I knew exactly what would’ve happened had I gone on tour with him all those years ago. I knew it as well as I knew my own name. I would’ve given up everything, only for the winds to change and him to leave me with nothing.
That would never happen with Rich. We wanted all the same things. We fit perfectly. Our lives were completely planned out. I felt safer just thinking about it.
Still, the sad, pitiful truth was that despite my vitriol, I loved Ethan too much to let him leave like this.
“I’m happy,” I pleaded with him. “I’m in love with a man who loves me back exactly as I am now, and I want you to stand next to me on Saturday and be happy for me.”
“And that’s really what you want?” The question sank through my abdomen.
I swallowed. “Of course it is.”
He put his phone in his pocket and looked ahead toward the empty ambulance bay, his smile cool and bright without atrace of the emotion that had been there mere seconds ago. “Uber’s here,” he said, his chin pointed in the direction of a blue Toyota Corolla.
I cleared my throat. “You need to be there early for pictures,” I said, changing the subject, unwilling to dwell on the way my face was surely telling on me.
“Yeah, sure, but do you need a ride home?” he asked, ignoring my subject change.
“No, uh, Rich is picking me up,” I lied. Guilt compelled me to bring his name back into the conversation one way or another. I hadn’t done anything wrong but this fight felt like its own kind of betrayal. It had revealed starkly something I’d tried to hide from myself: the prospect of losing Ethan as my friend was more terrifying than the notion of not marrying Rich. Awareness slunk up my neck, and suddenly, I felt…gross. That full-body revulsion of touching a stranger’s gum under the bus bench rolled over my body in waves.
“I’ll see you Saturday, yeah?” I said, watching him climb into the car.
“Of course,” he promised. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
What was he seeing in my face right then? How sad and terrified I was that this could’ve been a relationship-ending fight and the only thing I’d have to show for it would be a party penis straw?
The car door clicked shut, but as I walked away, his voice echoed on the pavement behind me.
“Chuck!” He was yelling through the window, his body halfway out like he was a golden retriever on the highway. “I love you.” It was as though the words dropped out of his mouth by accident.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and pasted on mybreeziest smile. “I love you too, Powell,” I shouted back through cupped hands.
His “I love you” spun around my temporal lobe, even though he was a dude with a head injury and didn’t mean anything by it at all.
So I shoved even more nonchalance into my voice and said, “This is your final warning. If I see you climbing into my lemon buttercream cake, I’m coming for you. I don’t care if you have a broken head.”
His torso lurched forward, but he caught himself. His eyes lingered on me for an extra beat. “Lemon? For a cake?” He shook his head in that heartbreakingly familiar way. “Could never be me.”
Never ever.
The scent of his aftershave was still on my dress as I opened my rideshare app. More than ever, I was so happy to be marrying Rich. He was thewould alwaysto Ethan’scould never.
I looked behind me, just for a second, to watch Ethan’s body slide out of the window and back into the car as it disappeared into the dark.
Chapter 23
The Fun Kind of Breaking and Entering
Tuesday, Now
At work, everythinghas gone to shit.
Sure, my Monday disappearance didn’t exactly set the place up for success, but while I was getting my heart stomped on in my driveway, Bob was hiding from the receptionist, who’d been fielding his angry client calls. Literallyhiding. At some point, Pamela mounted a search team and caught him watching highlights of the US Open in the lactation closet.
So on Tuesday morning, I don’t know what I’m expecting to greet me—acknowledgment, recognition, mild gratitude for my years of unrelenting service to his clients—but Bob has never been more of a heinous prick. I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed to have uncovered the depths of his incompetence or if he’s justthatentitled. No one asks about the wedding fiasco besides Stacy and, weirdly, Paul, who makes an appearance in the office despite having a two-day-old infant at home.
On Wednesday, Anders from IT delivers my new laptop in exchange for a garbage bag of rice and computer parts.
“It’s set up like you had it before. Back to normal,” Anders tells me.
