by JD Hawkins
Some guys get around it by looking for the things money can’t buy; just ask Warren about his grandkids. But most just walk around with that deadness in the eyes, their only joy reminding themselves that there are still people out there without what they have. It’s a stupid game, but the only one some people play. People like Theo, Hazel’s ex.
As I get ready and dressed in the penthouse suite I rented, the wedding isn’t even the foremost thing in my mind. Hazel and I had gone home to our respective places last night, and even after I’d said goodbye to her all I could think about was what she was doing. I imagined her peeling off that wet dress in her tiny apartment, surrounded by all that color. The sand she couldn’t rinse off in the sea falling from her body under the spray of the shower. Her sleeping like a baby afterward.
I can’t lie to myself about how much I like her anymore. About how much I want her all the time. But the bright spot in my mind, the happiness inside I get just thinking of her name, is run straight through with a kind of tragic gloom.
Because I know I can’t have her. I’d have to give up everything I’ve worked for if I wanted her, and that’s too much, even for her. I would never be able to respect myself, and I’d be surprised if she still respected me.
I spent the morning trying to think of how we could work something out, even though she said she didn’t want to do long-distance. Maybe I could fly out once or twice a month, like I did this week. Maybe she could come out to see me for weekends I’m free. The more I try to think it through realistically, however, the more it feels like some desperate, limp solution. Reducing whatever it is we have to meetings like that, they’d feel like empty hook-ups. Only reminding me of all the things we can’t do.
Maybe it’s just my cynicism, my inclination to the most negative possibility, but I can’t help thinking about what my life would be like if I’d met her long ago, when I still had so much time. When I was a young, angry loner who wanted everything including revenge, before the fire turned to stone, and when she was…
Well, she would be like she is now—sweet and kind and open and beautiful in everything she does. Maybe then I would have lived more easily, less hardened by vengeful ambition and a struggle-ridden search for something that I still haven’t quite yet found.
Once I’m ready, I take a cab to the restaurant where I left my car and drive it to Hazel’s apartment complex. I message her to tell her I’m ready to come up if she is, and she responds telling me to wait downstairs for her. I get out of the car and lean back on it as I watch the graffiti-ridden doors.
I know she’s going to knock me out when she emerges, but it’s the kind of blow you can’t block. She bursts out of the main doors and dances down the stone steps in her heels, the purse flying from her shoulder. I can’t tell if she’s excited or in a hurry—either way, I’m just happy to watch her.
Paul was right: she wears red better than anyone. The bold, eye-catching color a perfect match for her vibrant smile and energetic grace. Less “devil in a red dress” and more “wild as berries.” She’s swept her hair to one side, and the sexiness of her exposed neck makes me imagine things it’s way too early in the morning for.
“Sorry I made us late,” she laughs as she nears. “I thought I’d dye my hair to match my dress but the color came out terrible so then I went back to blonde but it took forever to get the pink tint out, and what with how small my apartment is I made a huge mess but—”
As soon as she’s close enough I have her in my arms, kissing her as if last night never ended, shutting her up with the force of my early-morning lust.
She smells like jasmine, tastes like strawberries, and feels perfect in my arms. I feel the sudden urge to do that same thing I did last night and tell her to forget the wedding, to move through the city like wild animals once again until the adrenaline overwhelms us.
“Wow…” She smiles when we pull apart. She presses her fingers against my lips until I realize she’s wiping off lipstick. “You haven’t even told me how I look yet.”
“I prefer to show it instead.”
She pulls away slowly, smoothing the lapel of my suit, touching my collar gently.
“You look pretty good yourself,” she says, and I can see in her roving eyes that she’s impressed.
“What’s that?” I ask, noticing a folded piece of paper in her hand.
“Oh, I thought I’d give you this before I threw it out. I dunno…never mind.”
She’s about to walk away with it but I take it from her, and she’s in such a hurry she rounds the car to get in while I unfold it. The painting I saw at her place, yellow and wild, the one that transfixed me like a portal to another world.
I look back over the car but she’s already getting inside, then back at the image. It feels powerful and moving, like part of something much greater than paint and paper. I fold it back up delicately, then place it in my front pocket carefully—putting my wallet in my back pocket instead. I’d rather protect this more.
“So it’s a beach wedding?” I ask as we pull up to the address she gave me.
“I guess so,” Hazel replies.
I stop the car at the gates, where a greeter with the manner of a border patrol agent checks Hazel’s invitation like it’s visa papers, then directs us on how to get to the parking lot. I steer the car through the gates and up a tree-lined path that leads to an open area in front of a stately building. The stretch of coast beside it is private and pristine. The esplanade full of milling people and lavishly decorated food and drink tents. Everything screams money.
I park along the curb, the lot already full of ostentatious luxury cars, and Hazel locks arms with me as we walk around the building, through the tents, and toward the beach.
She clenches my arm a little tighter as we approach the other people there and I turn to look at her.
“Gosh…maybe this was a bad idea,” she says in a mousey voice. “This is so…fancy.”
