Chapter 20 Caleb
Caleb
It’s no wonder she’s home tonight. Everything in that room was Brooke’s. She was hiding items from her own wedding. Her almost wedding. A wedding that was meant to be today. And here I am, sitting in her kitchen, asking her about it when all she probably wants to do is forget.
Brooke places a bowl in the middle of the kitchen table. “May I present…girl dinner,” she says, gesturing to the bowl of popcorn topped with chocolate chips. I give her a questioning look. “Just try it.”
“Someone really needs to teach you how to cook.” I grab a small handful and try it. I don’t hate it. “God, Brooke, I’m such an asshole,” I say, dropping my head into my hands on the table.
“Yeah.” Brooke sits down across from me and slides a beer in my direction. “You are…”
Geez. I didn’t expect her to completely agree. Though, as kind as I’ve been to her lately, I’d also been a huge asshole at one point. Jordan’s words about rejecting Brooke are fresh in my mind. It was so complicated, I don’t know how to explain any of it.
“…sometimes.” Brooke takes a sip of her wine. “But not because of this. How would you have known?”
“I don’t know but I still feel like an asshole.”
“I appreciate the apology. If it makes you feel any better, I’m relieved to not be Mrs. Kent Chadwick right now.”
Kent. Fucking. Chadwick. Is she kidding? It takes every part of me not to spit my large sip of beer across the table. She laughs as I struggle to swallow.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Kent Chadwick? I haven’t thought about him in years. You were going to marry him? He was the fucking worst. Remember how awful he was at the country club?”
Her face twists into a grimace. “Yeah…” she says before taking another sip of wine.
I am utterly baffled. Kent’s the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick.
No first names. We weren’t allowed to call any of the members by their first names, so to me they simply didn’t have them.
Kent was, probably still is, a spoiled country club kid who treated staff like they were there to serve him.
I guess technically we were there to serve him.
We were there to give the members the best possible experience.
After all, they paid a lot of money to be members of an affluent social club.
But Kent was always a fucking prick about it.
At least his parents had some manners. They said please and thank you.
I doubt Kent ever uttered either of those words to staff.
Kent and Brooke. Engaged. To each other. It’s a knife to the chest. He’s exactly the kind of guy I worried she’d end up with, but that doesn’t keep an emotion that feels a lot like jealousy from coursing through me.
I look at her in that nightgown that’s somehow adorably sexy on her, despite being the most conservative nightwear I’ve ever seen. Her wavy brown hair is pulled into a disheveled topknot, pieces falling in her face. Not a stitch of makeup on. Beautiful.
Until I found her on the floor of Spencer Soirees and took her to urgent care, I’d rarely seen Brooke Spencer with a hair out of place.
I like that version of Brooke, the version she puts on when she steps outside her door.
But I more than like this version. So perfectly imperfect.
Kent Chadwick didn’t deserve a moment of her time, let alone an engagement and everything I’m trying not to think about that comes with that.
“Why, Brooke?” I ask as calmly as I can manage.
“There is…” She releases a long breath. “A lot to unpack there.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” I say, though I desperately need the answer.
“No, it’s okay.” She gives me a half-hearted smile. “What better time than now?” She glances away and I follow her gaze to the digital clock on the microwave. 10:45 p.m.
“You’re thinking about what you would have been doing right now…at the wedding? Picturing the timeline in your head?”
She looks back at me and smiles.
“Well, what is it?” I ask, leaning back in my chair. “Tell me about the grand plans for a Spencer wedding.”
“Grand plans,” she says with a laugh. “That was part of the problem. My mom has had my wedding planned for at least a decade and was probably plotting for me to get together with Kent for even longer. Maybe not Kent specifically, but someone like him.”
I tip my beer bottle in Brooke’s direction. “Classic Judy.”
“Classic Judy. It made her so happy, planning the wedding. Everything she wanted for me, the things she never had. The engagement party was over the top…that’s where most of the stuff in the closet came from.
That and the bridal shower. But that was nothing compared to what she had planned for the wedding.
Right now, we would have been getting ready for a sparkler exit, obviously, and fireworks over the green at the country club. ”
“No, not the country club,” I groan, hanging my head down. “I thought they didn’t allow sparklers.”
“Oh, you know Judy convinced them to do it. Just this once,” she says, doing an impression of Judy.
“Would you expect anything less than the country club for Kent Chadwick? You’ll be relieved to know that the wedding wasn’t going to be in the ballroom because that wouldn’t fit the four hundred guests my mom and the Chadwicks were expecting.
They were going to tent over the golf course.
It was all my mom and Kent’s vision. He didn’t contribute much, but when he did, Mom fawned over every terrible idea he had like he was the first groom to ever show interest in wedding planning.
Things she would have told any other couple not to do.
Anything I asked, like a smaller guest list or having my favorite flowers, was ignored because it didn’t fit her vision. But I wanted my mom to be happy.”
“You’re too good to her, Brooke.”
“She’s done so much for me, Caleb. I owe it to her,” she says.
I disagree, but I hold my tongue. I’ve never liked Judy and nothing she’s done this summer is changing that opinion.
“How did you two get together in the first place?”
“Matchmaker Judy. Set us up on a blind date. Spent weeks talking about this guy who’d be so great for me. Never mentioned his name and I didn’t even think to ask until right before he picked me up. If she’d told me, I wouldn’t have agreed to it. He picked me up in his Cybertruck.”
“No,” I groan. “You’re lying. Getting me back for being such a dick.” A fucking Cybertruck. Come on.
She laughs, and the smile that comes with it is worth hearing about Kent and his Cybertruck.
“I know, red flag.”
“The reddest.”
