“Hi Beck. How are you?” I said, trying to sound casual, even though I was freaking out on the inside. His name felt strange rolling off my tongue.
He nodded once. “I’m good. I see congratulations are in order,” he said, gesturing to my left hand.
I looked down at my ring and fingered it self-consciously before putting my hand back down by my side.
“Thanks,” I said, bringing my gaze back to him.
I wondered if Patrick had told him I’d gotten engaged. I couldn’t tell. The look on his face gave nothing away. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he was madly in love with someone else. I didn’t know, because I’d never asked Summer about him. Suddenly I wished she would have told me anyway. I knew I would run into him eventually now that I was living in Boston and would have preferred to have been armed with more information for this exact situation, but we both knew that Beckett Ryland was a forbidden topic unless I was the one who brought him up – and I never did.
“You look good,” he said, still remaining expressionless.
I couldn’t tell if he meant it or if he was just being polite. Not that it should matter, but of course it did. I’d imagined this meeting a thousand times in my head and in each and every instance his looks had faded and he’d gained thirty pounds. Such was not the case as the guy standing before me looked even better than he had when we’d dated.
“Thanks, um, so do you,” I mumbled, looking down at my shoes.
And then, as if things couldn’t get any weirder, they did.
“So, I saw your Mom the other day,” he said.
And there’s one of the reasons why my mom doesn’t know I’m engaged. She still talks to my ex-boyfriend. They are friends, and she adores him. When she found out he proposed to me, she didn’t congratulate me for saying no like I had imagined her to when the tiny version of her had been perched on my shoulder with my Aunt Karen. She was actually pissed that I’d turned Beckett down. An argument had ensued in which some hurtful things were said, and in the end she agreed that it had probably been a bad idea for her and Aunt Karen to speak so openly in front of me about their disdain for marriage when I was so impressionable, but emotions had been high at that point in her life. She also shared that she actually thought marriage could be great with the right man. In her eyes, for me, that right man was Beckett. She has never forgiven me for turning down his proposal, and I know she has always secretly hoped I would end up with him. Ryan and me forever was never in her master plan.
“Oh yeah?” I said to Beckett and could hear the irritation in my voice.
He had to know it irked me that he was friends with my mother. I wasn’t friends with his family even though I would have liked to stay in touch with his sister, Katie. We’d gotten close in the years I’d dated Beckett. I’d even been in her wedding, but in my opinion, in a break-up only mutual friends, like Summer and Patrick, get to remain friends with both people. My mother should have been off-limits, but Beckett had never abided by those rules.
“Yeah, I was home for a few days, so we had lunch,” he said.
I gritted my teeth. The fact that he’d had lunch with my mother annoyed the hell out of me – especially since she hadn’t even told me. I forced myself to maintain my composure. A few more minutes of being polite, and I could find an excuse to exit the conversation.
“Do you go home often?” I asked.
Beckett’s parents were neighbors with my mother. They had moved in next door to us the summer before our senior year of high school, and Beckett and I had become good friends before we started dating later that year. I didn’t go home much anymore, but when I did, I found myself praying that he wouldn’t be there at the same times as me, so I wouldn’t inadvertently run into him. Thankfully there were only two times when his green Toyota 4Runner had been in his parents’ driveway when I’d been visiting my mother, but I’d never actually seen him.
“No, not really,” Beckett said, “but Jill and Chris were visiting with Jackson, so I went down for the weekend.”
Jill was Beckett’s oldest sister, and Chris was her husband. They’d gotten engaged when I was dating Beckett. I didn’t know who Jackson was. Family friend? Dog? Kid?
“Is Jackson their son?” I asked, going with the most-likely scenario.
“Yeah, he’s nine months old.”
“Oh. Well, tell Jill I said congratulations when you talk to her.”
He nodded. “I will.”
There was an awkward silence for a few seconds as we both thought of what to say next. Beckett came up with something first.
