“I need to just go,” Wynne said. “Clear my head. I shouldn’t have come here. I was . . . I thought I’d surprise you, and I guess I did.”
“Just please don’t make this a big deal. Andy and I don’t want anything to ruin this wedding. It’s a big chance for all of us.”
Wynne’s heart picked up speed again. Chance? For all of us? “I’m not sure how my wedding is your chance, Meredith.” She straightened her back, prepared to square off with this woman who had come barreling into her life and whose presence was still confusing to Wynne. She wasn’t sure why she was there and why she had allowed it. Her glance flickered over to Andy. And how he’d suddenly gone from “could barely stand her” to giggling over drinks in a dark corner.
“I’m trying to make my mark. Just like you,” Meredith responded. Behind them Andy shuffled his feet as if he was thinking about fleeing the scene.
“Meredith, this isn’t a publicity campaign. This is my wedding.” She realized what she’d said and amended her words, her gaze falling on Andy. “Our wedding. This is real life, not some TV show.”
Meredith’s laugh was more of an unladylike snort. “You actually thought this was real? That is just precious.” She reached out to pat Wynne’s shoulder sympathetically, but Wynne moved away before she could. Unfazed, Meredith continued. “We’re actors. In a television show. We’re all just playing a part.” She narrowed her eyes at Wynne. “It’s all part of the game.”
“What game, Meredith?” Wynne spat out. “What you call a game, I call my life.” She looked around them, at the empty street and the massive new bridge crossing the dark horizon. She lowered her voice. “This is my marriage. My future. What about you? Your future? Don’t you want something more for your kids? Your marriage? Don’t you get tired of all this . . . this . . . fakeness? Don’t you want some—” She gave an ironic laugh as she realized what she was about to say. “Don’t you want some reality?”
Meredith’s face changed. The smile Wynne had grown accustomed to seeing seemed to break as she watched. “Reality?” she scoffed. “Why would I want anything to do with reality?” She gestured to the scenery around them. “Look where I am. This is my reality!” She gave Wynne a knowing smirk. “Reality is what you make of it. If one version doesn’t match up, you go make yourself another. You of all people should know that.” She crossed her arms as if the conversation was over.
“Um, I’m just going to go settle up,” Wynne heard Andy say. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him back away, grateful for an escape.
“But your kids. Your husband,” Wynne said as she watched Andy reenter the bar. “I mean, they’ve been at his parents’ house for awhile. Don’t you even want to go be with them?”
“My husband took the kids and left.” Meredith stared straight ahead, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. “He got tired of my ‘need for constant attention.’” She held her fingers in the air to make quotation marks. “He said it was either the show or him.”
Wynne started to say something about choosing fame over family but Meredith held up her hand and continued. “What kind of person would make me choose between them and something that makes me happy? How selfish is that?” She shook her head as if she was still trying to figure it out. “I told him if he would even ask that of me, he clearly didn’t understand or love me. And you know what he said to that?” Wynne started to say she didn’t know but Meredith plowed on without noticing. “He said, ‘Well then, maybe I don’t.’ The next day, he suddenly needed to go to his parents and he took the kids with him.” She shrugged. “But did I sit around crying over it, lamenting my lot in life and dissecting the situation like some people?” She angled her eyebrow in Wynne’s direction. “No! I met you and decided that maybe I could help you and get my mind off the situation at the same time.” She held up her hands. “I made a new reality.” She gave Wynne a look that told her she believed that settled it.
But Wynne didn’t see it that way. “But what if you called him? Maybe he’s waiting to hear—”
Meredith held her hand up, her jaw trembling as she did. Her voice shook as she spoke, and yet she still said the words Wynne hated to hear. “I don’t want to call him. Don’t you see? I’m done. I’ve got other things to do, other things to focus on. And if he and the kids are happy, then so be it. In the meantime, they’re tossing around ideas for some shows I could be involved in.” She gave Wynne a smile, her jaw gone rigid. “I’m still in the game.” She reached out and tugged on her hand, a plea. “That’s what Andy and I have been talking about. He understands. I hoped you would too.”
“But what I saw in there. That wasn’t just understanding.”
Meredith laughed. “Poor Wynne. I wish life was as simple as you want it to be.”
Wynne saw Andy’s dark shadow approaching. “I can’t handle this. I need some time to think.” She turned and walked quickly over to her car. Let Meredith explain to Andy what had happened. She’d talk to him in the morning when, hopefully, things looked brighter. Although she couldn’t see how. Was he just in it for the fame too? Had she totally misread him? Was he actually into Meredith or had she tried to seduce him? By the look on his face before he’d noticed Wynne, he wasn’t exactly pained. Maybe she was reading too much into it but one thing was clear: she didn’t know everything there was to know. And her perfect wedding was becoming increasingly less perfect.
Her mind was a jumble of thoughts as she drove over the bridge back to Sunset, her car rolling past the hotel parking lot as if it had a mind of its own. She drove straight into the parking lot in front of the pier. She parked the car and made her way up to the mostly deserted pier, pushing aside the memories of Callum that being there brought back. At that time of night there were only a few hardcore fishermen hunkered over the rails and some random teens moving in pairs, the dark water churning beneath the planks where they stood. She moved swiftly past them as the thoughts churned. Her feet only stopped because she reached the end of the pier. Out there, overlooking the vast expanse of ocean in front of her, she gripped the pier railing and took a few deep breaths to steady herself.
