Once and for All

by Sarah Dessen

In response, she looked down at her coffee cup, running her finger around the rim. “I’ve just never been much of the vacation type. That’s it.”

  “Because you didn’t have the opportunity,” I said. “Also, you were stuck with me.”

  “I have never been stuck with you,” she replied. Then she reached over, brushing my hair back with her free hand. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but you’re still not answering my question.”

  Exasperated, she dropped her hand. “Look. I know it’s not a popular or common thing, but I like working. I prefer it, actually. If I’m not doing my job then I feel at loose ends. Which is bad enough here at home. But we’re going to be on an island. With no escape.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Are you serious? But you always talk about how much you hate your job.”

  “I do not,” she replied immediately, clearly dismayed. “No, no. I say that certain aspects get on my nerves, and specific brides or circumstances. But the job itself? Never.”

  I sat back, trying to process this. It did actually fit, now that I thought about it. “So what you’re saying is that all those times I wanted to go the beach, or the mountains, or the amusement park, we could have and you just didn’t want to?”

  She bit her lip. “Well, maybe not every time.”

  I shook my head. “Wow.”

  “I’m sorry,” she told me. She squeezed my hand. “Look. There was a point in my life, when I was still married to your dad, when I was free to do whatever I wanted. I felt like I should have been so happy. And I wasn’t. Then everything fell apart, and I ended up at Linens, Etc. as a single parent, and didn’t expect to be happy ever again. But when I met William, and we started doing this business, it was like suddenly things just clicked for me. I’d found my thing, you know, my It. When you come to something like that late, you’re always afraid you’ll lose it again. It makes everything about it feel precious.”

  “Mom, you were, like, twenty-two when you started this business,” I pointed out.

  “Twenty-two, divorced from a trust-fund poet, and I’d spent the last few years raising chickens and making bracelets for a living.” She sighed. “Finding my calling felt like a blessing. And you don’t take blessings for granted.”

  “You’re allowed a day off, though. Even God took one.”

  “And like Him, I get my Sundays,” she said. “That’s enough.”

  She got up then, crossing the kitchen to refill her coffee cup. On the TV, Dan Jersey, the news anchor, was somberly reporting on the stock market while a graphic of highs and lows hovered over one shoulder. I studied it, thinking about what she’d said. The calling part I couldn’t relate to, not yet anyway, and I loved vacations. But this idea of coming across something so right for you after feeling like you never would, and then being terrified of scaring it away—well, that wasn’t so hard to understand.

  “We have four weddings left before Bee’s,” I said to her now, as she took her seat again, folding one leg up underneath her. “They won’t be affected by you relaxing a bit. I’ll make sure they’re waiting for you the minute you return. Promise.”

  “Well, it looks like I don’t have a choice,” she said, sighing. “William already bought us matching hats and caftans. I’m going, like it or not.”

  The way she said this, you still would have thought she was being packed off to work camp in Siberia. But you never know what you can do until you try, and if you’re lucky, what you love will always be waiting for you. That’s just how it is in most cases. Not all. But most.

  “The thing is,” Julian said, leaning over the table, closer to me, “what most people don’t realize is that discounting alien life isn’t just foolish. It’s arrogant.”

  I picked up my iced tea, taking a sip. In the first fifteen minutes at the Thai restaurant, we’d covered the basics—school, family, music—just like every other date I’d gone on so far. Then, suddenly, we were talking extraterrestrials. It hadn’t even been a natural segue, either. Julian, the nephew of one of the ladies who owned the stationery store beside our office, just plunged right in.

  “I’m sorry?” I said, as our waitress paused by my elbow, refilling the tiny bit I’d already consumed.

  “It takes a lot of balls to just assume you are the only form of life in the universe,” he explained, taking off his baseball cap and smoothing back the dreadlocks beneath it. “That’s what my talk is about this weekend. The full title is ‘The Hubris of Earthlings: How Narrow-Mindedness Endangers Our Understanding of the Universe.’”

  His aunt, Florence, had mentioned he was in town for a conference at the U. That’s what I got for being so worried about the bet that I didn’t ask questions. When she said he was my age, a nice guy, and looking for someone to hang out with, I’d just jumped right in.

  “So you’re, like, an expert,” I said now, as he checked his phone—prominently between us and lighting up with messages regularly—on the table. “You must be, if you’re speaking.”

  “Well, anyone can give a talk if you sign up early enough,” he said, typing some response while not looking at me. “But, yes, I consider myself a scholar when it comes to outer galaxies. We should all be students of the greater world, though. It’s our duty. To do otherwise is, frankly . . .”

  He looked down at his phone again as a new message came in.

  “Arrogant,” I finished for him. He didn’t hear me.

  After the entrees arrived, I excused myself to the restroom, where I took as long as possible washing my hands and reapplying lipstick. If I had to kiss a few frogs to find another prince, I was definitely working my way through the amphibian world. Why was it so hard to find someone I actually liked to talk to? Although really, at this point, I would have taken just some continuous eye contact. Or, well, attention.

