It Takes Two

by Jenny Holiday

  “I’ve got to go over there,” he said. “Do you think she went home?”

  Jane held up a palm. “Hang on. This is where you get Wendy’s best friend Jane and not sister Jane.” She shook a finger at him. “You’d better not go over there unless you have something definitive to say to her.”

  “Define definitive.”

  “You were all wild-eyed and creepy back there. And just now, when I asked you if you could love Wendy, you said, ‘Love is never the problem.’ That doesn’t sound very definitive to me.”

  He started to object, but actually, she was right. He had asked Wendy to move in with him in New York as a response to the notion that she might be pregnant. And he hadn’t really even asked—it had been more like an order. What he had not said was anything about love. About what was in his heart. Wendy deserved to hear that. So he needed a plan—something other than ordering her to up and merge her life with his because she might be knocked up.

  “I call dibs,” Jane said. “I’m going over to Wendy’s soon as I can get out of here, and you…” Jane pressed a hand against his chest. “You figure out what the hell you want before you do any more damage.”

  * * *

  History was repeating itself, Wendy thought as she buzzed Elise up to her apartment. Repeating itself with inversions. Here she was, fleeing a wedding rehearsal with a broken heart. At Elise’s wedding, it had been Jane fleeing. Wendy had comforted her. Now it was Jane’s wedding and Elise was comforting Wendy. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.

  “Hey, sweetie.” Elise stepped inside.

  “You drew the short straw, I guess,” Wendy tried to joke.

  Elise didn’t bite. “Nope. That scene had become decidedly not low-key. I’d rather be here.”

  Wendy laughed. And cried a little, too. And walked into Elise’s arms when she held them open.

  “The guys at the rehearsal were bellyaching about missing a Jays game. Is there one on? You wanna watch?”

  That made Wendy cry harder. Elise hated sports. She was the type of person who thought there were goalies in a baseball game.

  Elise led Wendy to her den, pushed her down on the couch, and covered her with the same quilt she and Noah had snuggled under only days ago. “Hang tight. I’m gonna go order us a pizza.”

  Ninety minutes later, stuffed with pizza and garlic bread yet somehow still hollow inside, Wendy watched listlessly as Elise fidgeted. Then her phone vibrated and she stood suddenly. “I’ll be right back.” Wendy didn’t bother pointing out that there were two outs, loaded bases, and it was the bottom of the ninth. Elise hadn’t been paying attention anyway—she’d spent most of the game on her phone. But hey, Wendy didn’t mind. She was glad to have the company, glad Elise wasn’t forcing her to talk, though she suspected her reprieve would not last beyond the end of the game.

  “Wendy.”

  Or apparently it wasn’t even going to last that long. An adrenaline spike pushed Wendy out of her slumped position. “Jane. Jane, I…” What? What could she say? It’s not like she hadn’t known she would have to talk to Jane at some point, assuming Jane wasn’t going to just ghost on her, but…Her mind churned, trying to settle on the right words.

  Well, there was always the truth. She turned off the TV. “I’m sorry.”

  Jane sat on the other chair in the room, the old family rocking chair. Normally she’d have shoved Wendy over and shared the oversize TV chair with her. It stung that she didn’t.

  “So you don’t like Cameron.”

  “That’s not true.” Wendy cringed. She was going for honesty here, right? It was the only thing that might allow her to make amends. “Anymore.” Jane started to speak, but Wendy talked over her. She had to get it out. “I didn’t think he was right for you initially. But that, and me not liking him, had nothing to do with him, really, or even you. I see that now. I’m just sorry it took a near tragedy for me to get my head out of my ass and really let myself see him. Let myself see how good he is. How good you are together.”

  “You said at the restaurant you were afraid to lose me.”

  Wendy nodded, miserable. “I felt like I’d already lost so much. Other than Mary, you were the only person I had left. I know it makes no sense, but I sort of felt, irrationally, like he was taking you from me.”

