I’m not sure how long it took me to figure it out, but looking back now, it was obvious: we’d left because we didn’t belong there.
And now here I was where I didn’t belong.
I texted Tori, but she didn’t respond. So I dug my sketchbook out of my bag and grabbed a pen. I guess other people write journal entries when they’re upset. I doodle. And an hour later, after I had rendered Forrest Ritter as a grotesque cartoon octopus with a lolling tongue and grabby tentacles, I felt a lot better. Good enough to draw a little sketch of Michael in his pj’s so I could practice more realistic portraiture—“mimetic,” my art teacher calls it—and so I could see him again before morning.
5 The Pancakes of Penance
I must have drifted off at some point that night, my sketch pad beside me, because before the sun came up there was a knock on the door and I heard Michael whisper, “George? Are you up? May I come in?”
In that instant, all I could think about was how ratty my hair probably looked and how rancid my breath smelled, but he opened the door before I could warn him. He caught my sketchpad when I accidentally kicked it off the bed in an effort to cover my legs and underpants, though he’d seen both before.
“Let me guess—your rendering of Forrest Ritter?” He laughed as he flipped through the pages and landed on the octopus man I’d drawn last night. His laughter stopped suddenly when he’d flipped past a few pages; he looked up in surprise and delight, asking, “And … is this me?”
“Who else wears bear shirt jammies?” I groused, thoroughly embarrassed.
He climbed onto the bed and lay down next to me to admire my portrait of him.
“I’m working on realistic portraiture,” I explained. “Trying to move beyond mean cartoons. I’m taking extra art classes this fall since I’ve gotten all of my math credits done.”
“You’re not joining me in calculus? Who will I cheat off of?” he teased, because (1) he has the highest grade point average in most classes so he doesn’t need to cheat off of anyone and (2) cheating off of me in math would be a guarantee of failure. He put the sketchpad on the white wicker nightstand and looked at me. “You have to like me kind of a lot if you’re drawing my portrait.”
“I do. I’m just … out of my depth here.”
He rested his head on my shoulder so I couldn’t see anymore how his hair was sticking out in lots of directions, some of his curls matted and some having gone haywire overnight. I figured such disarray meant that he hadn’t been to the bathroom yet and had come to see me first thing upon waking up. I wondered if he had even waited for the first glint of daylight to knock on my door and this thought made my heart stop for half a second.
“If you want to go back to Longbourne … ” he began.
“I want to be with you,” I declared as I rested my head against his. “I’m just not too good at all of this.”
He put his arms around me and said with his mouth against my shoulder, “After the wedding today it will all be over. Then it’s just us.”
“That sounds good,” I said, and when we kissed I forgot my concern about the freshness of my breath. I just thought about how good it felt to be held by him and how demented I would have to be to lose him.
After a few minutes, he brushed some hair out of my eyes and looked at me intently, saying, “These people who make you so nervous—they’re my family, and they’re part of me, of who I am … ”
“I know. Remember how long it took me to figure out how lovable you are?”
He rolled his eyes and lamented, “And that should have been so obvious!” as he pulled me tighter to his chest.
We kissed as the sun came up and the little birds in the trees sang their songs to us. Then we knew the day had to start whether I wanted it to or not and Michael decided to go for a run before breakfast.
“I’ll make breakfast,” I declared as he reluctantly slid off the bed and shook out his limbs. “As a thank you-slash-hostess gift to your mom and dad. I’ll make pancakes?”
“Ah, the pancakes of penance.” He laughed, then added quickly, “not that you have anything to atone for with them.”
“Do you think your mom will mind if I use the blueberries she bought on the way here?”
Michael grinned loftily as he turned from the door and said, “She’ll be thrilled. Just double the batch because my dad will eat about ten of them.”
“Seriously? How do you Endicott boys stay so skinny?”
