34. Natalie
Natalie
It’s almost seven, the time we planned to meet my family at the fair. Luke’s been back for only two days, and he’s been on calls almost nonstop since Wednesday. Now there’s something wrong with one of the houses in Florida, and he’s been doing his best to deal with it all from here.
It’s okay, though. As much as I wish we had more time together, I’ve been busy, too, with family photo shoots and an engagement session I did last night. I haven’t snagged any interest from my social media post, but I’m not letting that get me down.
We meander through the loud, colorful fair until we find Jules and Sandra standing in line for the Ferris wheel.
Sandra leans in for a hug. “Hey, this is fun! I’m so glad we could all do this.”
“I haven’t been to a fair since I was a teenager,” I say.
“Me too,” she laughs. “Do you two want to ride the Ferris wheel?”
I look up at Luke, and he nods. “Sounds great.” He looks around. “Where are Cam and Tyler?”
“They’re just getting some dinner over there.” She points at a big red food truck that has a line of at least fifteen people waiting to order. “They’ll be waiting a while, so we’re doing this while we wait.”
“Where are the kids?” I ask.
Juliet answers. “Mom and Dad have them at a table eating a funnel cake.”
My eyes flit between my sister and Sandra. “Oh, boy. That’s the perfect dinner. They’ll be bouncing off the walls for days.”
They chuckle, and Jules mumbles, “Tell me about it.”
The girls ride in a red gondola together, while Luke and I hop in the blue one behind them. We hold hands as the wheel turns, and we get lifted high into the air. From the top, we can see absolutely everything.
The fairground consists of a big open field bookended by maple trees and oaks.
Lights blink all around us as we rotate around the Ferris wheel, music plays too loudly through speakers nearby, and screams turn to laughter, echoing up from the ground and neighboring rides.
When the gondola comes back down, the cacophony of sounds rings out, and when we glide back up to the sky, it all blurs together in a hum.
But the scent of hot dogs and oil from deep fryers follows us, floating on the humid breeze.
It’s warm tonight, but once the sun goes down, the air will cool to the perfect balmy temperature.
“Just one step closer to skydiving,” Luke says over my shoulder.
I turn my attention away from the view to look at him. “What?”
“The ride. We’re pretty high.”
I look up at the sky as the sun burns orange, almost kissing the horizon. “Yeah, but nowhere near as high as that.” I point at a plane as it floats behind a cloud. I blink at him. “You don’t actually want me to go skydiving, do you?”
“No.” He shakes his head, a playful twinkle in his eyes. “I would never put you in danger, remember? I think horses were enough of an adventure, anyway.”
My eyes slide down to his lips as he speaks.
“Hey,” he says, lifting my chin between his thumb and finger. “My eyes are up here.”
I meet his gaze and slide closer to him on the bench, my stomach rising and dipping, but not from the motion of the Ferris wheel.
“Did you really miss me when I was gone?” Luke asks, cupping my cheek.
I lean into his touch like it’s second nature. “I did. I wanted to turn over in bed and feel you beside me. The cabin is too quiet without you.”
“I’m here now, sweet girl. I’ll always come back to you, wherever you are.”
I lean in and kiss him—hard. In the two days he’s been back, I haven’t gotten nearly enough of him. I close my eyes, and he brings his hand to the back of my neck, tangling in my hair. My fingers drag lightly across his arm, and I smile as I feel goose bumps lift across his skin.
We kiss like that until the Ferris wheel slows, and when it comes to a stop, my lips are swollen and my heart is full of him. Luke removes his hand from my hair, and with a hand on my lower back, he guides me away from the ride’s platform to wait for Jules and Sandra.
Luke’s fingers are entwined with mine as we wait on the grass. He leans close to my ear, his heat radiating onto my skin. “I can’t get enough of your touch, Nat—your kiss. You do things to me.” Once again, his lips graze mine.
I step back to look up at him, furrowing my brow. “Right here? In front of everyone?” I look around, all too aware of the people moving around us.
