20. Chapter 20
Chapter 20
T hings wound down not long after the fireworks ended, with everyone wanting to get a good night of sleep before the big day. Jane and Haley went back to their room, letting out a loud, nearly synchronized sigh between them as the door shut.
“What. A. Night ,” Haley said, flopping onto her pillows.
“You could say that,” Jane agreed as she collapsed onto her own bed. “You know what the good news is, though?”
“There’s good news?”
“There’s always good news,” she said. “The good news is that now you have all the stuff out of the way for your wedding day.”
“Don’t say that,” Haley said, popping up in alarm. “You’re going to jinx me.”
“You can’t jinx something that’s meant to be,” Jane said. It felt like something Luke had said, or would say.
Haley made a sound that conveyed something like I don’t know about that . She fell back on her pillows again, her face tilted up to the ceiling. She closed her eyes and let out a long, long exhale, and then was silent for a long time. Maybe too long.
“Haley?” Jane said in a whisper. She didn’t want to wake her up, but she knew Haley would kill her if she let her go to bed without washing her face the night before her wedding.
Haley wasn’t asleep, though. “Yeah?”
“You’re still awake?”
“Yeah.”
Uh-oh , Jane thought. “What is it?” she said.
An extended pause. “I definitely want to do this, right?”
Jane sat up on her elbow, giving Haley her full attention. “Do you not want to do it?”
“No, I do,” Haley said, still looking up at the ceiling. She paused. “But it’s normal to freak out a little, right?”
Of course , Jane wanted to say, but she wasn’t sure. “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably? I think so.”
“I’m excited,” Haley said. “ So excited to marry Blake. I’m just starting to freak out a little.”
“To be fair,” Jane said, “it’s been a day.”
Haley let out a little chuckle. “That, it has been.”
“Why don’t you get changed and wash your face and everything,” Jane said. “And then we’ll talk some more.”
“All right.” Haley heaved herself to a sitting position. “I told you I got this super fancy moisturizer, right? You can use some of it, too. We’ll wake up with glowing skin.”
“We better,” Jane smiled.
By the time Haley came back in the room, she was her normal cheerful self. “All right. I’m okay now,” she said. “I’m all the way to excited. I’m not freaking out anymore. I just needed to have my moment.”
Jane laughed. “Okay,” she said. “Good.”
“It would be weird if I didn’t have my moment, right?” she said. “It is a major decision.”
“I mean, yeah, I think so,” Jane said. “I freak out when I have to decide what to order at a new restaurant.”
“Right?” Haley said. “Or even what restaurant to eat at in the first place. I feel like when it’s all said and done I will have spent actual years of my life trying to decide where and what to eat.”
“Easily,” Jane said. “I can barely decide what to wear every day.”
“That’s why I have a million different kinds of black pants,” Haley said. “Remember when I painted my bedroom? I brought home like twenty paint samples and put them up on the wall because I thought it would help me decide, and—”
“They all looked exactly the same,” Jane finished.
“Exactly the same!” Haley said. “Even the blue and the green looked the same to me. I was like, well, that did absolutely nothing. It drove my mom crazy. She kept saying, just pick one! You can always paint over it!”
“I know, but who wants to do that?” Jane said.
Haley nodded. “Totally.”
“You know how I want to get a new couch one of these days?” Jane said. “That feels like a massive decision. Something I’m going to have to sit on every day for the next ten years? At least? Like, how is that supposed to happen?”
“Too much pressure!” Haley exclaimed.
“I looked at reviews for months when I got my vacuum,” Jane said.
“Oh, yeah, same when I finally got new sneakers,” Haley said. “I read a minimum of ten reviews for even the smallest purchase.”
“Minimum,” Jane said emphatically. “And I still won’t order anything online that doesn’t have free returns.”
Haley laughed, and then she looked at her with a genuine, earnest expression. “Besides Blake,” she said, “the best decision I ever made was being best friends with you.”
“Was that a choice?” Jane joked, even as she started to get a little teary.
“Maybe not at first,” Haley said. “But it became one.”
“Oh, Haley,” she said. Maybe, she thought, the best things in life were a blend of both: the things that were meant to be and the things you decided you wanted. Maybe, that was where the magic was: recognizing those things—little gifts meant just for you—and reaching out and grabbing them when they came by.
Haley clapped her hands together a few times. “Okay, I’m actually like super excited,” she said. “I’m getting married , Jane!”
“I heard,” Jane said, laughing.
She hooked her fingers together and stretched her arms over her head. “How,” she said, “am I supposed to sleep tonight?”
“You better sleep,” Jane said. “We can’t have the bride looking exhausted in her pictures.”
“Ugh, I know, but I’m wired,” she said. “I’m never going to be able to fall asleep.”
“Put your phone down,” Jane said. “It’s the blue light.”
“It’s not the blue light,” Haley said. “It’s the literal billions of things to look at.” But she did put it down. Ten minutes later, she was snoring.
Jane quietly reached for her own phone. She opened the camera and hit record on a video for fifteen seconds, evidence for the next day when Haley would inevitably tell her that she totally didn’t sleep and/or totally didn’t snore, and also for the memory of it. The night before Haley’s wedding. It all still felt like a dream.
She started clicking around, feeling wired herself and definitely like she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep anytime soon. Instagram, then some news headlines, then a wedding day checklist to make sure they weren’t forgetting anything, even as part of her thought at this point, it was probably better not to know if they were forgetting something.
She was about to check the weather for the next day—which she’d already checked, oh, a hundred times—when a text popped in from Luke: “Hi.”
That’s it? Two letters ? she thought, but a grin spread across her face anyway. “Hi,” she typed back. She waited a second, and then added another text: “What are you up to?”