“He was actually pleasant and nice. He even said thank you to the waiter at dinner.”
I scoff. “I don’t believe you.”
“I wouldn’t believe me either if I hadn’t heard it myself. It turned out to be an okay first date. And we had good dates afterward. He even promised to never drive me in that car again.”
“What a gentleman,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Before I knew it, my mom and I were going to the club with him and his parents and…I don’t know…
it was nice. She wasn’t on my case as much and I was happy enough.
Last fall, we were at the club for dinner and Kent stands up, clinks a knife against his wine glass, and asks everyone in the dining room for their attention.
He makes this grand speech about how perfect we are together and the perfect life we’ll have.
Then he’s down on one knee in front of me with this absolutely obscene ring.
I should’ve known that second it would all be a disaster, but I looked at my mom.
She had a huge smile on her face and she was crying. So I said yes.”
Happy enough. She deserves so much more than happy enough.
“What do you mean you should have known?”
“I don’t know,” she says, tilting her head in thought.
“I know I’m surrounded by weddings all the time, but I’ve never thought much about getting proposed to.
I knew at that moment it was all wrong. The country club, so terrible.
When he was on one knee and said ‘will you marry me,’ it gave me the ick. ”
“Him getting down on one knee gave you the ick? I thought that was the ultimate romantic grand gesture.” That’s so Brooke now that I think about it. She’s always cared more about the connection than the fanfare.
“I was sitting there in the middle of the dining room with women in pearls that I didn’t know grabbing my hand to look at the ring and telling me how lucky I was. It was my mom’s dream, not mine. Suddenly I knew exactly how I’d want to be proposed to.”
“Oh?”
Her cheeks flush but she continues. “I don’t want to be put on some pedestal.
I want to be standing face-to-face with the person I’m going on this enormous adventure with.
As equals. I know it’s supposed to be romantic or whatever, but if I ever get the chance again, it won’t be like that.
Weddings and romantic proposals are great, but marriage is about creating a life together.
And…never mind. You don’t care about how I would want to be proposed to. ”
Oh, but I do care. I care a lot. I can’t form words because my heart is in my fucking throat, so I give her a look that says just tell me.
She looks down and plays with her hands.
“…definitely not in front of dozens of watching people. In public is fine, but not some big grand gesture. Like a secret, no one around even knows it’s happening. And not at a fucking country club.”
Noted.
I’m imagining standing face-to-face with Brooke. Asking her that question. I hope she can’t tell that my heart is about to pound right out of my chest.
I figured I’d ask someone that question eventually, but I’ve never put much thought into the proposal. My work-life balance in California was shit and didn’t allow for much more than casual hookups or friends with benefits. Not to mention being hung up on the woman sitting across from me.
I like what she’s saying. Going into marriage together.
“You’ll get the chance again, Brooke,” I manage to say, shaking away the daydream.
She looks at me with a soft smile and shrugs. “We’ll see.”
Brooke Spencer is full of surprises. I always imagined she’d be a hopeless romantic.
If she’d told me she had her whole wedding planned, it wouldn’t have shocked me one bit.
Until tonight, I would have bet she had a secret box containing a full color-coded itinerary with everything planned down to the minute. A secret Pinterest board at least.
“My mom’s convinced I’m a ruined woman. That I’ll never get married, as if that’s the worst thing in the world.
Rich, coming from her. She never married but made a good life for herself.
For us. When I called it off you would have thought Kent died, the way she behaved.
According to her, I not only ruined my life but hers too.
She seems to have gotten over that for now, thankfully.
Wedding season is keeping her occupied.”
“That sounds like a very Judy reaction. When did you call things off?”
“In April, after the bridal shower. It was an awful day. Well, it was the most beautiful bridal shower I’ve ever seen. Some of my mom’s best work. Don’t ever tell her I said that.”
I draw an X over my heart. All her secrets are safe with me.
“I sat there opening gift after gift, trying to imagine my life with Kent and…I couldn’t picture anything.
My brain wouldn’t go there. I’d been playing fiancée for months and I never once thought beyond the wedding day.
When I tried, I panicked. All these guests I barely knew, friends of the Chadwicks.
The wives of Kent’s friends. Thank god Maddie and Jordan were there.
Kent came at the end and everyone, except the two of them, fussed over him.
I couldn’t fake it anymore. I kept it together until the guests left. Once they did, I called it off.”
“Was he an insufferable asshole about it?”
Brooke raises her eyebrows. “What do you think?”
“I hate that fucking guy.”
“He was relieved, but I injured his pride a little bit.” She takes a breath as her eyes meet mine.
“Caleb, I’m sorry I overreacted the other night.
How my mom handled things made me feel like a complete failure.
Having all of it tucked away in that room, I could pretend it never happened. And then you opened it.”
“Brooke,” I say. “You’re not a failure for calling off a marriage you didn’t want to be in.”
“I know,” she smiles, weakly. “But I appreciate you saying that. I should be thanking you. Jordan and Maddie helped me clean the closet the next day. Returned some gifts, donated things, burned the dress. I kept the rest of the Le Creuset though.”
I look at the stove. “Ah, it’s all making sense now. You don’t cook though, Brooke.”
But I do.
“So everyone keeps reminding me…it’s for the aesthetic, remember?” She laughs and I want to bottle it up so I can listen to it over and over.
“Of course, the aesthetic.”
“Maybe I’ll learn one day,” she smiles. “If I can find a good teacher.”
Me.
My mind is a mess of emotions, regrets, dreams. I’ve messed up so many things in my life and I certainly ruined any chance of anything more than friendship with Brooke. Friends. We can be friends again.
Why doesn’t that feel like enough?