Chapter 46
Rehearsals
The night before the wedding, we all gather in the l’orangerie, tucked into the garden, the way a heart tucks its most fragile things behind bone.
Flowering dogwood stems are laced through the rafters. Candles flicker in mismatched jars. The air is warm and sweet with the scent of tomato vines and late-summer basil, the kind of perfume you can’t buy because it only exists when something has been loved into growing.
It’s just the Jones family and me.
Kiki runs the logistics like she’s hosting a global summit. Jay from Houlme has taken command of our wood-fired oven with the calm authority of someone who believes in heat and patience. Platters come out in waves: blistered pizzas with squash blossoms, a little char at the edges; tender-leafed salads topped with shavings of cured hen eggs that look like something you’d find in a magazine spread.
Negronis are flowing, some real, some pretend, and no one seems to mind which is which. Patricia has already decided the phony negroni is “darling,” the way she politely describes dishes she’ll later reverse engineer in her own kitchen.
The playlist was curated by Gavin.
I know because it sounds like our road trip to Vancouver. Now, all of the songs sound like they hide secrets. Chords that rise unexpectedly, like a hand on your back when you weren’t braced for touch.
I’ve been seated opposite him at the long table. That distance feels deliberate. A choice. Discipline.
He laughs with Patricia, gestures toward Jared, says something sarcastic to Cari. But every now and then, his gaze flicks toward me. It lands, stays, moves away. Like his eyes are doing their own rehearsal. Practice looking. Practice not reaching.
Olivia isn’t here tonight. Neither is Samuel.
I do everything I can to avoid his gaze, but my body remembers my time with him. Not in a romantic, tasteful way. In a cellular way.
His hands.
The shape of them on my ribs. The way his thumb used to draw slow circles at my hip as if my body was a map he’d already memorized. The way he could make me feel safe and wrecked at the same time.
It rushes back in unexpected waves. Months apart, and I haven’t untangled a single thread. It’s like he moved in, quietly, and my cells refused to let him leave.
When a server passes a platter down the table, Gavin reaches for it at the same time I do.
Our fingers brush. A shared accident.
My whole nervous system lights up like a match.
He stills. I still. The platter wobbles.
Patricia laughs at something Liam says, and the moment is swallowed by noise, but my skin won’t forget.
We don’t speak.
But the tension is so present, it has elbows and sharp corners.
Later, when I step outside for air, it’s as if the garden is breathing in the dark. Thyme and rosemary and the faint, wild sweetness of strawberries and huckleberries. I can hear the distant hush of Fishing Bay across the road.
Gavin’s shadow appears in the doorway, but he doesn’t join me.
He just stands there, like he’s waiting for me to decide something.
My foster-kid instincts snap awake: don’t ask for love out loud. Don’t put your whole heart on the table. Don’t hand someone something they can use against you.
So I walk away first.
And I tell myself it’s the safer choice.