by Susan Wiggs
Sonnet found a half-empty bottle and poured herself a glass. “I think I’ll stick around here and…” She paused. After all was said and done, the maid of honor had no further duties. “…drink alone.”
“Ah, baby.” Her mom offered a soft smile. “Your time will come, just like I was saying before the wedding. No one can say where or when, but it’ll happen.”
“Gah, Mom.” Sonnet grimaced. “I’m not mooning about my love life. That’s the last thing on my mind.”
“If you say so.” Nina lifted her glass in salute.
“I say so. Go away.” Sonnet made a shooing motion with her free hand. “Go drink with your husband. I’ll see you in the morning, okay? I’m planning to be on the noon train to the city.” She watched her mom and stepdad wander down the gentle slope toward the lake, their silhouettes dark against the moonlight.
They paused at the water’s edge and stood facing the moonlit surface, Greg holding Nina protectively from behind, his hands folded over her midsection. Sonnet sighed, feeling a wave of gladness for her mom. Yet at the same time, the sight of them embracing made her heart ache. Sonnet tried to imagine herself in that role—the bride. Would her own father walk her down the aisle, the tears flowing freely down his face? Doubtful. General Laurence Jeffries, now a candidate for the United States Senate, was more figurehead than father.
And when she pictured herself walking down the aisle, she couldn’t form a mental image of the guy waiting at the end of it. She wasn’t going to hold her breath waiting for him.
“I hate weddings.” Zach Alger sidled over and slammed back a bottle of Utica Club. “I especially hate weddings that require me to behave myself.”
Sonnet had spent most of the day sneaking glances at Zach, trying to accustom herself to this new version of her oldest friend. They hadn’t had a chance to talk at the wedding; the evening had sped by with her still doing her duty as maid of honor. Now, mellow from drinking and dancing, she regarded him through squinted eyes. It was hard to get her head around the idea that he had been a part of her life since preschool. That, perhaps, was the only reason she didn’t swoon sideways when he walked past, the way most women did. Still, it was hard to get used to his unique, striking looks—so blond he was sometimes mistaken for an albino, and now built like a Greek athlete, yet oddly oblivious to his effect on the opposite sex.
She gave him a superior sniff, falling into her old role as sidekick. “You mean there’s a kind of wedding that doesn’t require you to behave yourself?” She plucked an untouched flute of champagne from one of the tables that hadn’t yet been cleared.
“I’m a wedding videographer. I’ve filmed more weddings than I’ve been to baseball games. I haven’t seen a Saturday night in five years. And what do I do when one finally rolls around? I go to a freaking wedding.”
“Daisy’s wedding.”
“Any wedding. I hate them all.”
She scowled at him. “How can you be hating on Daisy Bellamy’s wedding?”
Just hearing herself say the words aloud filled her with a sense of wonder—not because Daisy had married the man of her dreams. That in itself was wonderful. But the real miracle was that Daisy had gotten married at all. Her parents’ divorce had been so hard on her. Back when Daisy’s dad and Sonnet’s mom were first getting together, both girls had agreed that marriage was too perilous and restrictive, and they’d made a pact to avoid it at all costs.
Now Daisy was soaring off to wedded bliss, and Sonnet was stuck keeping her end of the pact. She cringed at the picture of her own romantic future. Thanks to her impossibly busy career as a director at UNESCO, she had almost no time to date, let alone get swept away and fall in love. She dreamed of it, though. Who didn’t? Who didn’t want the kind of love Daisy had found? Or her mother and Greg Bellamy? Or the head couple of the Bellamy clan, Jane and Charles, who had been married for more than fifty years.
Of course Sonnet wanted that—the love, the security, the lifelong project of building a family with her soul mate. It sounded so magical. And so unreachable. When it came to a serious relationship, she had never quite figured out how to get from Point A to Point B.
Lately, though, there was a glimmer on the horizon from a most unexpected source. Her father—yes, her super-accomplished, goal-oriented father—had introduced her to a guy. His name was Orlando Rivera, and he was heading up the general’s run for office. Like the general, he’d attended West Point. He was in his thirties, ridiculously handsome, from the eldest son of a monied Cuban-American family. He had the dark appeal of a Latin lover and was fluent in English and Spanish. And, maybe most importantly of all, he was in the tight inner circle of satellites that revolved around her father.
“I’m allowed to hate anything I want,” Zach said, grabbing the champagne from her hand and guzzling it down.
Defiantly, she picked up a half-empty bottle that was bobbing in an ice bucket and took back the glass. “It was Daisy’s big day, and if you were any kind of gentleman, you’d be happy for her. And for me,” she groused at him. “I got to stand up at the altar for my best friend—”
“Hey,” he groused back. “I thought I was your best friend.”
“You never come to see me.” She feigned a dramatic sigh. “You don’t call, you don’t text… Besides, I can have more than one.”
“Best is a superlative term. There can only be one.”
