by Marie Landry
With that logic, it’s not a stretch to believe it’s possible for Jasper and me to be friends again someday. I just have to finish falling out of love with him first.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You’re going to hate me so much.”
“Gee, Gwen, I love conversations that start like that.”
When she doesn’t so much as crack a smile at my sarcasm, I step aside and let her into my apartment. We’re not the type of friends who show up at each other’s places unannounced; we’re both firm believers that’s what cell phones are for. Her impromptu appearance, coupled with the way she’s wringing her hands as she bustles past me, has apprehension bubbling up inside me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She strides into the kitchen and spins around to face me when she reaches the fridge. “Do you have any wine?”
I glance at the wall clock behind her. It’s four-thirty on a Thursday afternoon.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” she says, as if reading my mind.
“There’s an open bottle of rosé in the door. I’ll pour while you sit and tell me what’s going on.”
She rounds the kitchen counter and hoists herself onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. “Something happened with the photographer’s camera during the wedding, and at least half the pictures are ruined.”
My hand freezes as I go to pour the second glass of wine. “Ruined? As in…?”
“They remind me of pictures we used to end up with on old film cameras and disposables. Everything is distorted and blurry and…blobby.” She clasps her hands in front of her face to hide the trembling in her bottom lip.
“Oh no,” I breathe, reaching across the counter and gripping her arm. “I’m so sorry. Are any of them salvageable?”
“Some,” she says. “The pictures she took of us girls before the wedding, plus all the shots from the ceremony. But the group pictures and the ones from the reception are….are just…” She covers her face with her hands.
The apprehension in my stomach has turned into a sick feeling. I know how much it meant to Gwen to have a plethora of pictures from her wedding day. Her parents never got married and she doesn’t have many pictures from her childhood because her dad was a busy single parent. She’s been borderline obsessive about documenting her relationship with Evan in pictures and videos. When she told me how many thousands of pictures she took on their honeymoon, I asked her if she slept at all or just took pictures twenty-four hours a day for two weeks.
I set the wine bottle down and go around the counter to hug Gwen from behind. She drops her hands from her face and grips my arms, holding on tight.
“Such first-world problems,” she says with a sniffle. “But those pictures meant a lot to me.”
“I know, sweetie, I know,” I say soothingly. “But wait…why would I hate you over that?”
Gwen stiffens in my arms. “Uhh, well, that’s where the wine comes in.” She releases her grip on me and guides me onto the stool beside her before reaching for the wine. “The photographer was quick to offer solutions to make it up to me. She feels just awful.”
“I can imagine.”
“After some back and forth, we figured out the perfect solution. Well, perfect in theory…”
“Spit it out, you’re making me nervous.”
“We’re going to recreate the reception,” she says in a rush. “I’ve already talked to everyone else and most people are on board. Not everyone who was there can come, but the main group and a few close friends have all agreed. Hugh and Ivy said I could have the Village’s event space again, and they even booked the same DJ. We’ll all dress up in the same clothes we wore to the wedding, and the photographer can get a whole new set of shots.”
“Is it safe to assume Jasper will be there?” I ask, and she nods. I nod along too, my head bobbing like a demented puppet on faulty strings. “Y-you want us to…you expect me to…” I pause long enough to down half my glass of wine. “You want me to relive one of the most humiliating and painful nights of my life?”
Gwen’s face flushes from forehead to chin. “It’s a huge ask.”
“Huge,” I echo numbly. “Monumental.”
“But you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. To some people they’re just pictures and it’s the memories that matter. That’s all true, but it’s about more than that for me. I want to remember that day forever. Evan means everything to me and the Perrys are my family now. You and Ivy and Hugh are my family. Please, Willow. I feel like the world’s biggest asshole for asking this of you, but you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important to me.”
When I don’t say anything—I can’t, my tongue feels like lead in my mouth—Gwen barrels on. “I would never try to downplay what happened that night. I can imagine how awful it was for you, and I hate that you associate those memories with my wedding day. But it wasn’t all bad, was it? We had fun until…”
“Yeah. Until.”
“Think of it as a do-over of sorts. You’ve told me you already suspected something was off with Jasper that day. Seeing him again will be painful, but you’d see him eventually anyway, and at least now you know. So you can dance and have fun and enjoy your night, all while avoiding the eldest Perry. Evan and I will do our best to run interference.”
She clasps her hands in front of her, her eyes pleading with me to understand and agree. In all the years of our friendship, Gwen has rarely asked me for anything. She’s been an incredible, loyal friend who would do anything for me. I can suck it up and do this one thing for her. “When is The Perry Wedding Two-Point-Oh?”
Her whole body slumps with relief, and the breath she releases blows the loose hairs away from my face. “It’s…um…it’s this Saturday.” She scrunches her face, her shoulders bunching up around her ears as if she’s bracing for impact.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. Instead of doing either, I lift my glass and chug the rest of my wine. “Okay. I’ll be there.”
