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I chuckle. “That’s it?”
“Well, I don’t want to ask you details that may still be uncomfortable for you to say out loud. But if you want to say them, I’m-I’m here.”
I don’t think I have ever heard words more sincere and comforting than that, paired with his bright, distant eyes.
So, I give in. “Two weeks before our wedding, I found out he had been cheating on me and that he was cheating on me with a woman who makes himhappier.But he didn’t know how to break off the engagement.”
I manage to let out a laugh instead of a wail. “That’s the part that’s most confusing to me, I guess. How could he go on marrying me knowing that I’m not his happiness anymore? Was he planning to leave me at the altar? Get a divorce soon after we get married? I-I never knew the answer to that. But if I didn’t find out myself, he would’ve married me a week from now.”
“Then why are you sad?” Carter asks me—no, challenges me.
I turn to read his expression. But I’m a little too drunk for that. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he repeats what he said, “Why are you sad? You found out he’s cheating on you before marrying him. That’s the best-case scenario, isn’t it? Being left at the altar is more humiliating, and getting a divorce is expensive. But you found out about it two weeks before the wedding. Sure, it sucks, but it’s the best-case scenario. You dodged a bullet there, Estelle.”
And Carter is right.
I dodged a bullet—it may have grazed me, but I didn’t lose a limb.
Larson may have broken my heart, but he didn’t get to break my spirit. I can still come back up from it. From all of it.
In fact, I have nothing to be ashamed of. I loved Larson with all my heart, while he loved me with half of his. I was willing to give him a hundred percent while he gave me fifty.
I got away.
I’m the one that got away.
I think this is the first I have seen myself in this light—the survivor, not the victim.
“Thank you,” I utter to Carter as I glance at him. “I didn’t realize that’s what I needed to hear.”
He mirrors my grateful expression. “Glad to be of service. I honestly think you’re a wonderful woman, Estelle. It’s so hard not to like you.”
Did he just confess that to me?
As I stare at his shadowed outline, an echo of an answer resonates from a farther void, I feel a different tug pull from my chest—like the fictional red string people always talk about.
Something connecting you to your soulmate, they say.
Acting with that feeling—or my tequila-fuelled brain—I lean sideways toward Carter, touch him by the cheek, and kiss him on the lips.
At first, I feel his shoulders tighten, but then, he kisses me back, moving his mouth at the same pace and desperation.
And just as I feel myself getting lost in the moment of mindless ecstasy, Carter pulls away with urgency. “I’m sorry, Estelle.”
I’m taken aback. I thought Carter liked me. Did I misread the signs?
I play it cool. “What?”
He stands up, dusting off his pants. “You’ve had a little too much to drink. We shouldn’t… we shouldn’t dothis.”
I look up at him in confusion. “What do you mean ‘this?’ You mean kissing? But we’ve already done more than that.”
“No, we haven’t,” Carter replies with certainty.
“Yeah, we did,” I argue. “The first night we were together? Back at your apartment—”
“Nothing happened then.”