The reply came back near-instantly. “Just watching TV.”
“Oh, yeah?” she responded. “What’s on?”
“A rerun of SportsCenter,” he wrote. “The same episode I just watched.”
“Haha.”
“What about you?”
“Hanging out while the bride gets her beauty sleep.”
“Nice.”
That was it. She scrolled up and down with her thumb. Not enough words to read into, not enough to really respond to.
She was about to slide the phone up onto the bedside table and try to fall asleep herself when another text popped in. “You wanna go look at the stars?”
She felt like someone squeezed her heart, just a quick squeeze, but enough to get her adrenaline going. She waited a full minute to reply, which felt more like a full year. “Like … sometime?”
“Like … now?” he typed back.
Do I want to look at the stars ? she thought. I totally want to go look at the stars.
She oh-so-carefully lifted the comforter and oh-so-gently swung her legs off the bed. She waited a second, in case Haley woke up, but she was out. She pulled on a hoodie and a pair of leggings and ran a brush through her hair, just in case. She grabbed a room key—mentally patting herself on the back for remembering—and quietly clicked the door shut behind her.
He was waiting for her downstairs. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Didn’t know you were an insomniac, Luke Sanderson.”
“It’s not that late,” he said. “And also, we are definitely not the only people out and about right now.”
“Really?” she said. “Do tell.”
He laughed and took her by the hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll get Cinderella back before she turns into a pumpkin.”
“I don’t think it was Cinderella who—” She cut herself off and laughed. “Never mind.”
He opened the door for her and followed her through. “After you, princess.”
***
They ended up back where they had watched the fireworks, sitting side-by-side on the beach. The sky was inky, the water off in the distance impossible to see at first. But once her eyes adjusted, it didn’t seem all that dark anymore.
“I see the big dipper and the little dipper,” she said, pointing up at the sky. “That’s all I know.”
“I don’t know that much myself,” he said. “But you see that reddish one over there?”
“Where?” she said, following where he was pointing. “Oh, yeah, I see it.”
“That’s Mars.”
“The planet?”
“The one and only.”
“No way,” she said. “I thought you had to have a telescope to see any planets.”
“Not all of them,” he said.
“Huh,” she said. “I had no idea.” She liked that about him, that he could help her see something differently that she’d seen millions of times before.
“So,” he said as they settled against the back of the bench, “I have a tiny confession to make.”
Jane cast a sidelong look at him. “What?”
“I remember when you locked yourself out of Haley’s apartment back in college.”
“You do?” she said.
The hint of a grin. “How could I forget?”
“That’s what I said!” Jane exclaimed, throwing her hands up. “And Haley was like, oh, don’t worry. She said for sure you wouldn’t remember.”
He grabbed onto one of her hands, the one nearest to him, and held it close to him. He scrunched up his face a little in his defense. “She said, don’t you dare bring it up to Jane. She was very strict about it. You’ll ruin my wedding, she said.”
“Of course she did,” Jane replied, shaking her head.
“Did your ankle end up being broken?” he said. “I don’t remember that part.”
“A bad sprain,” she said. “I can’t believe you remember that, though.” Except that, yes, I totally can , she thought.
“You were really cute,” he said.
“Stop it,” she said.
“You were,” he said. A beat, and then he added: “That day and all the other ones, too.”
Haley’s cute friend Jane , she thought, remembering his words from earlier in the night.
“I thought about shooting my shot with you,” he said.
“Shooting your shot was not a thing eight years ago,” she said, trying to sound casual, breezy, unaffected, even though she was exactly none of those things at the moment.
“Oh,” he said, “it was a thing.” He paused. “I was like, well, she lives two states away.”
“You thought that?” she said, losing a little of her faux-nonchalance.
“I totally thought that.”
“Wow,” she said. “I had no clue.” She really hadn’t had a clue. What if she had? What would have happened then?
“You’re still cute,” he said, looking at her.
“Stop it,” she said again, but she really meant, tell me more about that. A lot more, in detail, with plenty of pauses so I can remember it all. “I still live two states away,” she said, her tone light.
“They’re pretty small states,” he said. “Last time I checked a map.”
Her mouth quirked up at the edges. “Do you check a map often?”
“Often enough,” he said. “Also, I have a car now.”
And so do I , she thought.
“And lots of frequent flyer miles,” he continued. “I actually cross state lines all the time.”
She gave him a full-fledged smile. “Is that a humble brag?”
He returned her smile. “Maybe a brag-brag?”
She laughed. Luke was definitely not a humble bragger or an actual bragger. “Well, I’m impressed.”
“Then it worked.” He cleared his throat. “So …”
“So.”
“Given all that …”
She ticked them off with her fingers. “Given the car and the frequent flyer miles and the two small states—”
“ Very small states,” he interjected, and then looked at her—really looked at her. “What about if I shoot my shot now?”
She glanced away, and then back to him again. “Do you want to shoot your shot now?”
“Yeah.” He gave her that world-class, famous smize of his, and that was the beginning and end of it. “I think I do.”
“Well, then,” she said, her heart tapdancing against the back of her ribs, “I guess you should shoot your shot.”
He reached for her chin, gently tipping her face up to his with his thumb, and then he kissed her. He kissed her in a way that felt like a surprise, and he kissed her like it was something he’d been waiting to do for eight years. Is that possible ? she thought. It couldn’t be, she knew that. But it felt like it was. Somewhere, out in the distance, she heard the crackle of a few scattered fireworks, rogue firecrackers people were setting off on their own. The waves were coming in, the breeze was picking up, the night alive all around them. She pulled back from him for a second, taking it all in—this night, this air, this soundtrack, this guy.
And then she placed her hands on both his cheeks and kissed him again.