7. Paul and Trish’s Wedding, October 2016 #2
After a year had passed with nothing more than birthday exchanges, she stopped asking Paul for updates about Ren.
It hurt to know that he was staying in touch with Paul and not her.
But now, arriving in this strange hotel in Las Vegas for Paul and Trish’s wedding festivities, Sarah knew she would finally see Ren again.
She wondered how he was doing, how his marriage was going, why he had stopped texting with no explanation.
She was hurt but had no right to be, which was the most mortifying form of sadness.
As if on cue, just as she was walking down the hallway to her hotel room, awkwardly juggling her key card, dress bag and wheeled luggage, Ren Durand stepped out of a room immediately in front of her, closing the door softly behind him.
His appearance was unusually unkempt, his hair mussed and clothes wrinkled.
“Ren?”
He spun to look at her, his expression going flat. “Sarah. Hi.” His voice was low.
“What’s up?”
Then the door swung open behind him and a pretty red-headed woman was standing there in a t-shirt and silky pajama shorts, her hair in a chaotic tangle. “Weren’t you going to leave me your number?” she asked.
Ren’s eyes shot to the woman. “Uh…Right. Yes. Sure.”
Sarah watched him do a pat-down of his outfit as he searched around for his cell phone.
“Well, I’ll just…” Sarah said, waving vaguely, and kept walking. Her room was only two doors away, and she could practically feel Ren’s mortification radiating toward her as he spoke to the woman in low tones.
“Here. And what’s yours?”
“I mean, I don’t have to call you,” came the young woman’s irritated reply before Sarah managed to unlock the door to her room. “But I do come to town a lot.” Sarah slipped inside and shut the door as quickly as she could.
Everything about the scene felt unreal and sordid. Wasn’t Ren married? She stood inside her hotel room door and sent a quick text to Paul.
Hey. Ren and Paola are coming to your wedding, right?
That should be vague enough to fish out the details.
Her phone buzzed a moment later. Not Paola. It would get awkward after the divorce.
Sarah heard footsteps outside her door that she knew were Ren’s. He was standing there deciding whether to knock. She waited, frozen in place, then heard a quiet sigh before the footsteps kept going.
She wondered what to text Paul, whether to mention what she’d seen. Instead, she wrote, When was he divorced?
Paul replied: Finalized a couple of weeks ago but separated a year. You guys should catch up. He may be slow getting going today because my bachelor party went late but he’ll be at the rehearsal dinner.
Bachelor party. That explained the bad Vegas cliché that she had stumbled upon.
It still seemed so out of character for Ren.
At school, he had hooked up with young women he liked talking to, not ones whom he wasn’t interested in giving his phone number to…
at least, none that she knew of. Maybe he had a whole other life she’d never known about.
She stood there, pressing her back against the wall and shutting her eyes tight. Something else hit her, a delayed reaction. He was still gorgeous. Startlingly so. Of course he was.
Everywhere she visited in Las Vegas seemed to have some kind of gimmick: flamingos, fountains, shiny red décor.
At the Thai restaurant that Paul and Trish had picked for dinner the night before the wedding, the gimmick was massive fish tanks on the walls lit by glowing blue light.
Everywhere in the city sounded like a dance party and smelled like cigarettes, and this place was no exception, Sarah thought. But it did look cool.
As she entered the private room reserved for their event, she paused to give a quick hug to Trish, who looked as slim and elegant as ever in a navy-blue cocktail dress, and then turned and threw her arms around Paul.
“Guess what! I got a teaching job!” Paul half-shouted in her ear over the aggressively loud music.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m going to be a history teacher. For twelve-year-olds.”
“Poor little bastards.”
“I know! And I’m doing acting again. I’ve started an improv group.”
“That’s fantastic. Send me a video of you doing improv!”
“Absolutely no fucking way,” he said with a laugh.
As she released Paul from her hug, she noticed Ren standing behind him, dressed in his usual dark colors as if he wanted to recede into the wall.
“Hey!” she said as she approached, acting like they hadn’t seen each other earlier.
“Hey, Sarah.” He was frowning.
Everything about him felt overwhelming suddenly: that he was here, and close, and staring at her. She took another step towards him. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“And the boy? How old is he now?”
“He’s almost five. He’s in pre-school.”
“The famous Camus years.”
He finally broke into a grin. “Right. Picking up English has not been as easy as we’d hoped.”
