Chapter Eight Natalie
Natalie tried to clear her head as she headed up the inn’s stairs toward Jonathan’s room, but the anxiety that’d been building throughout the day had begun to reach a fever pitch.
Marigold didn’t have a wedding license and was flying to New York for her birth certificate.
Olivia had gone AWOL, and the other bridesmaids were asking a million questions Natalie couldn’t answer.
And on top of that, she’d completely blown her chances with Susan Denver.
She’d probably see her again before the end of the wedding festivities, but Natalie couldn’t see a way to bring up her book—Remember when you said you’ve always wanted this kind of novel?
Well, I have it!—without sounding unhinged.
She nodded vaguely at a blond woman coming down the stairs in jeans and a fleece. “Natalie!” The woman reached out for a hug.
“Hannah, hi!” Natalie said. “Sorry, I was in my own world.”
“I get it. Westleigh is also a dreamer. Maybe she’ll be writer like you!
” Westleigh was Hannah’s five-year-old daughter and, in Natalie’s recollection, screamed bloody murder if forced to part with her ever-present iPad.
“We were supposed to stay with my folks, but my mom refuses to buy new kitchenware, and I can’t be around all those microplastics in my… present condition.”
“Of course.” So her “new addition” was a baby and not a home renovation. “Congrats!”
Hannah beamed. “Thank you. I hope our news doesn’t distract too much from Marigold’s big day. This weekend is all about her, of course! I haven’t seen Marigold yet. Is she saying here or at the cottage?”
“At the cottage, but she actually had to fly back to New York to get something. She’ll be back tonight.”
“Oh no! There wasn’t anyone who could go for her?” Hannah gave Natalie a pointed look.
“She wanted to take care of it,” Natalie said as brightly as possible. “Sorry, I gotta run. I’ll see you at the rehearsal later!”
When she reached Jonathan’s room, she paused and took a deep, steadying breath. She’d already mortified herself enough for one weekend; she needed at least one social interaction to go smoothly or else she’d turn around and walk straight into the sea. She knocked loudly.
“Come in!” Jonathan’s voice called.
“You sure? Are you decent?”
“Only one way to find out!”
Natalie opened the door and stepped in, blushing with residual embarrassment from yesterday’s mishap, and found a fully dressed Jonathan standing next to an old-fashioned writing desk, fiddling with his laptop.
He wore the same thick-framed glasses that’d always made Natalie’s heart flutter in college, the ones Marigold kept calling outdated.
“I’m sorry again about yesterday,” Natalie said. “I still can’t believe they gave me the wrong room key.”
“It’s fine,” Jonathan said with a grin. “Consider it your consolation prize.”
The air hissed out of Natalie’s lungs like a leaky air mattress. “Sorry, what?”
“You know, because the stripper fell through? At the bachelorette party?”
“Oh, right,” Natalie said, trying to hide her relief.
He picked his laptop off the desk and flopped onto the bed just like he’d done hundreds of times in college, back when Natalie wouldn’t have hesitated to flop down next to him.
But that was a lifetime ago. Now they were fully fledged adults and Jonathan was less than thirty-six hours away from marrying Natalie’s best friend.
But didn’t that make things safer, in a way?
There was no more ambiguity. No more what-ifs.
Everyone had made their choices. There was nothing Natalie could do to change things.
Perhaps there’d been a point years ago when she could’ve pulled a Hail Mary and gone for it, but now Natalie couldn’t confess her feelings without looking like the most delusional sociopath on the planet.
Jonathan opened his laptop. “So I have a draft of my vows, but I want to make sure they aren’t too cheesy. You know how much Marigold hates that stuff.”
“Definitely,” Natalie said, still standing. “Do you want to email it to me?”
“Sure… or you could just read it on my computer? I promise I’ve showered since I was last in the hospital. Although I guess you know that already. Hey, is that why you walked in on me? Did you need firsthand proof that I’d washed off the hospital germs before you got too close?”
Twin waves of embarrassment crashed over her—the reminder of yesterday’s mortifying mishap and the reference to her notorious germophobia.
Back when Jonathan was in med school, he’d sometimes swing by her apartment after work, and even Natalie’s all-consuming crush hadn’t been enough to allow him to sit on her couch in his scrubs.