She refilled the glass and took a gulp, enjoying the lovely head rush of the bubbly. “You and your rules. Both you and Daisy are my besties and there’s nothing you can do about it, so there.”
“Oh yeah? I can think of something.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her down toward the dark, flat expanse of Willow Lake.
“What the heck are you doing?” she said, twisting her hand out of his.
“The party’s over, but I’m not tired. Are you tired?”
“No, but—”
“Hey, check it out.” He led the way down the slope to the water’s edge.
“Check what out? I’m going to ruin my shoes.”
He stopped and turned. “Then take them off.”
“But I—”
“Lean on me,” he said, going down on one knee in front of her. He slipped off one sandal and then the other. She felt an unexpected frisson of sensation when he touched her. “That’s better, anyway.”
She sniffed again, unwilling to admit that the coarse sand on the lakeshore felt delicious under her bare feet. “Fine, what are we checking out?”
“I saw something.…” He gestured at the water lapping gently up the sandy slope.
She saw it, too, a glimmer in the moonlight. Then she frowned and lifted the hem of her dress to wade out and grab it. “A champagne bottle,” she said. “Somebody littered.” Holding it up to the light, she squinted. “There’s a message inside, Zach.”
“Yeah? Open it up and check it out,” he said.
“No way,” she said. “It might be someone’s private business.”
“What? How can you find a message in a bottle and not look at it?”
“It’s bad karma to pry into it. I won’t be party to snooping around someone else’s emotional baggage.” Defiantly, she flung the bottle as far as she could. It landed unseen, with a decisive plop. “What kind of idiot leaves a message in a bottle in a landlocked lake, anyway?” she asked.
“You should have looked,” he said churlishly. “It might have been important. Maybe it was a cry for help and you just ignored it.”
&n
bsp; “Maybe it was some teenager’s angsty poetry and I did her a favor by getting rid of it.”
“Right.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the dock jutting out into the lake.
She pulled back. “Wait a minute. Now what are we doing?”
“I told Wendela I’d take the boat over to the boathouse.”
Wendela was the wedding planner, and Zach did most of the videography work for her. In addition, she often enlisted him to do other odd jobs at events. In a small town, it was a way for him to cobble together a living, Sonnet supposed. He was talented at what he did; during the reception, Wendela had told her he’d won some prestigious awards for his work. But like all artists, he struggled. Awards didn’t translate into a viable income.
“You’re here as a wedding guest,” she protested. “Wendela wouldn’t expect you to work tonight.”
“What, driving a boat is suddenly work? Since when?”
“You have a point. What is it with guys and boats?”
“There are some things that cannot be resisted.” He slipped off his bow tie and opened the collar of his tuxedo shirt, his Adam’s apple rippling as he sighed with relief.
Good Lord, had he been working out? She didn’t ask, because everyone knew that was just code for “I think you’re hot.”
And she didn’t. How could she? He was Zach—as familiar as a lifelong friend, yet suddenly…exotic.
“I shouldn’t have done those Jell-O shots,” she murmured. Pulling her attention elsewhere, she stood on the dock and looked out at the moon-silvered water. The sight of the lake never failed to ignite a rush of memories. She had been here before, many times through the years.
During her junior high and high school years, when Camp Kioga had been closed down, she and Zach used to sneak onto the premises with their friends on hot summer days, swimming and reliving the glory days of the resort, which dated back to the 1920s. And every once in a while, the two of them would slip into the boathouse and pretend to be smugglers or pirates or stuntmen in the circus. Sometimes, even as youngsters, they would fall so deep into the fantasy that they’d lose track of time. She remembered talking with him for hours, seemingly about nothing, but managing to encompass everything important. When she was with Zach, it never felt strange that she didn’t have a dad, or that she was biracial, or that her mom had to work all the time to make ends meet. When she was with Zach, she just felt…like herself. Maybe that was why their friendship felt so sturdy, even when they almost never saw each other.
An owl hooted from a secret place in the darkness, startling Sonnet from her thoughts. “It’s getting late,” she said softly. “I’m leaving.”
He gently closed his hand around her wrist. “Come with me.”
A shiver coursed through her, and she didn’t resist when he drew her close, slipping his arm around her waist and edging her toward the boat moored at the end of the dock. It was a vintage Chris-Craft runabout, its wooden hull and brass fittings polished to a sheen so bright it seemed to glow in the moonlight. The old boat had been used in the wedding, mostly for a photo shoot but also, and most romantically, to transport the bride and groom to the floatplane dock, where they’d been whisked away to their honeymoon at Mohonk Mountain House. A Just Married sign was tied to the stern.
“Hang on to me,” Zach whispered. “I don’t want you falling in.”
“I won’t fall—whoa.” She clung to him as the boat listed beneath her weight. The open cabin smelled of the lake, and the flowers that had been used to decorate it, and the fresh scent made her dizzy. The second wave of champagne was kicking in.
“Take my jacket,” he said, wrapping it around her shoulders. “Chilly tonight.”
