CHAPTER 39 Cello Player No. 3
With everything happening after the ceremony, I didn’t get the chance to ask William what his earlier reaction was all about until we sat down for dinner at the reception. We shared a huge table with all the Sj?berg family, including Nathan, Vivienne, and Nathalie’s new boyfriend, Lars. William told me they had dated back in high school. They broke up after two years together, got married to other people, divorced, and now had reconnected after all these years.
Sivert was visibly displeased with Lars’s presence. One could say he was a little jealous by the disdainful looks he shot Lars’s way. But Joel wanted his mother to be happy, and he didn’t mind Lars being invited to the wedding. And it’d been a while since I’d seen her this happy and at peace.
“What happened before the ceremony started?” I finally asked in a hushed voice, trying to be discreet. “Did you see a ghost?” I kept my tone playful so he would feel more inclined to tell me.
“Something like that, yeah.” He sliced a piece of his filet and took it to his mouth. I waited for him to chew and swallow. “See the blonde cello player on the right?”
I nodded. “Cello Player Number 3. I remember her from the audition tapes. Lily and I loved her from the start.”
“Cello Player Number 3 is Astrid,” he said, staring at his plate as he stabbed a potato and dabbed it in the sauce before eating it. He wiped the corners of his lips with the napkin. “My ex. The one I told you about.”
William had mentioned her briefly back in December. He told me they had parted ways when she moved to Gothenburg to pursue a degree in music while he stayed in Stockholm to become a chef. All I knew was that things hadn’t ended on a good note and that they hadn’t seen each other since.
“I didn’t even know she lived in New York,” William added before I could think of anything else to say. “But please don’t mistake my shock of seeing her with anything else. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting to see her, and least of all at Joel’s wedding.”
“No, it’s fine.” I shook my head with a smile. “I was curious to know what made you react that way.”
We didn’t discuss the topic any further.
The final portion of dinner was up, and the musicians stopped playing when the DJ took over. Before the rest of the ensemble finished gathering and packing their instruments, I noticed Astrid heading our way, her cello case strapped around her shoulders like a backpack.
William’s jaw tensed, but he licked his lips and looked away, resting a hand on my knee.
“Is that … Astrid?” Eric said with a surprised smile as she lifted her hand and waved at our table. William perked up in his seat as his family members turned to look at him and see his reaction to Astrid’s presence. Nathan, who sat at our table, looked at me instead.
“Oh, goodness. It is Astrid.” Nathalie was beaming as she shot up from her seat. Jesus Christ. To think I was the one who insisted on booking her for the gig. “Aren’t you guys going to say hi? You haven’t seen her in ages!”
Everyone stared at William again, waiting for him to respond, but he remained silent. Meanwhile, Tobias, Joel, and Eric stood to join Nathalie. I snorted, feeling betrayed at how quickly they stood and how happy they seemed to greet her.
Whatever.
“Hej!” she said with the brightest grin, greeting Nathalie first with a warm embrace that almost made me scoff at the familiarity of the gesture. Fuck me. Astrid’s silky, sun-kissed blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders as she unstrapped the cello case and settled it on the floor.
They were talking in Swedish, so I didn’t understand what they were saying, but it was easy to guess from their body language. They were probably saying it’s been a while, and what are the odds. I even caught a grattis from Astrid—Swedish for congratulations.
They chatted for a few minutes, and at some point, Astrid pulled out her phone and typed as Nathalie dictated.
I lifted my wineglass and took a long sip. “William, kom hit och s?g hej!” Nathalie urged William to say hi to Astrid, but she waved a carefree hand and approached us instead.
“Hej, kille,” Astrid said in a sweet, velvety tone to William, her mouth upturned into a half smile. He stood up slowly to greet her. “?h! G? inte upp.”
He replied in Swedish, and added, “This is my girlfriend Billie. Billie, this is Astrid.”
“Trevligt att tr?ffas,”1 she said, followed by a longer statement my limited Swedish lexicon failed to account for as she outstretched her hand.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, trying not to seem clueless as I shook her hand. “But I don’t speak Swedish.”
“Oops, my bad. I assumed you would by now.” She shrugged and gave me a small, squinty, innocent smile, but the dig was there. “Well, it was the nicest surprise seeing you all.” She waved everyone goodbye. “Congratulations, again.” She rounded the table and picked up her cello case from the floor. Eric helped her strap it back on. “We should grab that coffee soon to catch up, Nathalie.” Of course, she chose English to say her parting words.