“So you’re living in Boston now?” he asked, but we both knew he already knew the answer. It was obvious we were both struggling to keep the conversation going.
I nodded. “Yup. For about a month now, but you probably knew that.”
“Yeah. Patrick told me.” He paused, and then said, “He didn’t say anything about that though.” He was gesturing to my left hand.
I was right. He didn’t know. I didn’t give Patrick enough credit sometimes.
“Yeah, it just happened,” I said, intentionally being vague.
I thought I saw his expression falter in that moment, but I couldn’t be sure. For some reason it threw my mind back to how miserable we both were in the weeks after he’d proposed. Then I remembered the night after we’d broken up and got angry as I let myself think about it for the first time in years.
The night he broke up with me, we’d both been crying. It was miserable. He’d left my apartment, and I’d stayed up all night crying into my pillow with Summer holding my hand telling me he’d change his mind. The very next night, against my will, she convinced me to go to a party. I’d been crying for the better part of the day and didn’t feel like being social, but I couldn’t imagine sitting home alone. A half an hour into the party, I’d opened the door to what I thought was the bathroom, but discovered it was a bedroom. On the bed, half-naked were Beckett and a girl with long brown hair that I’d never met before. I’d held back the tears long enough to get out of that house, but then I lost it. Beckett never saw me, but the image of him and that girl was burned into my brain.
I thought about asking him about it, but it suddenly seemed so childish to bring up something that was technically ancient history. Still, it didn’t prevent my blood from boiling and anger to burn the backs of my eyes as I thought about how easily he’d moved on from me.
Fearful that I might say something mean and regret it, I started to ask him what he did for a living when a tall, leggy blond in a fitted red dress and red patent leather stilettos sidled up to him and put her arm around his waist. She kissed him on the cheek, then turned to me and smiled. I smiled at her with what I knew was a half-confused, half-trying expression on my face. If this was the kind of girl he now dated, then maybe we were never that compatible in the first place. The idea twisted my stomach just a little.
“Courtney,” Beckett said, “this is Jenna.”
He didn’t offer any attachments to the name Jenna, so I didn’t know if it was his girlfriend Jenna, his friend Jenna or just some girl named Jenna who he’d met that night and was planning to take home. I watched with wide eyes as she suddenly leaned over and whispered something to him, her red stained lips moving slowly and deliberately as he listened with rapt attention. Then I almost gasped out loud when she closed her lips around his earlobe and sucked on it for a few seconds before whispering something else to him. He laughed out loud at whatever she’d said before turning away from me.
“We’re going to go to the bar,” he said, as he glanced back over his shoulder. “It was good seeing you, Courtney.”
He turned away without waiting for me to say anything in response. His arm was around Jenna’s waist as they walked, his fingertips grazing the top of her rear end. All I could do was watch them walk away, half-disgusted and half-something else that I couldn’t identify.
“Was that Beckett?” Kate asked incredulously, suddenly coming up behind me.
I si
gned deeply. “Yes.”
“Wow. Who was the blonde?” she asked, and I could hear the distaste in her voice. God love her for that.
“Jenna,” I said in a nasty tone that surprised even me.
“Jenna,” she repeated, not acknowledging my obvious opinion of the girl. “She looks like a slut.”
I nodded. “She probably is.”
We were such bitches, but in that moment all I could think about was how Beckett could have done so much better that a girl like that. Who sucks on someone’s ear in a public place? I suddenly had an image of the two of them in the club bathroom, Jenna on her knees, and I knew I needed to get out of there.
“I need to go call Ryan,” I said, making a break for the door. Suddenly my conservative, sometimes boring fiancé didn’t seem so dull. He would never stand for that kind of behavior, nor would he date a girl like Jenna. He was a gentleman.
The cool, fresh air outside hit me in the face as I walked out of the club. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Ryan’s number. He answered on the third ring.
“Hi honey,” I said, more eagerness in my voice than I’d planned.
