by Lily Paradis
“I could ask Julian, but I’d rather have you do it,” I tell Colin.
He doesn’t look utterly shocked because he knew I would ask him. He’s the closest thing I have to a brother. Julian is my grandfather, and we’re amiable, unlike my relationship with Lara, but we’ve never been close. If he walked me down the aisle, it wouldn’t mean anything, and I’d rather just walk alone.
For tradition’s sake, I need Colin.
“I’ve really been waiting on Hayden to ask me to be his best man, so I’ll consider your offer and get back to you.”
Catherine punches him in the arm, so he stands and kisses me on the cheek.
“I’d be honored.”
Sentimental is one of my favorite versions of Colin, so I’m grateful he’ll be there for me when I’m shaking down the aisle.
Austin comes back with a sketchpad and begins to draw because we aren’t getting anywhere with the samples.
“You’re not like other brides, Tate. I love a challenge!”
He shows Catherine and Colin, and by their gasps, I know it must be beautiful. Catherine nods at me, and I expect Austin to show me, but he doesn’t.
“No,” he tells me, holding it against him. “You can’t see it. If you do, you’ll tear it apart in your mind until you hate it, and then you’ll hate it on the day. If you see it right before, you’ll love it.”
I hug Austin with his sketchpad between us because I see a little bit of me in him, a little bit of that edge people are so wary of.
This is why I need him to be the one to make the dress I become a Rockefeller in. It needs to have that little flair of darkness, so I can feel at home, not like I’m playing dress-up for thousands of people.
If I don’t feel like myself when I get married, I’ll never last. Hayden deserves better than that.
I deserve better than that, and I hope with all my heart that this dress is a sign that all this will be what it needs to be.
Now
I SAY GOOD-BYE to Catherine and Colin and head to Evanna Wyatt’s favorite coffee shop in New York, so I can try to channel her while I write.
My boss, Chad Holstrom, wants two new stories by the end of the week. Normally, I’d be fine with that, but nothing I’ve written lately is good. My brain is clouded, and I’m not myself.
Everything comes out generic instead of sounding like me.
“I want them to know it’s Tate McKenna before they read the byline,” was what he said when he threw my last short story in the trash right in front of me.
I need to get my edge back, or I’m going to be out of a job.
They know my order, so it’s ready in seconds, and I choose a secluded corner where I can see the rest of the shop, but I’m not noticeable.
New York is kind to celebrities, but since I’m now on Google for my writing and my ring, I like to blend in rather than stand out.
I pull my laptop from my bag and start to write, but after ten minutes, I hate it all. I need something that’s going to shove me over the edge, so I can write like myself again. What I have so far isn’t going to cut it.
“I’m going down to the Red Cross,” Jane announced. “I’m really doing it this time.”
“Jane, why on earth would you do that?” Her mother pursed her lips.
“Daddy and John are over there, and I should be, too. I can help. I have to help.”
“Here.” Her mother held out a letter. “The mail came.”
Jane snatched the dirt-caked tattered letter and opened it. She twisted her ring around her finger as she read it.
They say I’ll be home for Christmas, Janie. I hope you got my last letter. We haven’t had any incoming mail in weeks. I promise I’ll be okay. I look for you in everyone.
Yours, John
Jane ran to get her coat. She scribbled a reply. If there were even a small chance it would get to him, she would send it.
As she ran out the door, she shouted to her mother, “I’m off to post this!”
She kissed the letter and dropped it in the box before skipping and smiling all the way home.
She took off her coat and rubbed her hands together to warm them.
Ten days.
A military car pulled up and Jane ran out, sure it was John. Instead, two officers stepped out in full regalia. One man removed a flag from the car and presented it to Jane, her cheeks still rosy from the walk.
Too much, but not enough. I don’t like it. I slam my computer shut and look around the shop.
A woman is putting a sleeve on her coffee, and we make eye contact as she turns to find the napkins. She strides over to me, a faint smile on her lips.
“Tate,” she says, “how are you?”
“I’ve been better,” I tell Addison because I don’t want to admit I’m angry with my Rockefeller since she doesn’t have the luxury to be angry with hers.
She sits down in front of me without invitation.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” she says. “Are you getting stressed out?”
“Yes,” I admit. I take a sip of my lukewarm coffee. “I’m not really a wedding person.”
She laughs lightly.
“I wasn’t either. It’ll get better once all the hype dies down, I promise.”
She glances at her phone.
“I have to run. My sister’s in town. If you ever need anything, give me a call. It might help to talk to someone who has been through it.”
She places a hand on my arm like that’s supposed to reassure me, and she picks up her bag and leaves. As she walks away, a tiny business card flutters out of her purse and onto the floor.
I look up, but she’s already on the phone and walking outside.
I lean down to pick it up, and I flip it over out of habit.
ADDISON SARO ROCKEFELLER.
