He squeezes my waist. “Joni,” he says, voice gravelly. “Should we talk about this?”
Embarrassment flashes through me that Ren had to be the one to call out how obviously we’ve been avoiding reality. “Of course,” I say. “But not now? We have the rehearsal dinner tonight, the wedding tomorrow. We can wait until we’re back in Portland.”
Ren’s brow creases at the same moment I realize what I’ve said. I stay stock-still like prey spotted. Maybe if I don’t move, he won’t catch it.
I’m not sure why I said it. I know I’ll have to move out of my place in New York sooner rather than later, but I haven’t been thinking about it this week, have assumed it’s an issue I’ll deal with—it hits me with stomach-dropping clarity—the day after tomorrow. Sunday. When I’ll be getting on a plane to head back to a life that doesn’t exist anymore, and here I am, making out with Ren in the aisle of a hardware store like horny teenagers, like the past and future don’t concern us.
“I mean,” I say, twisting to face him. “When we’re… I don’t know. When we’re in the same place again.”
He looks at me like he used to, like he can see straight into my brain. I wait for him to question me, but instead he just pulls me into his chest, all the spots our bodies touch working to erase the anxiety clawing through me. I think it might solve all my problems if he never lets go. He reaches up, tugs lightly at the ends of my hair. “I like this new haircut,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, I love your long hair too, but this feels like you.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” I say, wrinkling my nose. Ren smiles thoughtfully at me, and I’m transported to a world in which we didn’t fall apart, in which maybe I didn’t need to cut my hair, or maybe I did anyway and he was there much sooner to tell me that it looked like me. “I’m so annoyed by that.”
“Why’s that?” he asks.
I shrug weakly. “Sometimes I just don’t think I know what I want until the universe gets fed up and hits me in the face with it.”
Ren laughs. “The universe hit you in the face with a new haircut?”
I rest my chin against his chest, look up at him. “Something like that.”
I don’t tell him what I really mean. That three years ago, my feelings for him dawned on me so suddenly I felt like I’d been flipped upside down and shaken out,and that I don’t think I was turned upright again until now.
chapter twenty-five
We spend a rushed rest of the afternoon restringing the twinkle lights and putting up the new ones, Ren continuing with bar setup while my mom places the centerpieces just so on the tables, everyone else spread around wherever Sasha positions them.
I barely make it to the last ten minutes of my shower slot before the rehearsal dinner, washing my hair and shaving my legs in record time. I dry my hair in front of the mirror in Stevie and Leo’s room, change into my cowl neck, terracotta slip dress, then nearly run into someone in the hall.
“Hey!” Sasha’s husband, Alex, has just arrived, bag over one shoulder. “Long time, no see!”
I hug him hello, start to ask how his flight was, when Sasha sticks her head out of their room, looking as close to frazzled as I’ve ever seen her, color rising in her cheeks and wavy hair wild. It’s not the first time she’s seemed overwhelmed this weekend, and it strikes me as odd. Sasha is usually so cool under pressure.
“Are you okay—” I ask, but she interrupts.
“You have twenty minutes to get ready!” she shouts, whether at Alex or me,I don’t know. We give each other a knowing look and head in our opposite directions.
When I step out onto the screen porch, Ren is just finishing buttoning up his shirt, the top two still undone. I can smell the vaguely citrusy soap our moms always stock the house with from here, his hair slightly damp from his own shower. There’s music playing from his phone, a Nick Drake song. I shut the door behind me and drop my dirty clothes on my bed, turn to him.
“How’s your ankle?” he asks as I run my fingers over his collar.
I lift my foot, glance down at the new Band-Aid I put on. “Basically healed,” I say. I look back at him. “I had averygood doctor.”
He reaches into his back pocket. “I got you something.”
“You got me something?” I ask, trying to peer around him to see what it is. “Are we going to prom together?”
Ren rolls his eyes and smiles. “Wedidgo to prom together.”
“Yeah, and you broke the heart of every eligible girl in the twelfth grade by going with yourfriend,” I say. It had seemed so obvious at the time; of course we’d go together. Now it’s just another item on the list of signs I might have missed. There were plenty of other girls Ren could have gone to prom with, and I could have probably mustered the courage to ask the guy who sat next to me in Government. We’ve always chosen each other.
“Am I not your friend now?” he asks, hand still tucked behind his back.
Of course you are, I want to say, but it’s more complicated than that. No matter how easy, natural, it’s felt this week, Ren hasn’t been just my friend for years now. I settle on, “I think you’re a little more than my friend.”
“I think so too,” he says, and my heart gives a light flutter. “Okay, close your eyes. Hold out your hand.”
“You’re not going to put a bug in my hand, are you?” I say, shutting my lids.