She rolled her eyes and sat on the bed next to Jonathan. “I only freaked out when there was that outbreak of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which even you have to admit isn’t unreasonable.”
“And the so-called Ebola outbreak?”
“There were cases in New York!”
“Not at my hospital!”
“You don’t know that. They could’ve had asymptomatic Ebola.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“You know, I think Liesl might be onto something. You are one of those know-it-all doctors.”
“If I were, would I be asking you for help?”
“Touche.” She purposely mispronounced the word it so it rhymed with douche, a family joke of Natalie’s that Jonathan had adopted.
She took the laptop from him and steeled herself for the inevitable stabs of pain.
She’d accepted that Jonathan was marrying her best friend, that he’d chosen Marigold over her.
But she wasn’t super keen to read Jonathan’s justification for why.
Not that it was all that difficult to understand: Marigold was model-pretty, funny, and supremely sweet to boot.
She had her clueless, callous moments—as did most beautiful, rich people who led charmed lives—but at her core, Marigold was kind and caring.
Natalie didn’t begrudge Jonathan for his choice, but she didn’t have a burning desire to see it all through his eyes.
Yet to her surprise, Jonathan’s vows were a tad generic. He praised the same qualities everyone saw in Marigold; it was a speech that could’ve been written by anyone close to her. Or even just someone who knew and liked her.
Don’t read into this, Natalie told herself.
He’s not a professional writer. Except that Natalie had worked with students long enough to know the difference between style and content.
She’d tutored gifted writers whose elegant prose revealed nothing, and kids with no grasp of grammar, diction, or rhythm but whose clunky sentences still communicated intelligence or humor or passion.
“Is it okay?” He sounded nervous. “Don’t hold back. I want your notes.”
“It’s… lovely. I just wonder if there might be room to make it a bit more… specific to you and Marigold.”
“Oh.” Jonathan frowned. “Yeah, no, I can see that.”
“Maybe something about when you knew she was the one?” Natalie asked, unsure whether this was the impulse of a skilled editor or just a masochist.
Jonathan’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s easy.
She gave me the most incredible card for my birthday.
We’d been dating for a few months, and I was pretty smitten, but then she gave me this card—twenty-nine reasons why I love Jonathan—for my twenty-ninth birthday.
It was thoughtful and creative, it made me a little teary.
I have a photo of it.” Jonathan reached for his phone and began to scroll.
“Listen to this: number seventeen, ‘I love how you scoop ants out of the shower before you turn on the water.’ Or number twenty, ‘I love how your forehead wrinkles when you cut vegetables.’ ” He ran his hand through his dark curls, embarrassed.
“I know it’s stupid, but I was like: this woman gets me. That’s when I knew I was all in.”
Natalie stared at him, a frozen smile on her face as she tried to process what she’d just heard.
Surely Jonathan was oversimplifying things for the sake of his vows.
That couldn’t have been the moment everything changed between him and Marigold.
That’s not how things worked in real life.
You didn’t decide to propose just because someone gave you a nice birthday card!
But as she watched Jonathan smile at his phone, reading it for the umpteenth time, Natalie couldn’t ignore the coil of regret that had been tightening inside her for the past four years.
Jonathan was about to marry the wrong woman, and it was all her fault. A woman she’d practically thrown into his arms because Natalie had been too cowardly to confess her real feelings.
Jonathan glanced up from his phone and frowned again. “You okay, Bumpy? You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine.” Natalie jumped off the bed lest he place a hand on her forehead to feel for fever. She felt so hollow and fragile, she was sure she’d shatter under his touch and lose any semblance of self-control.
“So what do you think? Do I mention the card in my vows? Because it’s true—that’s the night I realized: I could spend the rest of my life with this woman.”
“I don’t know,” Natalie said weakly. “It might not work for the vows. Maybe add some humor? Some promises, not minding that she always falls asleep during movies?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jonathan placed the laptop on the bed and rose to his feet. “Do you need some water?”
I need a time machine, Natalie thought. Marigold hadn’t done anything wrong.
Natalie was the one who’d screwed up time and again.
She could’ve made a move anytime during the first ten years of their friendship, but she’d let her insecurities get in the way.
Jonathan loved Marigold. And only a truly terrible person would try to sabotage what they had.
The day before the wedding. When the bride’s mother was fighting cancer.