17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Now
For the rest of the weekend, I putter around Theo’s house while he works outside. I might have suspected him of avoiding me, except that it’s obvious he keeps up with his several acres of land. I keep waiting for my phone to buzz with a call or text, but it’s absolutely silent. Evidently, my mother and Daniel were serious when they said that they were done with me, and I don’t hear from anyone else, either: not his family, none of my bridesmaids. Nobody.
On Monday, while Theo is at work, I call the country club from beneath the covers of his guest bed. Matilda answers the phone, and when I tell her that I need to cancel our booking, she responds—rather coldly—that my mother has already called to take care of it. Then I call the boutique, the florist, the baker, and it’s the same story: everything has been canceled and refunded.
My wedding is officially off.
And, it would appear, nobody cares.
It’s not like I have any moral high ground. When Leona, Daniel’s cheating friend’s fiancé, ended their engagement, she was immediately cut from our social circle. Others in the group had looked the other way when the same thing happened to them, but Leona made a different choice: she moved out of the big apartment, got a job, and started over. I wasn’t any better than the others; I didn’t keep in touch with her. I joined in the gossip behind her back.
And yet I told Theo that maybe I could sleep on her couch. How presumptuous.
I'm such a bitch.
A little after five, I see Theo's truck pull into the garage from where I’m sitting on his covered back porch. The polite thing it do would be to go inside; instead, I stay put and wait for him to find me.
When the door from the house snicks open, Theo steps out, two bottles of beer dangling from his fingers. "Found my hiding place?"
I glance around. The porch is like a whole other room, with wicker furniture and a hammock. There’s an enormous, expensive-looking grill in one corner. Thin mosquito netting keeps the bugs out, and a screen door allows entry to the backyard.“What kind of hiding place has see-through walls?”
“The kind that’s in the middle of nowhere.”
I stay lazily slouched on his sofa, my feet propped up on the small table in front of me. Theo steps over my legs and sinks into the chair on my other side. He sets the beers down on the table, produces a bottle opener from his pocket, and flips the caps off both. He picks one up and slides the other toward me.
I stare at the label on the beer. It’s the same cheap brand we used to drink in high school, and I don’t think I’ve had it since then. “You still drink that?”
Theo shrugs, takes a long gulp. When he swallows, his throat bobs over the collar of his polo, and I suppose I’m out of fucks to give, because I openly stare. “Sometimes,” he tells me. “What do you drink now? Three-hundred-dollar bottles of wine?”
The last bottle of wine I can remember Daniel ordering for us at a restaurant was north of four fifty, but I decide not to disclose that information. “I think my days of three-hundred-dollar anything are over.”
“Back to your white trash roots, I guess.”
It’s a joke with a trace of bitterness. Belatedly, I realize that Daniel’s insult was directed toward both of us, not just me.
I pick up the drink that Theo set in front of me and take a tentative sip. The beer is cold and crisp, and I find myself tilting my head for a longer pull.
“ Very white trash of you,” Theo remarks.
I rest the bottle on my thigh. “Quit saying that.”
“Just trying to fit in.”
“He’s an ass,” I snap. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Theo props his socked feet up on the wicker table between us. “How did you even wind up with this guy?”
I pick at the damp label with my manicured nails. They’re starting to chip, but I won’t be able to get them redone anytime soon. “I met him in Hilton Head a few years ago. He was there for a bachelor party, and I was on vacation with Mom and Travis.”
“And Kelly played matchmaker?” Theo guesses.
“No. He approached me.”
It was the same year I’d had my rhinoplasty and excision. Even though everyone around me kept saying how great I looked, I was unsure. I’d thought that the surgeries would make me more comfortable in my own skin, but every time I looked in the mirror, all I saw was a stranger.
Then Daniel was there, in a button-up shirt and pressed chinos, sidling up to me at the beachside bar and asking to buy me a drink. He didn’t ask much about me, and I didn’t offer; I was happy to sip my mojito while he told me about growing up in the suburbs of New York, moving into the city for college, and working in finance. Then he asked me back to his hotel room, and from there, I was swept into his world.
“What did you like about him?” Theo asks.
My answer needs no deliberation. “That he didn’t ask questions.”
“That sounds like another way of saying that he didn’t care to get to know you.”
I shift on the couch, tucking my feet beneath me. “I dated people before him.” And after you, is the unspoken end of that sentence. “Even if we were just messing around, eventually they’d feel comfortable enough to ask about my birthmark. Then it would turn into asking about my family, which was a completely shit situation by then, and it was only a matter of time before I’d have to start—"
I stop myself. Theo is watching me closely, and I exhale hard, averting my gaze to look out at the mature pine trees that line the northern edge of his property. They’ve been here for generations, just like Theo’s family. Just like mine.
“Daniel took me as I was,” I elaborate. “I never had to tell him about things that I wanted to keep to myself.”
“He seemed real understanding about it when he was yelling at us the other day,” he drawls sarcastically, and then taps his cheekbone. “What about that?”
Reflexively, I lift a hand to trace my scar. “What about it?”
“Did he ever ask where it came from?”
“Eventually.”
“And did you tell him the truth?”
“Nope.”
“So you were prepared to marry a guy who didn’t know the most basic things about you,” Theo says, equal parts puzzled and scornful. “You were going to go the rest of your life without showing your husband a picture of you as a kid or bringing him back to your hometown? Or talking about any of the shit you went through as a teenager?”
I find myself grinding my back teeth together. “He never asked.”
“That’s my point, Sass. Why—”
“It’s my point, too,” I snap at him. “So we weren’t madly in love or whatever, but not everyone is like your parents. Daniel made it so that I didn’t have to worry about much of anything, and I never had to talk about you. To me, that was plenty.”
Predictably, Theo’s expression softens. I don’t want his pity, and I don’t want to delve any further into the fact that getting over him was the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever had to do, so I barrel onward. “And anyway, I think you gave up the right to have an opinion on any of this when you dumped me on the side of the road.”
Just as I intended, his annoyance returns. “For god’s sake, Nina.”
“Oh,” I say innocently, hiking my eyebrows up my forehead. “I’m sorry, is that not what happened?”
With a frustrated groan, he takes off his hat and grips it between his hands, curling the brim. Tension and humidity thicken the air. “Things weren’t all that great for me, either.”
I know what he means—Randi alluded to it the other day—but I’m not ready to be kind. “You were fine. You went to college, you started your own business, you live in this enormous house—”
“Nina.”
“What?”
“Stop running your mouth for two seconds.”
“ Excuse me?”
“This stuff I’ve done that you’re going on about—everything I did after you left—think about it a little bit harder.”
I turn my palm upward. “What? What about it?”
He leans toward me, and I find myself distracted by the slight protrusion of his tongue when he enunciates, “ Think .”
We stare at each other, him expectant, me just fucking confused. Eventually he looks away, letting out a short, humorless chuckle. I watch as he shoves his hat back onto his head. He gets to his feet, empty beer bottle in hand, and nods at mine. “You done with that?”
“Yeah.”
He picks it up, strides past me, and walks into the house.
“Where are you going?” I call after him.
The screen door opens, and Theo pokes his head back out. “Leaving you to think,” he says, and then he’s gone again.