Chapter Twenty Natalie
This can’t be how Jonathan imagined the night before his wedding, Natalie thought, looking around the lounge area that contained the inn’s after-hours honor bar, a beautiful, library-esque room with built-in bookshelves, a fireplace, and leather club chairs where some of the guests had gathered for a nightcap.
Jonathan and Natalie’s actual friends had all gone to bed—save for Zack, who’d left on a quest to find an open pharmacy—and now they were stuck with Hannah and her husband, Kevin, both of whom defied the laws of nature by growing duller the drunker they became.
“Dinner was delicious, wasn’t it?” Hannah said.
“I had the chicken and the salad, and a little bit of the beef, but I didn’t try the fish, which is a shame because later at the bonfire, this woman was raving about the fish.
So I asked Kevin if he’d tried it, but he said he couldn’t remember, and I told him he’d remember really exceptional fish, so either he didn’t have it, or else it wasn’t as special as that woman thought it was.
But I was bummed about missing out, so I googled the chef and it turns out his restaurant is going to have a booth at the food festival in my parents’ town, the same weekend we’ll be visiting next month. Isn’t that ironic?”
“So ironic,” Jonathan said before flashing Natalie a quick smile.
It was one of their many shared linguistic pet peeves, when people erroneously used ironic instead of coincidence.
They also shared a mutual dislike for back east (back from where?), yummy (cloyingly cutesy), fine wine (corny and meaningless), and curl up with a good book (why would anyone curl up with a bad book?) Jonathan typed something on his phone, and a moment later, Natalie’s buzzed with a text.
This isn’t how I pictured the night before my wedding.
This is what you get for coming to my rescue, Natalie wrote back.
The lounge had been empty when she’d snuck in to grab a nightcap from the honor bar, but instead of heading straight back to her room, she’d made the error of sitting down for a moment.
A minute later, Hannah had bustled in, hair damp from the rain.
“Goodness, here you are all alone again!” she’d said, fixing Natalie with a pitying smile while Kevin headed wordlessly to the bar.
“I’m exhausted, but I’ll sit here for a bit while you finish your drink. ”
“I’m fine, really,” Natalie had said. “I could actually use a few minutes by myself.”
“Don’t be silly! You should never drink alone. Especially single girls. It can be a slippery slope, you know. That glass of wine before bed turns into two, and pretty soon you’re downing a bottle a night.”
Kevin ambled over with the enormous water glass he’d filled to the brim with scotch, ignoring the neat row of appropriately sized whiskey tumblers. “I think you forgot to sign for that,” Natalie had said.
“What are you talking about?” Kevin grumbled.
“It’s an honor bar. You’re supposed to sign for it on the sheet there.”
Kevin sniffed. “What kind of wedding doesn’t have an open bar?”
Natalie stared at him incredulously. “This isn’t the wedding. This is a hotel.”
Hannah continued, ignoring the whole exchange, “You know, I have a cousin in New York you might like. Well, he lives in New Jersey, but he comes into the city whenever he has a doctor’s appointment.”
That’s when Jonathan had wandered in with Zack and another groomsman, Chris.
They’d planned to end the night at a dive bar in town, but had arrived to find it closed due to flooding from earlier.
“Here’s the man of the hour!” Hannah had said.
“I was just telling Natalie that it’s not good to spend so much time alone, and that she has to meet my very eligible cousin. ”
“Natalie’s a writer. She needs to spend time alone,” Jonathan had said, signing for the bourbon he’d poured for himself and his groomsmen. “She’s not one of those people who talks more than they think.” Zack laughed and then started to choke on his drink until Jonathan pounded him on the back.
A few other guests had joined for a bit, but the impromptu after-after-party had wound down, leaving just Natalie, Jonathan, Hannah, and Kevin.
Natalie was more than ready for bed, but it didn’t seem right to abandon the groom.
Jonathan’s ceiling had started to leak during the storm, and the inn’s handyman was still in his room, patching it up.
Finally, Kevin topped up his drink, once again ignoring the notepad where guests were meant to sign for their drinks, and he and Hannah retired for the night.
“You don’t have to wait here with me,” Jonathan said to Natalie after they left. “You look exhausted.”
“Thanks for pointing that out.”
