Chapter 9
NINE
Lauren
As we walk, I worry.
How much has Kate had to drink? Did she pound shots when I wasn't looking? Like me, she’s has never been able to hold her liquor.
Take the time in college when we used our terrible fake IDs to get into a club: she ended up spending the entire night barfing in the bathroom, and I passed the whole evening at her side holding her hair out of the toilet instead of dancing with a hot guy from Toronto whose name I never caught.
Back then I'd laughed it off, because it was hilarious. Tonight, practically a decade later — a decade, we were eighteen at that club on Chicago's Miracle Mile — it's a little less funny.
Way less funny.
Being with Max at the springs was wonderful, and I'm annoyed our evening got interrupted. It isn't often I get to make out with a man who's handsome and kind and funny and apparently also a closet romantic who carries heart-shaped rocks in his jacket pockets.
I practically have to run to keep up with Remy, who has long legs like his brother. We power down a path toward the far edge of the springs. Remy and Max wave to a small cluster of guests who are smoking weed at a clearing.
After a couple more minutes we stop. Damien's pacing on the limestone path, and Tate is sitting a few yards away on a bench, smoking a cigar.
“I found Lauren,” Remy pants.
Damien takes a few steps toward me. In the darkness, he looks even bigger, especially with that scowl.
“Where is she?” Panic rises in my chest, and I think about all those Lifetime movies Kate and I used to watch on Sunday afternoons. Did Damien do something? Say something? Did he hurt her? “What happened?”
“Over there. She got a little emotional and wants to talk with you. Only you.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks down. “Not me.”
For a man who's supposedly marrying Kate out of kindness and concern for her health insurance, he looks like someone who is lovesick. I glance at the limestone ledge where it extends over the water. In the moonlight I can make out a figure in a white dress, huddled at the edge. Below us, the water shimmers and it’s almost otherworldly.
I feel like I’m suddenly in a fantasy novel.
“Okay,” I say. “I'll go talk to her.”
I slip my sandals off and hand them to Max. When I step onto the first flat rock, he reaches for my arm.
“We'll go slowly, okay?”
I turn to him. “There's no we. Kate won't talk if you're with me. I'll be fine.”
“You sure? The limestone can be uneven and slippery.”
“I’ve walked on tons of rocks before.” Although I can’t really name any at the moment, beyond a neighborhood river in Ohio when I was a kid. Still. The rocks are mostly flat, and not steep. I hand my purse to Max.
“Wait. Here.” Max pulls his phone from his pocket and switches on the flashlight, handing it to me. Our fingers touch for a second and I briefly wonder why I didn’t think of that with my phone, since it’s like my third arm. “Be careful.”
I give him a small smile, wanting to lean over and kiss him but aware of the three Hastings brothers standing nearby.
Right. Focus.
I turn and begin stepping carefully, rock by rock, shining the light about a foot ahead of me. Step, pause. Step, pause. Some of the rocks tilt at odd angles, but most are solid. I extend one arm for balance.
Piece of cake.
When I'm about five feet from Kate I slow down. “Hey. Katie,” I say softly.
She twists her head. I can see in the phone's light that her eyes are already puffy. “Hi,” she sniffles.
“You okay?” I reach her and crouch on the rock beside her. She's dangling her legs over the edge of the limestone, a few feet above the water, and the spring goes a deep, sapphire blue for a second. Part of me wants to ask about what’s up with the water, but there are bigger issues afoot.
I fold one knee slowly to my chest, then the other. Max's illuminated phone rests in my lap and gives off just enough light that it looks like my midsection is glowing. I can practically feel the angst coming off Kate in waves.
“What's going on?” I ask softly, glancing back at the four brothers on shore. “Did you drink too much?”
She shakes her head. “I haven't had much to drink at all.”
“Then what is it?”
Kate sniffles loudly, then breaks out into a sob.
And another. She leans into my body and cries into my shoulder, and I wrap my arm around her.
