Chapter 22
As the temperatures skyrocketed into August, Liz felt like she was walking on progressively thinner ice. For the past month, she had tentatively tipped through the motions, half-hearted yet hyperaware of her untrustworthy ground. It felt like all it would take was one wrong step for everything to shatter.
After the July weekend in Ocean Beach, she reached a tentative truce with Roseanne—the wedding dress shopping fiasco negated by the engagement ring disaster—but Liz was anxious, nervous about future mistakes. She was sure more mishaps lay waiting around the corner.
Meanwhile, Cam flung himself full force into the engagement party planning, playing second assistant to Roseanne and Meghan. Liz had invited a few distant relatives and coworkers and the college friends she’d interacted most frequently with on Instagram, but the majority of the engagement party would be populated by the Peters family. Liz wasn’t surprised by that roster; she knew her circle was small. But still, it felt hard to lean into the allure of a party that could have practically been thrown in honor of Cam and [insert fiancée name here].
Tucker, the event coordinator at Maguire’s, had welcomed Cam and Liz right off the five thirty p.m. Friday ferry with two complimentary glasses of champagne. Cam and Liz had their arms filled with party decorations, candles for the tables, and twinkling lights for the walls, which they gladly plopped down at Tucker’s request in exchange for the bubbles.
The space was gorgeous and distinctly beachy. Massive windows punctuated rich wood walls, decorated with various antique Ocean Beach signs and nautical netting. A large white deck had tables facing directly onto the bay, where the sun was beginning its sparkly descent. It was casual yet sophisticated. Fire Island charm.
It would have been perfect if everything between her and Cam hadn’t felt so fragile.
If Cam noticed Liz’s recent retreat from the engagement party enthusiasm, he didn’t draw attention to it. Over the past few weeks, she had kept her conversations with him light and easy. She’d seen flashes of his anger, his pain, their previous weekend in Ocean Beach. He was struggling, but Liz told herself that all would be better if they could make it past the party. Maybe smiling for the happy relatives would make them happy, too.
The thinnest ice of all was the Domus Fellowship. No changes in application status had occurred, despite Liz’s hourly refreshes on the program’s website. She would log on to the site each morning as she sipped her coffee, and then again during lunch, and lastly right before bed. No matter the time of day, the answer remained the same: wait list.
Liz hated that she couldn’t let her Italian daydream die and be buried, but she didn’t want to tell Cam yet and risk breaking their rocky peace over nothing. Over a rejection she knew would come any day now.
Instead, she had boarded the ferry to Fire Island and slapped on a happy face.
“And your mother mentioned someone will be recording the big night?” Tucker asked them now, interrupting Liz’s thoughts.
“Yes, our friend Maggie,” Cam said.
Maggie. She had texted Liz all month long. Words of encouragement, memes, jokes. Liz didn’t answer but Maggie kept them coming. It was her way of apologizing, Liz presumed, of begging forgiveness. Her wish to be let back in.
Liz hadn’t known how to answer. She could practically hear her mom in her ear, telling her to forgive. To make space for Maggie again in her life. To at least give her another chance.
Yesterday, Liz finally texted Maggie back, asking to talk in Ocean Beach. She’d rip off the Band-Aid. If Maggie was staying in New York for good, they had to figure out some way forward. Either a blowup or a makeup. It would be either a blessing or a disaster.
Nancy would have known exactly what to do. She had always led with kindness, with grace.
Liz just wasn’t sure that she could ever be as strong, as forgiving, as her mother.
“Leave the rest of the decorations right over here for now, we’ll make sure everything is set up perfectly before tomorrow.” Tucker gestured to the office down the hallway, toward the kitchen.
There, Cam dutifully organized the welcome signs, the banner, the signature cocktail napkins, carefully placing everything on a table, a chair, the floor. As he did, Liz caught sight of a tube of toothpaste poking out among the bags.
It was Frozen Mojito Fresh—one of Robyn’s signature flavors.
In all the unexpected moments from this summer so far, Robyn’s “goodbye gift” was certainly up there with the most surprising. A few days after Liz and Cam had gotten home in July, and Mac had solidified his breakup with Robyn, a care package arrived at their door. Inside was a sampling of Robyn’s start-up prototypes and free products, as well as a card thanking Liz and Cam “for the life experience.” Cam had held up the toothpaste and grinned. “Now this we could actually use at the engagement party.” They’d include it in the bathroom baskets at the venue, along with a warning label: alcohol very much included.
“That should be everything,” Cam said, taking stock of the decorations. “Next up, we party.” He flashed Liz a smile. His cheeks were tan, his hair even blonder after a summer of weekends in the sun.
“What, something in my teeth?” he asked.
Liz smiled back. “Nah, just checking you out.”
“Tomorrow is going to be perfect.” He grabbed her hand, twirled her around him. She had no choice but to smile. He still sent butterflies in her stomach, even when she was stressed. “I can’t wait to celebrate you, to dance all night.”