*****
I was sure it would be ages before I had another chance to wear my gorgeous sparkly teal dress. Despite loving it, part of me never wanted to even see it again since it was what I was wearing the night Jasper broke my heart. But here I am, just five weeks after Gwen and Evan’s wedding, wearing the dress and sporting similar hair and makeup as that night. The only difference from five weeks ago is that today I got ready in the back room of Cravings after working half a shift rather than at my apartment.
Marisol nearly pokes my eye out as she puts the finishing touch on my eyeliner. She’s been flitting around all evening like a bird in a too-small cage.
“Why are you so nervous?” I ask as she gathers her makeup and shoves it haphazardly into its case, which is usually organized with fanatical precision.
“What? I’m not!” The words come out in a rush, sounding almost defensive. She freezes, blowing out a loud breath and jiggling her hands at her sides. “Gwen told me I could invite someone tonight if I wanted to since there’ll be fewer people than there were at the actual wedding, and I…I invited Carmen. And now I’m second-guessing that decision.”
“Carmen? I thought you two stopped seeing each other after your fourth date.”
“We did. It ended amicably, though—she’s looking for something serious and I’m not quite there, so we decided to end it before things went south. We ran into each other last week and went out for coffee, and then I called her last night and asked if she’d like to go to a faux wedding reception with me.”
“Wow. Well, good for you, Mar. I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
“See, that’s why I’m second guessing this. I told her I wasn’t interested in anything serious and then I invite her to a wedding reception where literally all my friends will be. Doesn’t that send major mixed signals?”
Marisol is one of the most confident people I know, so seeing her doubting herself like this makes me feel as if I’ve entered some bizarre alternate universe. “If you really do ju
st want to be friends with her, make sure to introduce her as a friend. Don’t leave room for ambiguity. Treat her like you’d treat me or any of your other friends—no kissing, no hand-holding…”
“No taking her back to my place and ripping her clothes off…”
I snort. “Right, none of that. Unless you decide you do want to be more than friends with her.”
Marisol is silent, her mouth twisted to the side as she ponders. After a moment, she claps her hands and pulls me up from the desk. “You’d better get a move on, my lovely. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Talking to Marisol calmed my nerves somewhat, but as I wrap myself in the fancy faux-fur shawl she’s loaning me for the night—a concession to my winter jacket, which would squash my hair and dress—my stomach begins to roil with anxiety. The walk through the Village toward the event hall feels endless. The early evening air has a bite to it, and the frosty scent hanging in the atmosphere makes me think it’s going to snow later.
I’m shivering by the time I reach the events building. I dash inside, going straight for one of the heaters in the atrium and standing there until my body stops trembling and my hands have thawed. As I slip off the shawl, I realize how quiet and dark it is in here. Beyond the entrance hall, fairy lights seem to be the only thing illuminating the huge reception room. Gwen told me earlier today that since all the beautiful fall foliage is gone, she’s recreating the formal photos inside. The ten of us who were originally in the photos were asked to arrive an hour before the party. The eerie silence in here is not helping my anxiety.
I get out my phone and turn on the flashlight app before stepping into the doorway of the event space. “Hello? Anyone here? I’m not that early, am I?”
The sudden flash of a spotlight turning on in the middle of the room makes me jump back. My fight or flight instinct kicks in, making me want to flee. I’ve just swiveled on my heel when I hear footsteps. I turn back as someone steps into the glow of the spotlight.
“Jasper?”
“Hello, Willow. It’s so good to see you.”
He’s wearing the same charcoal-gray suit he wore five weeks ago today. His hair is a little longer, the artfully-tousled waves begging to be touched.
I turn off the flashlight and stuff my phone in one of my dress pockets. “What’s going on? Where is everyone else?”
“They’ll be here shortly.” He steps to the edge of the spotlight and stops. “I asked for their help with all this, and they practically fell over themselves to assist me.”
My brain is working so hard to catch up, I can almost hear the cogs turning. “All this?” I ask faintly. “So there’s not going to be a reception do-over?”
Jasper holds out his hand to me. The movement seems to have a magnetic effect because before I’m even aware of what I’m doing, I’m standing in front of him. He gently clasps my hand and moves us into the center of the pool of light.
“There is, but not because the photographer’s pictures were ruined.” His fingers tighten around mine. It’s only now I realize he’s still holding my hand. Half of me wants to pull it away, while the other half wants to leap into his arms. I’m still too stunned to do either, so I allow him to continue holding my hand while I drink in his beautiful, familiar face.
“Let me start from the beginning,” he says. “I’m sorry I hurt you. Sorrier than I can say. Despite my almost-instant regret over ending things with you, I convinced myself I did the right thing. I fully believed what I said about you deserving better was true. I forced myself to leave Bellevue the morning after the wedding because I knew if I saw you, I’d ask you to disregard everything I’d said the night before and beg you to forgive me. I couldn’t do that, though; I had too many things to work on before being able to give myself to you fully.
“I’ve spent the last five weeks working on myself. I doubled my therapy sessions and allowed myself to dig deeper than I had before. I realized how much I had changed in my short time with you, largely because of you. Being with you showed me how life could be, how I could be. I thought of myself as an old dog incapable of learning new tricks, but that wasn’t true. I did learn new tricks, with the biggest one being how to love someone outside my immediate family.”
