“Sorry,” he says, pocketing his phone. “What?”
“For you.” I toss him the key chain. “We can match.”
He smiles, tucks it into the front pocket of his suitcase.
“I do have one prediction,” I say as Ren walks over and zips up the back of my dress without my asking. “Charlene makes everyone sing some song with her at the wedding tomorrow night.” I turn around and fix his half-done tie. “Remember my parents’ anniversary party a couple years back? She got everyone to sing along to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?”
“How could I forget.” Ren lifts his chin as I straighten his collar,plucks an errant string out of my hair that must have come from my T-shirt when I slipped it over my head.
But he doesn’t let go. He brushes my hair back into place, absently rubbing it between his fingers. His eyes lower to mine, lips parting slightly, and my breath hitches as Stevie’s words suddenly come back to me.How do you think Amanda feels about this whole weekend?
I swallow, jab a thumb toward the door. “Shall we?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Ren says, releasing my hair. “Let’s go.”
But he doesn’t move.
“Ren?”
He shakes his head and steps away, holding the door open for me to pass and locking up behind us. As we head down the globe light–lined path, a breeze rustles the trees, the evening sky orange above the mammoth treetops. It feels so similar to Oregon this far north, it could almost be home. I try to focus on this fact, to put the image of Ren’s hand in my hair, mine on his collar out of my mind. “This place reminds me of your parents’ backyard,” I say as we rush down the trail.
“Yeah?”
I look over at him, worried that he’s in his head now about zipping up a dress for a girl who isn’t Amanda. His eyes are fixed on the ground, hands shoved in his pockets; he’s not totally here with me.
“You know,” I continue. “A little removed from the rest of the world.” It was one of my favorite things about his house growing up: how their backyard abutted the river, so that there were spaces where you couldn’t tell we were even in town. It was a good substitute for when we couldn’t be at the beach house.
Ren doesn’t respond, and I leave him to his thoughts.
As soon as we walk into the barn, I’m swept into a hug, my mom’s familiar lilac scent enveloping me. She doesn’t ask where we were or mention her texts, but any hint of guilt I feel about assuming she would evaporates when she holds me away from her, inspecting me, and says, “You look tired.”
Ren rubs a hand over his mouth to hide his smile before my mom is moving on to him.
“Kiddo,” my dad says, drawing me into a one-armed hug. “Good flight?”
“Good flight. Sorry we’re late.”
He waves a hand. “Cocktail hour has hardly started. You’re fine.”
The four of us wander past the long tables to the bar. Because so many people are spending the whole weekend here, most of the guests are also at the rehearsal dinner tonight, milling around under the paper lanterns hanging from the beams above us, meandering out to the grassy area in the back. After we grab drinks, we pause to say hello to some distant family members. I wave at Claudia and Clark across the room, their six-month-old sleeping in a carrier on his chest.
After cocktail hour, we sit down to dinner. Ren updates my parents on the adoption agency Thad and his husband are working with, and they discuss Sasha’s recent engagement to Alex.
“Did you hear about Stevie’s story?” my mom asks us. Stevie has been trying to expand her portfolio before she graduates next year, get more bylines under her belt.
“The site she wrote it for profiles a lot of up-and-coming acts,” I explain to Ren. “The piece she wrote was about a group out of Brooklyn.” I bump an elbow against his arm. “They’ve covered a couple Sublimity bands, actually.”
He glances over at me and nods. “Right.”
“Ren,” my mom says, and I watch as he sits up a little straighter, leans forward, face clearing when she addresses him.“Your mom told me you and Amanda are going to Italy this fall?”
“With her family,” he says, as something chilly slides over my shoulders. How does my mom know something about Ren’s life that I don’t? “For her sister’s wedding.”
His words push at some sore spot in me. It feels like I’m being shut out of his life the more serious he and Amanda get, and it dawns on me that there might come a time I don’t know anything about him at all. I pick up my fork to stop the spiraling.
It’s after dinner is cleared and we’re at the bar with another round of drinks that my mom focuses her attention on me. “I’m worried about you,” she says, seemingly out of nowhere.
I’m mid-sip of Mavis’s favorite Napa Valley white and extend it into a chug. “What do you mean, Mom?” I say, pressing my lips together in a tight smile.