I look around, trying to see what Hazel’s seeing. The men all look bored, and the women all look stressed, even beneath the shiny, meticulous outfits. It’s a little fancy, for sure. Women in big hats and the drink tents done in a pastiche of thirties promenade style. The lines of hanging lanterns and lavish bouquets everywhere don’t seem to be doing much for the mood, though.
“Just looks like a regular wedding to me,” I say.
Hazel has a nervous look in her eyes as we move through the groups of guests.
“I don’t know…” she says. “There’s something…ominous in the air.”
“Like I said: just like a regular wedding.”
Hazel laughs a little at this and the bright, beautiful sound immediately draws some eyes to us—those that weren’t already checking her out. There are some beautiful women here, and even more who are dressed beautifully, but none can hold a candle to Hazel.
As I look around, I can’t tell who’s checking her out more—the men or the women.
I catch sight of the boardwalk that extends out onto the pale sand, the chairs and platform set up there for the wedding, and lead Hazel toward it.
“I don’t like weddings much, to be honest,” I say, as we stop and stand on the edge of the boardwalk, which is lined with pink blossoms and driftwood arches.
“Why not?”
“All that ‘special day’ stuff. Having to be perfect…getting a wedding planner…trying to organize and predict everything down to the last detail… Who does what when and where and how to say what at which time—as if you can make something ‘special’ if you just plan it thoroughly enough. To me it just sucks any life out of the thing.” I stop myself and glance at Hazel, who’s smiling, and then look away a little embarrassed. “Sorry. I know women love that kind of thing.”
“Is that what Nicole did?” she asks, and the question almost winds me.
Once I get over the leg-sweep question, I nod.
“Yeah. She did,” I say, as if surprising myself with the answer. “I would have married her the day after I propo
sed, but she wasn’t going to get married unless people were going to talk about it for years. A year later, and I think all she’d managed to organize was the color of the bridesmaid dresses.”
She puts a hand on my arm affectionately, but before she can say anything I decide to change the subject.
“Anyway, which one of these assholes is the one who left you?”
Hazel laughs again and looks around, and immediately a few heads who had been turned in her direction look away, pretending they weren’t transfixed by her in the red dress.
“Umm…I don’t know. I don’t see him…” She leans a little each way, then turns back around to look out at the pier that reaches out onto the sand, a few people milling about on it. “Wait… Yeah, there he is—to the right of the chapel thing.”
I look over and see three men in suits, as well as the priest in a smock. Another couple of guys a little further out.
“Which one? The big guy?”
“No—he’s with the priest.”
“The blond one?”
“No. Next to him.”
I squint a little at the two guys left, not so much because I can’t see, but because I can’t believe I’m seeing what she is.
“The guy with the Steve Jobs glasses,” she adds, and I feel something inside of me sink, a shock like a splash of cold water on my back.
I stare for seconds, unable to speak.
“You…he…” The words come out but I can’t seem to string them to anything.
I turn back to her, this incredible, unique, exciting, life-changing woman, who looks as spectacular as any in that red dress, then turn back to the weedy guy with no chin and a cloying smile in the distance.
I’m not a guy who judges on appearances, but there are things you can see in people, in their eyes, that don’t lie. The same way I saw a hint of Hazel’s incredible kindness and energy at the hotel pool. The same way I see my own hardness and detachment when I look in the mirror. And this guy…
I stare at him, searching for some quality that might make him even remotely worthy of taking space in Hazel’s life, in her heart. But all I can see is a kind of furtive weakness, a shiftiness. His eyes condescending, his smile fake and forced—the natural expression of a man who always takes the easy route, who’s afraid of being challenged, who has nothing firm in his soul. A face that lacks more than it possesses, even the suit unable to lend him any character, any sense of weight. He looks like what he is. A pathetic cheat.
I feel a storm of negative emotions swirling inside of me. Hazel’s past, her history with this guy, no longer some theoretical, abstract story, but visceral and real, right there in front of me. An anger that a guy like this could touch—let alone hurt—someone as wonderful as her. Astonishment that the two of them, such polar opposites, could even exist on the same plane. Then the return of a deep kind of black misery, that for all I’ve fought and struggled, I never had someone like Hazel to make it worth it—and I still can’t—yet this apparent imitation of a man not only had her, but treated her the way he did.
“That guy?” I say, still in awe.
“Uh-huh,” she says, almost casually.
I turn away from the beach, directing my profound incredulity at her now. Arresting her immediately in my hard gaze. I see her freeze up, widening her eyes in surprise at the intensity of my focus on her now.
“Hazel,” I say firmly, “that’s the guy who left you? Who hurt you?”
She nods, as if too afraid by my sudden change of manner to speak out loud.
I shake my head, looking down at the ground and palming my hair as I struggle to absorb the shock.
Then I look up at her again and say, “What the fuck are we even doing here, Hazel? He’s nothing compared to you. Not fit enough to even look at you. You exist on a whole other level—another world. Why would you even still care about what he does or thinks enough to be here?”
Understanding now passes through her expression now, hardening her surprise into a kind of defensiveness. “That’s easy to say, Nate. But I could ask you why you care so much about that job, too.”
“That’s different—”
“No it isn’t,” she says quickly, interrupting me. “You could go off and do anything, something without all that ‘status’ attached to it—but you’ve got a point to prove. To yourself.”
