I open the trunk and fish in her bag for a pair of jeans and a black tank top. She throws off her shoes to get into the jeans, pulls them on, and bends forward to pick up the shoes, which she curve-balls into the field. Okay, I’m going to let it slide and not give her a lecture about littering. Instead, I go back to the trunk and pass her a pair of flats.
She gets out of the field and into the car, I mount shotgun, and we speed away. The sole memento of our passage in this deserted land will be the cadaver of a white satin dress resting in peace at the side of the road.
As we reach more trafficked streets, Amelia makes one sure turn after another. She seems to have a clear idea of where we’re going.
“Ames?” I say uncertainly. “Where are we going?”
“How many days do you have off?”
“A week, stretchable.”
“Good.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“The airport.”
Five
Wedding Inquisition
♥♥♥
Saturday, June 10—Napa Valley
“Gemma?” Jake repeats. “Is it you?”
Finally, bouncer guy drops me to the ground. I shake him off with some indignation and walk back toward the center of the room.
“Jake,” is all I’m able to say.
On the other hand, the bride doesn’t seem to suffer from muteness.
“Jake, who is this woman? Security, can you take her away, please?”
Jake appears shell-shocked.
“Is this Gemma, as in your ex-girlfriend?” the bride asks. “What’s she doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Jake says.
“Tell her to go away. I don’t want her here.”
I find my voice again. “Jake, I need to talk to you.”
Jake stares from me to his wife-to-be and back, still at a loss for words.
“Well, we don’t want to hear what you have to say. So you can go,” the bride says.
I look pointedly at the minister. “I have a right to speak; everyone can speak. I want to speak now.”
“Well, technically, she does have a right to speak,” the minister says.
“Oh, please!” The bride’s voice jumps up a few octaves as she turns toward the minister to argue. “You’re the one who told me the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ was an archaic form with no real value, and that it wasn’t necessary anymore.”
“But you insisted on keeping it, so now she has a right to speak. It’s the protocol.”
The bride turns around and gives me the stare of death. I ignore her and turn toward Jake.
“Jake.” I inhale deeply. “When I discovered you were getting married, my world collapsed. I bought a ticket for San Francisco the same night, telling myself I was never going to use it, that coming here was a stupid idea, that I’d say the wrong thing and humiliate myself. Then today came, I was at the airport with the ticket in my hands, and I couldn’t stay away.
“I couldn’t live with myself another day if I didn’t do this. I wish I had perfect and beautiful words to say to you, but the truth is I don’t. I wrote eighteen speech drafts coming here and now none of them seems to make any sense. All I can think about are the things I should’ve said three years ago, and I didn’t say because I was too stubborn, too proud to admit my mistakes. Too proud to pick up the phone when you were calling. Too proud to reply to your emails. Too proud to admit I was wrong and you were right.
“Well, I’m not anymore. I made so many mistakes, and coming here today’s probably going to be the biggest one yet. But the one thing I’m sure wasn’t a mistake in my life was—is loving you. Because that’s what I came to say, I love you… and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you, I’m sorry for all the wrong choices I made, and I’m sorry for choosing the worst possible day to tell you all this. But I’m not sorry I love you. Knowing I was about to lose you forever made me realize that in the past three years, I’ve lived my life without being really alive. Because you’re what makes me feel alive. You always have been. And I don’t care if my life’s here, in London, or wherever else, because now I understand that you are my life, Jake. Not a job, not a place.
“I’ve tried not to love you—believe me, I’ve tried. But I just can’t. I don’t care if this is lame or embarrassing. I don’t care about anything other than you… I thought you should know… what I’m trying to say is just that I love you, I’m in love with you, and I want to be with you.”
I finish my speech, and the entire room stays wrapped in an eerie silence. Everything seems frozen in time. The guests look like petrified statues, and Jake’s face is inscrutable. I keep looking into his gray eyes, trying to decipher what’s going on inside his head. I get lost in his gaze of misty winds, ice, and snowstorms.
That’s until the bride breaks the spell. “Well, you’ve said your piece. Now you can go. Jake, tell her to go.”
Jake tears his eyes away from me and stares at the bride.
“Jake,” she repeats, her voice shaky, “tell her to go.”
Jake has his back turned; I can’t see his face as he’s dropped his head to stare at the floor. When he looks back up at the bride, her face scrunches up in a grimace.
“I can’t,” Jake says heavily. “I’m sorry.”
“You bastard,” the bride yells, raising her bouquet above her head. I think she’s about to go Carrie-Bradshaw-after-Mr.-Big-leaves-her-at-the-altar crazy and hit Jake on the head with the bouquet, but she must have a change of heart midway because she hurls the bouquet at me instead, screaming, “You bitch!”, and runs out of the room.
Instinctively, I duck. The bouquet soars above my head, hitting Jake’s mom straight in the face. Why did I duck? I should’ve taken one for the team. This isn’t going to gain me any I’m-a-better-daughter-in-law points. Stupid reflexes!
I see Jake murmur something to his younger brother, Edward, who walks toward my side of the room.
“Are you okay, Mom?” he asks Mrs. Wilder.
“Yes, yes.”