She stood for a moment, staring out to sea as she thought about what to do. Desperate, she began to pray. Prayer was another thing she’d let slip as she’d raced through these recent days, frantic to accomplish all that needed doing. She’d kept secrets and hid her doubts, even, at times, from herself. She’d struggled with the stress and doubts and confusion without remembering that she could give it all to God and trust Him with the outcome. She looked up at the blank night sky above her. The moon was the only thing above her, that one true thing glimmering there like a beacon.
“Help me,” she said silently, her chin pointed to the moon. “Show me. I’m so lost. Please don’t let me be so far off course that You can’t get me where I need to be. I’ve made a mess of things and I need You to make it right again. Because I can’t.”
She whispered the word “Amen” aloud and then stood in silence as the ocean wind blew wildly. She ran her hands through her hair, as if she could comb through the tangle of thoughts in her mind as she untangled the strands that the wind had whipped into knots.
“You never did have a ponytail holder when you needed one,” she heard a voice say.
The voice was familiar—so familiar she thought she was hearing things. She looked in the direction it had come from, her eyes landing on the face that went with it, seeing but not believing. And then, just as naturally as if no time had passed and the last year had not happened, she walked forward, into his waiting arms, the top of her head fitting just underneath his chin like always. She could feel his heart pounding through his thin T-shirt and she imagined he could feel hers as well.
She looked up into Callum’s face, reveling in the comfort and familiarity of it even as her conflicted feelings mounted. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said.
“I told myself not to come, that I was messing with your future. That I didn’t have a right—and I don’t.
I know that. But—” He sighed deeply and stepped away in order to look into her eyes. “I had to come tell you the one thing I didn’t say to you. The real reason I contacted you after I saw you on that talk show.”
She blinked up at him, the moon shining over his shoulder, the sky void of stars. She knew what he was going to say and she wanted, but didn’t want, to hear it. She’d felt it pulsing underneath all the things they’d said to each other since that first text. It was that thing he kept himself from saying that night at his house. The thing she would never push him to say because it didn’t matter anymore, did it?
“I came to tell you that I still love you, Wynne. And that I made a horrible mistake when I broke up with you. I wanted you to know that before it was too late. Just in case it would make some difference.” She started to speak, but he held up his hand. “Not that I expect it to. I know you’re in the middle of this big production and how selfish it is for me to come here, now of all times. But I kept picturing you here.” He smiled nostalgically, his teeth shining against his tan skin in the blue light of the moon. “I actually pictured you right here. It’s why I came out here tonight, to think about what I was going to say and to pray. And then I looked up and there you were. It felt . . .”
“Too perfect?” she finished for him. She could imagine how he felt when he looked up and there she was. They’d both come here to pray. She wondered if this was like the joke she heard about the man who prayed for rescue at sea but refused the plane and boat that came by to save him, holding out for God Himself to come to his aid. Hadn’t she prayed for the answer? But that had been mere minutes ago. Surely this was a coincidence. Instead of finding an answer in Callum’s eyes, she only found more questions.
Callum motioned her over to a nearby bench, there at the end of the pier, away from people. He knew privacy was at a premium for her. “Why did you come out here tonight?” he asked.
She shook her head, unable—or unwilling—to explain her flight to this place, fueled by anguish and confusion and even shame. She’d wound up in a situation she didn’t know if she could get out of, wasn’t sure if she should want out of, didn’t know how to get out of. There were so many people involved, so much money and time spent, so much investment. She looked out to the sea, partly wishing she could somehow slip onto those waves and wake up on another continent.
“Just thinking things over,” was all she said to Callum.
He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows at her. “Nice try. You act like I haven’t known you your whole life.” He planted his palms on the bench on either side of him and looked at her hard. “Let me guess. You’re not sure if you should go through with this.”
“Let’s just say I’m not sure about anything,” she said.
“Then you shouldn’t do it. If you’re not sure.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
He held his hands up, the picture of an innocent man. “Look, try to see me here as a friend. I know that seems weird but . . .” His voice trailed off as he dropped his hands back to his side. She noticed his hands were clenched into fists. Once, when they were freshmen in high school, he’d nearly punched a guy who was a bit too aggressive in his pursuit of her one night after a football game. That was the moment she’d realized he was interested in her as more than a friend. Funny how that intense situation led to something that became the best thing in her life.
Could it happen again? She felt the words echo through her. But an answer from the rational, sensible part of her—in a voice that sounded a lot like Picky’s—quickly shot back an answer: Don’t be ridiculous. The voice, she knew, was right. She had obligations, commitments, duties. She had people counting on her. This moment she found herself in—here, with Callum on the pier at Sunset Beach moments after learning she didn’t know her fiancé as well as she wanted to—wasn’t one that would last. It would be gone with the rising sun, gone just like the moon that hung bright and shining above them, its light tinting everything blue.