“Yes, my dear,” Nathalie replied, waving goodbye. “You have my number now.” Astrid nodded and stared at William with those sky-blue eyes and gorgeous makeup-free face—a natural beauty. She parted her soft pink lips as if wanting to say something. Instead, she turned around and walked away.
Once she was far enough, William said to his mom, “Coffee? Really?”
“I was just being polite! She asked for my number. What did you want me to say?”
“I want you to say no if she ever calls you,” he retorted, the table going eerily quiet.
“You can count on it.” Nathalie winked as the wedding planner whispered something quickly in her ear before darting away. It was time for parent dances. I knew because I’d memorized the order of events for the wedding.
Everyone quickly moved on to talk about something else and redirected their attention to the dance floor.
“Sorry about all that.” William widened his eyes and flared his nostrils, turning to face me.
“Why did she call you kille?” I asked. “What does it mean?”
“It means boy.” He shook his head and gave me a tight-lipped smile. “She used it as a pet name when we were dating. She was taunting me.” William slid my chair closer to his, tracing an invisible line down my arm with his finger. “You’re not jealous, are you?” He smirked at me.
“Never.” I crossed my arms at my chest and playfully lifted my chin. Then, I blew out a breath. “Okay, you got me. Everyone seems to love her.”
He laughed. “They were more surprised about the coincidence than excited to see her, believe me. But yeah, she used to get along great with everyone, but that’s in the past. I can assure you she won’t call my mom for a coffee date.”
“Good.”
His lips met mine for a soft kiss that lingered for a few seconds before breaking it off and pulling slightly back. William grabbed my hands. “Move in with me.”
I laughed. He laughed.
“What?” I cupped his cheeks with my hands and squeezed his face lightly. “Are you drunk already?”
“A little,” he said with a laugh. My hands fell to his knees, and I squeezed them. “But that’s beside the point. I’m dead serious about this. I want to bring down the wall separating our rooms and sleep on the same bed as you every single night.” He tucked a loose, wavy strand behind my ear.
“Does that mean I’ll get a rent increase?” I quipped. “Since I’ll be having a bigger room?”
“Definitely,” he said, stretching the joke. “But I’m sure we can reach a mutually beneficial understanding.”
“I bet we can.” I smiled and looked up to meet his beautiful, light sapphire eyes that could get me to agree to anything in two seconds. “You’re not kidding about this, are you?”
He shook his head no and puckered his lips slightly.
“We sleep together almost every night,” I reminded him. “I’m starting summer school, and you’re leaving soon. Will we have the time to work on joining the bedrooms right now?”
He bobbed his head yes and blinked slowly.
“William!” I let out an exasperated laugh. We’d been neighbors for a while before we even started dating. And thanks to the invisible door separating our rooms, moving from his place to mine was easy. We had that added closeness not many couples had at the beginning of their relationships.
At the end of the day, he still arrived at his place, and I arrived at mine. We had our privacy if we felt like it, even if I spent the night at his place or him at mine on a regular basis. Still, William asking me to move in with him was a huge deal. It was a significant step up our relationship ladder. And as exciting as I found the idea of sharing my life with William in an even more intimate way, it also made me feel sad because he was leaving soon.
William knew me well, and by the way he was looking at me, I was sure he was trying to guess where my reluctance was coming from. It wasn’t about not wanting to say yes or feeling afraid about taking that next step. “I’m afraid I’ll miss you more if we do this right before you leave.” I grabbed the flaps of his jacket and pulled him closer to me.
“I’ll miss you to death either way,” he whispered back.
With a sigh, I pressed my forehead against his again, then dropped a peck on his lips.
“My Girl” started playing, and Lily and her father took the dance floor for the father-daughter dance.
“Say yes,” he said.
“Yes.” There was no other answer. It felt right, and it made my heart beat faster with excitement.
William lifted his fist and mouthed, “Yes!”
I laughed, cleared my throat, and said, “Jag—?lskar—dig.”
William gaped at me with exaggerated shock. I never attempted to say anything in Swedish. As much as I loved languages, Swedish was a language that was completely out of my comfort zone.
“Jag ?lskar dig ocks?, och jag ?r v?ldigt glad att du sa ja. Jag tar hand om allt. Jag lovar. Du beh?ver inte oroa dig f?r n?gonting.”