“Hi,” he said. “Are you having fun?”
I calmed down a little as he spoke. His voice was comforting.
“It’s not really my scene,” I said, as I watched two girls who were dressed similarly to Jenna climb into the back of a limo with two guys who could have been part of the cast of The Jersey Shore.
“Then come over,” he said. “I’m just watching a movie.”
It was very tempting. I didn’t want to leave Kate and Summer, but I also didn’t want to go back inside where I would risk running into Beckett again. I certainly didn’t want to see where his night with Jenna was headed. I walked toward the curb, making the decision to leave and go see Ryan. It was my celebration night, after all. I could make the decision to leave if I wanted to.
I reached my arm in the air to hail a passing cab, as I said, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Six
“When’s the wedding?” Lisa, Ryan’s sister, asked as she passed me the risotto. “Henry, get your elbows off the table.”
We’d been at Ryan’s parents’ house in Marblehead for exactly an hour, and so far our engagement had been the topic of the night.
“Mmphf,” said six year-old Henry, as he yanked his elbows off the table and crossed them in front of him in defiance. His sandy brown hair fell almost into his eyes, as he scrunched up his face.
“Eat your dinner like a good boy, please,” Lisa said, handing him his fork. He swatted it away where it landed at the feet of Betty, the Carson’s maid who was standing by to fill water glasses or remove empty plates.
Lisa rolled her eyes but didn’t get up to get the fork. She just looked over at Betty, expecting her to pick it up, as James, her husband, walked over to the bar next to where Betty was standing and poured more scotch into his glass.
“Fine, starve,” Lisa muttered as she turned back to me. “So when’s the wedding?”
I watched over her shoulder as Betty bent down, picked up the fork and put it into her pocket. Then she brought Henry a new fork, leaned down, said something that made him smile, and like that, he started scooping risotto into his tiny mouth.
“Can I have ice cream?” came Ruby’s baby voice from across the table.
She had been blessed with the same blond ringlets that Ryan had, which I thought was incredibly cool since neither Lisa nor James had curls. Lisa’s hair was the same color as Ryan’s, but it was thin, wispy and straight. That night Ruby’s hair was pulled into pigtails.
Lisa ignored her daughter and looked at me expectantly.
“Can I have ice cream?!” Ruby screamed.
She was loud for such a tiny person. I looked over at her, but I was the only person at the table who did. Everyone else’s eyes were trained on me, waiting for my answer.
“Um, we’re not sure,” I said, looking at Ryan. We had definitely not discussed a date yet, and I had no plans of picking one any time soon. I wondered how he’d feel about 2017.
“I want ice cream!” Ruby screamed even louder.
“Shut up, Ruby,” said Madeleine, who up until that point had been texting on her iPhone and not speaking to anyone. I wasn’t exactly sure who a nine year-old could be texting, but no one seemed to question her. “You’re so annoying.”
With that, Ruby started to cry.
“God dammit. Just bring her some ice cream,” James said to no one in particular, as he took a big swig of his scotch.
I watched Betty start to move from her place in the corner.
“No!” Lisa said then. “No ice cream. Ruby, eat three bites of your chicken and three bites of your broccoli, and then you can have some ice cream.”
Betty stopped in her tracks.
“She doesn’t know how to count,” Henry said around a mouthful of food.
“Come here, Ruby Cube,” John, Ryan’s younger brother, said as he pulled Ruby onto his lap and counted out pieces of chicken for her to eat.
Lisa rolled her eyes again, and James kept drinking. They were great parents.
“Can I be a bridesmaid?” Madeleine asked. She was looking up from her phone, but her fingers were still typing away. I was slightly in awe at her dexterity.
“Maddie, you’re too young,” Lisa said in a voice that said they had already had this conversation.
“Maybe she could be a junior bridesmaid,” Lydia said then.
“Yes!” Madeleine said, clenching her fist and pulling her elbow toward her in celebration.