Shiny words reflect off the light, and although they’re beautifully made, I hate every letter.
I’m fuming.
Saro is not a common last name.
I’ve never heard it, save for one person.
I’m not sure how I didn’t see this coming, but I’m stunned.
My sister’s in town.
It doesn’t make any sense that Jasmine and Addison are related, but I have to know.
I pull my phone out of my purse and text Hayden. If he’s not at his penthouse now, he’d better be in the next ten minutes. I want to do this at his apartment instead of mine, so I can leave. So I can get away if I have to.
I delete all the words I have written so far. Then, I type out a single sentence.
Seven guns fire three times, and Jane collects a flag.
It’s a sentence, but it’s an entire story, too.
I send it. Chad will either love it or hate it.
I gather my computer and throw my half-full drink in the trash.
My phone buzzes with Hayden’s reply that he’s home, so I walk the four blocks to his penthouse and demand to be let up.
The guard knows me by now without me flashing the ring at him every time, so he lets me in the elevator immediately.
I don’t know what I’m going to say to him. I couldn’t plan this out because I’m too angry. I was upset before about Jasmine in his office, but that could have been work-related. I could have written that off.
But then for Addison’s last name to suspiciously match Jasmine’s? That’s too much.
I climb out of the elevator like a hurricane to find him standing at the bar with a drink in his hand. I feel murderous.
I throw the business card at him to see if it’ll mean anything while I pour myself three fingers of the nearest bottle of alcohol.
He looks at it and sets it on the counter, but his brow is still furrowed.
“The Saro sisters?” I try to see if I’m right.
“What about them?” he responds quickly.
My blood gets even hotter. “How do you know them?”
“Tate, what are you getting at? Is this about today with Jasmine?”
I throw my glas
s in the sink so hard that it shatters.
“It’s always about Jasmine! Everything always comes back to Jasmine!”
Hayden stands there, too calmly. I want him to feel something. I want him to yell back because I’m so incredibly angry at him even though he has no idea what’s going on.
“Tate,” he says, taking a step forward, “what always comes back to Jasmine?”
I put my head in my hands and hold back the rage inside me. I want to break everything in this penthouse. I’m probably going to break Hayden.
My left ring finger starts to throb, and I can’t help but wonder if this is a sign that I should back out now and try to find a new life, the way I stumbled upon this one the very same hour I left Charleston in the first place.
This wasn’t starting over if my old life followed me.
I take a few deep breaths and sit on one of the barstools with my head in my hands. I run my fingers through my hair and pull lightly to try to quell what’s rising up inside of me.
“Hayden,” I say too calmly. It’s an Old Tate trick—switch from angry to calm in a second to let them know how furious you are. “Do you have any idea who Jasmine Saro is dating?”
I hate that word—dating. But I don’t know what else to use in this situation. I guess that’s what they’re doing. I guess that’s what I was doing with Hayden before this ring was put on my finger.
“I’m not sure,” he says, “I don’t talk to her that often. I haven’t seen her in years until today.”
“And why was she here?”
“She said her boyfriend had an art gallery opening. She thought she’d say hello.”
I put my head in my hands again like I didn’t hear what he just said.
“I’m sorry. Her boyfriend has a gallery opening? Here? In New York?”
Hayden nods, like he still can’t quite put the pieces together.
“Who is her boyfriend, Tate?”
He looks at me for a few seconds, and I just stare at him, willing him to put it all together.
In a few moments, his expression changes, and he does.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not him?”
Hayden hates Jesse’s name like I hate Jasmine’s, so he refuses to say it.
I get up off the stool and start picking the pieces of glass out of the sink.
“Yes,” I say with conviction. “Yes.”
Hayden stares at me in disbelief, and I’m glad someone else is on the same page as me.
He downs his drink in one swig.
“What does that mean?”
He wants me to say it, and it burns my throat more than alcohol when I do.
“Jesse is in New York.”
Then
WHEN I GRADUATED from Vanderbilt, there was no one in my cheering section, except Catherine. She flew down from New York for Colin and me when we became official adults. She finished a semester early and was already starting graduate school, so I felt incredibly behind even though I was doing things right on schedule with what society told me was normal.
I walked across the stage, shook a professor’s hand, and smiled for a photo, and then I had a degree.
I didn’t expect Lara, Julian, or Cece to make the trip. Cece was too busy trying to get her boyfriend to propose. Lara didn’t care, and Julian never went anywhere without Lara, as curious as their relationship was.
Catherine cheered loudly for us both and took us to dinner after.
“Well,” I said, poking at my degree with my drink, “there it is. I guess we’re adults now.”
“We’ve been adults for a long time, Tate,” Colin told me.
“I don’t think that’s true. Is there a mark of adulthood?”
“You have a job lined up,” Catherine says. “I think you’re an adult.”
She was right. I had applied for a position as a staff writer for the Charleston Tribune and had miraculously gotten the position. I’d be writing short stories for the Sunday paper.
