Summer’s store was on the ground floor of the brownstone that our office was in. Her father actually owned the whole building, so we’d gotten a hell of a discount on rent. He made up for it by charging the lawyers who rented the top floor a sizeable amount which they paid without question. If we were lucky they’d never be any wiser that we were getting a deal that they were paying for.
“Great. I’m starving,” I said, grabbing my bag from the floor where it had landed earlier that morning when I’d walked in late. I’d been working with Lauren since then, so my bag had never made it to my office.
Summer and I were silent as we walked down Newbury Street toward Rebecca’s Café. Even though neither of us said anything, we both knew why we weren’t yammering on like usual, both of us fighting for talk time. I was definitely still stewing about what she’d said, and I was pretty sure she was, as well.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said, letting out a huge breath as she said it. “I know marriage freaks you out. I should have realized that instead of jumping down your throat.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“It’s just not fair,” she said, and I suddenly knew why she’d jumped down my throat.
I put my arm around her as we walked, and she leaned her head on my shoulder for a few seconds. She took another deep breath and pulled away from me.
“I’m thinking about breaking up with Patrick,” she said then, completely blindsiding me.
“What?!” I asked, stopping in my tracks in the middle of the busy lunchtime sidewalk, nearly causing a collision with the impatient man who’d been walking too close behind us.
He muttered something along the lines of ‘stupid bitch’ as he hastily maneuvered around me. Normally, I’d have given him a piece of my mind, but I was too shocked to care what he called me. Summer stopped and waited for me to catch up with her, which I did once my heart started beating again.
“Why on earth would you break up with Patrick?” I asked, shaking my head.
Patrick and Summer had been together since high school. They were the most perfect imperfect couple I’d ever known, who seemed to fall more in love every day, if that was possible. From the outside looking in, it was hard to see what made them work, but I could attest that they were very much right for each other. This was probably what made this news so tough to swallow. I needed details. I was pretty sure the decision to break up was one-sided, and Patrick would be crushed when he found out. I have it on good authority that Patrick has been in love with Summer since he was fifteen years old. She just never knew it, but I worked with him for two years during high school and heard about Summer Levitt every day during that time.
Back then, I never would have seen them together. Patrick, with his shocking red hair, freckles and gangly sixteen year old body wasn’t exactly considered a catch. He was the class clown, making up for his awkwardness with jokes. Summer on the other hand, with her dark hair, blue eyes, and curvy little body, was the life of the party.
I can remember Patrick ogling her from the sidelines at football games as she jumped up and down in her cheerleading uniform or trying to make jokes to get her attention at parties. Then there were the times he’d practically tackle me so he could help her pick out a new bikini when she’d come into the surf shop where we worked. When she’d finally agreed to go out with him, he’d smiled for a week straight. If she broke up with him now, it might just kill him.
Summer sighed again. “I just don’t know what he’s waiting for. We’ve been together forever. I love him so much, but if he doesn’t get his shit together and propose, I’m going to end things.”
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Okay, well, if that’s all it was, I knew she was fine. Patrick had a ring. I’d helped him pick it out a month earlier. I had it on good authority that she’d be engaged by the end of the summer, and it had never been harder to keep that a secret from my best friend.
“Sum, you don’t want to do that,” I said, trying to pacify her.
“No,” she said, stomping her stiletto on the ground like Ryan’s three-year old niece, Ruby, did when she was throwing a temper tantrum. “It’s not fair. You get proposed to twice, by two really great guys, and you’re not even excited about it. And that’s fine. I get it, but I really, really want to get married, and Patrick just doesn’t get it. I’m just going to end things.”
Ouch. Did she really have to drive the knife in like that? Normally I would have fired back at her, but she looked pissed, so I just let it go.
“Summer, he has a ring,” I said finally, knowing I shouldn’t have said anything, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Patrick could thank me later when Summer didn’t break up with him.
“What?!” she asked, turning to face me.
So I spilled the beans and told her the story of how Patrick had asked me to ring shop with him. She was speechless for about three seconds before she started asking nine million questions and was practically bouncing by the time we reached Kate at the café.
“When is he going to do it, Court?” she asked for the fifth time. “You have to tell me.”
“Summer,” I said, slightly exasperated. “I have no idea. I would tell you if I knew. Hi Kate!” I’d never been so glad to see her. I gave her a big hug in greeting.
“That’s it. I’m calling him,” Summer said then.
“You’re what?!” I exclaimed, spinning to face her. “No you’re not. Kate, grab her phone.”
Kate, without question, reached out and grabbed Summer’s phone from her hand, as I pulled her other arm away to prevent her from dialing.
“Stop it,” Summer said, wrestling with me and reaching for her phone that Kate had dropped into her Chanel bag.
I was highly aware that we were causing a small scene on the sidewalk as people stepped around us on their way to and from lunch.
“Why are we hiding her cell phone?” Kate asked, as Summer finally stopped resisting, crossed her arms in front of her and narrowed her eyes at me.