“Save one for me?” Liz said.
“How about all of them?”
She couldn’t help it. She swooned.
“Last order of business. I promised my mom I’d take a photo of the space so she’s mentally prepared for tomorrow.”
“Easy enough.”
“Can I borrow your phone, babe? My screen still looks like a construction site.”
Liz rolled her eyes—Cam had been putting off replacing his damaged phone screen for weeks—but acquiesced.
“Thanks, Lizard. Be right back.”
He went to record the space, leaving her with a quiet sense of hope. Maybe they could do this together, rechart their way. A party wouldn’t be so awful. Surely she could put away her worries for the weekend.
Yet when Cam came back to her, his face pale and angry, she knew she’d been sorely mistaken.
“Can we talk about this outside?” He angled Liz’s phone screen back toward her view, toward an email he had no doubt opened and read.
It was from the Domus Academy.
A notification that had rolled down her home page while her phone was in Cam’s clutches.
The timing couldn’t have been worse.
The subject line was clear as day: Congratulations on your acceptance—see you in Milan!
She got in.
But now Cam knew what she’d been hiding. He’d caught her red-handed.
Liz followed him outside, excuses spiraling through her brain, her blood pressure climbing to the sky. “My professor from NYU recommended me for this program—” she started, hoping to explain in the best course, but Cam cut her off.
“Have you been lying to me all summer?” His voice was at once confused and worryingly empty.
She tried to backtrack. “I wasn’t sure I’d get in, I didn’t want to risk—”
“How does that change anything? You still kept this huge thing from me.”
“I wanted to tell you. I just didn’t know how. You’ve been so excited about wedding planning, and this would change things and—”
“Sorry I’m excited to marry you, Liz! Didn’t realize that was a crime.”
She wanted to get closer to him, but he flinched back when she took a step toward him.
“That’s not what I mean. I just, I knew you’d be upset. And the acceptance rates are so low—”
“So what? I still deserve to know you’re applying to someplace halfway around the world. You’re my fiancée, Liz, we are getting married!”
“You’re right. I’m so sorry. Really. There’s no excuse. I’m just saying—”
“And you knew I’d be upset because it’s the wrong thing to do.”
Liz felt like she’d been burned. “The wrong thing to do?”
“We’re engaged. We’re getting married. We’re building our life together and now you want to run away from it all? Go to Italy for some random program? I didn’t think grad school was a thing in the fashion world. How is this even necessary?”
It was the exact reaction she’d feared. “You don’t know anything about it. How could you say that?”
“Why do you need to run right as things are getting good?”
“You think this is good?”
“We’re planning a wedding! Our wedding!”
“You’re planning a wedding. You and your mom. I know she’s a professional, but do you really think this is making it any easier for me?” Liz yelled, sick of biting her tongue. Cam had struck a nerve, and everything fell out of her. “A proposal next to your parents’ apartment? A wedding picked out by your mom? An entire engagement party planned practically just for your family? Do you, do either of you ever stop for one second to think about if this is what I want? To ask yourself if I even can do this—do any of this—without my mom?”
“Liz.” Cam moved toward her, but this time, it was Liz who backed away.
“No. I tried to smile and go along with all of this. Do you have any idea how hard this is with you guys throwing your happiness in my face? I love your family. I want to be a part of your family. But this? This is hard for me. Without her.”
It was everything Liz had spent the past two months feeling in the deep, dark corners of her heart. Everything she’d tried not to dwell on in order to move through the day. She missed her mom more than anything, and even though she knew Nancy would want her to celebrate, to be a glowing bride, Liz couldn’t. The grief hadn’t shrunk, it had grown into some new body part, a limb of its own. She took it with her wherever she went, and though she tried to hide it, swallowing her sadness when she could, Liz had reached her limit.
Wedding planning had made it clear. For the rest of Liz’s life, her mom wasn’t going to be there.
“Liz,” Cam said again, walking toward her once more.
“Stop. I don’t want to look at you.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, pulling her into a hug. “I am so, so sorry. But Italy? All these lies? I mean, is that really what’s going to help us right now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I just feel like I don’t know anything anymore. Nothing is making sense,” she whispered into his shoulder.
“We make sense though, right?” Cam’s voice was low.
After considering for what seemed a lifetime, Liz wasn’t so sure. “I think I need to be by myself for a little. Can we talk about this later?”
Cam’s face was pained, but a part of him must have felt the same. The part that felt betrayed by her lying, by her secrets. By her wanting to escape to Italy, to leave him behind.
“Okay,” he said. Without putting up any more of a fight, Cam grabbed their bags and turned to walk toward the Serendipity House, alone.
Liz shakily pulled out her phone and didn’t exhale until she heard the voice answer on the line. “Any chance you’re ready now?”