Chapter Nineteen
Marin’s plan worked great . . . for the next three hours, anyway, until the Lover’s Luau, where I and my coconut bra accidentally bounced straight into Matty at the poke bowl station, his back to me as he reached for a second helping of ahi tuna.
“Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to—” His eyes widened, then softened, his whole face brightening at the sight of me. “Elliot. Hi. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Waiting and hoping to run into you. I must’ve walked the length of the resort at least ten times today.”
“I didn’t realize you were here, or I would have started on the other buffet line,” I said, trying for cool even though my stomach bottomed out as we stood face-to-face.
“You look . . . Well, you always look . . . like you. You look like you. Just as beautiful as I remember.”
I wanted to tell him he still looked like him too.
The floppy hair a little more professional, more trimmed.
A few more creases around his eyes but still boyishly handsome, only with stronger features now, a sharper jawline, slightly hollowed cheeks, and a light stubble that added a more rugged edge.
But instead, I straightened—tight, rigid, and silent.
“So how are you?” he asked, like it’d only been a few days since I last saw him. Not an entire lifetime.
“What the hell are you doing here, Matty?”
Before he could answer, Marin swooped in like an FMCP superhero in a grass skirt, ready to save the day but with zero chill.
“Elliot! Good! Here you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.
” She paused and eyed him from head to toe, not hiding the disdain morphing her features into a snarl. “Matthew.”
“Hi, Marin,” he said. “Good to see you too.”
She made a very audible vomiting sound. “Ugh! Don’t.
” Squeezing between us to box him out, she continued, “Anyway, I saved us two seats wayyyy over there, let’s go.
” And without waiting for a response, she grabbed my arm, sending the baja shrimp on my plate hurtling to the ground, leaving Matty in the proverbial dust.
On the way, we zoomed past Mom, Keith, and a couple of teenagers I could only assume were his kids. We passed Uncle Ted and his latest trophy wife, then Matty, who had settled under a nearby palm tree with his plate.
We’d made it only a few more steps when I felt a gentle tug on my arm. I spun around to see Izzy, who pulled me into a quick hug. “Hey, Marin,” she said, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Can I steal El for just a moment, to grab a drink real quick?”
Marin eyed me first, like a good best friend, to check for a green light, and when I gave a small nod, she reached to take the small buffet plate from my hands. “Sure, of course. I’ll find us some seats.”
Izzy wove her arm through mine as we sidled through the outdoor space. “So, my girl, how are you holding up? I’m so sorry you didn’t know Matthew was coming. Your mother said she wanted to be the one to tell you.”
“And, of course, she was too self-absorbed to have remembered. And I was blindsided. Some kind of heads-up, or at least a choice in attending, would have been nice.”
I didn’t mean to get snippy with Izzy. After all, it wasn’t really her fault that my mother didn’t even think to give me any warning.
“I at least want to apologize, then. I thought Matty had said things with you two were improving, and I couldn’t help but hope you two might finally patch things up. Selfishly, I miss our trips and our outings together. They haven’t been the same.”
“He told you things were okay between us? Well, someone certainly practices revisionist history. He and I haven’t said so much as a word to one another in over five years. He tried to reach out early on, a few times, but I’m not interested in rehashing it all.”
She paused, her lips set in a thin line. “I know I promised never to get involved, but, El, five years is a long time. He knows what he did was wrong.”
I shook my head, feeling my chest tighten. “Wrong? No. It was so much bigger than that. Wrong doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
She studied me for a long moment, then let out a quiet sigh.
“You know, holding on to that kind of anger . . . it’s not healthy and it has a way of leaking into everything else.
Of course I’d love to see you and Matthew be able to move past it and go back to being at least friends again, but really, I’m saying this for you.
I just don’t want to see you carrying around that weight forever. ”
“Izzy, please, enough. I can’t do that with Matty. I just . . . can’t.” I shook my head, feeling the sting of tears starting to rise. Forcing a lighter note into my voice, I tried to steer us away from the conversation. “What I can do, though, is hunt down those drinks. Come with me?”
“Fine, but only if you’re buying,” she joked, putting her arm around me.