I filled Kate in on our conversation, as Summer pouted next to me. Kate heartily agreed with me that Summer should not call Patrick, so she agreed to keep her cell phone through lunch just in case Summer decided to get sneaky and call him from the bathroom. Summer pouted for exactly three minutes before Kate reminded her that Patrick would be proposing soon. From that point on she had a permanent smile on face for the rest of lunch.
As we ate, I told Kate about my own news. I didn’t even try to fake it with her, knowing she’d never buy it. I just told both her and Summer the details of the proposal. I had heard hundreds of proposal stories over the years, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t mimic the sheer elation that most brides had. At that point, I decided I was probably defective and just let it go. I wasn’t going to be a gushy bride, and that was that. Everyone would just have to deal with it.
Throughout my story, Summer listened with rapt attention, no doubt fantasizing about when and how it would happen for her. Kate smiled as I talked, but I could tell she was holding something back, especially when I got to the part about where Ryan proposed.
Later at the office, I asked her about it.
“This is what you want?” she asked, laying it all out there in true Kate fashion, as I perched on the arm of one of the guest chairs in her office.
I hoped she would understand my hesitation. She wasn’t ready for marriage either, but her feelings toward the institution were more due to not being able to find the right guy, and she had no intentions of settling. She usually couldn’t get past the first date since she always found some flaw or another in the guy that she just couldn’t live with. I thought her expectations were too high, but she had assured me again and again that she is just selective, and since a husband is forever, she ha da right to be picky. I couldn’t argue with that logic. I reasoned that I was waiting for the right time as much as she was waiting for the right guy.
“Truth?” I asked.
She nodded, as she tucked a lock o
f her shoulder length brown hair behind her ear.
“I’m not ready. You know how I feel about marriage. I love Ryan, but I don’t understand why we have to take this step. Why can’t we just keep dating?”
She sighed. “Because this is what people do, Court. They date, they get married, and then they have babies. It’s kind of how it goes.”
“Babies!” I said, but it came out more like a screech. I started waving my hand in a rapid slashing motion in front of my throat. “No babies! Why would you bring that up?!”
My heart was beating erratically again. If this kept up, I would have an actual heart attack before I turned twenty-five.
Kate held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. No babies.”
I shook my head rapidly, my low ponytail swishing back and forth. “No babies,” I repeated.
“What about Beck—” she started to say, but I cut her off.
“Don’t say his name,” I warned.
“Exactly,” she said, and I narrowed my eyes at her. “Don’t you think it’s a little odd that you still can’t talk about your ex-boyfriend, and it’s been almost three years since you broke up?”
“Stop it,” I said, more warning in my tone.
I didn’t want to talk about him, and the worst part was Kate knew better than to go there.
“Courtney, I don’t think you ever got over him. There I didn’t say his name.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I did not want to have this conversation. I pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger.
“Kate, please. We broke up years ago,” I said, opening my eyes to look at her. “I’m not harboring any leftover feelings for him. I’m just freaked out about the fact that I’m engaged, okay. It’ll pass. I just need some time.”
“Fine,” she said, “but I think that you need to look a little closer at why you need time to get excited about being engaged. I guess I have to wonder, is it the engagement, or is it Ryan?”
“It’s the engagement,” I said, without hesitation.
Kate just raised her eyebrows at me and gave me a pointed look as she picked up her phone to make a call. I left her office to go back to my own, pissed off that my friends didn’t understand how I felt, but also because for the second time in twenty-four hours I was thinking about the one person I’d tried to block out for so long.
Five
“A toast,” Summer said loudly over the hip hop music that was blasting from the speakers near our heads. “To Courtney. May she be the hottest bride ever!”
“When she’s thirty,” Kate chimed in.
“When she’s thirty,” Summer echoed, and I laughed.
We cheered, raised our shot glasses and downed the chilled vodka. I winced and shook my head as the vodka burned my throat and then quickly jammed the sugar-covered lemon slice that I was holding into my mouth. It had been a while since I’d done a shot, and they weren’t as easy to swallow as they used to be.
Doing lemon drops was Summer’s idea, as was having a girls night out at a club in Back Bay to commemorate my engagement. Both she and Kate had demanded that regardless of how I felt about being engaged, we needed to celebrate the milestone. When they established that I would not have to wear any kind of bride paraphernalia and that no one else but us would know what we were celebrating, I agreed to go.
Ryan hadn’t been thrilled that I was going clubbing with the girls. He hated the club scene, citing it as a juvenile meat market for desperate people. He’d questioned why I wanted to go out in the first place when I could stay in with him. I’d jokingly told him he was boring, so I was going to have fun with my girls, which was only half-true. There were definitely times when I wished Ryan would loosen up more. He was so tied to his conservative roots that he didn’t know how to just have fun. Once and a while I could get him to be adventurous, but it didn’t happen very often. I was actually excited to be going out with the girls even if I was ignoring the underlying theme of the night.