  Just as I thought this, my own phone beeped. When I pulled it out, I saw a text from Ambrose. CHECKING IN, he wrote. We’d agreed on this, for safety’s sake, as it was a date not at a party or with another couple. YOU GOOD?

  HE LIKES ALIENS, I responded.

  WHO DOESN’T?

  I sighed, ignoring this, then put my phone in my pocket and headed back to the table. I knew the drill now. All I had to do was get through dinner, politely decline dessert, and then offer a firm handshake before heading home. I had to admit, though, that even week and three dates into the bet, I was already kind of over it. But I couldn’t quit, after all my big talk. Even if August seemed ages, even galaxies, away.

  “How’d the airport go?” Ambrose asked.

  I sank into one of the leather chaises of the office, letting out a big breath. “Excruciating. But they are on the plane. I went into the terminal and watched the screen until it said DEPARTED, just to be sure.”

  “I’m glad,” he said. “When she unpacked her entire carry-on searching for her passport and it was in her hand, I thought for sure she was going to just bag the whole trip.”

  “Oh, we had, like, two more incidents like that while en route,” I told him, rubbing my eyes. “I’m starting to think it’s a good thing she never goes away. I don’t think I could take it.”

  “But she’s gone,” he said, wrapping a rubber band around the stack of place cards he’d been counting and dropping them into the bin at his feet. “And we have the weekend off. Just as soon as we finish all this.”

  I looked at the arrangement of vases, guestbook, cake toppers, napkins, and other nuptial-related items piled on the table in front of me. It had all been purchased for the Margo Wagner Wedding, which had been booked for the next day. A moderately expensive, mid-size double hander with a shabby chic theme, it was to have been the kind of event my mom and William could do with their eyes closed. And it would have been lovely, I was sure of it, if Margo’s fiancé hadn’t called it off with a little over a week to go.

  It was too l
ate to get back any deposits or return stuff, even if she wanted to, which she did not. In fact, the specific orders, delivered by her grim-faced mother, were that she “never hear about this unpleasantness again.” We could always use extra supplies for emergencies, but there was still something sad about boxing up all this stuff that had been bought, I knew, with such great plans and hopes. I reached over, picking up the cake topper: it was a groom holding a bride in his arms, both of them grinning.

  “I’ll wrap up the candles and candleholders,” I said to Ambrose now, getting to my feet. I ripped open a box of tissue paper, pulling out a piece, and picked up a small blue votive. The colors for the wedding were to have been yellow and blue, the bride and groom’s favorites, respectively. “But to be honest, I never liked the whole green idea.”

  Ambrose glanced over at me. “Green idea?”

  “The tablecloths,” I said, nodding at the stack of them on a nearby chair. “My mom hates anything but white. But Margo was all about the symbolism, you know, of merging yellow and blue together. So for the reception, she wanted a lot of green.”

  He laughed. “Man, in this business people can find meaning in everything. Even the color wheel.”

  “Weddings make people do weird things,” I told him, wrapping another votive. “That’s the one truth that never changes.”

  “I’m starting to understand that,” he replied.

  As we worked quietly for a few minutes, I thought of Margo Wagner, a girl fond of heavy makeup and statement necklaces whom I had met a couple of times at the office. All brides tend to be obsessed with their events, but I remembered her being mostly focused on her huge engagement ring, which she was constantly turning to catch the light. Perhaps, I thought now, it was like a crystal ball, and looking into it she saw everything turning out perfectly, with yellow and blue and then all that green. Or she just liked the way it shined. Maybe both.

  “So,” Ambrose said now, as I wrapped a larger pillar candle, “what’s the latest on the dating front? You’ve been awfully quiet since Alien Lover. Hope you haven’t had trouble keeping up your end of the bet.”

  “Nope,” I said. “Last night I doubled with Jilly and Michael Salem with one of his friends, also a food truck kid.”

  “Wow, that’s a big community, huh? It’s like homeschooling.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “This guy, Martin, his parents do dumplings. I hear they are delicious.”

  “And what about Martin?”

  I sighed, picking up another votive. “Very nice, super cute, and totally hung up on his ex.”

  He made a face. “Yikes.”

  “Yeah. Her name is Eloise. To me she kind of sounds like a nightmare, but he is hopeful it’s just a matter of time before she comes to her senses.” I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “It wasn’t awful, though. At least I got to see Jilly.”

  “She’s been busy?”

  “She’s always busy. But now she’s in love, which means any of her spare time is all about Michael Salem,” I said.

  “That always sucks. When your friends go totally MIA.”

  “Nah, I’m happy for her. She deserves it.” I bent down, arranging the candles in the box at my feet. “Jilly has always been a hopeless romantic, but she’s never really had a serious boyfriend. It’s a first for her, all this walking into the sunset. So it’s huge.”

