It Takes Two

by Jenny Holiday

  “And then I’ll pronounce you husband and wife,” the officiant said. “And tell you to kiss.”

  “You should practice that now!” Gia exclaimed, and everyone laughed as the bridal couple obliged.

  The officiant guided them through the recession, and then they gathered around while she went over how they would enter the reception. “And that’s pretty much it. Short and sweet.”

  “Low-key,” Jane said, and Wendy bit the insides of her cheeks and made eye contact with Elise and then Gia in turn.

  “You’re all dismissed from your official duties this evening,” the officiant said. “Enjoy the party.”

  Elise made her way over to Wendy, leaving Noah chatting with the officiant. Gia tagged along, too, making a face of exaggerated relief as she left Hector behind. Elise pinched a bit of Wendy’s voluminous skirt between her thumb and forefinger. “By the way, I love this dress on you.”

  “Isn’t it so perfect on her?” Gia said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in silver,” Elise said. “It totally suits you.”

  Silver? Wendy looked down at herself. “It’s gray, though, isn’t it?”

  “Too shiny to be gray,” Elise said.

  “Totally silver,” Gia agreed.

  Oh my God. Wendy was at a fancy party in a silver dress. Maybe that was why, after she’d bought the dress, she’d never seemed to find an occasion to wear it. Had she been subconsciously rejecting it? She would never buy a silver dress. Not knowingly, anyway.

  She started to panic. Well, no, she kept panicking. Because that’s pretty much what she’d been doing since the whole unprotected sex incident.

  And…suddenly panic wasn’t the right word. Terror was what she was feeling right now.

  Because she realized that she’d left the fucking morning-after pill in the cab. The pill they’d made a point to stop for on the way.

  But okay. Okay. It was a two-minute walk to Queen Street. There would be pharmacies there. She just had to slip out, and she’d go buy another one.

  And anyway, she was not pregnant. It was just insurance.

  She took a deep breath. It was going to be okay. She was a successful, responsible, independent adult who had made a mistake. She hardened herself. She could handle this.

  “Wendy. Wait.”

  * * *

  Wendy was leaving?

  Noah had been talking to the officiant, but he had one eye on Wendy. He wasn’t sure why, just that it was sort of impossible not to watch her when she was in the vicinity.

  She was probably just going inside to check on something. He tried to pay attention to what the officiant was saying, but…something was wrong with Wendy. Her face was scrunched up as if in pain—and he couldn’t let that stand. So he excused himself and went after her.

  “Wendy. Wait.”

  She stopped in the little hallway that connected the patio with the restaurant. She was wearing a silver dress with a short swingy skirt. As she turned, both the skirt and her long hair flew out behind her. The sight of her took his breath away.

  “What?” she said, all annoyed and short, and he almost laughed. That was the cure for his heart-eyes-emoji gasping.

  “What’s wrong?” Because whatever else was or wasn’t happening between them, he knew her. Something was wrong.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit.” Something was wrong, and he intended to find out what it was.

  She rolled her eyes. “I had a pill I needed to take, and I just realized I left it in the taxi on the way over here.”

  Okay, this was a surmountable problem. She’d forgotten her allergy meds or something. He was slightly annoyed that he hadn’t known she had allergies—or whatever—but a pill was a tangible thing he could retrieve. “Let me take you home to get another one.”

  “No, no. I don’t have another one. It was…”

  “It was what?” A pit opened in his stomach. Was there something seriously wrong with her? Jesus Christ.

  “It was a morning-after pill.”

  “A what?” He staggered backward. He actually staggered. His legs were no longer capable of holding him up.

  “Morning-after pill. Emergency contraception.”

  “I know what it is.” But holy fucking Christ. “I thought you said you weren’t…you know, in a fertile part of your cycle.”

  Argh. That had not come out right. He did not object to the rightness or wrongness of her claim about what part of her goddamned menstrual cycle she was on.

  He objected to her taking the pill.

  He objected to her taking the pill.

  Holy, holy, holy fuck.

  He, Mister “I Can’t Propose,” did not want some extremely hypothetical child of his and Wendy’s to…what? Not implant? Not fertilize? He didn’t even know how the fuck morning-after pills worked, only that he did not want her taking one. The only other time he’d had a pregnancy scare that had not been his reaction. In fact, that time, he would have broken into the goddamn pharmacy and stolen a morning-after pill if he’d needed to. Hell, that time had pretty much cemented his decision not to sleep around casually. That’s how much he hadn’t wanted an unintended pregnancy.

  This was…not like that.

  Holy fuck.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “I was just going to…make sure.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, we broke the ‘only in New York or fake New York’ rule pretty badly last night. I just want to make sure that…there are no consequences.”

  What he wanted to say next was Don’t take the pill! We’ll figure everything out, but don’t take the pill!

  “Move to New York!” he blurted instead. “Move in with me. You’ll be able to get a job. The best firms in the city will fall all over themselves to get you. I have connections—”

  She sighed and pushed herself off the wall. “Noah. I’m not pregnant. I’m just paranoid.”

  “I know. I know.” Why was that so…disappointing? “But even if you’re not, I want…”

  What? What did he want?