On a positive note, I had been engaged for a full week and was starting to get more comfortable with the idea. My heart palpitations slowed considerably as the days went by, and I found that the anxiety I felt whenever someone asked about my ring diminished a little with each question. Ryan had inadvertently helped with this by keeping things relatively normal between us. He had yet to ask me any questions about actually getting married, which I appreciated more than he could have known. Maybe he assumed I would just take the reins since I planned weddings for a living. I decided then that I would wait for him to bring up the subject. Until then, I would maintain my silence.
He told me that he’d shared our news with his parents when he came over on Sunday night with Thai food. He hadn’t gone into much detail but said they were very excited. I had a feeling he was embellishing, as I knew his mother couldn’t be thrilled with the idea of our union. He told me his parents insisted that we join them for dinner that weekend, and I was already dreading the idea of spending time with them when the conversation would no doubt be about our pending nuptials.
I hadn’t yet told my own parents but had decided to call them the next day. I’d spent the week working up to the conversation, especially with my mom since I wasn’t sure how she’d feel about my announcement. However, I was hitting that point where if I didn’t tell her, she would be even more pissed at me, so I knew I had to bite the bullet, and soon.
“One more?” Kate suggested.
I raised my left eyebrow at her.
“Oh, come on,” she begged. “We’re celebrating.”
She put her hands over her head and moved seductively to the music. Preppy Kate in her navy t-shirt dress looked slightly ridiculous dancing to a Taio Cruz song, so I gave her credit for trying and figured I could do the same.
“What the hell,” I said, holding my shot glass out.
“Yea!” Summer cheered, as we all grabbed another shot from the table in front of us.
We tipped them back, the vodka burning a little less that time.
“Where are the cute guys?” Kate asked then, looking around the packed club.
It was definitely not our scene, and I had a feeling we wouldn’t find any of Kate’s khaki clad Cape Cod boys there, but I was willing to help her look.
“Come on,” I said, linking my arm through hers. “Let’s do a lap around and see if we can find a hottie for you.”
There was definitely an interesting mix of people present that night, and I realized how out of place the three of us looked. Summer in her bright patterned vintage Pucci dress and platforms and me in my skinny jeans, flowy white tank top and heels look just as odd as Kate. I should have realized when I noticed that almost every other female in the club was wearing something made of spandex or leather that we were in the wrong place. I started to suggest that we head down the street to Charlie’s where we could sit at the bar and order drinks, but then Kate spotted a guy who just might have walked off the pages of the J. Crew catalog, so I stayed quiet. As soon as they saw each other, you could see the relief come over both of their faces. Kate hastily unlinked her arm from mine and approached him.
Not sure if we should leave her, Summer and I hung back talking as best we could with the music pulsing loudly in the background. Apparently we looked lonely, because a short guy wearing baggy jeans, a Celtics jersey over a white t-shirt and backwards hat came up and started dancing in front of us. We laughed and Summer nudged me. Without thinking, I raised my left hand to him, realizing what a weapon I suddenly possessed. He instantly stopped dancing, shrugged, and backed away. I was laughing with my hand still in the air when he moved to the right and my heart stopped beating. Standing just five feet away, with a clear shot of my raised hand, was my ex-boyfriend. He was looking directly at me with a look on his face that I couldn’t read.
Summer didn’t see him. She was looking at me and my face which I could only assume held a priceless expression since she turned instantly to see what had caught my attention. She looked
surprised for half a second, but then she ran over and hugged him. I lowered my left hand slowly, covering it self-consciously with my right, but I knew it was too late. He’d already seen my ring. In good faith, I walked over to say hello. It wasn’t like I could just walk away, even though it was what I really felt inclined to do in that moment.
“Beckett!” I heard Summer say, as she hugged him. “It’s so good to see you. What are you doing here?”
Beckett.
My stomach churned involuntarily as I watched him hug Summer. I wasn’t sure why, but it was upsetting to see how easy it was for her to be around him while I was ready to throw up the vodka I’d downed a few minutes earlier. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew they saw each other regularly. He was Patrick’s cousin, so it was inevitable. I wasn’t a huge fan of their friendship, but the last thing I would expect of her would be to avoid him because of me. This was my fight, not hers.
“Hey Sum,” he said, as he hugged her tightly. He looked over her shoulder and caught my gaze but didn’t say anything. “I’m here with Tim and Alex. They’re around somewhere.” He gestured to the throngs of people around us.
I didn’t know who Tim and Alex were, but Summer obviously did. She said something about wanting to say hi to them and disappeared into the crowd. I stared after her, my mouth slightly agape. She’d left me there to face Beckett alone. I would seriously have to kill her later.
“Hey Courtney,” he said politely, finally addressing me.
I quickly closed my mouth as we made eye contact. It was beyond awkward. I swallowed hard, not sure if I would be able to form words. In his dark jeans and white button-down shirt, he looked so grown up. I noticed that his brown hair was longer than he’d ever worn, and he had a few days worth of stubble. It was amazing that he looked so different but somehow exactly the same. The only thing missing was his smile, because in that moment, as polite as he was being, he wasn’t smiling at me.
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