He was headed back for Charli.
Was he out of his mind? Probably. Was this a shot in the dark? Yes. But damn, it felt right.
Imagining walking through the glass doors at the restaurant and seeing Charli back there waiting at their old table by the fireplace filled him with more excitement than he’d felt in years.
Kendall had been wonderful. Kendall would have made a great wife. But Kendall wasn’t his true love. He had finally admitted that to himself after years of denying it. And now that he had, he couldn’t believe that he’d gotten so close to standing at the altar with her and exchanging vows.
Jack knew he should have been mentally preparing himself for Charli not showing up, but he couldn’t force himself to think of that yet. He didn’t know what was waiting for him at Hayden’s, and until he did, he’d hope for the best.
The cab rolled up, and Jack tipped the valet and climbed in.
“Where to?” his scruffy-faced driver asked.
“Northwest 23rd Street,” Jack said, tapping his hands on the dashboard. “Hayden’s.”
The car sped off into the rainy night. He stared out the window through the rain trickling down the glass at the blurred building lights on the other side of it and took a deep breath. Please let her be there. Please.
The cab arrived at Hayden’s just minutes later.
Jack checked his watch. Seven o’clock on the dot. He’d made it.
He thought about asking the driver to do a loop around the block so he could peer into Hayden’s out of the cab window and see if Charli was already seated, but he was so antsy that he decided against it. After handing the driver a sweaty ten dollars for the six dollar ride, he opened the door and darted through the rain into the restaurant.
There was a crowd of soaked pedestrians in the stuffy entryway waiting behind the hostess stand to put their names in. Jack pushed his way through them, looking over the tops of their heads, trying to get a peek at the table.
“Sir, are you meeting someone?” the hostess asked him.
“Well, I—”
“Jack?” The sound of his name coming from the back of the restaurant excited him until he realized it wasn’t Charli’s voice. It was Kendall’s. A second later he saw her, in the most ridiculous black dress, stand up from her seat at the table right next to the one where Charli would have been waiting for him.
The table was empty.
Jack stuck his hand out and grabbed onto the hostess stand, his knees going weak.
“Are you okay?” the hostess asked, helping him stabilize himself.
No, he wanted to shout, I’m not. He scanned the room, hoping maybe Charli was somewhere else, but there was no sign of her.
“Sir?” the hostess said again. “Can I get you some water?”
Fuck water, Jack thought. “I’m fine,” he said, trying to keep it together. Kendall was flagging him toward her. Jack had no choice but to go back there.
As he walked, he kept checking over his shoulder and looking at the front door. Maybe Charli was still planning on showing up. Women were always late, weren’t they? Although Charli was a planner. And he’d never known her to be late for anything. He had always been the one who ran behind. Was it possible that she’d changed in the years they’d been apart though? Maybe. Hopefully.
“Jack, what are you doing here?” Kendall stared at him with a hopeful glint in her eyes, and he suddenly realized he’d probably gotten her spirits up. A phone call would have sufficed to reiterate an apology, and since he’d shown up at the restaurant, she must have assumed he’d tracked her down to see about getting her back.
It was hard for him to think with Tina glaring at him from her chair like she was ready to punch him in the nuts, which, to be honest, he wouldn’t have blamed her for.
“I just—I felt weird how we left things,” he said. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
“Well, now you’ve seen me,” Kendall said, throwing her arms up and letting them fall to her sides. “Do I look okay?”
He should have gone with something else. She looked like hell—in that dress, with her red-rimmed eyes, and her hair all messed up—and he felt terrible—he was responsible.
“Let me explain myself better,” he said.
Jack looked at the empty table where Charli was supposed to meet him, and his stomach sank again. He considered launching into the full story right then so that Kendall would know everything. He’d told her about Charli when they first got together during that obligatory past-relationships talk, but he’d never mentioned how serious they were or their pact. It wouldn’t have taken long to explain, but what was the point? It wasn’t like he was going to end up with Charli. And if he started talking about her, he honestly thought he might break down. He was already struggling not to.
“I just had a change of heart about spending the rest of our lives together,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me, and I honestly wish I didn’t feel the way I was feeling, but I do.”
Kendall folded her arms over her chest, and Jack watched the expression on her face change from one of hope and confusion, to anger and frustration. Her eyes burned into him.
“So sometime between this morning,” she said, raising her voice, “when you were fucking me,” she practically screamed it, “and this afternoon, you just had a change of heart?”
The room started to fall quiet. Curious heads turned. Whispering began. There were a few chuckles. Jack’s ears began to ring. He wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground.
“You’re better off without me,” he said.
“No shit.” Tina tossed her napkin on the table.
She stood up, and Jack took a step backwards. He needed to get out of the restaurant.
“I’ll be staying at my mom’s place for a few days,” he told Kendall. “Feel free to go to my place in Seattle and get all the stuff you have there while I’m gone. If it’s still there when I get back, I’ll box it up and send it to you. I’ll get my stuff whenever is convenient for you.” He took a deep breath. “You truly are wonderful Kendall and again I’m so sor—”
Tina cut him off. “Did you hear that, Kendall? You’re wonderful. Now get the hell out of here, Jack.”