He kisses her on the cheek, exchanges muffled words with bouncer guy, and turns toward me. “You. With me,” he says curtly.
I contemplate protesting, but I need someone in the family on my side. I throw one last glance at Jake, who’s whispering furiously with the minister and doesn’t turn around. So I follow his brother out of the room.
“Where are we going?” I ask Edward as he turns into a narrow corridor and down a flight of steep stone steps.
“Somewhere more private.”
Oh my goodness. He’s taking me to the castle dungeons. What next? Is the wedding inquisition coming to interrogate me? Are they going to send bouncer guy?
Edward leads me through a labyrinth of corridors and finally lets me into a small room with walls made of thick stone, no windows, and two doors. The room’s furnished with two chairs and an old-fashioned table.
“Wait here,” Edward says.
“For whom? How long?”
“Jake, and I’m not sure.”
“Please don’t leave me here alone.”
“You’re going to be fine; I have things to sort upstairs.” He walks through the door, then pauses and pops his head back into the room. “Ah, Gemma?”
“Yeah?”
“That was bad ass.” He winks at me and walks away, closing the door behind him.
I pace around the small cell, but there’s not really much I can do besides sitting in one of the chairs. I check my phone—no signal here. Not that I need to call anyone. What’s going on upstairs? What’s happening? Is the wedding off? It looked that way, but who knows?
Suddenly the door bursts open and Jake storms into the room. With a few flicks of his fingers, he removes his bow tie and sets his gray eyes on me. They’re ignited with… umm… emotions. Love? Hate? Anger? Passion? I’m not sure. I can’t read his features.
Even with the tortured face, he’s impossibly handsome. My
eyes flicker over the bow tie hanging loosely around his neck and the open shirt exposing his Adam’s apple—too sexy. I move my gaze up to his shaven strong jaw and back to his icy gray eyes, intimate and foreign at the same time. Three years have chiseled his face, making it even more gorgeous. Not fair. No one should look this good.
I make to get up on wobbly knees and go toward him, but he stops me with a raised finger. “Down,” he orders, moving the same finger downwards to indicate what I should do.
He starts pacing around the room. He stops, looks at me, and speaks.
“You…” He shakes his head and starts pacing again.
After a few seconds, it’s a repeat.
Stops. Looks. Speaks.
“Of all days… today!” Shakes head. Starts pacing.
It’s like a dance.
Stops. Looks. Speaks.
“Years, Gemma… years!” Shakes head. Starts pacing.
Stops. Looks. Speaks.
“Not a word…” Shakes head. Starts pacing.
Stops. Looks. Speaks.
“You’re crazy.”
He’s finally standing still. Umm. I’m tempted to ask if he thinks I’m crazy in a you’re-so-cute-because-you’re-crazy-romantic way or if it’s more of an I-want-them-to-shut-you-in-an-asylum-and-throw-away-the-keys crazy. I make to stand up and join him, but he shows me his index again.
“Down.”
“Can’t we talk if I stand?”
“No Gemma, we can’t. Right now, I need you there at a safe distance. I’m still too mad at you to have you in my air.”
“Okay, I’m going to sit down.” I feel like Chris Pratt talking to Blue in Jurassic World. I’m not sure if Jake is going to tear me to pieces or join #teamgemma. “But please say something.”
“Three years, Gemma. Three. Years.” He finally seems able to streamline his thoughts in a more articulate way. “Not a word from you in three years, and you choose my wedding day to have a chat?”
“I’m sorry, Jake; I know my timing’s bad…”
“Bad timing, she says. Ah! Your timing isn’t bad, it’s awful. Why did you wait until I was at the altar?”
“Well, my plan was to catch you before the ceremony started,” I explain. “Then there was this rude lady at the airport who wouldn’t rent me a car because my driving license was expired, but she maxed out my credit card with the stupid deposit anyway so I didn’t have any money left for a cab. I took like five different trains and busses to get to Yountville, and from there the only way I could get here was on the back of a tractor filled with hay. Then bouncer guy wouldn’t let me in, so I had to cook up a distraction. I sacrificed my bag, I threw it down the moat, and I ran past security. By the time I was inside, it was too late. The ceremony had already started, so it was sort of a now-or-never moment.”
“You came here riding on a hay tractor?” He’s trying to keep a straight face, but I can see the corners of his mouth twitch. And for the first time since I got here, hope rises in my chest.
“I did.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I am a bit.”
“And I’m crazy.”
“Are you?” I ask.
He’s looking at me with such intensity, I might pass out. I want to throw myself at him and hug him, kiss him. But I’m afraid I’m going to get the sit-down finger again, so I stick to my chair.
“This morning,” Jake says, still looking at me with a fire burning in his eyes, “all I could think about was you. The first thought that popped into my head when I woke up wasn’t I’m getting married today, it was today I’m saying goodbye to Gemma forever. I was about to throw everything to hell. But you’d refused to speak to me for three years. You didn’t return any of my calls or messages—not one. And I’ve tried, Gemma, you know I’ve tried.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“So I told myself that I didn’t know anything about your life today, that you were probably already married to someone else or something, and that I had to move on with my life and leave you in the past. But the moment I saw you, I knew I wasn’t getting married today. The truth is, you had me at Jake…”
“I did?”