I try to think of something to say to that, but I can’t. As ridiculous as it seems to me, that she’d compare caring about the opinion of a man who looks more like a worm to my entire life’s goal, I can’t find a way to make it clear. I turn to look back at him, but before I can she reaches out and grabs a fistful of my shirt at my abs.
“Don’t look,” she says, staring at me rigidly. Her eyes flickering around me. “He’s coming over.”
“Hazel?”
The voice comes from behind me, and I immediately know it’s him. Its tone as weak and cloying as his face. She lets go of my shirt and I stand aside to face him, putting on a smile and putting an arm around her shoulder.
“Theo! Congratulations!” Hazel says, and though her voice flutters as beautiful as ever, I can hear its slight nervousness.
She moves out of my arm to give him a quick, formal hug—holding her head back as if wanting to make as little contact as possible—then returns to my side as if it’s shelter.
“You came…” Theo says, eyes darting between me and Hazel in utter surprise.
“Well, you did invite her, right?” I say, forcing a laugh though it takes effort not to scowl at him.
“Of course he did,” Hazel says, turning to me and patting my chest—a gesture that looks like she’s holding me back as much as it does affectionate. “I’m so happy for you.”
“Thanks… Yeah…” Theo says, nodding weakly.
He glances at me again, but he can’t seem to hold eye contact for more than a split second. He furrows his brow a little to show a mild curiosity, and it’s like he’s afraid to just come straight out and ask who I am.
“This is my boyfriend, Nate,” Hazel says, for the first time sounding fully honest. She winds an arm around my back, her other still on my chest, and presses her body against mine proudly.
“I’m still trying to be more than that,” I say with a laugh, planting a quick kiss on her hair then holding my hand out to Theo like it’s an afterthought.
“Oh… Right…” he says, looking meek.
“Nate Keaton—I’m in investments.”
“Investments?” Theo repeats quickly, his interest not so meek anymore. “Like…venture capital?”
I smile at how brazen this guy is. From Hazel’s story of him, and just the look in his eyes, I could tell he wasn’t much. But at the mere mention of money, he looks like he’d be willing to ditch the whole wedding to try to give me a pitch.
“A bit of everything,” I say nonchalantly. “At M and B we keep a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.”
“Montague and Brown?” he splutters, barely getting the words out along with his breath.
“The one and only,” I reply, feeling guilt-free despite the fact I’m stretching the truth.
He glances at Hazel again, as if wondering how the hell she got so close to what he wanted, then back at me. Somehow he wrestles his goofy expression back into something approaching normal and civil.
“I’m…wow…that’s… See, I’m actually running a start-up at the moment and—I don’t want to sound too forward here, but you see we’re working on something that’s really exciting and—”
I raise a finger to stop him and turn my full attention to Hazel. “Honey, you want a drink or something? You okay there?”
She presses her hand a little further into my chest as she smiles sweetly up at me.
“I’m good, babe. I think it’s starting soon anyway.”
“Yeah,” Theo says, sounding like a third wheel. “Georgia timed it perfectly so the sun and shadows would look best.”
I don’t even turn to look at Theo, or acknowledge he even spoke, instea
d deciding to plant a soft kiss on Hazel’s lips. As sweet and natural as anything, the two of us looking at each other like we’ve got a love so deep the rest of the world becomes irrelevant when reminded of it. When I pull back she laughs gently and wipes lipstick from my lips again as I smile back at her.
“Uh…Hazel…it’s good to see you found someone,” Theo says, as if looking for an avenue back into the conversation.
“Yeah. I’m really happy,” Hazel says, lending me another affectionate gaze.
“She makes me really happy, too,” I add.
Suddenly it’s noticeable that the crowd is gathering and moving around us, making their way to the wooden pier over the beach, taking their seats for the ceremony.
“Listen, wait,” Theo says, holding his palms up as if to stop us. “Can we talk after the ceremony?” he practically begs me. “I really think we could do some business together.”
I suck air between my teeth, wincing as if about to deliver unfortunate news—trying not to reveal how much I’m enjoying playing with him.
“I don’t think so. I never discuss work at social events, and I’m not really planning on staying too long anyway.” I check my watch and see his eyes go wide in my periphery.
“We should go take our seats, babe,” Hazel says, and I can tell she likes the idea of torturing Theo by cutting this short.
“Uh, wait a sec,” Theo says desperately. “Do you have a card? I remember your name, maybe I can call your office and make an appointment?”
“Honey,” I say, still looking at Hazel, “why don’t you go get us some seats—somewhere at the back, we don’t want people checking you out instead of the bride.”
She laughs and looks at Theo as she peels away from my side. “Sure. Congratulations again, Theo.”
He still has that dumbstruck look on his face as he says, “Thanks.”
I pat her on the ass and don’t take my eyes from her as she joins the stream of people moving to the chairs.
“Look at her,” I say out of the side of my mouth. “Isn’t she incredible?”
“Yeah…” Theo says, sounding breathless and stunned still, watching her go. “She looks like a different person… She never dressed like that when I was with her.”