“Well, I’d love to see photos of him,” she said. “If you want to share any.” There, she was being normal, right?
“Sure.” He stared at her for a long moment. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Weren’t they already talking? “Of course.”
“Over there, maybe?”
He led her to the quietest corner of the room, where they could stand in the half-darkness just beyond the edge of the biggest fish tank. He leaned close to her and she thought again that he was almost stupidly attractive.
“So that woman you saw me with before…” he said just loudly enough to be heard above the music.
“Mmm?”
“Paul’s bachelor party last night, we all got pretty drunk. And she’s very nice, I mean I had a nice talk with her, but I don’t make a habit…since my divorce, I don’t make a habit…”
“Ren, it’s fine. You didn’t do anything you have to justify.”
“I know, I just…” He took a breath.
“I just didn’t know you were divorced.”
His mouth opened in shock. “Paul didn’t tell you?”
“I didn’t ask him. I guess I was waiting for you to tell me.”
Ren looked down again. “Right.”
“Why’d you stop texting me?” There. That was what she really wanted to say. “You stopped completely. At first I thought you had gotten busy, but…maybe you did get busy, but…”
He let out a long, slow breath. “Yeah.”
“I thought we were friends, and then it felt like…” She couldn’t finish. She didn’t know what it had felt like. Like she was a seductress he had to cut out of his life? Like he just didn’t like her anymore?
“No. We are friends,” he said now. “I hope we are.”
Sarah had a strange feeling of suspense. Half of her—more than half—had expected him to say that he hadn’t even realized he’d stopped texting her, that he had just gotten so busy that he had largely forgotten she existed. But his expression suggested that there was an explanation after all.
“Did I do something?” she asked.
“No!” He looked surprised.
She wondered again about Paola. Had there been a prohibition against talking to her? But if so, why hadn’t that ended when he separated from his wife?
He met her eyes. “I just…my marriage was not…good. It was falling apart. And I know you predicted that.”
“No, Ren.” Was that what he’d thought? During that last conversation at the art fair, that she’d been insinuating he would get a divorce?
“I felt… It felt weird writing you and not telling you I was having trouble. But explaining it…I thought…I guess I didn’t want you to…” He stopped.
Oh God. Did Ren think she was going to hit on him? Did Ren think that if she heard his marriage was on the rocks, she would make a move? What an utterly mortifying thought.
“You didn’t want me to what?” she asked, trying not sound defensive and failing. She had been dating someone, she thought angrily. She wasn’t going to throw herself at him at the first opportunity. In the middle of his divorce.
“I didn’t want you to say you agreed with her,” he said at last. “I didn’t want you to tell me that you’d never expected my marriage to work because I was kind of a fuck-up.”
She stared at him. “You thought…have I ever said anything about…?” She frowned. “I mean, I teased you about getting married, but only because…”
He frowned. There was a long silence. Ren tilted his head to one side, watching her as if he was trying to figure something out.
Then he sighed slowly. “I guess…Paola made me feel like you made me feel at university sometimes, like she thought I was an idiot. And after a while, there was nothing left about me that she liked.” Sarah watched Ren’s pained expression.
She’d never seen him like this. It was like the divorce had ripped him open, brought out some new level of honesty she had never witnessed before.
“No,” Sarah said gently. “I think you do a great job of taking care of people, and I’m sure you do a good job taking care of your son.
You were nice to me in school. Always, even when we were arguing.
Even when I turned you down. And if Paola didn’t respect you, and didn’t see that about you, that means she never understood you in the first place. ”
He stared at her for a moment. There was the flash of a self-deprecating smile. “Well, if I’d known you were going to say that, I would have reached out earlier.”
She smiled briefly. “I just missed you.”
“I know, I just…and I didn’t want to hear that you were dating another one of your jerks.”
“I’m not dating one of my jerks,” she said. “I’m not dating anybody.”
His eyes were warm as he looked at her, and she felt a wave of nerves.
It hit her then that they were both single.
He was looking at her like he wanted to kiss her, and for once, she felt sure that he did.
Her insecurity had blinded her to the possibility he might like her back in undergrad, but now she thought she could understand him better.
He glanced at her hair, her tight wrap dress.
“Me neither,” he said. They stared at each other.
“Hey you two!” Trish called. “We’re telling everyone to eat.”
“Come on,” Sarah said gently, nudging his arm. “Let’s check out this Vegas buffet. Although I guess you get those all the time.”