“It’s an all-inclusive,” I reminded her.
“That’s right.” Izzy laughed, giving me a little squeeze as we made our way over to the bar, where a harried bartender was juggling orders and pouring rum punches two at a time. Izzy ordered a glass of white wine for herself, then glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.
“A margarita, please,” I said, the anticipation of the tart lime and tequila almost sharp enough to cut through the knot in my chest.
“Salted rim,” Izzy added on my behalf, because of course she knew how I liked mine best.
A few minutes later, drinks in hand, we wove back through the crowd to the long table where Marin was waiting, saving me a seat next to where Dad, Shira, Allegra, and Cannon were locked in a heated debate about which season of The White Lotus was the best.
“The first one. No question. Set the stage for the rest,” Allegra argued.
“Yeah, but this last season? Come on. It was so much more emotionally raw and visceral than the others,” Dad countered.
“It has to be the second season. Sicily. What a setting! I swear, every episode was like travel porn. I was ready to pack up my suitcase and get on a plane each week. Wasn’t even sure I should keep watching, I was so worried I actually might. Right, honey?” Shira said, rubbing her hand over Dad’s.
Dad looked up from his plate. “What about you, Elliot? Which season did you like best?”
I set my food down on the table and climbed onto the bench. “I didn’t really . . . you know, watch. Just a few episodes here and there.”
“See,” Cannon said from across the table. “Way overhyped, right? Everyone acted like it was the second coming of TV or something. More like rich people whining in exotic locales. Bor-ing. I’m totally with you, Elliot.”
I looked over at my half brother, who had to be, what .
. . twenty? I tried to do the dysfunctional family math.
Let’s see, I was about two when Dad left Mom and me for his secretary, who promptly ended it when she realized he wasn’t as much fun in real life as when he was an office fling.
He then went through a series of girlfriends—if you could even call them that, more like weekend experiments—before he met Shira, also his secretary but with better staying power, when I was about five.
About a year later they got married, then a year after that had Cannon, followed shortly by Allegra.
And the sad truth was, I didn’t really know either of my siblings.
Not well, anyway. It always seemed to me that Dad moved on with his new family, showing them both the kind of warmth I never saw from him, and I suppose I resented them for it, even though looking at them now with an adult perspective, I knew deep down none of that was any of their fault.
“Glad to know I have an ally somewhere in the West family,” I said, tipping my margarita glass toward Cannon in a loose toast.
“What do you mean by that?” Dad asked, frowning like I had just accused him of a crime. “I’ve always been on your side, haven’t I, El?”
“Sure, when you bothered to show up.”
The atmosphere at the table started to shift at my comment, Allegra taking a dramatic sip of her drink and Shira resting a supportive hand on Dad’s forearm.
“That’s not exactly fair,” he started. “I tried. I did. But your moth—”
Before he could finish, Keith clinked his glass and stood up.
“I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you for making the trip to Ambergris Caye to be here for our wedding. I know that little plane is really something,” Keith said with a chuckle.
“But hey, we made it! It’s so wonderful to look out into this sea of faces: family, old friends, new friends, all here to celebrate with us.
It means more than I can put into words. ”
The space was closing in on me: Keith and his professions of eternal love for my mother, Dad and Shira canoodling like they were on their second honeymoon, everyone awkwardly pretending we were all one big happy family, and just a few tables away, Matty, looking maddeningly at ease, like none of this was out of the ordinary.
How the hell had they all managed to move on, when I was still picking up the pieces from the fallout that thus far had been my life? Dad didn’t come to my high school graduation because my “bog troll” of a mother would be there.
His words.
Mom, similarly, refused to come to my senior a cappella showcase at Brown because she felt his “toxic aura was contagious.” And now they were toasting one another and making merry, like the past twenty-nine years hadn’t been one long, miserable standoff with me playing sheriff square in the middle of the fray.
I felt like I was going mad. Like I’d stepped through the looking glass or into a Norman Rockwell painting where families did things like talk about what season of The White Lotus they enjoyed most over thick cuts of prime rib instead of TV dinners eaten alone for decades, none of them present or there for me in any way that mattered.