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“I do.” I sit across from her, tired but wired from the events of last night.
After Stone left, I washed up for bed, only sleep never came. It eluded me as I chased it for hours. My mind wanted nothing more than to replay the night in real time, re-living and relishing every detail.
“You chose wrong. I’m telling you. And this is your second chance. This is the universe giving you a do-over.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Stone always seemed annoyed when I was around. I think he only tolerated me because I was his best friend’s girl.”
“You know that old cliché where a boy pulls a girl’s ponytail in the schoolyard, but it’s really because he likes her?”
“Nah. I think I’d know. He was always so cold to me.”
Monica throws her hands up. “I still think it was a cover up. He was trying to overcompensate for how he really felt. Or maybe he was trying to deny how he felt. Either way, nobody’s cold to people for no reason at all. Everyone’s got their reasons.”
While Stone seems to have thawed a bit since college, almost everyone gets a little better with age.
But still, I can’t help but wonder if Monica’s onto something.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Stone
* * *
“Check these out.” Stassi’s brother, Sutton, lifts a shiny golf club from his bag. “Just got new grips on these last week.”
Stassi’s father and Jude look on, impressed, but they just look like ordinary rubber grips to me.
“Custom,” he adds. “Fitted to my exact finger size and everything.”
“Where’d you go for that?” their father asks, his Rolex twinkling in the morning sun. A few minutes ago, I watched him climb out of his chromed-out Escalade and snap at the valet to help him hoist his clubs out of the trunk. He then slipped him a crisp bill of some undetermined amount and went inside only to emerge with a cocktail. Never mind the time of day.
Sutton pulled up behind him in his Porsche Cayenne, copying his father move for move.
Meanwhile, Jude and I parked in the general lot and carried our clubs to the clubhouse ourselves.
I hope for Jude’s sake he never becomes one of them—the kind to walk around like the rules don’t apply to them. Not that it would bother me any, it’s just that the world already has plenty of people like that. They don’t need one more.
Every once in a while, I’ll catch glimpses of a version of Jude I don’t recognize. Like he’s assimilating into the Guinness family lifestyle. It was bound to happen sooner or later—and Jude was worried early on about them liking him, especially since he hailed from a blue collar background.
He was concerned he wouldn’t be deemed good enough for their princess.
It turns out, though, that whatever the princess wants, the princess gets. If the man she wants isn’t highbrow enough, the Guinesses will make him highbrow enough.
I think about what Stassi said the other day, about how once they start a family, Jude won’t have time to hang out anymore. I’ve seen it happen with colleagues over the years and other friends who went straight from college into the married-with-kids life. And I get it, you have to put your family first. It’s just how it goes. It just hurts watching my best friend fade into the man they want him to become … essentially a stranger.
Jude tees off at the first hole, followed by his future father-in-law. Sutton and I wait in the golf cart we’re sharing.
He fusses with the radio, tuning it to some classical station, and then he turns to me. “So, uh, are you cool with the line-up change with the wedding?”
I wrinkle my nose. “What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t he tell you?” Sutton asks. “He was going to swap you and I … it’s just that Stassi thought since I was actual blood family, that I should be the best man.”
My stomach knots, caving in as if I’ve just been sucker-punched.
First of all, that’s the most ridiculous notion I’ve ever heard.
And second of all, why the hell didn’t Jude tell me himself?
“At least you don’t have to come up with a speech anymore.” Sutton slaps my back. “Takes some of the pressure off. I know Jude said you were stressing about it a bit.”
I was only stressing because I was struggling to find the words to describe Jude and Stassi’s relationship in a way that didn’t reek of superficiality. All I could think about was that night at the club in Tulum, and how she was a virtual siren, calling him away from everything he thought he wanted back home.
“You’re next, Stone.” Jude says from his cart as he places his club back into his bag.
I grab my club and a ball and head to tee off, contemplating how long it’s been since they made the change and when Jude was going to tell me.