He could’ve been telling me to fuck off, but I was still a puddle on the floor. I loved how his voice turned slightly graver when he spoke in Swedish. He knew I loved it, especially during sex. I’d mentioned it to him more times than I could recall. Still, I tilted my head and rolled my eyes at him because he knew I didn’t understand one lick of whatever he had just said. Except for the first part where he said he loved me, too.
“What?” he said with a laugh. “I thought you’d learned Swedish by now.”
“Shut up.” I laughed, remembering Astrid’s earlier comment. “What were you saying?”
“That I’ll take care of everything.” He kissed my temple. “And that you don’t need to worry about a thing.”
“Thank you.” I took a slow, calming breath and pushed away the nagging thoughts that reminded me William would soon be moving twenty-four hundred miles away. “Now, let’s watch Lily and her dad dance.”
William tapped his thigh twice, asking me to sit on his lap, and I did.
“Thank you,” he said. “For saying yes.”
After helping Lily into her third and last dress of the night, we all switched gears to full-on party mode. I was having the time of my life. It’d been a while since I allowed myself to have a good time without holding back or feeling guilty about it.
Zara and Moira had been dancing close to us, and I caught William shooting curious glances at them before we decided to take a break and drink some water. “Why was Zara afraid you’d get mad about Moira being her plus one?” I asked him. When I helped Lily get changed into her third dress, Zara came with us, too. She told me all William had said to her was, “We’ll talk about this after the wedding.” Evidently, Zara had interpreted William’s comment as a win and had taken the liberty to shamelessly enjoy Moira’s company for the rest of the evening.
William lifted his brows as he drank half a glass of water in a single gulp. Then he set the glass on the table and clicked his tongue. “Fredrik, one of my best friends growing up, asked Zara on a date four years ago,” William explained. “She asked me first if I was okay with it, and I said no. Zara had just turned eighteen, but I still saw her as a child, and Fredrik and I were twenty-four. She went out with him behind my back. He obviously didn’t know Zara was my sister. Nobody knew. All he knew is that she was a family friend.
“So one day, Fredrik calls me to catch up and mentions how he’d been fucking around with Zara, among other things I’ve already drilled out of my brain.” William signaled the server to bring him another drink. I wasn’t drinking much and had since switched to water. “I lost it,” William continued. “As much as I tried to keep it together, I failed. And Fredrik didn’t get why I was so upset. He probably thought I had a thing for her, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t tell him she was my half-sister, so he didn’t take it very well when Zara called him the next day to end it after I made her do it.” He licked his lower lip. “My friendship with Fredrik ended because of it, and I made Zara promise she wouldn’t date any of my friends, male or female. So she knows better than to get too attached to Moira.”
Damn.
The situation was more complicated than I thought. I’d promised Zara I would say something to William, but Zara had left out the most important details when we discussed it. All I could think of saying was, “Zara mentioned earlier she really likes Moira.”
William shook his head, and I could sense the irritation building up inside him. “I can’t risk my relationship with Moira. It goes beyond our friendship, which I’m also not willing to give up if things were to go south between them.” William took a deep breath when the server came back with his drink. He took a sip and carried on. “You know I don’t usually like to speak of things before they’re set in stone. But let’s just say if I ever decide to act upon certain business endeavors, I’ll want Moira in my corner. And Zara getting involved with her makes me uneasy.”
I peeked over my shoulder and saw Zara and Moira dancing, laughing, smiling. I remembered the chemistry between them the night they met, and even if I understood where William was coming from, it was still unfair to Zara. The romantic in me thought everything was possible without hurting anyone or any relationships. Zara was older now. She wasn’t eighteen anymore, and Moira struck me as a very responsible and mature woman.
“I’m sorry about what happened with Fredrik. That sucks,” I said. “It really does. But I think you should talk to Zara first and see if you’d be willing to make an exception.”
“We’ll see.” William frowned. “I’d rather not think about this right now.”
“Okay.” I smiled and kissed his lips.
“Speaking of exceptions,” William said with a laugh. He sipped his drink and jerked his chin over my left shoulder. I turned to find Naomi kissing a guy against the wall behind the dessert stand. My jaw dropped.
Naomi didn’t bring a date to the wedding because she was “still dating” Aaron. However, since the wedding was a closed event, no cell phones were allowed for increased privacy. Lily and Joel couldn’t risk any unauthorized sharing or leaking of photos, especially when they had granted exclusive rights to Haute Magazine for coverage.