My breath catches in my throat when he says the word ‘love’.
“I love you, Willow.” He leans closer so we’re eye to eye. The intensity in the dark depths of his gaze sends my heart beating double time. “You were right about me being afraid. I was terrified of allowing you into my heart and my life, even though that’s what I’d been doing since the day we met. You accepted me and never judged me, but I worried you’d eventually decide our differences made us ill-suited or you’d get bored with my fuddy-duddy ways. I allowed myself to get in my own way because I was afraid of hurting you. Then I went and hurt you anyway.”
His grip on my hand tightens. “I’m sorry for pushing you away and I’m sorry I hurt you—hurt both of us. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I had to tell you how I feel and why I did what I did. I recreated Evan and Gwen’s wedding night as a do-over of sorts, wanting to say everything I should have said that night, and hoping to replace some of the bad memories with good ones.”
His face falls when I slip my hand from his. I turn my back to him and step to the edge of the ring of light, needing a moment to think without his imploring eyes on me. Despite the highlights of the last five weeks—my friends and my mom rallying around me, taking Cravings to new heights, tapping into previously-unknown levels of creativity—there have been some truly dark moments too.
Jasper and I have now spent almost as much time apart as we spent together before the wedding. We may have only known each other for a matter of weeks before things ended, but he wasn’t the only one who changed in that time. And he wasn’t the only one who fell in love.
“You still live in Toronto,” I say without turning around.
The rustling behind me tells me he’s stepped closer, although he doesn’t make a move to touch me. “I left my job at the bank, and Hugh has offered me a job here at the Village.”
I spin around, nearly knocking into him. He grips my upper arms to steady me, and doesn’t let go. My mind whirls with questions—is he moving to Bellevue? What about Hadley? Is he okay with being that far from his other siblings and baby Elizabeth?
I don’t get a chance to voice any of my queries before he says, “I want you back in my life, Willow. I may not deserve that after the way I hurt you, but life isn’t the same without you. I understand it may take time for you to forgive me or even want to see me again after tonight, but I’ll take your presence in any capacity. Even if it means nothing more than friendship.”
“And if I’m not interested in being friends?”
He blinks several times, either from surprise or because he’s fighting tears. Maybe both. His quiet tone holds a note of defeat when he says, “Then I’ll respect that.”
I nod slowly. He would respect that. He’d go back to being my friend if that’s what I wanted. But it’s not. There’s the not-so-small matter that we fell in love with each other during our short time together, and I can’t ignore that. I won’t. Not when I’m being handed a second chance with the man I love.
“I don’t want to be just your friend, Jasper.” I take one of his hands from where it still rests on my arm and clasp it in both of mine. “I want to be your best friend. I want to be your partner, your confidant, your lover. The person you turn to and depend on. The person you laugh and cry with. The person you build a life with. I want it all, Jasper.”
His smile starts slow and spreads, lighting his whole face. I’m completely dazzled by the sight.
Before he can say anything, I hold up a finger for him to wait. “If we do this, if we decide to be together as a couple, you can’t shut me out again. You can’t shut down because you think you know better than I do what I need or deserve. I understand the instinct, but you have to talk to me and keep letting me in.”
“I will, I will, I
promise,” he says quickly. He switches the position of our hands so he’s gripping mine. He brings our joined hands to his mouth and kisses my knuckles over and over, his eyes closed tightly. When he opens them again and our gazes meet, we both break into breathy, giddy laughter.
“Did you really arrange for all this?” I ask, glancing around the room properly for the first time. It looks almost exactly how it did the night of the wedding.
“I did,” he says, kissing my knuckles once more. “Regardless of how things turned out tonight, I hoped at the very least you’d leave here with some positive new memories. I even arranged for a special post-faux-wedding brunch do-over tomorrow morning.” He makes a face and adds, “That was a mouthful.”
I laugh. “Were you that confident things would work out between us?”
He grows somber. “I wish I could say yes. I honestly didn’t know how things would go, despite being hopeful. Gwen and Evan wouldn’t divulge much about how you were doing these past few weeks, although they were entirely on board when I came to them with my idea for tonight.”
“Can we come out now?”
The disembodied voice belongs to Gwen. I wonder how long they’ve been waiting in the shadows, and if the whole crew is here already or just her and Evan.
“Wait one more minute,” I call in the direction her voice came from. As I turn back to Jasper, I gently pry my hands from his so I can cup his face. His eyes crinkle in the corners as he realizes my intention, and his hands move to grip my waist as I lift up on my toes and press my lips to his. It’s a much-too-short kiss for my liking—and his too, if his tight grip is any indication—but we apparently have an audience, and we have some celebrating to do.
When I call that it’s okay to come out, Gwen and Evan appear from the shadows. I can’t help grinning when I see they’re both actually wearing their wedding outfits again.
“You missed your calling as an actress, Gwendolyn Dunwitch-Perry,” I say in my sternest voice. “You really had me going with that sob story about the ruined wedding pictures.”