  “I don’t think you know how much it hurts me…” Jane’s voice cracked. She struggled to continue. “To hear that you think you could ever lose me. I mean, you’re the one taking off for six months.”

  Wendy blinked, stunned at the pain in Jane’s voice. “But…you’ll be a newlywed. You won’t have time for me, so it’s perfect timing for this trip.”

  Jane pressed her lips together and stared at Wendy for a long time. Then she said, “Are you insane? Why do you think I’m rearranging my publishing schedule so I can jet off and join you at various points on this stupid trip? Do you know that I had to ask for an extension on the book so I can come to Bangkok? Do you think I care about stupid Bangkok? I mean, you’re still giving me shit for eating McDonald’s in New York. Do you think I want to go to freaking Thailand?”

  Wendy, who had thought she was out of tears, started crying again, which started Jane crying. Then Jane got up, belatedly smooshed in next to Wendy, and put her arms around her. “Nothing lasts forever,” Jane whispered. “I can’t promise that nothing will change once I’m married, but you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

  Which made Wendy cry even harder.

  They just sat like that for a minute or so, letting themselves cry, until Jane said, “We never did this kind of drama when we were teenagers.”

  Wendy couldn’t help but chuckle through her tears. “We were either freakishly mature or else emotionally stunted.”

  “I’m going to have to go with emotionally stunted.”

  Wendy sighed. “Yeah.” Then, because she couldn’t imagine a time when she’d ever not be compelled to keep apologizing, she said, “I really am sorry about all the Cameron stuff. I just…lost my mind for a while.”

  “I know.” Jane pulled away and looked at Wendy. “Is that your defense when it comes to my brother, too?”

  Wendy buried her head in her hands. “Basically.” That wasn’t even remotely all of the truth, but what was the point in explaining the complicated evolution of her feelings for Noah? He didn’t return them, not in any way that involved her and not some imaginary responsibility she represented. Analyzing the situation would only put Jane in an awkward place. She couldn’t provide the usual best friend shoulder to cry on in these circumstances, and Wendy would never ask her to.

  “I admit I was shocked,” Jane said. “Hurt that you were carrying on behind my back. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t about me. And the more logical it seemed. I don’t know why I never saw it before, but you two are kind of perfect for each other.”

  “It doesn’t matter, though, does it? My feelings are irrelevant. It takes two. And he doesn’t want me. Not really. He doesn’t love me. He just said all that back there because he thought I might be pregnant—you know Noah and responsibility.”

  Jane nodded and rolled her eyes at the same time. “My brother, despite being so smart, can be kind of slow on the uptake sometimes.”

  Wendy grabbed her best friend’s hand. “I don’t deserve to ask you this, but please can we not talk about Noah?” She had to be ruthless with herself. To pick herself up and start walking through the pain. Because that was the only way out. And anything that was going to slow her down, she didn’t want. Maybe all her travel had been for the wrong reasons, had been an overcorrection, but she couldn’t help but think that the underlying impulse had been correct. She could choose how to feel.

  “You got it,” Jane said. She picked up the remote and turned the TV back on. The game was over. Jane started flipping. “Oh, look! Sex and the City.” Sure enough, the four lead characters were sitting around having brunch. “That’s totally the four of us, don’t you think?”


  Wendy chuckled. “Which one am I?”

  “Oh, you’re totally Miranda.” Jane cuddled up next to Wendy. “And I’m Carrie, and we’re best friends.”

  And that wasn’t nothing, Wendy reminded herself. When her heartbreak healed—if it healed and didn’t just become a big lump of scar tissue she had to learn to live with—she’d still have Jane and the girls.

  Jane’s phone buzzed.

  Wendy caught a glimpse of a really long text as Jane picked up her phone. “You should get going,” she said. As tempting as it was to cocoon in here with Jane forever, surely she had stuff to get done. “You’re getting married tomorrow!”