“You did. And so, yeah, I am crazy… about you. Damn me, I’m still in love with you.”
I stare at him. “You mean you’re not getting married anymore?”
“No.”
A huge smile takes over my face.
“Up,” he says, and I get a thumb going upward this time. “Come here,” he whispers.
I get so close to him our noses almost touch.
“I missed you,” he says, cupping my head in his hands and burying his nose into my hair. Well, he’s not going to get a red berry rush, but I hope he won’t be too disgusted. “You smell so good; I’ve missed your smell.” Yeah, he’s definitely touched in the head or crazy in love with me, because no one in his right mind would think I smelled good right now.
“Gemma?” He nuzzles my neck.
“Umm?”
“Are you having a whole conversation inside your head? You know I can’t hear you.”
“Yeah. I mean, no. I missed you too.”
I pull away from him to look him in the eyes, but he holds me close. He slides one arm around my lower back, squeezing me against the solid wall of his chest, and I melt in the warmth of his embrace. I snuggle closer to him, afraid of letting go. He strokes my hair and the side of my face until his hand slips under my chin, lifting my face up toward his. Time holds still as we lock eyes then it seems to fast forward as he presses his lips onto mine in a kiss we’ve both waited three years to share. It feels simultaneously as if no time and an eternity have passed since our last kiss. It’s all so familiar, and yet so new. This is Jake. He still loves me and we’re kissing.
After five minutes or an hour, I can’t tell, Jake pulls back and buries his head into my neck. “So what now? What was your grand plan after you stole the groom?”
“I didn’t plan ahead,” I confess. “I’m not very equipped, to be honest. I don’t have a car, money, or any clothes. They’re all scattered down the moat, and bouncer guy’s probably feeding them to the pigs.”
Jake roars with laughter. “I forgot how crazy life could get with you. How about I take you to dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“Yeah, you have to eat, right? We can start simple and figure out the rest as we go.”
He’s more right than he knows—the last thing I ate were the tortilla chips at the airport. I could never stomach airplane meals. I’m surprised I haven’t passed out yet.
“Still talking in your head?” Jake asks.
“Yes. No. I mean, I’d love to go to dinner with you.”
He takes my hand and guides me outside the castle into a new life.
Six
Honeymoon
♦♦♦
Saturday, June 10—Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
I pick up the bottle of complimentary champagne from the floor and take a swig. I’m with Amelia in her honeymoon suite in Mexico, and we’ve been sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed drinking champagne since we got here.
“He’s married,” I say, staring into space. “Jake’s married. I can’t believe it.”
“I’m not married.” Amelia takes the bottle from me and gulps down the bubbly as if it were water. “Gosh, I’m such a cliché,” she adds when she’s done drinking. “How pathetic, going on my honeymoon with my best friend after I was dumped at the altar.”
“Ah, well. Technically, you left him at the altar. And at least, in this case, your best friend’s just as heartbroken as you are.”
“Were you really going to bust Jake’s wedding?”
“Yeah, I would have. You know, if I hadn’t met…”
“My ex-fiancé’s mistress.” Amelia finishes the phrase for me.
“Yeah, her. You really had no clue something was up with William? Not an inkling?”
“To b
e honest, this past year I’ve been so busy planning the wedding I wouldn’t have noticed a pink elephant sitting in my living room, bellowing. You know what the worst part is?”
“You’ll have to change your Facebook relationship status to ‘it’s complicated’?”
“No.” She chortles. “To tell the truth, I’m more disappointed my perfect wedding got ruined. I’m more depressed I’m no longer a bride. It’s more saddening than not being William’s wife. I keep thinking no one will see the butterflies released.”
“Butterflies?”
“Yeah. I had this cute mint-colored birdcage filled with all-colored butterflies, and they were supposed to open the cage when we cut the cake and all the butterflies would’ve soared in the air above us and it would’ve been beautiful.”
“It would have,” I say pensively. “But a wedding isn’t really about the butterflies. Not unless they’re in your stomach.”
“No. I guess not.”
“Are you in love with William?”
“I don’t know how to answer. I’ve always taken my being in love with William as a given. I haven’t asked myself that question in a very long time, and now I’m too angry and too drunk to give you a reliable answer. How about you? Are you sure you’re still in love with Jake?”
“Want to know what the worst part is for me?”
“You got a Brazilian wax and no one’s going to see it?”
“No.” I smile despite myself. “That I can answer your question in the blink of an eye with no need to think. I’m in love with Jake. I always have been.”
“Oh, Gemma, I’m so sorry. You should’ve gone to San Francisco to stop him.”
“And what, send you a text? Hi, Ames, I just met your soon-to-be-husband’s mistress. Please don’t marry him. Talk to you soon. Love, Gemma?”
“You could’ve called.”
“Amelia, I love you, but you’re getting annoying. I could never have told you over the phone William was having an affair. You would’ve done the same for me, so cut the crap. Plus, I’m not even sure what Jake would’ve said.”
“You think he would’ve stopped the wedding?”
Love Connection (A Feel Good Romantic Comedy) Page 4
