“Both.” She props one elbow on the cart, fanning herself. “Wow. Okay. I didn’t even realize that was still going on. You and Tarek, I mean.”
“To be fair, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. I don’t think either of us expected it to happen.”
“Well, do you like him?”
“I liked kissing him.” Truthfully, I’m not sure what I want to happen now. I haven’t texted him and he hasn’t texted me, and while normally that would ratchet my anxiety up to eleven, I feel oddly calm about the whole thing. Maybe because I’m still trying to process it for myself. “You’ve seen what his relationships are like on Instagram. We wouldn’t be right for each other.”
I did like kissing him. But I’ve seen so many miserable brides, miserable grooms, miserable families putting on a show because they think they’re supposed to. I’ve seen the expressions my parents wear with their clients. None of it is real, and I already do enough pretending.
I learned from my parents like I learned how to bustle a wedding dress: love is a performance.
“Right, of course, how could I forget you don’t do the whole emotion thing,” she says. “Maybe that’s what I should have done with Noelle.”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” I say. “He’s going back to UC Davis at the end of the summer.”
“My levels of horniness don’t mesh with this last-summer-before-college-everyone-splitting-up thing,” Julia says. “It’s like my body is trying to sabotage my brain.”
Most of the time I feel the opposite. I pick up a pillow shaped like a pineapple before tossing it back in the bin. “I’m not sure how I feel about making new friends in September. It sounds hard. I just want to find some unsuspecting art student who vaguely looks like you and force them to listen to all my problems.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m not worried about us.” She holds up an alarm clock shaped like a guitar amp. “Cute,” she declares, just as I say, “Trying too hard.”
* * *
After Target, we wait in line at Molly Moon’s in Capitol Hill, where Julia asks to try every seasonal flavor before settling on her usual, melted chocolate. I go with salted caramel, and we take our cones and put up our sunglasses as we head to Cal Anderson Park across the street. There’s a softball game in progress on one side of the park, and in the tennis courts, a group of tattooed, muscular dudes all in black are playing some game that involves Rollerblades and lacrosse sticks.
“Owning five corgis is a whole personality trait,” Julia says. I’ve just finished telling her about Maxine and the very part-time work I’m starting next week. There’s something I can focus on instead of Tarek, and I vow to redirect my anxieties as best I can.
“I wouldn’t even want five cats. That’s five animals thinking they’re better than you,” I say between licks of salted caramel. “My self-esteem is touch and go as it is.”
We manage to find a patch of grass that isn’t being used for badminton, fetch, or slacklining, which is a real feat on an eighty-degree day in Seattle. As we sit down, my phone buzzes, and I push away the hope that it’s Tarek. I glance at it, groan, and shove it into my bag. Julia lifts her eyebrows.
“Victoria,” I say, then fish my phone back out. “I should answer this. Sorry.”
She texted my mom and me, and while I’m sure my mom is on top of it, I feel compelled to make up for the fitting a couple of weeks ago.
My future MIL isn’t a fan of the hair comb. She wants me to wear her veil, which is so 80s it’s practically singing “Take on Me.” Help?
We’ve handled plenty of pushy in-laws. I can hear my parents’ voices in my head as I type back, First, make sure she feels like she’s being heard. Then, calmly explain to her that this is what you want to wear. We’re happy to chat with her if you feel you need an intervention.
Exactly what I was going to say, Mom writes a minute later, and I hate the spark of pride it gives me.
Julia attacks a chocolate river dripping down her cone. “I take it you haven’t told your parents yet.”
“I’m working up to it.” That’s true, isn’t it? What I’m doing with Maxine has to be a step in the right direction.
“Quinn. I’m going to say this in the nicest way possible. You cannot draw this out. The longer you do, the more upset your parents and Asher are going to be. This thing is making you miserable, and you’re making me miserable.”
Even if she didn’t mean it to, it rubs me the wrong way. “Wow, sorry I’m not nonstop fun to hang out with.”