  A slow smile blossomed on Jane’s face. It was probably a sext from Cameron she was reading. Then she cleared her throat and looked up, suddenly all businesslike. “I am getting married tomorrow. And I do have…something I need to do yet tonight.” She smirked, but then she looked up in what seemed like alarm. “You’ll still be in the wedding, right? You don’t have to do anything but show up, right before the ceremony.”

  “Are you kidding me? Of course. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Where else am I going to wear that tartan sash?”

  “I know it will be hard. You know that I, of all people, know how hard it will be.” Jane was referring to her big declaration of love to Cameron at Elise’s rehearsal dinner that had been rebuffed.

  “It is kind of shocking how history is repeating itself, isn’t it?” Wendy said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that shocking. We always did everything together. We’re the Lost Girls.”

  Right. Wendy didn’t point out that since Jane was about to marry the love of her life, she probably couldn’t call herself “lost” anymore. Even though Wendy understood now that she wasn’t going to “lose” Jane, things were going to be different.

  Jane blew Wendy a kiss, and Wendy plucked it out of the air and pressed it against her broken heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THE WEDDING DAY

  As Jane had predicted, the wedding was going to be hard.

  But maybe not quite as hard as Wendy had expected, thanks to Gia and Elise, who were doing a bang-up job keeping the heartbroken maid of honor distracted.

  “Maybe this wedding is actually pretty low-key,” Gia said as the three of them queued up for a ride. “I mean, how many weddings have you been to where you get to go on a roller coaster an hour before the ceremony?” Part of Jane and Cameron’s courtship a year ago had involved crazy—for Jane, anyway—stunts, and the couple counted this amusement park as a special place.

  “Are you sure Jane doesn’t need us for anything?” Wendy suspected her friends had been dispatched with instructions from the bride to babysit her. She sure as hell appreciated not having to see Noah any more than necessary, but she didn’t want to make life any harder for Jane. She’d done enough of that lately.

  Gia looked at her watch and then at Elise. “Not yet.”

  Two rides later, Wendy was being herded toward the area of the park where the wedding would take place. There would be a short ceremony outside, followed by a reception inside a pod that looked like a geodesic dome.

  Wendy started to panic. “Jane said I could swoop in just before the ceremony started.” And that wasn’t for another thirty minutes. “It’s too early.” She stopped walking. Literally dug her heels in.

  “Yeah, but we have to get changed and stuff.” Elise took Wendy’s arm. “Jane wants us to be ready to go.”

  “You’re just gonna have to woman up, Wendy.” Gia grabbed hold of Wendy’s other arm.

  Her friends had to tug her harder than was probably seemly to get her moving. But, crap, they were right. Jane had cut Wendy a lot of slack about the logistics of the day. Anyway, it wasn’t like she hadn’t been part of some terrifying trials in her day. So she put on her court face and put one foot in front of the other.

  And kept doing it until she hit the door of the reception pod. It was too early for the guests to have arrived, but she spotted some of the guys milling around outside—not Noah, thank God. They were wearing kilts. They looked good. Damn, now she was going to have to spend the evening looking at Noah in a kilt. Just to rub salt into her wound, and—

  “Oh!” Elise exclaimed, looking at her phone. “Gia, Jane needs us!” She spoke artificially loudly.

  Wendy narrowed her eyes.

  “Right!” Gia chirped. “Wendy, we’ll meet you inside in a second. Go ahead and start getting changed. Our bags and dresses are all in there.”

  Something was definitely going on, but before Wendy could ask what it was, Gia opened the door to the pod and literally shoved her inside.

  “Ow!”

  She turned, intending to go back outside and see why her friends were being so weird but stopped when her gaze snagged on the…Empire State Building?

  Huh?

  The room was lined with fabric backdrops, the kind you would see in plays, with scenery painted on them. One contained a bunch of iconic New York City skyscrapers, another the Statue of Liberty.

  What the everloving hell?

  She performed a slow rotation, her mind trying to make sense of the scene even as her heart started skipping out of control.

  There was the Brooklyn Bridge and Times Square.

