4. Chapter 4
Chapter 4
M aybe Tommy really wouldn’t be the best man.
It cheered Jane up a little to think it. Maybe it would be too much, too soon, and he would just graciously bow out. He’d already seen the whole thing as an emotional bomb that could detonate in the middle of the exchanging of vows. That part hadn’t changed, it was just in a different way now. He could avoid the whole thing—flip the whole narrative and be a hero, even!—if he stepped to the side. Only a select few would know of the sacrifice he had made, which would make it even nobler. What a great guy , they would murmur along the fringes of the reception, to support the groom and also still let the bride have her day.
Or maybe he could be an usher instead. Still part of the wedding party, still recognized as an important person in Blake’s life, but not “accompanying the bride’s best friend, his ex-girlfriend, down the aisle” important. That cheered Jane up even more. Then she could be the noble one, the one who was there for her best friend and also took the higher road when it came to the groom’s cute but noncommittal cousin with the unfortunate timing in breakups. She’s so classy , the girls would whisper to each other after the ceremony. He doesn’t deserve her anyway.
Maybe he really wouldn’t be the best man. It was totally possible. It would still be awkward but not impossibly so, a little bittersweet but not unforgettably so. It would work out just fine.
And then Jane thought about what she knew about Blake, and what she knew about Tommy, and what she knew about weddings and what made them special, and she knew, with clarity, that the chance Tommy wouldn’t be the best man was somewhere on a scale of, oh, zero to never. About the same chance that she wouldn’t have been Haley’s maid of honor.
And then she sighed, a big, heavy, deep sigh, and flopped back against the pillows on her couch.
***
Tommy texted sometime after lunch, which was probably three hours or so earlier than Jane expected but sixteen hours or so later than she would have liked. “You want to talk?”
Jane squinted at her phone. She was watching a marathon of a makeover show called Mad for Matrimony , ostensibly for last-second wedding research but mostly because she liked to torture herself sometimes. “Do I want to talk? Not really,” she said out loud, but started typing a response: What do you want to talk about?
The phone rang then, which annoyed her, because why text in the first place, then. She sat up on her couch and straightened her topknot, as though he could see it somehow, and then answered. “Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“How’s it going?”
“I mean …” She rubbed her eyes. “About how you would expect, Tommy.”
“I’m sorry.”
What are you sorry for ? she wanted to ask. Was he sorry for blowing up their whole night? Was he sorry for breaking up with her? Was he sorry for being Blake’s best man? Was he sorry for making her think there was a chance he would love her past her thirtieth birthday?
He took her silence as an opening. “So I guess Haley told you they set a date.”
Was it still considered setting a date if there wouldn’t even be a full moon between now and then? Jane wondered. She had limes in her fridge that she was pretty sure would still be good by then. She had a bunch of eggs in there that would definitely still be good by then. “Yeah, she told me.”
“Obviously I didn’t know they would be getting married so soon …”
“Would it have changed anything?”
He didn’t respond to that. “What do you think we should do?”
Jane cleared her throat. “I’m going to be Haley’s maid of honor.”
“Okay,” he said. “That’s what I figured.”
“And?”
“He’s my cousin, Jane,” Tommy said. “He’s family.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I figured.”
“I know it will be a little awkward,” he said, “but we can just be adults about it.”
Jane couldn’t help herself. “Was it adult to break up with me during a dinner celebrating my best friend’s engagement?”
He took the bait. “Okay, so clearly being adults is out of the question.”
“Clearly.”
He was quiet for a minute, then two, so long that she lifted the phone away from her ear to make sure he was still on the line. Finally, he spoke. “I’m sorry. Okay, Jane? I am sorry.”
Now she asked. “What are you sorry for?”
A long pause. “All of it.”
She didn’t know what all of it meant and she didn’t ask. Some questions, she realized, she didn’t want to know the answers to.