He grinned as he turned to the doorway. “Haven’t you gotten the picture yet, Georgie? It’s superior genetics. Ow.” He ducked to evade the pillow I threw at him. “I’ll see you after my run.”
He returned half an hour later, glistening and red in the face, just as I was delivering a second stack of pancakes to his father’s plate. Dr. Endicott had greeted me that morning with a hug and the promise that I would not see Forrest Ritter at the ceremony or reception as his invitation had been revoked. I’m not sure how Dr. Endicott had accomplished that and I didn’t really want to know. My goal was to simply survive the day without humiliating anyone, least of all myself.
After breakfast, I took a long bath and fretted for a long time over the possibility of doing anything with my hair besides leaving it in its usual artlessly layered state. I considered calling my sister Tori or even Cassie for advice but just gave up. Maybe I’d get lucky and fall off another porch, breaking a limb and getting a pass on the whole event. But when I came downstairs and saw Michael looking truly dapper, I thought it might actually be worth braving his family all day just to see him looking so handsome. He wore a light-colored suit over a dark rose shirt and a green and dark pink striped bow tie—and I swear to you it did not look at all dorky. Still, I must have smirked when I saw it because he said, “Go ahead and laugh, but trust me—most of the men will have on bow ties.”
“And not just those that want to look like Orville Redenbacher, the guy on the popcorn jar?” I teased as his mom ruffled his hair and said to me, “It’s a preppie thing. You’ll see.”
And they were right—most of the guys did have on bow ties.
I’d been so worried that throughout the whole ceremony everyone would stare at me, slapper of intellectual icons, but it turns out that at a wedding, all the attention goes to the bride. But even if they had stared, it might have been worth it when Michael held my hand as we settled into the pew and whispered, “You look really pretty.” A happy bubble swelled up in my heart and he kept his hand wrapped around mine for most of the ceremony and the warmth and strength of his fingers made me relax, little by little. The ceremony was mercifully short, and I managed to stand up and sit down at all the right times by following everyone else’s lead. Afterward, we threw birdseed at Rose and Sterling as they made their way to the limo and then Michael and I followed his parents to their car and drove to the local country club, where the hall looked like a castle made out of rough rock dug out of the beach. He and I walked into the little village and down the main street, looking in the windows of bookstores and the Vineyard Vines store and a bike repair shop just to kill time before the reception officially started. People in beach gear looked at us in our party finery, and I thought one woman, who wore an enormous Yankees shirt over a bathing suit that revealed too much of her butt, was going to snap a picture of us.
“Did she think we’re some kind of human tourist attraction?” Michael laughed as we walked back to the country club.
“Maybe she thought you were a Kennedy.”
“Maybe she knows you are the famous slayer of pervy literary giants.”
I stopped walking at the sound of that, but he was smiling, and he took both of my hands, brushed his forehead against mine, and mock cooed, “My little feminist avenger.”
“Little?” I squawked and he cut off my laugh with a kiss that reminded me how absolutely incredible it is when his lips touched mine. Suddenly I couldn’t wait for the reception to be over.
In the banquet hall, we shared a table with his cousins and, unfortuna
tely, Catalina as well. Her parents were also in attendance, but I guess she was seated with us as the not-quite-children’s table. She looked really striking in an emerald-colored sheath and she spent most of the first course telling Michael about all the people they knew that I didn’t and practically cheered when the lobster was served. I ate both my salad and Michael’s because the restaurant had forgotten the request for a vegan meal. Michael wanted me to say something about it, assuring me that his aunt would be more upset about not getting something she had ordered than she would be with me for drawing it to her attention, but I wasn’t going to chance it. I talked for a long time with one cousin who had been to Burkina Faso with the Peace Corps and then an older distant cousin of Michael’s who made me laugh so hard a few times I feared the wine would fly out of my nostrils. He was an actual writer for one of the late night shows and knew everybody in Hollywood, but he just acted like a regular guy. When he saw me chatting away as if I had never had an angsty social moment in my life, Michael winked at me.