  She kept turning, as if by doing so she would somehow be able to make sense of the situation. The pod was otherwise set up for a wedding reception, studded with floral-bedecked tables and fabric-draped chairs.

  She appeared to be alone, so she walked toward the center of the space in order to take it all in.

  It was like Jane had gone off her rocker and decided to set her bogus Scottish wedding in—

  “Fake New York.”

  She gasped as Noah stepped out from behind one of the backdrops. If she’d thought her heart was out of control before, she’d had no idea. There he was, in a navy kilt and white shirt like some kind of Outlander fantasy come to life. He was her friend, her champion, her protector. Almost everything she wanted him to be.

  “I made a mess of things yesterday,” he said. “I led with responsibility instead of desire.”

  What? What was he talking about?

  “It’s because I’m used to thinking of life in terms of duty. I’m used to asking myself, ‘What are my responsibilities?’ Not ‘What do I want?’” He huffed an incredulous laugh. “It still sounds strange, saying that. What do I want?”

  She took a step toward him, but he waved her off. It was strange, talking from such a distance—she in the center of the room, he at the edge, with the snow of a Rockefeller Center Christmas behind him. He seemed to need to say his piece without her getting in his way. So she tried to calm her clattering heart enough that it wouldn’t drown him out.

  “What I want, it turns out, is you. Not because you might be pregnant, but—”

  “I’m not pregnant.” She couldn’t keep herself from interrupting him. He deserved to know. “I got my period this morning.”

  “Well, that’s disappointing.”

  “Excuse me?”

  * * *

  Noah laughed. Nothing about their current situation was laughable, but he couldn’t help it. He’d come so far from the trigger-shy boyfriend of yore. It turned out he’d just never had the right woman by his side.

  “Yeah, so when I contemplate the question of what my desires are, what I actually want, my head just fills up with…you.” He had to make her see. “Not because you might be pregnant, but because you’re you. Because no one has ever argued with me like you have. Or outrun me like you have. Or…gutted me like you have. So I’m as surprised as you are, but yeah, I’m fucking disappointed that you’re not pregnant.”

  “But—”

  He held up a hand. He had to get this out. She could object when he was done.

  “But whether you’re pregnant or not is neither here nor there. I got it wrong last night when I made it seem like that was what I was reacting to. I mean, what I said was true. I do w
ant you to be with me, but you were right. I was asking you to give up everything while I did the same thing I always do.”

  “Which is?”

  “Live my same old tightly controlled life.” He took a deep breath. “The thing about my life is that it doesn’t scare me. I know what’s coming. I’m comfortable.”

  “That’s not nothing. You worked hard for that.”

  That was part of what he loved about Wendy. She understood. “But it’s not enough anymore. Once I figured out what I actually wanted—which, by the way, in case it’s not clear, let me say one more time, is you—I thought, how can I get that? Under what circumstances can I have what I want?” He lifted his hands, gesturing around the room. “So here we are.”

  He saw the moment understanding dawned. “Fake New York,” she whispered.

  “Yes. Jane and Cameron helped me get all this together last night. I rented these things at a theater supply store, but I’ll buy them if need be. I’ll carry them around with me wherever we go if that’s what it takes.” He realized then that he’d neglected to say one essential thing. “Because I love you. I was too chickenshit to say that part last night. But I love you. Not because I’m supposed to. Because I do. I always have.”

  “How can you just—”

  He had to interrupt her again, because words were not enough for Wendy Lou Who. You couldn’t just say “I’m sorry I left you at the dance,” you had to actually not leave her at the fucking dance. He had to show her he meant what he was saying.

  “I’m quitting my job,” he said quickly. “I’m moving back here. You shouldn’t take that as pressure, because I’m doing it for lots of reasons, my mom and Jane among them.” That was the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but it was a truth, and as much as he wanted Wendy, he wanted her to be free to choose him.

  “I want to be with them, not just take care of them from afar,” he added. “I’m taking some time off to study to qualify to practice law here.”

  “How much time are you taking off?” Her voice had gone all scratchy.