  “What? What do you want?”

  Even in the midst of his turmoil, he couldn’t help but admire her razor-sharp intelligence as she plucked his very thoughts from his head. She wasn’t letting him off the hook. She never would.

  She looked at him for a long moment as he floundered. Finally, she said, “Because we slept together a few times, you’re freaking out.”

  “I’m not freaking out.” But that was a lie. He was freaking out. Just not in the way she meant. He wasn’t freaking out because they’d slept together a few times. He was freaking out at the possibility that they might never do it again.

  “You have this obsessive, protective impulse, and you can’t just let it be.” She started talking faster as annoyance crept into her tone. “It has to mean something so you’re trying to make it mean something retroactively, and your version of that is I give up everything—my career, my friends, my aunt—and move to New York? No, thanks. Yes, I had a crush on you back in the day, but I’m not that girl anymore. I went out and made myself a life. I worked hard for my life. I earned it.”

  “I’m just…” God. What? What? Why couldn’t he make sense? “I just need you to pause for one minute. I need to catch up. It feels like we were just in New York fighting because you were trying to convince me that Jane and Cameron were all wrong for each other, and now…” Now I’m in love with you.

  Maybe he should just say it. Lay out all his cards. She wouldn’t want to hear it, he was pretty sure, but what did he have to lose at this point?

  A movement in the periphery caught his attention.

  Oh, shit.

  “Jane,” he whispered. The only way this whole conversation could be worse was if his sister had overheard all of it.

  “You guys are sleeping together?” Jane said, confusion written across her face. Then she swung her gaze to Wendy, and confusion was replaced by hurt. “And you don’t like Cameron?”

  Chap
ter Twenty-Three

  Wendy felt like bugs were crawling all over her skin.

  Noah was being completely irrational. He thought she might be pregnant. He was exactly the sort of man who would step up in this situation. All those girlfriends he couldn’t commit to? She would bet partnership at the firm that none of them had had a pregnancy scare.

  And this wasn’t a pregnancy scare. She wasn’t pregnant. She was just, as she’d said, making sure.

  But besides that, his solution was abandon your hard-won life and move into mine? Typical Noah, trying to control everything.

  She refused to be controlled.

  She’d been asking herself all evening what life would be like if she could have what she wanted. This exchange made it clear that she couldn’t. He didn’t love her. He was willing to move in with her—or to “let” her move in with him. But for what? To co-parent? Perhaps with some meaningless fucking on the side?

  No. Wendy might be new to this love thing—or at least new to recognizing it as such—but she knew enough to understand that she couldn’t settle for anything less than the real thing.

  She might be alone under the disco ball, but at least it was her goddamned disco ball.

  But then, Jane. Jane had heard them.

  The bugs multiplied. They swarmed her insides—her stomach, her lungs. Her heart.

  “You don’t like Cameron?” Her voice was so small. So defeated.

  “No.” Wendy moved toward Jane, but Jane held out her hands to signal she wanted no contact. “I mean, I do like Cameron…” Wendy’s voice caught. “Now. Anyway, it was never about that. I was afraid to lose you. I was an idiot.” A tear started to fall. She swiped it away angrily.

  Without acknowledging anything Wendy had said, Jane turned to her brother. “Noah,” she said, her voice gaining some confidence. Some indignation. “How could you sleep with Wendy without telling me?” She swung back to include Wendy in her next accusatory question. “Were you two just going to keep this from me forever?”

  It was a fair question.

  Wendy had no answer. No answer other than I lost my mind, but it’s okay because I’m leaving soon. I’m running. It’s all scheduled.

  I’m leaving.

  That was the solution. As much as she’d had a little epiphany about the reasons she traveled so much, the fact remained that her methods had never failed her. Teenage Wendy had been stuck, but grown-up Wendy was not. She could always leave.

  So that’s what she did.

  She turned around and walked swiftly up the corridor. By the time she reached the end of it, she was running.

  She heard them mobilizing behind her. The sounds of her friends conferring.

  Heard Noah say, “What do I do?”

  Heard Gia answering him. “Wait,” she said. “You wait.”

  Wendy ran faster.

  * * *

  Noah waited.

  He went to the bar and got a Guinness, as if he were a normal man. Not one who’d just had his heart ripped out and handed to him.

  The restaurant had a row of stools against a small wooden counter that looked out the front windows. Miraculously, it was empty—the rest of the crowd was focused on the interior of the restaurant and the open bar in back.

  There wasn’t even enough time for his head to stop spinning before someone slid in beside him.

  “Noah.”

  He sighed. He loved her, but this was not what he needed right now. “Hi, Mom.”

  She didn’t say anything, which he supposed he should be thankful for. She just clinked her glass of soda water against his beer and patted his arm.

  Eventually, he asked, “Are you happy, Mom?” He had never asked her anything remotely like that before, but suddenly he needed to know. His big love revelation yesterday had made him think about happiness—about what it was, about how to get it. About whether it was even possible for someone like him.

  She didn’t answer for a long time. He thought she wasn’t going to.

  “I think I am.”

