43. Bailey
“Meow. Meow. Meow.”Lady Whiskerdown sat in front of me, loudly lodging her grievances. “Meow. Meow. Meow.”
“I know. I miss him, too,” I commiserated with Whiskey.
Since, technically, I didn’t speak cat, I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure what displeasure she was vocalizing to me and had been for the past ten days. She could be harmonizing with Frankie Valli since “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” was playing on repeat through my Echo speaker. But I doubted that was the case. Using context clues, I’d come up with an educated hypothesis.
First, her complaints began immediately after Cole left the apartment last Sunday morning.
Second, she’d found his sock and adopted it as her own. She carried it from room to room, wouldn’t let it out of her sight, slept with it, and purred as she rubbed her head against it.
Third, for the past ten days, she’d only slept on the pillow Cole had slept on and in the corner of the couch, where he’d sat after I’d passed out on him.
Conclusion: I wasn’t the only female in love with Cole Crawford in this residence.
Whiskey continued to tell me how unhappy she was as I sat on the couch with my computer on my lap, trying to catch up on work. Whiskey wasn’t the only one who was out of sorts; I hadn’t been doing too well since I’d told Cole that we needed to talk.
For the past week and a half, my thoughts had been consumed by the man, whom I had told, wasn’t right for me, and who kissed me sweetly before he left. I fell asleep thinking about him. I dreamt about him. He was the first thing that came to my mind when I woke up. He stayed in my thoughts every second of every day. I couldn’t escape him. I’d replayed the conversation we’d had at the breakfast table hundreds of times. I’d thought I was doing the right thing, the responsible thing, but with each day that passed, the conviction I’d had waned.
Had I made a mistake?
During those early morning hours, when I’d laid in his arms after we made love for the second time and he was sound asleep, I’d panicked. I’d slipped from underneath the warmth and safety of his arms and gone to the kitchen so I could think clearly, something I could not do with his arms wrapped around me.
I decided to count the red flags in the relationship.
Red flag number one: Cole worked as an escort. Even if sex wasn’t involved, there was no way we could see each other. Maybe, if I wasn’t a wedding planner and I wouldn’t have to see him with other women, I might be able to deal with it, but that was a big maybe.
Red flag numero dos: Getting drunk because you see someone who isn’t your boyfriend with another woman is not a sign of someone who is ready for a relationship. It’s a red flag.
And although technically, Cole wasn’t a rebound since Simon and I hadn’t been officially a couple, he still felt like one. Red flag number three.
The final crimson banner was what we wanted out of life. He’d said he didn’t want children, and that was fine. But I’d always seen myself having a family.
Four red flags were not a good foundation for a relationship. I knew that on an academic level. But now, as I sat here with Whiskey and Duke, I was playing devil’s advocate to my flags, turning them a lovely shade of pink instead as I rebutted my previous statements in the court of love.
Yes, Cole was a professional plus one, but he wouldn’t cheat. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. If we were together, he would never do anything to disrespect me.
Had I drunk a lot of wine, sure, but in fairness to me, it’s not every day that you run into the man you love on a ‘date’ with a woman like Charli James while you’re at work. I feel like I’d acted totally reasonably. If I’d done it after seeing Cole and Lindsay kiss, then it might be more of an issue. But I felt I could confidently file that behavior away as a one-time occurrence.
And as far as a rebound went, they weren’t the kiss of death. I think they were only a problem if someone still had feelings for their ex, which I absolutely did not. If I wanted to be with Simon, I would be with him. I didn’t want that.
Finally, I loved kids, yes, but I’d always seen myself as a kickass aunt. If I were with someone who wanted a family, then that would be great, but I honestly believed I could be perfectly happy being Auntie Bailey. Cole had nephews and a niece, with whom he seemed to be very close.
As I sat reconsidering my decision, an email from Billie popped up. I clicked on it and saw that it was a Dropbox link. She mentioned earlier that she was updating the event coordination page on the website and wanted Birdie and my input on which photos she should put up.
I clicked on the link expecting to find a variety of photos from the past two years of weddings that we’d done. The photos we had up now were mainly of the venues pre-wedding and reception to show the setups. Since we’d been doing this for so long, we had good relationships with most of the photographers that we worked with, and they would send us behind-the-scenes shots as well as candid shots of us at the event. So we’d stockpiled photos of us with the bride getting ready, speaking to vendors, and working the ceremony and the reception.