Kendall crumbled into her chair, covering her face with her hands.
Jack dropped his head, turned around, and with everyone’s eyes on him, started to walk out of the restaurant.
twenty-nine
NOW
GIANNA AND ELLIE had turned to head back inside when Charli shrieked. “My clutch!”
Gianna spun around and saw her running back toward them.
“I must have left it inside,” she said, as she ducked under the awning.
Gianna wrapped her arm around her. “I’m sure it’s still there. We’ve only been gone a few minutes. Let’s go in and look. Or I can just go . . . if you’re not comfortable going back inside.”
“No. I’ll come,” Charli said. “Let’s just make it quick.”
Gianna led the women back to the door and pushed it open.
The second she stepped into the restaurant, she noticed that Kendall, from the funeral party, was in tears again. Ellie rushed over to her before even taking off her jacket. Charli darted into the bathroom to look for her clutch.
At the exact same moment that Charli bolted, a man in the front of the restaurant bumped into the hostess stand. Gianna heard it first and then looked up and saw him and Rosie stabilizing it. He didn’t waste much time apologizing for the incident, which Gianna found odd. He just made sure the stand was upright and then scooted around it in a flash, shooting a look back toward Charli.
When Gianna saw his face, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her at first. They had to be, right? Because Jack was getting married to someone else, and it was already past seven o’clock—the reunion had come and gone. But, God, he looked just like him—a little older and with shorter hair—but almost identical to the Jack Gianna had last seen five years earlier. She reached into the back po
cket of her slacks for her glasses and shoved them on. When he came into full focus, Gianna’s mouth dropped. Brown hair, green eyes, broad shoulders. It was Jack. He had come back after all.
But why? Gianna wondered as he wove around the tables toward her. She might have thought that he had come to tell Charli about the wedding himself if he had had a different look in his eyes, but he seemed mesmerized by the glimpse he must have gotten of her before she bolted to the bathroom. The only conclusion Gianna could logically draw was that he was here for the same reason that Charli was—because he wanted to give their relationship another shot.
The moment she realized this, she felt a pit in her stomach for assuming that the wedding cake order form had been his and for sharing this assumption with Charli. She and Barbara must have been mistaken and caused Charli all of this heartbreak for no reason.
Of course, there was a chance that it was his wedding cake order form and that he had simply had a change of heart at the last minute, just like Kendall’s fiancé had. But what were the odds that two men in the same city both decided to stand up their fiancés the day before their weddings? That would have been too coincidental!
Jack continued to make his way toward the back of the room. As he wound his way through tables, customers turned in their chairs to watch him. She found it strange that they were doing this, because only her staff knew about Jack and Charli’s reunion plans and none of them had been around five years earlier to know what he looked like. What could have been their curiosity with him then?
Jack was almost to Gianna now. She looked over her shoulder to see if Charli had come out of the restroom yet, but she was still in there. Gianna wanted her to see what was happening. If she thought it would have sped things up at all, she would have run into the bathroom and gotten her, but Charli would be out in a second regardless. There were only three stalls in the bathroom and a sink. The clutch could only be in so many places.
Gianna turned back around. Her expectation was to be face to face with Jack at this point, but it seemed he had encountered a roadblock a few feet from her. And to Gianna’s surprise, that roadblock was none other than . . . Ellie.
“Tina told me she asked you to leave,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “What are you still doing here?”
The funeral party knew him?
Jack looked longingly over the top of Ellie’s head toward the bathroom. She could tell it was killing him not to push Ellie aside and keep on toward Charli. It was killing Gianna as well! What was Ellie doing? Move aside, move aside!
But Jack seemed to understand the holdup and resisted the urge to plow through it. He wearily addressed the whole funeral party.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been completely honest with all of you.” His eyes closed for a brief moment as if he was searching for the words to say, and when he opened them, he drew in a deep breath and looked at Kendall. “Five years ago, I made a pact with my first love, Charli.”
That was as far as he got before Kendall interrupted him. “Wait. Hold on. You mean the woman who was sitting here all night at that table was Charli,” she pointed to the two-seater in the corner.
Jack looked blown away. “You know her?”
“You’re the man that she was waiting for?”
“You know about the pact? I’m confused.”
But Gianna wasn’t anymore. It had all just clicked for her, and apparently for Kendall and the rest of the funeral party. Jack was Kendall’s ex-fiancé. The wedding cake order form did belong to him. He had had a last-minute change of heart, realized he wanted to be with Charli, and that was why he stood Kendall up.
Wow!
Just then, Charli stepped out of the bathroom. “Gianna, I found it!” she called. “It somehow ended up in the trash! That shows you where my head was at. I can’t believe that I . . . ” She must have seen Jack because her voice trailed off, and her clutch dropped to the floor with a thud.
“Charli,” Jack said, breathlessly.
Gianna pivoted around and saw Charli open and close her mouth a few times like she wanted to say something to him but couldn’t get the words out.
“I—I don’t believe this,” she finally stammered.