Luke steps in front of me, blocking my view of the people who continue to exit the ride. In his shadow, he’s all I see. “Expect an audience, Natalie. Because I plan to kiss you a lot more, no matter who’s watching.”
He catches my lips with his, and my heart pounds at the suddenness of it. I don’t know what’s gotten into Luke, but I like what it’s doing to me. He releases me from his all-consuming kiss, holding my waist with a firm but gentle hand. I feel lightheaded, grateful for his steady grip.
“Hey, there you are!” Sandra shouts, reaching us, with Juliet close behind her. She points a finger at Luke. “I saw that kiss. You trying to burn the whole place down or something?” She fans herself with her hand.
I chuckle nervously, still a little breathless as Luke steps away from me.
He slides his hand to the small of my back—it’s hot through the thin fabric of my tank top. “Something like that.” He smirks at her, then looks at me and winks. My cheeks flush. Then he tugs me along. “Let’s go find the guys,” he says. “I’m starving.”
Not long after, we find my parents sitting at a picnic table with Levi and Archie. The boys sport white powdered sugar on their faces and shirts, with smiles that spark a childlike joy in me. Cam and Tyler enjoy their own spread of food at a neighboring table.
Luke seats himself next to Cam, digging into a hot dog he grabbed on the way over and already jumping into conversation about the cabin and the new photos I took for their listing.
I nudge Tyler as I sit by him, across from the other guys. “Why haven’t you proposed to Sandra yet?” I whisper.
He frowns, looking over his other shoulder to make sure she can’t hear us. Turning back to me, he keeps his voice low. “I just … haven’t yet. I don’t know. The timing hasn’t seemed right.”
“When will the timing seem right?” I ask, then bite into a fried pickle I stole from his plate.
He shrugs his shoulders. “I’m not really sure. We’re both really busy. We’re invested in our jobs, and I visit Maple Lake almost every month, so that takes up some time. Her family lives in Vermont, so she travels to see them. I don’t really have the time to plan a wedding.”
“So, elope,” I say, like it’s obvious.
He leans closer to me. “Are you being serious? She would kill me if I even suggested it.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s Sandra.” Grease drips from the turkey leg in his hand. “She likes nice things. Big, expensive things that would take a year alone to plan, and I’d probably have to drive all the way up to Vermont just to get hitched.”
“So what I’m hearing you say is you don’t want to propose because it will throw your comfortable yet busy life into a whirlwind of listening to her talk about wedding plans—which she’ll most likely plan without you anyway—and you’ll have to take a road trip to Vermont for one weekend?”
He pauses, chewing on a juicy bit of turkey. “When you say it like that, it doesn’t sound so chaotic.”
“Because it’s not,” I say, chuckling. The cheese fries between Luke and Cam smell heavenly, so I snatch one and bask in its glorious cheesiness.
Checking that Sandra isn’t listening—she’s not; she’s talking animatedly with Juliet at the other end of the table—Tyler turns back to me. “It’s really not that bad?”
I shake my head. “It’s really not.”
“I haven’t been in any weddings except Juliet’s. I was the best man,” he states. “And Juliet’s wedding was so small, Cam didn’t have to do anything except show up. Jules knew exactly what she wanted, and Ali helped her with everything.”
“See?” I say. “Sandra will have a friend help with a lot of the planning, and her parents will do a lot of it too if the wedding is in Vermont.” I shrug. “And just be honest with her. Tell her you don’t want something big if it’s going to stress you out. Let her know how you feel about it.”
He nods, his blond hair falling around his ears.
“You know those bridal shows on TV?” I nod.
“Sandra watches those a lot. The brides are always crazy. Their dresses alone cost a fortune, and half of them treat their fiancés like trash. I didn’t want to sign up for that.
Not the reality show—you know what I mean.
The wedding. The crazy. The cost. I just want to start the marriage part without all that. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does. I get that. But if she wants a wedding, I think you should let her have it. If you guys are serious—and it sounds like you definitely are—then she’ll only have one chance at celebrating something like this.” I give him a tight-lipped smile. “You should let it be special.”
“You have a point.”