While a string quartet played during dinner, an electrified band provided more danceable stuff afterward so Michael’s aunt Viv and uncle Reg coaxed all the young people out onto the floor. I am a hideous dancer—at least I assume so because I don’t think I could bear to watch myself do it—but Michael is surprisingly good for someone who is often a little stiff. Catalina danced right beside us the whole time and she had what I imagine were actual club moves, these shimmies and turns that were like a less risqué Beyoncé video. I felt so hopeless beside her I decided to just amp up my ridiculousness by doing a bad version of the twist with two of Michael’s six-year-old cousins, who thought it was hilarious and really threw themselves into it. We were practically drilling ourselves into the floor we got so low, and Michael laughed and joined in as his grandmother shook her white head and scowled at me.
When the music slowed down, he took my hand and Catalina pouted a little before accepting an Endicott cousin as her partner.
“How am I doing?” I whispered as we started to sway in rhythm with each other.
“I’d say you are behaving exceptionally well tonight,” he said.
“I meant how am I doing as a dancer. But I am glad you noticed that I managed to avoid insulting or coldcocking anyone so far. And I really like your cousin Peter. And Danny. Oh, and Margo.”
“So you’re finding at least some of my extended family to be perfectly human—even likable, after all?”
I nodded against his shoulder.
He chuckled and rested his chin on the top of my head. “Remember our first dance?” he asked.
“When you tried to warn me about Jeremy Wrentham. Your grandmother was glaring at me just as hard then.”
He laughed a little, and I could feel it rumble up through his chest against mine. It felt good. It felt lovely to just sway there together under all the little twinkle lights and the candles. With the lights and all the white flowers, the room seemed to be glowing.
“She still hasn’t forgiven my dad for marrying my mom,” he said.
“Is that what your mom meant last night when she said that thing about the rich being different from you and me? From her and me, she meant?”
“Yep. My mom is woefully middle class by birth.”
“But she’s an artist. Doesn’t that count as being cultured, at least? And she’s the most elegant person I know.”
“I agree,” he said.
“Your grandmother approves of Rose’s wedding, though, and Sterling. He’s from ‘good people’?”
Michael laughed again. “His name is Sterling Bancroft Whittaker the Fourth and he works for JP Morgan Chase, so yeah, I think he passes. But just barely.”
I looked up at him and he was looking down at me and he touched his lips to mine and held them there for a moment. I felt an electric shock run up my sternum, but I demurred. “I don’t think we should have any PDA on the dance floor, not after last night. I don’t want a crowd gathering around us worried that I’m going to deck you, too.”
“I’d like it if you were a little more shameless with me.” He laughed.
I tossed my head and said as lightly as I could, “Your tongue and I have already been formally introduced, if you recall,” and that produced a kind of growl from deep in his throat that made me shiver.
“Let’s go,” he whispered into my neck. My breath caught somewhere between my lungs and the top of my throat. “Let’s go now.”
I nodded, startled by his urgency, and as the song ended, he smiled and announced to anyone who happened to be listening, “I could use some fresh air,” and soon we were outside walking down a path toward the town beach. He stopped at the crooked, rickety fence made of wire and skinny little gray wooden posts that separated the sand from the scrubby grass and the parking lot. I looked out at the day’s last beachgoers in the twilight, families and older people and a couple of teenagers in board shorts and T-shirts, and asked with mock alarm, “Mr. Endicott, what do you take me for? What do you plan to do with me at a public beach?”
“I have a few ideas,” he purred and kissed me so hard I had to steady myself but I didn’t want it to stop. It felt so good to feel his body so close to mine and to know and feel how much he wanted me, still, after all the things that had happened.
“I just want to be alone with you,” he urged in a newly husky voice. “Somewhere. Is that okay? I mean, after last night, with Forrest, you don’t feel … I don’t know … ”
Three kids zoomed by on bikes so fast that their wind blew my skirt a little.