Colin was set to fly off to Atlanta to work at the CDC in three days, and we’d all be split up for the first time since we met.
I’d had Catherine and Colin all through adolescence until now when school no longer bound us together. I would move into a small apartment closer to the city with Haley, and I’d have to live without the two of them.
I swirled my drink around and watched the ice cubes float.
I hated ice in drinks, but I didn’t want to fish them out either.
There was one more person I was losing, and I wasn’t sure I could.
He’d admitted what I felt was real because he felt it, too, and he had acted on it all semester when he sat in the back where I wouldn’t feel he was there. I hadn’t spoken to him since he left class, so I could pass my test.
I poured the rest of my drink down my throat and crunched on the ice.
“I’m doing it,” I said, putting it back down on the table with committed force.
Catherine and Colin looked at me like I was insane.
“Doing what?”
“I’m going to go talk to him.”
“Tate, don’t leave,” Catherine protested, panic in her eyes. She knew what kind of self-destruction I was headed for if I did that. “I have to fly back in two hours. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”
She was right. I didn’t want to waste our precious time together.
Jesse could wait—for now.
Now
HE’S HERE IN the city, and I hate that, but morbid curiosity gets the best of me. I’m cleaning up the pieces of shattered glass, and I’m not being careful, so my blood is going down the drain with the water.
I took my ring off and placed it on the counter, and Hayden decided that meant more than it did. I just don’t want to lose it down the sink.
“What does it matter that he’s here, Tate? We’ve been through this. He’s your past.”
I don’t look up at him.
“I know he’s my past, but now, he’s here. I tried to run away, and this is what I get. If he’s going to follow me to the edges of the earth, I can’t live like this.”
“Then, we’ll leave.”
“I’m sick of running. That’s all I do. I run. I don’t want to be that person.”
“Can you live in the city with him here?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t know. If he’s not here permanently, that might be okay. But if he’s here with Jasmine and he’s opening an art gallery, it doesn’t sound like he’s just passing through.”
Hayden’s brow furrows, and I rinse my hands off. There are several small cuts still oozing blood, but I dry my hands and reach for my ring.
He gets there before me and holds it up.
“I meant this,” he says, referring to the ring, referring to our relationship. “I still mean this. If you don’t, if you can’t mean it the way I do, walk away.”
I mean it. I just hate the fact that Jesse is finding his way back into my life the way he always does. I don’t think I can coexist with him, even in a city of millions.
I hold out my left hand and look at my ring finger, which is ever so slightly tilted off. No one notices it, except for me because I know I injured it more than Colin said that night in the mud hole.
Hayden slides the ring back on my finger without breaking eye contact, and I know he’s not going to do it again. He’s trying to read my facial expression, but there’s nothing to decipher.
We’re getting married in less than a week.
I love him. I choose him. I don’t want Jesse anymore. I want him out of me for good, and I want to scream in frustration. I want to throw my phone against the wall and watch as it shatters into a million pieces, just like me.
I want to do the same to Hayden’s, so Jasmine and Jesse can’t ever contact us again even if they wanted to. It gets under my skin that Jasmine’s phone number is sitting in Hayden’s phone at all.
“Hayden…” I ask him as calmly as I can. Even though I’ve already put the pie
ces together, I want to hear the whole story. “Why was Jasmine in your office today?”
“I told you,” he says. “She was just saying hello.”
“And you know her through Addison.”
“Yes. We’ve known them for a long time.”
I sit down on the couch, and he does the same.
“Your brother married Addison Saro,” I say. It’s not a question.
“Yes.”
“And Jasmine is her sister.”
“Yes.”
“Jasmine used to want you.”
Also not a question. I know Jasmine well enough to know that Hayden is exactly her type even though she’s with Jesse. Hayden is probably even more desirable now that he’s attached to me because Jasmine seems to want to dedicate her life to ruining my relationships.
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t want her?”
“I was never interested. She tried a few times, but I told her a long time ago that it was never going to happen.”
“And you’re sure she knows that?”
“Yes.”
I run my hands through my hair because I don’t know what else to do with them.
“What else do you want to know?”
I have a million questions for him, and I’m glad he’s offering, but I don’t know how to ask without having to reveal why I hate her so much.
“If Addison lives here, why did Jasmine move to Charleston?” I ask. I’ve never known the answer to that question, and frankly, I never cared until now.
“She lived here until John and Addison’s wedding day. After the car crash, her father didn’t want her here. He said the city was too dangerous, but I think it was just an excuse for him to move. He never liked it here. Addison was old enough to make her own decisions, so she stayed. Since she and John were already legally married before he died, she decided to take up his shares in the business since I was in school. If she hadn’t stayed, I would have had to drop out of school to help. Their parents are divorced. Their mother stayed here, and Jasmine’s father took her down to Charleston because it’s where the other half of his company has headquarters.”