I watched her fingers start to fly over the keyboard again and wondered how many of her friends were getting that update. I looked down the table at Lydia in disbelief. She was looking back at me with a smug expression on her face which I took to mean that this wasn’t the first time she was going to be interjecting her opinions during the wedding planning process, and I’d better be okay with it. My gaze shifted to Ryan, but he was twirling his glass around, making the ice clink against the sides.
“Ryan, dear,” Lydia said then. “What does Courtney mean you’re not sure when you’re getting married? You know we need to book the club at least a year in advance, so I need to know the date.”
Club? What club?
I willed Ryan to make eye contact with me, but when he did, he said, “How about next June?”
It took everything in me not to respond the way I really wanted to. He had just trapped me, and now I had to agree. There was no way I was going to contest what he’d said in front of his family, and he knew it.
“Oh, that will be lovely,” Lydia said.
“Can my dress be pink?” Madeleine asked.
“Courtney will choose the color,” Lisa said, “but I did see the most beautiful light pink dresses at Neiman Marcus last week. I definitely think you should consider them. With Maddie’s blond hair, the color would be fabulous.”
Maddie, who had the same coloring as her mother, smirked at me, but I was pretty sure I was the only one who saw. I’m sorry, but when did my wedding colors become based on the hair color of a child who wasn’t going to even be in the wedding? This was getting out of control.
“Go ahead and book the club, Mom,” Ryan said, pulling out his Blackberry. “Any Saturday next June is good with us.”
Excuse me?
I opened my eyes wide at Ryan, willing him to stop talking.
“What?” he mouthed, then smiled at me. “Court, that’ll be enough time for you to plan everything, right?”
“You’re planning your own wedding?” Lisa asked, as Henry climbed onto her lap. Lisa was six months pregnant, so there wasn’t much room for Henry’s small body.
“Henry, stop,” she said. “You can’t sit on mommy’s lap right now.”
Henry started to cry. Lisa sighed and moved back, making room, so Henry could perch on the end of her knees.
“What I wouldn’t give for a glass of chardonnay,” she muttered.
I wait
ed to make sure no one else was going to speak before slowly saying, “Yes, I’m going to plan my own wedding.”
I was pretty sure that was the first thing I’d said on the matter of my wedding all night.
“Dear, you can’t plan your own wedding,” Lydia said. “It’s inappropriate.”
Now I was gritting my teeth.
“I thought you were looking for another job?” Lisa asked. “Didn’t you say you wanted to get into publishing?”
I smiled. This was a subject I could get behind. “Yes, I would like to work in publishing, but jobs are hard to come by, so I’m going to keep planning weddings until something comes along.”
Ryan smiled at me to let me know he supported my decision, even if his family didn’t.
“Well, that’s sort of silly,” Lisa said, and it took me a minute to realize she was speaking to me and not one of the kids.
I raised my eyebrow at her. “What’s silly?”
“To look for a job so close to when you’re getting married. I mean, you won’t have to work after the wedding,” she said, no doubt referring to Ryan’s sizeable bank account.
I cocked my head to the side, trying to keep my composure, as I responded to her question. I’d so far avoided this subject with Ryan’s family, but it seemed we were going to broach it.
“I actually want to work after we get married. I’d like to have a career,” I said, as passively as I could.
“Well, that will only be for a few years tops,” Lisa said, looking from me to Ryan.
“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant, but needing to hear her say it. I needed to hear the crazy for myself.
I took a big swig of wine in preparation.
“Because you’ll be a mother,” Lydia interjected, and I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep the wine from spewing all over the table. I’d known where the conversation was going, but to hear it said out loud still caught me off-guard.
“Excuse me?” I said, knowing I was better off staying quiet, that speaking up would start something I didn’t want to get into, but I couldn’t sit there a minute longer without defending myself.
Just Watch the Fireworks Page 5