She took a seat in the cockpit, feeling the peculiar intimacy of his body heat lingering in the folds of the jacket. She reveled in the slickness of the satin lining, which smelled faintly of men’s cologne and sweat. Oh boy, she thought.
There was an open bottle of champagne in the cubby by her knees, so she grabbed it and took a long, thirsty swig. Why not? she thought. Her official duties for the wedding were done, and it was time to relax.
Zach untied the boat and shoved off. He turned on the running lights and motor, handling the Chris-Craft with expert smoothness. He’d always been good with his hands, whether handling a vintage motorboat or a complicated video camera. As they motored across the placid water toward the rustic wooden boathouse, Sonnet admitted to herself that although she loved living in New York City, there were things she missed about the remote Catskills area where she’d grown up—the moon on the water, the fresh feeling of the wind in her face, the quiet and the darkness of the wilderness, the familiarity of a friend who knew her so well they didn’t really have to talk.
She had another drink of champagne, feeling a keen exuberance as she watched loose flower petals fluttering through the night air, into the wake of the boat.
She offered the bottle to Zach.
“No thanks,” he said. “Not until I moor the boat.”
She sat back and enjoyed the short crossing to the boathouse, which was bathed in the soft golden glow of lights along the dock.
Over the buzz of the engine, he pointed out the constellations. “See that group up there? It’s called Coma Berenices—Berenice’s hair. It was named for an Egyptian queen who cut off all her hair in exchange for some goddess to keep her husband safe in battle. The goddess liked the hair so much, she took it to the heavens and turned it into a cluster of stars.”
“Talk about a good hair day.” She was beyond pleasantly tipsy now. “I’d never cut off my hair. Took me years to get it this long.”
“Not even to keep your husband safe in battle?”
“I don’t have a husband. So I’ll be keeping my fabled locks, thank you very much. Berenice’s hair. I swear, your mind is a lint trap for stuff like this. Where do you learn it?”
“The internet. Yeah, I like geeking out over trivia on the internet, so sue me.”
“I’m not going to sue you. Whatever floats your boat, ha ha.”
“You can find out anything online. Ever watch that video of the Naga fireballs?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Too busy overachieving?”
“Since when is that a crime?”
“Never said it was.” Zach guided the boat inside, cutting the engine to let it nudge its way into the moorage, gently bumping against the rubber fenders.
“There,” he said, taking the champagne from her, “I’ve done my good deed for the day. Here’s looking at you, kid.”
“Too dark in here to see,” she pointed out. “Oh, right. That’s a movie reference. I forgot, you’re a walking movie encyclopedia.”
“And you’re movie illiterate.”
“No wonder we bicker all the time. We have nothing in common.”
He handed back the bottle and rummaged around the console of the cockpit. Then a match flared and he lit a couple of votive candles left over from the photo shoot. Taking the bottle again, he said, “Now here’s looking at you.”
She looked right back at him, unsettled by feelings she didn’t understand, feelings that had nothing to do with the amount of champagne she’d consumed. Like Willow Lake, and the town of Avalon itself, he was both deeply familiar and, at the moment, unaccountably strange. There had been a time, many times, when they had truly been best friends, but after high school, their lives had diverged. These days, they saw each other infrequently and when they did,
their visits were rushed, or they were busy, or one of them had a train to catch, or work, or…
Not tonight, though. Tonight, neither of them had anywhere they had to be, except right here in the moment.
She fiddled with a dial on the boat’s dashboard. “Is there a radio?”
“It’s a stereo.” Leaning forward, he hit a switch. Sonnet recognized an old tune from the days of her grandparents—“What a Wonderful World.”
“What’s this?” She pointed out a small screen.
“A fish finder. Want to turn it on and see where the fishies are?”
“That’s okay. And this?” She indicated a small cube-shaped object mounted in the center.
“A GoPro. It’s a camcorder, mostly used for sports.” He turned up the music. “You didn’t dance with me at the reception,” Zach said.
“You didn’t ask me.” She feigned a wounded look.
“Dance with me now.”
“That’s not asking.”
He heaved an exaggerated sigh and offered her his hand, palm up. “Okay. Will you dance with me? Please?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She stood up and the boat rocked a little.
“Careful there. Maybe ease up on the champagne.”
He drew her up to the dock next to him. She was a full head shorter than he was. It hadn’t always been that way. She remembered the year of his growth spurt—junior year of high school. They’d gone from seeing each other eye to eye to her getting a crick in her neck from looking up at him. He’d been skinny as a barge pole, and she’d taken to calling him Beanstalk.
He wasn’t a beanstalk anymore. As her mother had pointed out, he’d finally grown into his looks. In the candlelight, he looked magical to her, Prince Charming with a boyish smile. She kept the surprising thought to herself, knowing instinctively she didn’t want to go there.
He held her lightly at the waist and they swayed to the music, their movements simple and in sync. At the wedding reception, she had danced with a few guys but dancing had never felt like this before.