“If you need someone to rescue you, I’m applying for the job. Even if I just bail you out of this situation and we figure out the other stuff later.” He gestured in the direction of the parking lot. “My white horse is parked right out there.” His laugh was forced and they both knew it.
Though part of her wanted to take him up on the offer, the other part held fast to the vision she’d had for this wedding, for somehow making this work. Surely this situation was salvageable. To go with her feelings and impulses would only make things worse.
“I can’t do this, Callum. Please don’t ask me to. You said your piece. But now I just need to go back to my hotel room. And you should go home.” She stood up. “Thank you so much for coming here.” She gave him a sad smile. “If you’d done this months ago things, might be much different now. But it’s too late. I’m getting married.” She left him there and fled before he could stop her. She ran right past a woman on the stairs, her elbow grazing the woman’s shoulder as she mumbled an “excuse me.” Their eyes met but she was moving too fast to register that the woman looked vaguely, fleetingly, familiar.
Later, as she lay in bed she would remember the woman and try in vain to place her face in the sea of faces she’d come in contact with in the last months. Try as she might to think of something else—the woman, Meredith and Andy—her mind kept returning to Callum, and to the way he looked as she said it was too late. Just before she fell asleep she noticed the time and, calculating backwards, realized that they’d been standing on the pier talking at precisely 11:11.
The knock on the door sent her bolt upright in bed. She glanced over at the bedside clock, her mind shrieking an alert that her alarm clock—had she been thinking clearly enough to set it last night—should’ve barked out an alert over an hour before. Her photo shoot! Her parents! Picky! She shook her head at herself as she ran for the door. She tugged it open to find Donna on the other side, her look of displeasure morphing into a look of shock at the sight of her. “Sorry! I overslept! I—” She started to make an excuse but what could she say to explain the events of last night, especially to the producer of the wedding she was now confused about?
Was she confused enough to not go through with it? There were just so many ramifications if she did. Maybe a quickie divorce after the show aired—one with minimal fuss kept out of the press. That almost sounded easier. She shook her head. She was actually considering a divorce and she wasn’t even married yet. Things were way off course.
Donna marched into her room, her eyes scanning the mess with barely masked disapproval. She flopped onto the small loveseat in the room with a sigh. “The photo shoot is canceled,” she said. “We’ve got a bigger mess to fix here.” She crossed her arms and fixed Wynne with a stare that made her squirm.
How much should she admit to? Had someone seen her with Callum last night and told on her? Her mind flickered over the woman she’d run past, trying to place her again. She had the sense that she had missed something important.
“Meredith called me last night after you left the bar,” Donna said.
She couldn’t let on how relieved she was that that was what Donna knew about. Wynne nodded and gave Donna her best “woman scorned” look.
Donna leaned forward, balancing her elbows on her knees. She looked past Wynne, suddenly interested in the view of the marsh outside the window. “We need to do damage control here. I mean, you and Andy have a lot to look forward to and it really was nothing. Meredith’s willing to leave today if need be. She and I had a nice long talk and—well—I think she understands where things stand. There’s nothing going on between those two but if it makes you feel more comfortable, she’s fine with leaving, even if it means she can’t be part of the show.” She looked at Wynne. “You have to know that.”
Donna waited for her to say something, but when she didn’t, she continued pleading her case. “Meredith’s going through a hard time—she told me she was honest with you about her husband. We’re negotiating with her about a show about bein
g an uber single mom. We think it could bring about some big ratings. ’Course, she’ll have to get custody of the kids, and right now her husband has them, but . . .” Donna stopped short. “Sorry,” she shook her head and looked rueful. “I’m always thinking about work. Professional hazard. Everything is fodder.” She sighed and held up her hands, which made Wynne think of Callum the night before, saying he would just be her friend. But she had plenty of friends.
“All I’m saying is, please don’t let this little thing derail you. I know when emotions get involved it can be real easy to start thinking things. Like how this is a mistake and you don’t know each other well and you’re moving too fast.” She studied Wynne for a second and gave her a little smile. “Am I close?”
Wynne tilted her head from side to side and returned the smile. “Yeah.”
“I can imagine,” Donna said. She stood up. “Well, you’re off the hook for the photo shoot. It would be too awkward for you and Andy to have to pose as the happy couple so soon after, but I’ve asked Andy to come by so you two can talk.” She looked down at the phone she carried in her hand constantly, its presence as much a part of her as her limbs, her attention distracted by whatever she saw there. Wynne thought about how odd it was that she was having this conversation with her producer and not her fiancé. Why wasn’t Andy here to defend himself in person? Why did Donna have to ask him to come? And why wasn’t she angry at Andy? Probably because she felt hypocritical after her encounter with Callum last night.
“Your family arrives today?” Donna looked up from her phone and changed the subject. Crisis averted, for now.
“Yes, and my best friend. But not till late afternoon.”
“Well, let me know if you need any help getting them settled in. I’d say you’ve got just enough time to see Andy and then attend to them.” She looked Wynne up and down. “But I’d advise a shower and some makeup before you see anyone.” She gave her a sarcastic wink and left Wynne to do as she was told. She just wished someone would tell her what to do with her heart.
A June Bride Page 6