Her cries get swallowed up by the night sounds — the water moving below us, the wind in the cypress trees, the very distant murmur of the last bonfire stragglers.
“I love him,” she sniffles.
“You love who?” I whisper.
“Damien.” She pulls back and looks at me with her puffy, moonlit eyes. “I love him, Lauren. For real. I realized tonight that we've spent a lot of time together and they've been the best weeks of my life.”
I take that in. My first instinct is a small, private sting.
I would’ve guessed her best months were that first summer in our Chicago loft, rollerblading on the waterfront, crashing into the Bean while tourists photographed us.
Working all day and dreaming about our new careers at night over a bottle of wine and some Lou Malnati’s deep dish pizza. But I don't say this.
“He understands me, like you do. He makes me laugh. He makes me think. I feel like myself with him. And when he said he'd marry me for health insurance I didn't want to say yes but I did, and now I love him. I want to be his real wife.”
“Have you told him this?”
“No.” She swings her feet above the water. “I was watching him at the bonfire. He plays guitar — did you know that? He has this beautiful, quiet voice. He started singing and he looked at me the whole time, and I just — I lost it completely. It hit me like a freight train.”
“So you came out here to cry alone on the rocks instead of talking to him?”
She gives me a watery look. “Obviously.”
“Kate.” I sigh. “Come on. Let’s be rational. Tell him.”
“What if he doesn't feel the same way? What if I’m like a pity project, and telling him scares him off right before our wedding?”
I lean my head against hers. “The man was pacing the shore like a worried parent when I walked up. That's not how you look at a pity project. I also saw him kiss you and that is a man who was enjoying every second.”
She sniffles. “You think?”
“I know it for a fact.”
“Listen. Let’s just get through the wedding.” I squeeze her shoulder. “We’re going to have a blast. Damien’s great. His family is pretty wonderful.”
At that moment, I feel her whole body relax against mine. The spring glows quietly, a beautiful deep blue. Something in the night air shifts and tension dissolves.
“Lauren,” she says after a while.
“Yeah?”
“I'm a mess. I'm back in Cypress Grove. I have no job except bartending at a tiki bar, and I'm in love with my fake husband.”
“Not the wedding you imagined?”
“Nope. And it probably wasn’t what you anticipated, either.” She follows that up with a loud sniffle.
I think about Max at the springs. The way he'd listened. The stone he'd pocketed. The way he'd kissed me like he meant it.
“Actually, it’s not what I expected,” I admit, “but it might be exactly what I needed.”
She lifts her head and looks at me with one raised eyebrow.
“I'll explain later,” I say, slowly standing up and holding my hand out for her. “Right now, let's get you back to the resort. We can hang out in my room and watch some late night TV and sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow. And maybe you want to have a chat with Damien, too.”
“You’re right. Hey, thanks. Thanks for being here for me.” She takes my hand and lifts herself to her feet, then embraces me.
“Anytime,” I murmur into her hair.
We break apart and she says in a stronger voice, “I can do this.”
“Of course you can.”
She moves across the rocks toward shore with the casual confidence of someone who's been doing this since childhood. Barefoot and sure-footed as a cat.
“Wait — do you need the flashlight?” I call.
“Nah. I know every rock out here.”
I watch her go, then begin picking my way back cautiously. The limestone is cool and a little damp under my feet. Max's phone light bobs ahead of me. I can see his silhouette on shore and I pick up my speed.
I'm almost back when the gust hits.
It's a sudden thing — a gust from nowhere — and I shiver and lose my footing for just a second, just one step. But one step is more than enough.
My right ankle catches the edge of a limestone ridge at exactly the wrong angle.
The crack is sickening. I know it immediately, before the pain even fully arrives.
I pitch sideways, arms windmilling, and Max's phone arcs into the air in slow motion, and someone screams ‘noooooo’ in a distorted voice.
Wait, that’s me screaming.
And then I fall into the water.