by Bromberg, K
I know I left what felt like a million messages running the gamut from sad to angry to begging to crying to furious, but I know which one he’s referring to. My final message. The one where I gave in and told him if he didn’t want me anymore, he could at least have the guts to tell me.
I chew the inside of my cheek, surprised how talking about this is bringing back so much of the pain I swore I’d gotten over. “Why didn’t you call?” I ask quietly, in an attempt to cover the hurt that still remains.
He shifts to a sitting position, his face downcast to watch his hands for a moment before looking back to me. “Because it was my only chance to get out of here. Away from my dad, his drinking, and quick fists and my mom and her acceptance of it. Everyone saw me as Dale Whitley’s son. The kid who had no chance and wouldn’t amount to anything—”
“I didn’t.”
“I know and that was part of it. I don’t expect you to understand any of my reasoning or forgive me for what I did. Shit, looking back, I get what I did was fucked up. But you and Ryder and your parents were all the good I’d ever known. And God I was missing you. I was living in some shithole apartment, stuffing extra food from the craft service table into my pockets because I couldn’t afford groceries, and knew no one . . . but I knew if I talked to you, heard your voice, listened to you cry over the line, I’d drop everything and come back. I missed you like crazy. I felt so horrible for not having the guts to tell you when I left for that weekend that I might not be coming back.”
“I would have gone with you.” God, how many nights did I have thoughts of packing up my shit and driving to Los Angeles to find him? My own naïveté not knowing how big a city it was and how hard it would be to find him.
“I know you would have. But to do what? Skip out on going to college? Stand by and watch me chase my dreams while giving up yours? I couldn’t do that to you. You deserved the goddamn moon and stars, Say. Still do. I couldn’t make you sit in that rundown apartment all day and worry about your safety, while I worked eighteen hour days. I would have hated myself for it and you would have resented me for it.”
“So you just washed your hands of me and made it easy.” My voice is quiet, reminiscent of how I felt for almost a year after he left. Then again, now that I think about it, maybe I never became that carefree girl I used to be.
“It was never easy. Not a goddamn single day.” He fists his hands. Shakes his head. “If you only knew how I’d come home, collapse into bed from exhaustion, and miss every fucking thing about you.”
His words cut open old wounds. Make me think of him all alone in a new town and feel sorry for him. But he needs to know what I went through too. “I walked around lost for over a year. We did everything together. You were my first love. My first everything. And you up and left and shut me out.” I look out to the water beyond. To the snorkels sticking up out of the water in the distance. Hear the laughter of someone seeing the turtles, and I’m sure I sounded just as excited about it when I resurfaced. “I waited for you. I told you in that last message that I wouldn’t, but I lied. I spent three years waiting. Three years adamant that every tabloid with pictures of you with some gorgeous actress on your arm was Photoshopped, or an innocent lunch date misconstrued. You tell me you missed me and yet, what I saw of your life? It looked like anything but missing me, Hayes.”
“Saylor.”
“No. It’s okay. I know I told you in that last message that I wouldn’t wait for you, but I did.”
“You also told me you’d always love me.”
I still do.
It’s my immediate thought. One I hate and love. One I shove from my mind so I don’t say it out loud, but regardless still leaves me reeling.
And I can sense the question on his tongue. The one asking me if my confession ten years ago still holds true. There’s so much emotion clogging my throat, so much history thick in the air between us, that it’s better if I just don’t speak.
So the silence holds us hostage as we stare at each other from behind the protective lenses of our sunglasses. A part of me wants to see what his eyes are saying. The other part of me is scared to find out.
So, we hide.
“I came to your house.” His confession shocks me. My lips fall lax and my heart constricts. “My mom finally left my dad. Said my leaving shocked her into reality so she kicked him out. I told myself I was coming home to help her get situated in her new place. And yeah, I did . . . but it was you I wanted to see.”
“Why didn’t you?” My still-hurt eighteen-year-old self knows that if he had, I would have been devastated all over again. Pain renewed. The fallout of seeing him, brutal.
“I did actually, but Ryder answered the door. Threw a punch before I could even say a word.” He chuckles at the thought and rubs his jaw with the memory while my eyes widen in surprise. A part of me cheering for Ryder sticking up for me.
“What?”
“Yep. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so pissed. He chewed my ass like I deserved. Told me you were finally starting to eat again. Just starting to be you again,” he murmurs and his tone reflects how hard it was for him to hear how his leaving had affected me. The darkness I had lived in. Surrounded myself with and got lost in. “He told me he didn’t think I loved you because how could I do that to you? But if I did in fact love you, I’d turn around and walk away and leave you be. He knew I’d become fascinated with the bright lights and big city and would just leave again when the weekend was over and then you’d be hurt all over again.”
His confession weighs heavily in the space between us. My gut reaction is to be pissed at Ryder. For stealing a chance that was mine to decide if I wanted or not. But at the same time, he was trying to protect me and, at that time in my life, I needed protection. It’s pretty rare to be a teenager and know the person you’re dating is your soul mate like I did Hayes. And probably just as uncommon to have such an insightful older brother.
