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“When will I see you next?” she asks.
“Tomorrow is the buck’s and hen’s parties and then I’m offsite for a work thing...so it’ll be the day after that.”
Wedding day.
We’ll be dressed up, standing on opposite sides of Mike and Presley while they take their vows. Then she’ll be gone. The knowledge wrenches in my chest. This would be the chance for her to tell me she’s planning on leaving, to tell me she has a flight booked. To say,Hey, let’s talk about this,but Drew is silent.
It’s for the best.
The robe swirls like a black cloud around her as she heads back into the bathroom, giving me the signal that I can see myself out. I don’t want this magic thing between us to be over, but I have a feeling I’m witnessing the beginning of the end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Drew
THEWEDDINGIShere far quicker than I want it to be. I’ve been a sad sack the past few days, miserable about the weird tension between Flynn and me. Hurt by the way he so clearly didn’t want me to meet his niece.
Hurt also by the fact that my texts and calls have gone mostly unanswered, except for one that said,We’ll talk in person. I don’t do text chat.
Typical Mr. Stick Up His Butt. The guy has a rule for everything. MaybeIshould be setting rules and restrictions of my own, rather than jumping through his hoops.
I’d had a whole night of fun planned out for after the rehearsal dinner, including that sexy black outfit. I’d put a container of goodies together—whipped cream and strawberries and chocolate sauce—and I’d planned to seduce him in the kitchen first before we moved the party to his place for the rest of the night.
I ended up sitting on the couch in my sloppy track pants, eating the cream straight from the tub while wonderingjusthow much of a cliché I was: broken-hearted girl consumes the weight of her emotions in sugar and fat.
“Drew?” Presley waves me over. “Can you help me? I think one of the buttons is in the wrong hole at the back. Mum wanted to do it, but you know what her eyesight is like.”
We’re in a waiting room at the wedding venue—a beautiful old Victorian house settled among trees and surrounded by a stunning garden of white and yellow roses. The ceremony will take place in a courtyard decked with white pews and a trellis arch adorned with small white flowers. It’s not long to go now. From the sound of it outside, the men have arrived and Flynn’s laugh is a lance right through my heart.
Presley catches my eyes in the mirror, frowning. She senses my turmoil but I busy myself undoing my mother’s poor handiwork and fixing the line of buttons that run from Presley’s middle-back all the way to her butt. Each one is small and fiddly, like a little satin-covered pebble.
The dress is incredible—simple and yet eye-catching. Strapless with a fitted bodice and nipped-in waist and a sleek skirt with a touch of lace that manages to avoid “cake topper” territory all together.
“What’s going on, Drew?” She turns around when I’m done and touches my arm.
I catch a glance of myself in the mirror and I don’t look like me. Between my uber-girlie bridesmaid dress and the softly curled hairstyle and the pretty, minimal makeup... I look like a carbon copy of my sister.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.” There’s a lump at the back of my throat. “I don’t know if I ever knew who I was.”
“Don’t say that.” Presley pulls me in for a hug. “Of course you know who you are. You’re a fearless traveller and an incredible costume-maker and you’re independent and outgoing and you make friends wherever you go. People love you.”
“They don’t know me.”
It’s because I do the same thing every damn time—I hold people at a distance. I put a fence around myself in relationships to avoid the pain of being let down, of finding out I’m never going to be someone’s number one.
“I feel like I’m floating through life without any idea where I’m going.” I feel tears rush to my eyes but I blink them back. I willnotruin a hundred-dollar makeup job. “I don’t trust myself to make decisions about people anymore.”
Presley sighs and pulls back. She smells like my mother today—like roses and violet candies—because a bottle of YSL Paris that my mother only wears on the most special of occasions was her “something borrowed.”
“Can I tell you something?” she says, walking over to one of the big windows overlooking a strip of garden toward the front of the property. It’s open, letting in a cool, flower-scented spring breeze and the sound of birds chirping. “I don’t trust myself with that, either.”
“Really?” I almost can’t believe it.
“After the last...debacle, I thought I’d never try to get married ever again. I couldn’t believe I got itsowrong that I could hurt someone the way I did, by walking out at the last minute. Mike proposed three times before I said yes.”
“I had no idea.” I shake my head. “We have the opposite problem—you’re getting too many proposals and I’m not ‘marriage material.’”
“There’s no such thing as marriage material, Drew. Because no one is qualified to get married. No one is automatically going to be a good husband or wife based on some arbitrary personality traits. I know you’ve been hurt badly, but one man’s refusal to commit isnota reflection on who you are. That’s on him and only on him.”