“Not bad exhausted. I just know you’ve had a long day. I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you for everything you’ve done. You’d win the maid of honor Olympics, hands down.” He stood up, walked over to the bar, picked up a pen, and began to scribble on the notepad.
“What are you doing?” Natalie asked.
“I’m marking down Kevin’s drinks… and billing everyone else’s drinks to his room.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I absolutely am.”
“Jonathan! Stop it. That’s fraud.”
“Fraud?” Jonathan repeated with a smile. “Right, of course. I’m talking to the girl who told the registrar that they’d given her too much financial aid.”
“It was a mistake! I wasn’t being a Goody Two-shoes. It would’ve come back to bite me in the ass at some point.”
“Fine. I won’t make Kevin the cheapskate pay for a few drinks. Let see… I’ll sign the book as… Amanda Hugginkiss.”
“Yeah, sure you will…” Natalie said, rolling her eyes.
“Just did.”
“No, you didn’t.” She got up and walked over to the book. Sure enough, “Amanda Hugginkiss” had signed for two whiskeys.
“You’re such a doofus,” she said, unable to stifle a giggle. “Come on. You’re creating extra work for the poor employee who’ll have to sort this out.”
“Oh, it’s fine. I already told the front desk that I’d cover the drinks from tonight.”
“Well, in that case…” Natalie took the pen, scratched out her own name, and replaced it with Dr. Anita Cox.
Jonathan stared at it, wide-eyed, and they both burst out laughing.
Then, with a mischievous smile, he added “Biggs” as a middle name, and Natalie laughed so hard she lost her balance and had to collapse back into her armchair.
“I don’t know why I’m having this reaction,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.
“It’s really not that funny.” Perhaps it wasn’t the juvenile joke; maybe it was the surprise of seeing Jonathan’s goofy side remerge.
She hadn’t seen him like this in years—it’d been a long time since she’d felt this giddy energy with him, the kind she remembered from their early days in New York, when they’d gorge on all-you-can-eat sushi in the East Village, then meet some of their college friends for karaoke in Koreatown, where, if she’d had enough to drink, Jonathan could persuade her to sing TLC’s “Waterfalls” with him.
“I think you’re regressing,” Natalie said, still giggling. “It’s probably the stress of the wedding. I haven’t seen you like this in ages.”
Jonathan sank back down into his own chair, his expression suddenly contemplative.
“It’s not a bad thing!” Natalie continued. “I didn’t mean that you were doing anything wrong.”
“No, I know. I just… I guess I didn’t realize how much I’d changed.”
“I don’t think you changed. You just grew up—we all did. And that’s a good thing. No one wants a doctor who signs his charts as Amanda Hugginkiss.”
“For many reasons,” Jonathan said with a small smile. “But I miss the way I used to joke around, you know? Blow off steam. Now it’s like… I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s not the guy Marigold fell for,” he said quietly, then took a long sip of his drink.
“Not that it’s her fault! It’s just… when we started dating, she kept saying how different I was from the other guys she’d been with.
How I was ‘mature’ and ‘responsible’ because my job actually meant something.
And I guess I leaned into that without even realizing it.
And then, after a while, it just felt like…
” He exhaled. “Like if I let the other parts of me show, it’d mess with the version of me she fell in love with. ”
“Come on. You think Marigold’s only marrying you because you’re a doctor?” Natalie scoffed, though she wasn’t sure who her incredulity was meant to protect, whether she was bolstering Jonathan’s confidence or defending Marigold.
“No. I think I didn’t give her the chance to get to know the real me.”
“You’re being ridiculous. You make jokes around her all the time.”
“Certain kinds of jokes. Not stupid, goofy ones.”
“Then we all owe Marigold a huge thank-you.”
“Come on, Bumpy. You know what I mean. You just pointed it out!”
“It sounds like you just have cold feet.”
“Well, I was just out in a rainstorm.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled.
“Remember when Anna had a panic attack the night before her wedding?” About a year after graduation, they’d gone to the first of their college friends’ weddings.
The night before the ceremony, the bride, Anna, had begun to freak out, and when she’d complained of chest pains, Natalie had summoned Jonathan, who, although only a first-year med student, seemed best equipped to deal with the situation.
“Oh god, yes,” Natalie said with a laugh. She raised her voice to imitate Anna: “Of course I’m having a heart attack! I’m about to marry a man who takes so long to shit in the morning, he takes his laptop with him. And his coffee mug.” She shook her head. “At least Marigold doesn’t do that.”