When I saw the first image, my heart sank. It was not only from the first wedding that Cole had seen me, but it was also the moment he’d said he noticed me. You couldn’t see Georgia, the bride, or how upset she was because her back was to the camera. But my face was visible as I spoke to her, and off to the side was Cole. He was looking at me like…like he always looked at me. Like I was the only woman in the world.
As I clicked through hundreds of images, certain ones jumped out at me. Or, I should say, a certain person jumped out at me.
Cole Crawford.
It was strange to see us in the same place before I even knew him. As I clicked through the photos, I remembered our conversation and what I’d been wearing each time he’d seen me.
“You’ve worn two blazers, four long-sleeved shirts, three quarter-sleeve shirts, and one sleeveless turtleneck. The turtleneck was my favorite.”
At the time, the significance hadn’t really sunk in. It had been flattering, but having the visuals of the encounters in front of me took things to a whole different level. But now that I saw myself in two blazers, four long-sleeved shirts, three quarter-sleeved shirts, and the sleeveless turtleneck, it struck me just how much he had been paying attention to me.
My phone rang, and I picked it up half expecting it to be him. As if we’d had some sort of psychic connection, and he sensed that I was looking at photos of us. When I saw it was Billie, I felt ridiculous.
“Hey,” I answered.
“He loves you.”
“What?”
“Cole. He loves you.”
“You don’t know that,” I argued.
“What’s my favorite part of any wedding?”
“When it’s over.” I was only half-joking. Billie was by far the least romantic of the three of us.
“When the bride is walking down the aisle and all eyes are on her, I always watch the groom.”
Right. She had told me that before.
“After witnessing hundreds of grooms, I’ve gotten very good at spotting the look.”
“The look?”
“The look a man gets in his eye when the person walking toward him owns him, body, mind, and soul. The look that he gets when there’s no doubt in his mind that she is it for him. The look that he gets in his eye that says he would burn the world down to protect her. The look he gets in his eye that says he knows he’s the luckiest man in the world because he gets to love her.”
“Doesn’t every groom look like that?” I asked.
“No,” she stated flatly. “They don’t. But Cole has the look.”
“I can’t waste more time,” I told Billie the same thing I’d told Cole. “I wasted two decades in love with the wrong man; I don’t want to wa?—”
“You weren’t in love with Simon.”
“What? Yes, I was.”
“No, you weren’t. He was just your replacement.”
“Replacement for what? He was my first real boyfriend.”
“Replacement for dad.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You met Simon the week after dad died. You replaced one emotionally unavailable man with another. That’s it. You didn’t love him; you just couldn’t let him go because you associated him with a stable man in your life or the position you always wanted to be filled by a stable man in your life. But just like Dad, Simon was never going to be that for you. A narcissist can never be that.”
Was she right? Was that what I’d done?
Holy shit.She was right. Now that she said it, it made total sense. I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me. I’d always wondered why Simon had had such a hold over me, and now I had my answer.
“So, I’ve wasted two decades because of daddy issues,” I stated, more to myself than to Billie.
“I mean… I feel like that’s less than the national average.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since I picked you up after your first day at Habitat.”
“That was the first day I met him.” I couldn’t believe my sister had never enlightened me before. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
“You weren’t ready to hear it. You would have dismissed it and defended him.”
Dismiss and defend had been my go-to responses when it came to Simon.
“Okay, so what should I—” My question was interrupted when a text message popped up on my computer screen.
It was from Olivia.
Olivia: In labor. On the way to the hospital. Picking you up in five.
“Oh my god!” I cried out. “Olivia’s in labor! I gotta go.”
“Call if you need anything.”
I quickly shot a response back that simply read, Yay, then hopped up and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. I put my hair up in a ponytail, threw my computer in my bag with some snacks and a book, and rushed downstairs to wait for her.
As I stood on the sidewalk, I stared at the spot where Cole had dropped me off after the wedding. I thought about the look in his eye when he said he had something he wanted to tell me. And then the look in his eye when I’d woken up on his lap.
Was Billie right?
Was that the look of love?
And if it was, did I totally blow my chances?
Was I too late?