It takes usa few hours to pack that crowded little patch of ground into nothing but memories. Ethan scours the campsite about twelve times in search of plastic wrappers and other trash. When he’s satisfied, we drop our equipment off with Ted Wetter’s teen associate and sit on the ground against the side of the building without a word.
“Well, you won, Charley,” Laurel says, breaking the silence that settled onto our foursome. “I’m not getting married today.”
Petey rubs her shoulder, ever the cheerleader. “Babe, we can still—”
Her smile is wild and wrong, a breath away from a worn-out sob. “I have no interest in memorializing this day. Charley made sure of that.”
“This isn’t…” I trail off. She’s not interested in the nuances of my wedding objection or that I wantedherto be the one to call it off, not rabbit traps or trench foot. Still, she wants to bemad at me, and right now, all I want is for Laurel to have everything she wants.
I press my forehead into my knees as shame swirls in my gut. “I’m so sorry, Laur.”
“I know you are.” Then she pulls herself up from the ground and walks in the direction of her Chevy Bolt. I start after her, but Petey stops me with a gentle touch on my shoulder.
He gives me a quick head shake. “Not right now, Charles in Charge. It’ll be okay, but…give her a little time.”
He’s so unjustifiably generous to me that I’m…annoyed. How dare this man beniceright now? How dare he care more about Laurel than his own, lightly battered, ego? It makes me look like such an ass. Which I undeniably am, because he’sright. It kills me that he’s right. It’s more evidence that I might be wrong about everything else.
What if Petey and Laurelaregood together and I’ve ruined everything? I know I didn’t give Jonah trench foot or shove Ted into an illegal animal trap, but I brought spectacularly bad energy with me this weekend. I came here to ruin everything, and then everything was ruined. That’ll be what we all remember.
The blood drains from my face, my fingertips, my belly, and out through my toes like air seeping from a hole in a raft. I’m emptied out and replaced with the certainty of one undeniable fact: It doesn’t matter if, for the time being, my sister’s name is still Laurel Beekman. I’ve already lost her.
•••
They drive awayfirst, then Ethan and I follow.
I release a heavy sigh of whatever the opposite of relief is. “I didn’t want…that, you know?”
He pulls onto the main road. “Do you know what you did want?”
I sink into the passenger seat. “No.”
“I think that might’ve been the problem.”
I nod. Isn’t wanting time to stop reason enough for a “speak now” wedding moment between sisters? But I know the answer is no. I’m the bad guy here. There’s no way around it.
A heavy silence descends on the van. It snakes around my neck, tightening with each passing second. We drive and drive, until suddenly he pulls off.
“Pie?” he blurts into the quiet. The single syllable catches me so off guard, I actually jump.
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think we can go any farther until we eat pie.”
“Pie.” The word comes out slow, like I might not be familiar with it semantically.
He nods. The sunshine glows against his cheeks. “These seem like pie problems.”
“Pie problems.”
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say or are you going to join me at the only pie stand on Lake Superior that makes a gluten-free crust?”
So then we eat pie. And we feed each other pie. And we kiss, and we laugh, and we act as though we’re living a completely different day than the one I ruined this morning. We behave as we would were we drivingtosomething rather thanaway. We ignore the reality of the situation and play pretend.
Every kiss on my knuckles, every swipe of his hair, is paired with an unspokenjust one last time. We both know this isover, but neither of us is willing to acknowledge it out loud yet. Our relationship is a dog having its perfect last day on earth, and Ethan and I are somehow both the owner who knows they’re headed to the vet and the unwitting basset hound with a heart defect who assumes this is just one of many more pup cones to come.
Winding roads turn to freeways and wooded landscapes to open fields. I enter a state of highway hypnosis and let the world whoosh past until we’re finally parked in my driveway, where it all began.
“Harlow put us all in a group chat.” Ethan’s reading off his phone as I dequarantine my garbage bags of hazardous waste from the back storage. “Looks like Ted’s doing fine. No broken bones.”