“How would you know?”
“We were roommates!” She took a sip of water then spat it out. “This is someone else’s drink. Ew, ew, ew. Am I going to get herpes? Can you give me something to prevent it?”
“Oh my god, I thought you said your germophobia was getting better.”
“It is! I can hold the subway pole now.”
“I’m very proud of you. Now, what about ketchup bottles?”
“No comment.” Back when they used to have dinner together regularly, before she introduced him to Marigold, he’d noticed that she never put ketchup on her fries and eventually she’d admitted that the communal bottles freaked her out; too many people had touched them.
That night, he’d poured ketchup onto her plate as a joke, but then he did it the next time she ordered a burger, and the time after that.
Soon, it was automatic—as soon as their food arrived, Jonathan would add the appropriate condiment to Natalie’s plate without a word.
“You need exposure therapy. ASAP.”
“You’re not a psychiatrist.”
“Any port in a storm.”
“That’s not what that means,” Natalie said with a smile.
Jonathan shrugged. “When in Rome.”
“Gotta strike when the iron is hot.”
“It’ll be like killing two birds with one stone.” It was one of their old bits—slipping random clichés into conversation where they didn’t belong. “I’m not letting you leave this wedding without conquering your fear of germy hands. Come here.” He reached out and grabbed her arm.
“Stop it,” Natalie said, laughing.
“Now close your eyes and imagine allllll my germs seeping into your skin.”
“You sound like you’re trying to hypnotize me. I’m going to have you disbarred.”
“That’s for lawyers.”
“Fine. I’m going to have you dis-doctored.”
“Now take a deep breath in… and a deep breath out…”
“This isn’t exposure therapy. I’m not freaked out by you touching my arm.”
“Right. Hmmm… Let’s see, didn’t you once say that you could never get a facial because you didn’t believe anyone had clean enough hands to touch your face?”
Natalie pulled back. “You wouldn’t.”
“Now, just relax…” Jonathan tightened his hold on her arm and brought his other hand to her cheek.
“Jonathan! Come on,” Natalie giggled, squirming away.
He brushed his hand across her cheek, and she went completely still, momentarily stunned by the current of electricity buzzing across her skin.
The pleasure was short-lived, swept aside by panic that he’d noticed the effect his touch had on her.
“It’s your fault for enabling me all those years,” she said with forced playfulness.
“What choice did I have? You looked so helpless, staring longingly at the ketchup.”
“Helpless. Great.”
“Helpless and adorable. I couldn’t stand to see you in distress. I had such a crush on you back then.”
Natalie’s heart slammed against her sternum, as if pressing itself against her rib cage to hear better. “What?”
“Oh, come on,” Jonathan said, smiling. “Don’t pretend like you didn’t know.”
What the hell was going on? Had she gone through the looking glass? Entered Bizarro World? There was no way she’d just heard… No, it wasn’t possible.
Jonathan had had a crush on her?
Her mind reeled as she thought how hard she’d worked to conceal her feelings for him. The drastic measures she’d taken to cover her tracks lest she make him uncomfortable or ruin their friendship.
Or just embarrass herself. Because that’s what it’d really come down to, hadn’t it? She’d been afraid of looking foolish. And so she hadn’t gone after the one thing she’d wanted most of all.
Tell him, a voice screamed from the back of her head. Tell him that you’ve been head over heels in love with him for years. Tell him right now. Maybe it wasn’t too late to make things right. He’d admitted he was worried about marrying Marigold. Maybe he wanted a reason to call things off.
Natalie took a breath, willing herself to speak, but no sound emerged. Words still escaped her.
Jonathan rose from his chair with a heavy sigh. “I’m gonna try Marigold again. I won’t be able to sleep until I hear her voice and know she’s okay.”
Natalie felt something inside her clatter, a tiny scaffolding of hope she’d never had the right to build in the first place.
No one would ever choose her over Marigold.
Maybe Jonathan had had a crush on her once, but he would’ve dropped Natalie as soon as he set eyes on her gorgeous, charismatic roommate.
Natalie had only accelerated the inevitable by introducing them. Jonathan was never going to be hers.
“ ’Night, Bumpy.”
“Good night.”
He lifted his whiskey glass from the table, gave her head an affectionate pat, then left to call the woman he truly loved.