I take a sip of my water, while allowing the words to settle more, and the ones I hear more than anything are that he did truly love me. Showed it when he walked away the second time.
Something he said to me the other day echoes through my mind. Never let someone steal your passion. And I know he’s right. I know that if he hadn’t gone, hadn’t left and walked away without my holding him back, I would have been responsible for stealing his passion. My selfishness would have robbed the world of knowing his incredible talent. It would have robbed him too.
“I’m glad you took the chance, Hayes.” My voice is soft but resolute and I can see the visible startle in his body from my words.
“You don’t have to say that, Saylor.” His lips are tight. Head angled to the side as he looks at me.
“Yes, I do. Staying or me pulling you back . . . it would have stolen your chance to pursue your passion.”
He nods his head a couple times. Contemplating something I’m unsure of. “The funny thing is, Say, the older I get, I’m learning it’s okay to have more than one passion. One doesn’t have to be more important than the other. They can complement each other.”
The question is what does he mean by that?
And I think of Ryder. His ultimatum. How Hayes walked away.
He loved me. When I was hurting and swore he didn’t care about me anymore, he had loved me.
I can’t help but wonder when we part ways again, will it be under similar circumstances? That he loves me but will continue to pursue his passion, or he loved me, time’s changed us, and there’s no longer anything there?
The thought consumes me.
But he’s here. Dropped everything in his crazy life to come here for me.
Doesn’t that say something?
Saylor
“Relax.” Hayes’s voice is soft, the heat of his breath a comforting feeling against my ear as the wedding march begins. “You look beautiful. You are beautiful. And it’s definitely his loss and my gain you’re sitting here with me.”
I take a deep breath and let mysel
f lean into him for a bit more mental support. We’re standing in the last row of seats, which is the only place I wanted to sit so I could avoid seeing Mitch before the ceremony. We’re turned toward the aisle, waiting to see the bride.
When she appears, the guests suck in their breaths in reaction to how beautiful she looks while I do it out of surprise.
It shouldn’t shock me, considering everything else about this whole situation, but when I see her wearing a dress so very similar to the one I had picked it could be the same, my mouth drops open. And when I add the dress to the color scheme and flower choices I previously selected, I can’t help but selfishly feel like this whole event has been planned to rub my nose in what I could have had. Hence receiving a wedding invitation in the first place.
Is Mitch really that vindictive? He didn’t even ask me to reconsider or tell me he still loved me. Not a single word of protest.
It all comes back to me. How when I looked Mitch in the eye and told him I was leaving, having already packed and taken some things to my brother’s, he just stood there.
“I’m sorry, Mitch. I can’t go through with this.”
“With what?” There’s annoyance in his voice. I must be interrupting the PGA highlights or something.
“Our wedding.” And now I’ve got his attention. His eyes narrow and lips pull tight in disbelief.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just what I said.” My voice is even, despite the riot of nerves I feel within. “This isn’t working anymore. Hasn’t been for a long time. I won’t be able to make you happy.” And you don’t know—or care—about what makes me happy in the slightest.
His chuckle fills the smothering silence of the room. “You’re joking, right? Having cold toes or whatever it’s called, are you?”
I lick my lips. Shift my feet that are anything but cold. Force myself to not avert my eyes. “No. I’m not. We’re over.”
The shock on his face is what I remember the most. Like he was appalled that I’d ever think of leaving him. And then it morphed into anger. Disgust. Impatience like I’ve wasted his time. “Not marrying me will be the biggest mistake you’ll ever make. You know that, right?”
You’re kidding me, right? I bite back the smartass retort. Focus on keeping this as civil as possible. “If that’s what you want to think.”
“No. It’s what I know.” He takes a step back. Shakes his head. Looks back to me like I’m crazy—a pompous smirk on his lips. “Leave your keys on the counter on the way out. Hope your cupcakes can keep you warm at night, but I doubt it.”
And then he turned his back on me and walked away. Back to his Golf Digest or to polish his nine iron, or whatever it was that he cared so much about. Because it definitely wasn’t me, and his reaction—or lack thereof—just proved it.
He didn’t even seem angry. Or surprised. More than anything, he appeared put out. I had felt dismissed. Not missed.
So why did he send me the stupid invitation to this wedding if he didn’t care about me then?
The guests in the rows in front of us block my view, so when people finally take a seat, I think I’m the last to do so because I can finally see clearly. Mitch, handsome and debonair as ever, looks nervous, but only in a way that someone who has known him for a long time can notice. It’s the continued flex of his hands. The chuckle that sounds off. But then again, a lot of people are nervous when getting married.
And when she takes her place beneath the trellis and faces Mitch, her face falls perfectly into my line of sight.
The surprised murmur that Hayes softly emits says it all for me. Either Mitch definitely has a type—the blonde-haired, blue-eyed type—or it’s a complete coincidence that Sarah Taylor could be my long-lost sister.
I sit on the edge of my chair, eyes blinking as if I don’t believe what I’m seeing, but then again isn’t it just par for the course? Hayes rubs a hand up and down my back, a tangible reminder to remain calm, while I watch the ceremony.