“This isn’t the place,” I whispered.
“But don’t you? Want to be alone with me, I mean?” he asked and his eyes looked at once determined and pleading.
“Yes,” I assured him, because I did, more than anything I have ever or will ever want in the world.
“Maybe on our beach, tonight?” he sighed into my hair.
“Definitely,” I promised.
We went back to the reception and danced some more. I didn’t even object when Catalina cut in on us.
When we got back to the bungalow after the reception, however, it was pretty clear that all of his cousins and other guests were going to continue celebrating on the beach well into the night. And Catalina seemed to have nominated herself as chairwoman of the party committee.
“Come join us,” Catalina pleaded, pulling Michael’s arm as he stood resolutely on the porch of his parents’ beach house. She even added, “You, too, Georgia. Please.” Before I could object, Megan and Charlie both grabbed my hands and soon Michael and I were pulled down to the beach by the force of the family’s goodwill. Someone had lit a small bonfire and his cousin Jack was playing the guitar and there was champagne and glasses and lots of laughing. Megan and Catalina felt the need to describe what we’d missed at the rest of the reception when we’d ducked out and exactly how beautiful Rose’s dress had looked as she took off on her honeymoon to Capri. As they argued for about ten minutes over whether Rose had worn a Monique Lhuillier or custom-made Vera Wang gown, I looked over at Michael. He took a seat on some driftwood and we both settled in for a different kind of fun than we’d anticipated.
After an hour or so, we gave up hoping that everyone would get tired and leave the beach to us. We went inside the house instead and snuggled up on the denim-covered couch, half-watching an old episode of The Big Bang Theory and listening to the celebration that was going to outlast us. Later, we went upstairs, brushed our teeth together, and made big frothy smiles at each other in the mirror. He put his arms around my waist from behind and began kissing the back of my neck in ways that sent prickles of pleasure up and down my spine. I felt my limbs melt but came back to reality when I jumped at the sound of a firecracker going off outside.
“You Endicotts like to party,” I said.
“It’s kind of hard to ignore, isn’t it?” he agreed with a sigh. Then he walked me to my room and paused at the door to kiss me good night.
“You looked really beautiful t
oday,” he said, tugging at the belt of the patterned kimono-style bathrobe I had borrowed from Tori and asked, “Can I at least see your pajamas now? I didn’t even try to sneak a peek this morning and the suspense is killing me.”
“Are you sure you can handle an onslaught of sexiness?” I asked. He nodded solemnly so I looked up and down the short hallway and then flashed him. He groaned in disappointment.
“A PETA T-shirt and boxer shorts? Seriously?” He leaned his head against the doorpost, deflated. “That’s what I’m missing?”
“Yes. So cheer up, baby. You’ll sleep better now, right? Though there are a few holes in, um, strategic places in this shirt, actually.”
He brightened. “That shirt just got a whole lot sexier. Where are these strategic holes?”
I kissed the tip of his nose and opened the door to my room, saying, “I’ll leave that to your imagination,” and when I shut the door behind me I heard him say on the other side, “You’re killing me, Georgia.”
At least tonight I was frustrating him in a good way.
As I hugged my pillow to my ear, I wondered, despite teasing him about the strategic holes in my T-shirt, if I was really ready for him to see me in much less than that. He’d seen me in my bathing suit, of course. And a bra. But never naked. He’d never seen my body in all its dubious glory. And once he saw it, he wouldn’t un-see it. Once we were naked together, once we had that first night together, we wouldn’t be able to go back to hanging out in the evening and watching a sitcom on TV.
Could we?
Fearing I’d start to hyperventilate with a new worry, I grabbed the kimono I’d left hanging on the bedpost and held it to my nose. I could still smell him on it, a heady blend of toothpaste, some guy-style deodorant, and Michael.
Snark and Stage Fright (Snark and Circumstance Book 5) Page 5