“Hey.” She reaches out to pull on my arm, as though shaking me out of a literal funk. “You know what I mean.”
I do. I think. And she’s not wrong; I just haven’t decided how to broach the topic with my parents. I’m not ready for the consequences yet.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I say.
So Julia tells me about the roommate she picked on her school’s matching site and how you can sort based on how tidy you are and how tidy you’d like your roommate to be, and I smile and nod along like I’m supposed to.
The whole time, I can’t help feeling like she’s moving on—moving up—without me.
15
I may have done something bad last night,” whispers a bride through a crack in her suite door.
Next to me, Asher goes pale. “Oh god. You didn’t—”
“No!” the bride, Kaci, says quickly. “Nothing like that. I just… well, you’re going to see it eventually.” With that, she pulls the door wide, revealing her once-blond hair tinged mint green.
“You went swimming,” I say, recognizing the hue from when Julia and I went to a party at the house of the one person in our grade who had a pool and she emerged with green hair. There was always that one person with a pool, and they were always popular.
Kaci nods miserably. “We have a bunch of family in town, right? So I went over last night to hang out with some cousins I hadn’t seen in forever, and we were in the hotel pool until they kicked us out.”
In two hours, Kaci is marrying Mariana in an outdoor ceremony on the grounds of a sprawling estate outside of Seattle. Three hundred guests.
“I can’t have green hair in our wedding photos,” Kaci continues, teary-eyed. “I thought about cutting it off, but I really wanted to have long hair for the wedding, and I’ve been growing it out for ages—” She breaks off with a sob.
And even if the idea of accidentally dyeing your hair green before your wedding is kind of funny, those tears aren’t. This is a big deal to her, which makes it a big deal to us.
Asher makes this calming sound, a kind of tutting under her breath. “Kaci. Listen to me. I am not going to let you get married with green hair. Okay? But right now I need you to calm down. Breathe. Because I don’t think you want puffy red eyes in your photos either, do you?”
Kaci shakes her head and lets out one last sniff.
It’s interesting, the differences between Asher and Mom, who asked us to check on Kaci while she helped Mariana because the brides didn’t want to see each other until they were at the altar. Asher is nurturing where Mom is no-nonsense, but my sister can be intense when she needs to be. It makes me wonder, if I stuck this out, what kind of planner I’d be. If I’d fall somewhere in the middle between Asher and Mom.
The thought of it snags my lungs in a viselike grip, reminds me what I’d be losing if I gave all of this up.
You’re making me miserable, Julia said.
When I give all of this up. As soon as I figure out how.
Kaci lets us into her suite, which is all done up in white and rose gold, and Asher the wedding wizard unzips her emergency kit. “I know I have a little bottle of lemon juice in here somewhere,” she says, while I pour Kaci a glass of water she accepts with a shaky hand. “Some crushed aspirin might do the job too. If all that fails—which I don’t think it will!—I have a box of bleach. We’re going to get through this.” She holds up the lemon juice, victorious. “Aha!”
And then we get to work,
sitting Kaci down, spreading a towel on her shoulders, and soaking her hair with lemon juice.
“We’ll let that sit for about ten minutes,” Asher says. “I’m actually surprised this is the first green hair I’ve ever dealt with.”
Kaci laughs, and it’s a welcome sound. “Happy to be your first. Hopefully I’m not the biggest disaster you’ve seen.”
“Definitely not.” I lean against the window that overlooks where the caterers are setting up the outdoor tables. Not looking for Tarek. Nope. “That would be a groom whose friends thought it would be hilarious to shave off his eyebrows the morning of the wedding.”
Even if our conversations are only surface, I’ve missed working alongside my sister, and a task like this with an easy fix is almost soothing. The fact that it’s such a large wedding means I may not run into Tarek. If I see him, I don’t know how strong I’ll be. He’s going to be standing there with his hair and his eyelashes and his smile that knows exactly what we did on that boat, and I’ll remember the heat of his mouth on mine, the sound of his breath catching in his throat. And I’ll want to do it again.
