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“To whom?”
“Everyone.”
He smiled, and I smiled back. It was weird because—while I did it—I felt myself taking a snapshot of the way he looked right then, trying hard to hold it, imprint it really, so I could lock it in. Then I leaned all the way across him, turning the ignition back on for him.
“That’s it?” he said. “You’re done with me?”
I nodded. “For tonight,” I said, even though what part of me was thinking was, Never. I will never be done with you, Matt. I will never be able to think about you and hear about you and not totally—totally—miss you.
“You are going to think about it though, right, Emmy? What we talked about. You’ll give it some real thought?” he said.
There was a sense of desperation in his eyes that I didn’t recognize, and I wondered what had happened to him in the last three years to put it in there. Or if I had done it, in my leaving. A small piece of me couldn’t help but think we were sitting here together now—that he was so sure now—because I’d left. That he needed to get me back, so he’d know he still could. I was hoping that wasn’t true, or at least not all that was true. I was also hoping that I wasn’t right that if I said yes to him, his need would disappear. He would be the one deciding he didn’t need this anymore.
“Of course I’ll think about it,” I said.
And then, for the first time in a long time, I did what I wanted to do. I leaned in and kissed him. It was me who kissed him this time, longer than before, and like I meant it. His lips felt different than I remembered, though, but I knew in a minute, it would be erased. In a minute, if I let it, it would feel the same as it always had.
I got out of the car and leaned down—my face inside the open passenger-side window.
He leaned over and touched it. “If you’re going to be late or something, you’ll call me?” he said. “You won’t keep me waiting, right?”
“I won’t,” I said. I leaned in closer, that much closer into his hands. “I’ll be there.”
The first wedding superstition I remember learning about—during my own engagement, actually—was the one that said the bride and groom shouldn’t see each other from midnight on, the night before their wedding. Matt had been the one to explain the history of it to me. He had come home with information about it, I think, in his bid to convince me to let him have his bachelor party the night before we were supposed to get married. Apparently, though, the reason the bride and groom were supposed to be separated the night before the wedding was that this was the night the bride stopped being a girl. In fact, ancient Greeks ha
d this tradition of taking away all of the bride’s old toys and belongings—even cutting off her hair if it were long—stripping her of everything that didn’t have to do with her future life as someone’s wife. What was the groom supposed to be doing during this time? Whatever he wanted.
This was what Josh was doing: sitting in the emptied-out rehearsal dinner tent all alone. The waiters, the guests, our family—they had all gone. It was just Josh sitting there at one of the remaining tables, a tablecloth still on it, one candle lit in the center, nothing else.
I walked toward him. He was staring down at his watch. He didn’t look up from it even as I got closer.
“Twelve oh-two,” he said, eyes still on his wrist, touching the watch’s face. “Twelve oh-two. And . . . nineteen seconds.”
“Officially your wedding day,” I said.
“Officially my wedding day.” He looked up at me, tried to give me a smile. It wasn’t a successful effort.
I sat down across from him, carefully, not because I was afraid he’d tell me to go away, but because I was just starting to realize that there were several ways to stay with someone. And, depending on what I did, Josh might tell me everything, or we would get nowhere again.
“You missed Meryl’s parents’ speech,” he said after a few minutes. “They were talking about commitment. They were talking about how they knew it the first time they met me. How they had that type of feeling about me. Someone who would do the right thing. Someone who would never let their daughter down.”
“I’m sorry I left,” I said.
He shook his head. “It was like her father was daring me. I swear to God. That’s what it was like.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t daring you, Josh,” I said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I’m imagining he wouldn’t think he needed to.” He looked at me, but didn’t say anything. I cleared my throat. “Are you feeling better about things? Did you sit down and talk to Meryl?”
Josh moved the lit candle toward him, starting to run his fingers along the edges—in and out of the heat. “She went back to the city before I could.”
He said it so softly, I thought, at first, I misunderstood. But inside, I knew I hadn’t.
I felt something rising up in me, tried to push it down. It was a hectic night. I could try to understand that. Josh could still talk to her in the morning. But it did feel important to me that he talk to her, one way or the other. Only, I needed to ask myself: why did I want him to talk to her so badly? Was is it just because I thought he needed to be honest about everything? Or was it something else too? After today, wasn’t at least part of me rooting for Elizabeth? And for Grace? For the Josh I’d seen around them?
“I ran into Matt tonight,” I said.
