He swallows, nods. “Well, you didn’t look silly in it.”
“No?”
He shakes his head, like he’s thinking, searching for the words. “Nope. Not at all. You looked…” But he can’t seem to finish his sentence.
“Beautiful? Elegant? Sexy? Any of those would do,” I tease.
He shakes his head, again, but this time with an air of sadness. “Like someone who deserves a Happily Ever After.”
I smile, but his words send another stab of confusion right into my chest.
Because I’m still grieving that Nikki—the girl who went onLovedBythinking she’d get that perfect love story.
The girl who still believed in fairy-tale endings.
19
I’M SITTING ACROSS THEtable from my mom and Cara and Linney, trying to blink away images and memories of Nate’s hands on my back in that dressing room, the way we fell into each other, like it was inevitable. I bite the back of my pen with a vengeance, trying to focus. We’ve taken to having these daily “lunch planning meetings” which I can tell are the highlight of my mother’s day.
They say planning a wedding can be a full-time job. Or maybe I’m just using that as an excuse to avoid myactualjob. I should be working on content for my newsletter or dropping an AMA box onto the feed. Something to keep engagement up, but I can’t stomach the idea of being on social media right now. Leaving LA and returning home to the lake, it’s like I’ve dropped into a vortex, another world.
My mom is saying something about the flower shortage due to a recent drought, but I’m having a hard time paying attention, because behind her, through the screen door, I can see Nate working in the yard, making repairs to the old structure. And though I am still staunchly against the rushed nature of this wedding—andstill working through my mixed, distrustful feelings toward Cara, I have to say—it’s pretty meaningful the way Nate has devoted himself to this task.
Meema had that gazebo built in the late 1960s. She told me it was modeled after the gazebo inThe Sound of Music. I always looked up to Meema. She was technically a stay-at-home mom just like my mother, and yet she was nothing like my mom, whose whole world revolved around her kids. From the stories Meema told me, she was something of a socialite. She was elegant and witty, went to a prestigious college in New England, and would always tell me about her wild adventures before she met my grampa. And even after they married—they traveled to Europe by boat. Went to London and Berlin and Vienna, then explored the Austrian countryside, where her father’s family was from. Once they settled down here by the lake, they had this house built and added the gazebo. They’d apparently throw these infamous parties back here, and Meema would hold court until the wee hours of the morning, singing and entertaining her guests. Her life always seemed so glamorous—and surprisingly worldly.
When I was little, I’d often go out and lie along one of the benches in the gazebo and imagine I was on the set of a movie, or in love with an Austrian soldier, or just part of some story that was so much bigger and more romantic than my real life could ever be.
So watching Nate restore it after so many years of the gazebo just sitting there by the water, languishing, has me thinking wistfully of the past—and that younger Nikki who still believed in real-life fairy tales.
“So you’ll see what you can do tomorrow, Nikki?” my mom is saying.
“Hmm? What?”
“I was saying you may have to speak to the farmer about whether peonies are reasonable this time of year.”
“Oh, um, yeah, of course. I doubt peonies are realistic, unless they’ve got a hothouse, but I’ll find out.”
“And by the way, honey, where did you end up putting those boxes of bud vases you said you got from the store the other day? I haven’t seen them yet. It might affect what varietals we choose.”
I suppress an eye roll. But then I remember about the box of vases, and it’s all I can do not to crack a grin. “Oh right, of course! They’re still upstairs. I was going to save them for the day of…”
“No, let’s see them now,” Mom says matter-of-factly.
I hustle up to my closet room and bring the box back downstairs.
Mom starts picking through the vases, pulling out the porcelain cow, then a rooster.
“Nikki, what are these?”
“They’re little vases!” I say cheerfully. “Look, see how the cow has a hole in its back? You put the flowers in there!”
Mom gives me a look. “I think we were picturing more like mini mason jars, sugar,” she says pointedly.
“Ohhhh.” I draw out the word, looking apologetically to Cara. “Sorry—you said, ‘farmhouse chic,’ so I thought…”
Cara is pulling out more figurines from the box with an unreadable expression on her face. There’s a horse, and a sheep with curly porcelain wool.
A small smile creeps onto her face. “You know what? I love them.”