“Neither do I,” Jack said, his face brightening. “When I didn’t see you at the table, I assumed you hadn’t come back. I can’t believe you’re here.”
Charli crossed her arms over her chest, defensively. “No, I mean I don’t believe that you came back . . . considering you’re about to get married.”
She seemed to have caught Jack off guard because he looked like he was floundering for words.
“If you’re here just to tell me that, please just leave now,” she went on. “I already know. A few minutes before seven, Gianna found an order form with your name on it for a cake for your rehearsal dinner.”
Jack shook his head and countered with a forcefulness he seemed to hope was convincing. “No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not getting married.”
Charli narrowed her eyes at him. “Then how do you explain the order?”
“Well—I mean—I uh—I was getting married. To her actually.” He pointed to Kendall who was still stuck in her chair looking like she was trying to come to terms with all that was happening. “But yesterday I stumbled upon the box with the date and time of our reunion on it in my mom’s house. I had an overwhelming feeling when I saw it that I should come back here and that getting married was a mistake.”
Jack wiped his hands on his jeans. He now had a room full of curious customers and servers looking over at him and listening as he explained himself. Gianna’s kitchen staff, as well as Peter and Valerie, were peering out the window at him too. They must have noticed the eerie silence out here and realized something was up.
“I’m sorry, Kendall,” Jack turned to her. “I loved you. I really did.” Gianna could tell from the genuine look in his eyes that he was telling her the truth, and she thought Kendall sensed this too, although she wasn’t sure it was much of a consolation. “I thought I had moved on. But deep down, I think I was just telling myself that because I figured Charli had moved on.”
“You did, didn’t you?” He looked over the top of Ellie’s head back at Charli.
Charli unfolded her arms and let them drop to her sides, softening a bit now that she knew Jack wasn’t here to break her heart. “Only once you wrote me that last letter.”
Jack tilted his head to the side. “Are you sure about that? I wrote you that letter because I came to Charleston after I quit baseball and saw you out on the back deck at Fleet Landing kissing some curly haired guy.”
Charli must have remembered that afternoon because she cocked her head back and rolled her eyes like she couldn’t believe her bad luck. “It wasn’t what you thought,” she sighed. “He wasn’t—we weren’t . . . ”
“You mean . . . ” Jack said, pausing for a moment as he processed this. He looked deeply pained by what was obviously a big misunderstanding. Gianna could sense that he wanted to ask for more clarification, but he seemed aware that this wasn’t the right time or place. “It’s a moot point now,” he said instead, giving Charli what was clearly a forced smile. “Anyway, I knew the odds you’d be here would be slim-to-none, but I felt I had to come back just to see. I figured I would always wonder about you if I didn’t. And seeing you now . . . well . . . I can’t believe I ever considered not showing up.”
He stared at Charli intensely for a long minute.
“What a mess I’ve made though, huh?” Jack looked from Charli to the funeral party. “This is certainly . . . awkward to say the least. I feel like a horrible person.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
The room was silent for only a couple of seconds before Kendall rose from her chair. “Let me make it less awkward then,” she said. “I’ll get going.”
Gianna wasn’t sure if her standing up and giving Jack a full visual of her frumpy dress made things any less awkward, but Kendall was right. She needed to get out of here.
/> “Why don’t I just leave?” Charli offered. “I’ve already got my coat on.”
“No, really,” Kendall insisted, turning pinker with embarrassment by the moment. “You two . . . obviously have a lot to catch up on.”
Jack looked sick with guilt. “Can I at least walk you out?” he asked Kendall.
“No.” Kendall’s voice was firm. “I have friends who can do that.”
Ellie and Tina were already at work gathering up their party’s things. Ellie pulled out a wad of cash from her wallet and set it on the table, and Tina collected her and Kendall’s purses and stuck them under one arm, then wrapped her other arm around Kendall.
“You ready?” Tina asked her softly.
“Yes,” Kendall said. “Get me out of here.”
Tina nodded and together the three of them walked past Jack through the room full of onlookers and out the front door.
Jack watched them as they rounded the corner and headed to their car. He pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly struggling with remorse. Charli gave him a moment alone with his thoughts and then she walked over to him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“You okay?” she asked.
He noticeably relaxed with her touch. “Yeah,” he said.
He reached up, felt her hand, and then set his on top. “I am now.”
—
BY THE TIME Charli and Jack made it over to their table and sat down, the customers in the restaurant had turned back around in their chairs and picked up their conversations again, realizing the drama was over. Gianna’s kitchen staff wasn’t watching them anymore either, and her servers were back to waiting on their sections.
Gianna couldn’t take her eyes off them though. They looked so happy to be together again. And so right for one another. It was like they were . . . soul mates. The phrase suddenly popped into Gianna’s head. She had always desperately wanted to believe there was such a thing, and now . . . seeing Jack and Charli together . . . it was impossible not to.
Gianna blinked back tears, her decision about Peter’s proposal obvious now. Mary Pat had been right—something would speak to her. And this just had, loud and clear. With her mind made up, she went back into the kitchen.
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