“Just be honest with her about how you feel. She seems really sweet. I can’t imagine she’d be a bridezilla.”
“Ew. A what?”
“A monster-bride hybrid,” I say flatly.
He laughs. His shoulders relax, and I’m glad I could take away some of his stress. There are hundreds of times I wished I had a sibling to talk to about the hard things over the years, and if I can give him that, even just this one time, then I feel like I’ve done something right.
Sandra turns away from Jules, and Tyler gives me a look that says don’t say anything about this.
“You’re a social media photographer?” Sandra asks. “Luke just told me. That’s awesome.”
My smile stretches. “I have my own photography business called NataLily Studios.”
From the corner of my eye, Jules seems to twitch.
“Who have you taken photos of? Anyone famous we’d recognize?” Sandra’s light brown eyes glow against the setting sun in the distance.
“Maybe.” I frown. “Let me think … I took model photos for Clare Vong, and this past winter I did a snowboarding shoot for Ronny Baldoa.”
Sandra’s mouth drops open, and Tyler frowns.
“Whoa, wait,” he says. “Ronny Baldoa. As in the famous snowboarder who won gold at the X Games?”
“Yup.” I beam.
“Show us,” Tyler says. “Show us the pictures you took of him.”
“What, you don’t believe me?” I smirk but pull out my phone and thumb through my social media app to find Ronny’s account.
“I totally believe you,” Ty says. “But I’ve seen practically everything he’s posted, and I’m curious which photo you took.”
“He’s a big fan,” Sandra says, wrapping her hands around his arm.
I click on a photo of Ronny jumping off a car that’s buried halfway under the snow. I lay on the snow to get that shot. The red Chinese dragon painted under Ronny’s yellow snowboard as he jumped over me contrasts starkly against the blue sky and white snow all around him. It’s a great shot.
I turn my phone toward Tyler.
He widens his eyes in surprise, then looks up at me. “You took this photo?”
“Yeah,” I reply, smiling. “And a bunch of other ones he posted from the same shoot.”
“That’s amazing, Nat. You’re really good.” The pride in his eyes fills me up. “And I can’t believe you met Ronny Baldoa, let alone got to hang out with him.” Tyler can’t move his eyes from the photo.
“Can I see it?” Jules reaches across the table, and I hand her the phone. “That’s really cool.” She looks at it a few seconds, and then her face drops. “The caption says it was in Pennsylvania.”
“He flew me out. Paid for the whole thing—the flight, hotel, food. It was a great deal.”
“But you were in Pennsylvania.” She keeps staring at the photo.
“For only two days,” I say. “It was crazy. Ronny wanted me to get shots of him on the slopes, but I was terrified of falling off the ski lift. We had to bribe one of the guys with a snowmobile to drive me up the mountain to the terrain park.” I feel the nerves all over again. “I’m still embarrassed about it.”
“But you were in Pennsylvania,” she repeats, staring at me with dark brown eyes.
“Jules,” Tyler says gently. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” she snaps. “You mean to tell me you were in the same state as us, and you still didn’t think to see us?”
“It was for work,” I start, but she cuts me off.
“I can’t believe this,” she says, standing and dropping my phone on the table. Luke glances up, watching our argument with a quizzical look, and Sandra seems extremely uncomfortable.
Cam stands too, resting a hand on Juliet’s shoulder. “Jules, let’s talk about this at home.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it at all, actually.” She stares me down, her eyes bright and dark all at the same time in the evening light. “I’m just ready to go home.”
She walks away, gathering the kids and telling our parents she’s ready to leave.
I sit numbly, stunned into silence. Tyler hands my phone back to me, and I take it without a word.
“She’s just upset that you never came to visit when you were so close,” Tyler says gently. “It’s hard for her to hear that you were nearby and we never knew.”
I nod, staring at a dollop of ketchup on the cracked plastic table. Luke walks around the table and rests his hands on my shoulders.
“You ready to go home?” he asks.
My chin quivers. My chest tightens. My ribs squeeze my heart. I don’t look at anyone as I stand and leave with Luke.