  He would have laughed, had his entire fucking world not just imploded. “You think?”

  “Well, you know, I don’t have that much practice with it. I’m not totally confident I would recognize it.” She glanced at him. “I think you know what I mean.”

  He did. Life had been unpleasant when their father was alive. He had no doubt his parents had loved each other once, but his father’s addiction had ultimately grown bigger than that love. Grown bigger than all of them.

  “Jane snapped out of it,” she said, and he didn’t have to ask what she meant by “it.” “She met Cameron, and it was like a veil was lifted. And it wasn’t even as simple as ‘Cameron made her happy.’ I think Cameron helped her decide to be happy.”

  He nodded. That was a good way of describing it.

  “For me, it was more gradual. I hadn’t really thought about it in happy-unhappy terms until you asked me just now. But yes. Having a boyfriend has been fun. I’m not sure he’s the love of my life, but we have a good time. I joined a hiking group, and I volunteer at the school. I’m pretty sure all that is stuff that a happy person does?”

  “I think so.” Her words brought him a small measure of comfort.

  “But you,” she said, her voice growing sad. “I’m sorry I asked so much of you when you were young.”

  “You didn’t ask anything,” he started to protest, but she cut him off.

  “I didn’t have to. I just disappeared and let you take up the slack.” Her voice was heavy with emotion. “You had to grow up too fast. You skipped a lot of important stuff.”

  Like the prom.

  Where had that absurd thought come from? Even if he allowed her argument, she wasn’t talking about high school dances.

  “Yeah, you skipped a lot of important stuff because you were taking care of us, but for the love of God, you’ve got to stop doing it.”

  It was Jane speaking, though, not his mom.

  “Move over.” She shoved him not gently on the shoulder.

  He moved, and she squeezed between them, standing between their stools. “So, Mom, it turns out Wendy and Noah have been getting it on.”

  “I heard.”

  Noah put his head in his hands. He knew there was going to have to be some sort of reckoning with Jane, but did it have to be now, in the middle of her rehearsal dinner? Did his mother have to be involved?

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” his mom added.

  What?

  “Me either,” Jane said. “I mean, I was surprised, but when I stopped and thought about it for a minute, it made total sense. They’re perfect for each other.”

  What planet were these women on?

  Jane turned to him. “I’m going to ask you a question. Since you’ve been lying to me for weeks, I think I’m owed an honest answer.”

  He refrained from pointing out that he hadn’t lied, per se. He’d merely neglected to mention a few things. That was a distinction that might have flown in court, but it wasn’t going to work with his sister. “Okay.”

  “Could you love Wendy?”

  I already do. I always have.

  He didn’t verbalize what was in his heart, though, because life wasn’t that simple. Instead, he said, “Love is never the problem.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means there’s a pattern with me. I start dating someone, and it’s fine. It’s fun. There’s…affection, or whatever.” He didn’t bother saying that he’d never experienced anything close to the depth of feeling he had for Wendy. “But then, at some point, when things start to get more serious, I just…can’t do it. It starts feeling like too much responsibility, I guess.”

  He braced himself for derision. To his surprise, Jane and his mother both looked at him with sympathy.

  “I’m going to say two things,” Jane said. “They contradict each other, but somehow, they’re both true. Bear with me, okay?” He nodded. “The first is that you’ve always taken responsibility for Wendy.
Because she was my best friend. Because she needed it. Because she was a Lost Girl, too. But Wendy isn’t someone you have to deliberate over adding to your list of responsibilities. She’s already on it. She’s already in your care, whether you like it or not.”

  The truth of it was a punch to the gut. It was obvious. It should have been obvious. He was still processing the simple yet profound truth of what she’d said, when Jane hit him with more.

  “The second thing is that, even though you won’t—or can’t—see it this way, you don’t have to be responsible for Wendy. She’s fine. She’s an adult. You can trust her to make her own decisions and to deal with the consequences of her actions. If she loves you, don’t push her away because you’re afraid of what you might feel later. I mean, there might be a million other reasons to push her away, but that’s not one of them.”

  “No,” his mother said gently. “I think that’s not quite right.” Both siblings swung to look at their mother. “There aren’t a million reasons to push her away. There’s really only one, and that would be if you simply don’t love her.”

  He did love her. He loved her so much.

  Jane smiled. “I stand corrected.” She lowered her head to rest on Mom’s shoulder for a moment, and Mom gave her an affectionate squeeze. “Anyway, the point is, I know it’s scary. I mean, I know. But what the last year has taught me is that sometimes you just have to give up trying to control everything and start trusting your heart.”

  Then Jane popped up off her stool. “Now I gotta go get this dinner moving. I have to go see Wendy as soon as I can get out of here.”

  “You’re not angry at Wendy?” he asked. “Or me?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not gonna lie. This whole situation is a little weird. I’m hurt that you guys didn’t tell me what was going on. And I’m annoyed that Wendy was apparently secretly hiding this hang-up about me getting married. But I understand where it comes from.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  “It comes from being a Lost Girl. And that’s the reason I’m not angry, not really. Wendy and I, we’re the Lost Girls.”