And I’m not sure how I feel. My insides are a hurricane of emotions, each one blowing through quickly to make room for the next one. My stomach churns watching the life I could have had be given to someone else. Taken by someone else. And she may very well be deserving of it. On the other hand, maybe this is the life and social status she’s searched for, and if letting Mitch’s mom plan the wedding is the price she has to pay, she’s willing to give up the control to get what she wants. Unlike me.
I look to Mitch and his sure and steady movements. He’s a bit calmer now, so I study his face, watch his hands, and wait for that gut-wrenching pang of regret to hit me. The one that knocks me upside the head and tells me I made the hugest mistake walking away from him. That I still love him.
But it doesn’t come. Not once.
One of the two reasons I came here was to get this feeling and sense that I did the right thing. Sitting here, as a guest at the wedding I was invited to possibly to make a mockery of me, I can easily say I sure as hell did the right thing.
And I wonder how much the man beside me has helped to reinforce that feeling. How much hearing him validate some of my opinions, even though he didn’t know he was, has helped me and this newfound sense of self. The carefree, spontaneous sense of self I lost so very long ago.
I also study her, knowing this will be the only time I can without people thinking I’m being rude. She is the bride, after all, and the center of everyone’s attention right now.
Her hair is a similar shade to mine. Her makeup is flawless and her stature similar. She seems sure of herself. Happy. In love. Stunning. Classy. Timeless.
And so I watch the man I spent over six years of my life with marry a woman he met less than nine months ago.
Or maybe he met her before I left him? Maybe she was waiting in the wings and swooped in for the prize the minute she found out we had broken up? Or even worse, maybe they were sneaking around behind my back and that’s why Mitch was so indifferent to my leaving? The errant thoughts grow crazier with each second that passes. But regardless how bizarre my imagination makes them, one thing remains the same.
When I look at Mitch, I feel nothing.
* * *
“You’re awfully quiet.” His arm drapes across the back of my chair so his hand can rest on my opposite arm. He gives a gentle nudge of his knee against mine. Little reminders to let me know he’s beside me. But it’s not like I could forget. Between the numerous guests staring at us to the camera phones snapping pictures on the sly, it seems that everyone knows Hayes Whitley is here. And a catty part of me wonders how many of the cameras left on the tabletops for guests to use to help document the reception are going to have pictures of Hayes on them. With me.
The irony is not lost on me. Nor is it on Hayes evidently by the way he was so generous with his time by taking pictures and giving autographs while we waited for the wedding party to finish their post-ceremony pictures.
The ones I’m most certain were taken down on the private beach beneath the palm trees I had chosen. I mean why not, right? Good thing for them this island has a pretty moderate temperature all year-round or God forbid with the change of seasons, Rebound Sarah might have had to make a decision on her own.
I’m not oblivious to the constant whispers that stop when I walk by and then start again or the sly glances of the women who all think they’re better than me. But I do have to admit they sure as hell do a double take when they see Hayes’s hand on my waist or how he pulls out my chair for me. I force myself to meet their eyes despite the unease rioting through me, knowing they are talking about and turning their noses down at me.
Confidence, Ships, a constant refrain off Hayes’s tongue.
But I’m still on edge. Still waiting for security to show up and tell me I need to leave because I wasn’t invited, and that’s why I have the invitation tucked inside Hayes’s suit jacket pocket. Just in case. And still in shock over seeing my meticulous preparations come to life before me and not actually be for me.
“I’m just thinking,” I say quietly and look around once again at the centerpieces and linens and room setup.
“About?”
“About how Uptight Ursula sold this to Rebound Sarah. I mean, did she tell her the hotel offered a package deal where everything was already decided . . . and Sarah just went along with it?” What sort of woman happily accepts a wedding completely organized for a different bride? By a different bride. “Or was Sarah just so love-struck that she agreed to anything his mom wanted just to smooth over the waters because she can already tell what a controlling bitch she is?”
“Mmm.” He nods his head before pressing a kiss to my temple. And I love the gesture, the feeling it gives me, but hate that I immediately wonder if it’s for show or because he wants to do it. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“I mean as stupid as I now feel about allowing it to happen, I can stomach the similarities in our wedding dresses. Hell, even I had a weak moment and succumbed to Mrs. Layton’s relentless ramblings about how very special it would be for me to wear a modern-day version of the dress she’d married Mitch’s dad in. She had a designer bring in a couple of racks full of similar-looking dresses for me to choose from. And I did. And it was gorgeous. But that’s where I drew the line in giving in to her demands.”
Another murmur of acknowledgement from Hayes followed by a kiss to my temple.
And I love that he’s letting me ramble on and get it all out. That he’s giving me the elbows in the batter feeling I need and yet I’m nowhere near a kitchen or mixer.
The man really gets me.
I look his way to see his sudden interest in the room around us. “Something wrong?”
“Nah. There’s just an all-round weird vibe here . . . but it’s not our wedding, so who are we to judge?”
Not our wedding. I know he doesn’t mean the words how I hear them, but it makes me pause for a moment. Ideas and images flicker through my mind of what our wedding would look like. Simplicity over grandeur. In the field under the tree house with shabby chic décor and mason jars with tea lights in them for mood.