We were just curious. That’s the conclusion I’ve arrived at after a week of drafting and deleting a dozen text messages. Longtime friends who found each other attractive. A chemical reaction. Usually when I’m ready to move on, when I think the other person might want to DTR, I put as much space between us as possible. So I’ll see him, we’ll endure a period of awkward sustained eye contact, and then we’ll be golden. I am amazing at awkward sustained eye contact.
Asher’s phone timer beeps. “You’re good to wash it out. Shampoo and conditioner?”
Kaci holds up a travel bag of toiletries before disappearing into the suite’s spacious adjoining bathroom. A few minutes later, we hear a shriek of glee.
“I’m guessing that means it worked?” Asher calls out, and Kaci flings the door open.
“You are magic. Thank you.”
As the makeup artist and bridesmaids arrive, Asher asks me to check in with the florist. This will also require avoiding Tarek, which reminds me of our first meeting of the summer when I was avoiding Jonathan. Next to Tarek, Jonathan seems harmless. Jonathan was a lit match; Tarek is a five-alarm fire. Tarek is—
“Quinn?”
—standing right behind me.
I spin around in the foyer of the estate, nearly banging my arm on a towering sculpture that probably cost more than my house. “Hey, you!” I say, too loudly. Too much pep. I sound like my mother.
He lifts his eyebrows at my strange greeting—which, fair—and one corner of his mouth turns upward. I am fine. I am great. I am the coolest of cucumbers. I have taken the chillest of pills.
“I wanted to let you know that we’re all set for cocktail hour when the guests start arriving.”
“Yeah, okay, got it, cool. I’ll tell everyone.”
His smirk deepens. “You okay?” He crosses his arms, leaning against a pillar in the entryway like this is just something he does.
“Super,” I say. “You?”
“Similarly super.”
“Okay then. I’m going to…” I mime taking out my phone to text the group chat, nearly dropping it. Jesus. The sustained eye contact was not supposed to be this awkward.
* * *
The ceremony goes flawlessly, or as flawlessly as a ceremony can, given there’s no such thing as perfection in the wedding business. For some reason, my parents didn’t like that as a slogan either: Borrowed + Blue: because there’s no such thing as perfection.
I’m in the canopied dining area, waiting to escort guests to their tables, and I swear, Tarek goes out of his way to either glance at me or walk right in front of me every time he carries out a tray of food for the buffet. Harun is here too, and I watch them joking around when they’re in the kitchen, wondering if Tarek told Harun about us.
Though I guess if he’s glancing at me, I’m almost always glancing back. When our eyes lock, my face burns, and it’s not just because I forgot sunscreen.
This is getting ridiculous. I tell Mom I’ve gotten too much sun, that I need a walk and some space. The grounds are large, and it’s easy enough for me to disappear without disturbing anyone.
Sprawling maple trees shade my path as I walk and walk and walk, until I let out what feels like my first deep breath since last weekend, since that microscopic laundry room, since his mouth was on mine and his fingers were grazing my hips and—
Stop. It didn’t mean anything. It can’t mean anything.
It’s quiet out here. Calming. I’ve never been interested in the roughing-it kind of camping trips Julia takes with her parents, but maybe I could get into nature. I am a new and open-minded Quinn. Just leave me out here in the—shit, is that a wasp?
Of course I’m in the middle of my wasp-avoidance dance when I hear footsteps and spot Tarek heading toward me. I freeze, offering up my skin to the bees.
“Hey, you,” he says, echoing my earlier greeting in this low voice. When Tarek says it, he turns those words electric. I feel them in the tips of my toes.
I don’t know how he’s remotely calm. Maybe because he is a mature college student, and I am the kind of chaotic mess who, without fail, gets mascara all over her eyelids every morning and has to wipe it off and start again.
I chance a step forward, keeping a very safe few feet separating us. “Hi.” My heart does this infuriating beat-skipping thing in my chest that I decide to attribute to the wasps. They are terrifying, powerful creatures.