Naomi knew that. She’d been the one to negotiate the deal with Haute. So if anyone saw her kissing this guy, there’d be no evidence.
“Why does Aaron look like he’s about to combust?” Liam asked out of nowhere, appearing next to me. Nina ordered two glasses of water from the nearest server. She looked tired and sweaty from all the singing and dancing.
William grabbed Liam’s jaw and turned his head in the direction where the mystery man had Naomi pressed against the wall with his hands slipping dangerously low from the small of her back.
“Oh?” Liam squinted as he realized who that was. “Oh!” he shouted as his gaze flicked back to Aaron, who was a few powerful strides away from reaching Naomi.
It was evident that Naomi and Aaron’s relationship was growing more complicated and less fake the longer they played this pretend game.
Aaron shoved the man kissing Naomi to the side. He was either too drunk or too smart to engage with Aaron’s wrath. He looked confused more than anything else, and after staring at Naomi for a few seconds without getting any feedback from her, he walked away. She was too busy arguing with Aaron.
“I can’t watch,” I said, turning around. It was best to give them some privacy. Naomi would likely tell me what happened the next time I saw her without even having to ask.
“Well, I can.” Liam laughed. He was ready to take a seat and grab a bowl of popcorn.
Nina took a few more sips of her water and then set the glass on the table. She stood in front of Liam and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Want to go back to the dance floor?” She kissed Liam’s cheek and swayed her hips to the rhythm of the music, gently grinding against him.
“If you can keep doing that, I most certainly want to.” He grabbed Nina’s hand and pulled her back to the crowded dance floor. Two seconds later, the DJ announced it was time for the bouquet toss, and I heard Liam’s deflated “Seriously?!”
It made me laugh.
“Off you go,” William said with a smirk as the women gathered and got into bouquet-catching positions next to Nina. I stared at William with an exaggerated nervous grin as I walked away, but that didn’t stop him from cheering for me as he joined the men to stand around to watch.
Lily turned around and tossed the bouquet to the opposite side of where we stood. It practically landed in Vivienne’s hands. But Lily’s obnoxious friend Lana, who had been obsessed with Nathan back when we were dating, tried to seize it out of Vivienne’s grasp when she caught it. Lana was probably still obsessed with him. Thankfully, it wasn’t my problem anymore.
“Damn!” Nina laughed hysterically as we watched them fighting over the bouquet. But Vivienne didn’t go down without a fight. The bouquet was hers. She turned around, and Lana would’ve fallen to her knees if it hadn’t been for one of her friends who managed to help her before she did. Lana embraced her defeat, and Vivienne rushed toward Nathan to celebrate. He hugged her as they celebrated her triumph.
A genuine smile appeared on my face, but I quickly redirected my gaze away from them.
After the women scattered, the DJ announced it was time for the garter toss. Now, it was the men’s turn to make a fool of themselves. The only difference was that the men were pushing each other, pretending no one wanted to catch the garter. It was hilarious. But once Joel tossed the garter, they all got in competitive mode and jumped to reach for it.
Some guy I didn’t know caught it and hurried away to slide it up the leg of his date, who I assumed was his girlfriend.
“I don’t think the wedding gods are in our favor,” I told William when he joined me after the garter toss.
“Have you forgotten?” he said, his tone low and husky, grabbing me by the waist and tugging me closer to him in a playful way. “That you dreamed of me on Midsummer after putting those flowers under your pillow?”
“Hmm.” I tapped my chin twice. “Rings a bell.”
“Rings a bell?” he asked indignantly, lifting me off the floor to level his face with mine. “Have you also forgotten the meaning behind the dream?”
I nodded.
“Do you need me to refresh your memory? Because I know a method or two that might work wonders on you.”
“Wait … I think I remember now,” I whispered, my lips an inch away from his.
“You do?” He slowly lowered me back to my feet but kept my body close to his.
“It means I’ll have a lot of husbands, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get to be one of them.”
William’s nostrils flared with annoyance, and I laughed. “You are going to be the most stubborn, naughty, and disobedient wife, won’t you?”
“I’ll make my husbands go mad for sure.” I looped my arms around his neck and kissed the left corner of his lips.
“You’ll pay for this.”
“Looking forward to it.”