“We can’t keep meeting like this.”
“You’re the one who followed me here.”
He steps closer, something small clasped in his hand. “So I did.” The sweet, earthy scent of him blends with the trees and the flowers and the summer air, and for a moment I think I might need to lie down. Just right here in the dirt. “Rumor in the kitchen is that you de-greenified the bride’s hair.”
“All in a day’s work. And it was more Asher than me.”
“Still. For such a big wedding, it’s been a shockingly crisis-free one. The brides knew exactly what they wanted. We don’t always get that.”
“You really like doing this,” I say. “After all these years. You still love weddings.”
“You don’t?”
At the beginning of the summer, I was jealous—of him, of Julia, of my sister, of everyone who seemed to have their lives figured out. Now I just feel lost. Everyone is moving ahead and moving on, so solid about their chosen paths, and I’m still wondering where I fit.
Part of me wants to tell him how I feel about B+B, and while it would be easier than earlier in the summer, this isn’t the right place. I’m not getting sappy about Kaci and Mariana—it just wouldn’t be respectful.
“What we should really be talking about,” I say, because a subject change is always easier than honesty, “is why you followed me here.”
My words hit him in a way I didn’t anticipate. His eyebrows jump to his hairline, his dark eyes widening. “Shit—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I just wanted to talk to you alone, and there were all those people, and…”
I cut him off with a laugh. “Relax. I’m just giving you a hard time.”
“Okay. Because I actually did have a reason. I brought you something.” He unwraps a pastel-pink macaron, the loveliest little dessert I’ve ever seen. Kaci and Mariana did macarons instead of a cake, an impressive tower of them. He used to do this all the time, save me desserts, and it endeared him to me so much. Now it makes me want to press my mouth to the corner of his lips where his half smile starts.
“That’s adorable.”
“I was going for delicious, but I’ll take it.” He holds the macaron out to me, and it looks so delicate I’m almost afraid to grab it for fear of breaking it.
“Are they hard to make?” Dear god, can I stop saying the word “hard”?
“In theory, no. But they’re tough to master. They’re extremely temperamental, really sensitive to moisture in the air. So
you could follow the recipe exactly, and they could still be a disaster. But when you finally get them right, the perfect crunch to the shell and the lightness of the filling, they’re heavenly.”
I bite into it, and it’s at once soft and crisp and sweet and tart. “Oh my god, that’s perfect. Grapefruit?”
He watches me while I’m eating, like he can’t relax until he has my honest opinion. “Yeah? You like it?”
“Yes. So much.” I take another nibble. “But everyone’s about to eat them. Can’t really make any changes now.”
“I don’t care about everyone.”
And damn it, I’m weak. And woozy. And alone in this shaded grove with a boy who fed me dessert and can help calm some of my anxiety, even just for a bit.
So I grab his vest and tug him the last few inches to me. His mouth lands on mine in a smirk, and he is sugar and salt and heat, warming me up faster than the sun. His lips are familiar, but the kiss is more intense than Saturday. Firm. Insistent. I match each slide of his mouth, each stroke of his tongue as one of his hands moves to my hair, the other to my hip. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep standing. When I free one hand to reach behind me and find a tree trunk, I let my back meet the bark, and yes, that’s much better.
More, I tell him with the bite of my teeth. Absolutely, he replies with a hand pressed to the tree above my head. His body is flush against mine now, taut muscles and solid curves. The weight of him is enough to make me dizzy. I reach around to his back, his skin hot beneath starched fabric, as he lifts his lips to plant a kiss at the corner of my mouth. Along my jawline. Down my neck.
“Did you really need this buttoned all the way to the top?” he drawls against my throat.
I might faint. “My parents—they want us to look professional.”
“Is that how we’re going to look when we go back out there?” he asks, mouth tracing my collarbone. His teeth snag on my top button. “Professional?”
Slowly, he pulls back, and his gaze on mine is molten, like nothing I’ve seen from him before. Then, ever so gently, he flicks the button open with his thumb. One, then another.
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