  I could feel him looking at me as I stood back up, bunching up some more paper. “What about you, though?”

  “I just told you. Alien guy on Monday, Martin last night, and Ben and I are trying to work out something this weekend, since I’ll be free. So not only I am totally still in this, I’m actually ahead of what we agreed on. Which is why I’m already thinking about good prospects for you when you can’t go the distance with Lauren. Maybe Eloise will still be available.”

  “Maybe,” he said, and I laughed. “But I wasn’t talking about the bet.”

  I looked at him. “Oh. Then what did you mean?”

  “The whole in love, hopeless romantic, huge thing. When do you get that?”

  “Have to win the bet first,” I said, and laughed again.

  He didn’t. “I’m serious, Louna. The bet aside, you want that, right? The sunset walk?”

  Immediately, I felt myself tense, my guard going up. “I mean, sure,” I said, trying to sound light, easy. “Who doesn’t? But it only happens so often.”

  “You think there’s a limit on sunset walks?”

  “I think,” I said, “that we’re all entitled to great loves, but not an endless amount. If you’ve had one, it takes a while for another to come around.”

  “A great love is just that, though. Great.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “So it doesn’t usually involve a bad breakup, like yours did. Which is the opposite of great.”

  Now I was kind of stuck. I cleared my throat, recalibrating. “Things end,” I told him. “Even with the best—or greatest—of beginnings. And yellow and blue make green. Such is life, right?”

  I wrapped another large pillar in tissue, then put it in the box. After a few moments of silence, Ambrose said, “I can’t decide if you’re really this cynical or just guarded.”

  “Maybe both,” I said.

  I was trying to be funny, or at least lighten the mood. It was bad enough to be surrounded by the evidence of a romance that had crashed and burned; did we really have to share our own war stories, as well? The moment I thought this, though, I felt a pang in my heart. Ethan wasn’t a battle for me. Loving him had been the easiest thing I’d ever done. Maybe that was why I was so sure if anything else ever came even close, it would be nothing but hard.

  Just then the door opened, the beep sounding overhead. I looked over to see Lauren coming in, wearing flip-flops and a sundress, another girl following along behind her. “Hope it’s okay we dropped in,” she said to Ambrose, waving at me. I waved back. “I just really wanted Maya to meet you.”

  “It’s fine,” Ambrose said, putting down the guestbook he’d been about to pack up and walking over to them. “The famous Maya. It’s great to finally make your acquaintance.”

  “And you are the infamous Ambrose,” the girl, who was taller than Lauren, with dark hair and a nose ring and wearing jeans and a tank top, replied. “Who has my cousin in the best mood I’ve seen her in for months.”

  At this, Lauren blushed, but still reached out to take Ambrose’s hand, wrapping her fingers around it. “Maya got the brunt of my breakup darkness,” she explained to us. “I went a bit goth for a while there.”

  “If you can even imagine that,” Maya said.

  “I can’t. Lauren is all sunshine,” Ambrose replied, and of course at this she beamed, glittering even more. I went back to my candles. “So. Big day’s tomorrow, huh?”

  “Yep,” Maya said, glancing at the cake topper. “And I hear you can actually attend?”

  “I can,” he replied, and Lauren smiled even wider. “We had a last-minute cancellation. Hence all this stuff and no use for it.”

  Maya picked up a bottle of bubbles tied with a ribbon from a nearby basket. “Wow. Looks like it was going to be a big deal.”

  “All weddings seem big once you work a job like this,” he replied. “No matter the size, it’s the small details that kill you.”

  He sounded just like my mother. I bit back a smile, bending over my box.

  “Well, I guess it’s good we decided to forgo all that for the most part, then,” Maya replied.

  “Maya’s getting married tomorrow,” Lauren explained to me.

  “You are? Congratulations,” I said. “Where’s the ceremony?”

  She and Lauren looked at each other, then laughed. “Good question. Right now, it looks like it might be at that Jump Java a few doors down, in that little patio part out back. Unless we can find someplace better.”

 
I raised my eyebrows. “The patio? Aren’t there just smoking tables out there?”

  “We’re hoping to relocate the ashtrays,” Lauren said easily, as Maya moved her hand over the votives left on the table. “Maya and Roger want it low key, and Leo’s boss okayed it, as long as we don’t linger during the evening rush. It’s all about the party after, anyway.”

  “And where’s that?” I asked.

  “Probably we’ll all just go up to the Incubator for drinks,” Maya said. “That’s our favorite bar. We actually met there.”

  I looked at Ambrose, who had gone back to piling blue-and-yellow-edged napkins into the box. “Wow. After all we see around here, it sounds so easy.”

  This word just came to me, and I was grateful for it. Better than the next one, which was sad. But maybe the whole Margo thing was getting to me. Maya said, “Well, Roger just hated the idea of a big, expensive thing, you know? And we’re doing a party in a couple of months in Michigan for his whole family, so none of them are coming. It’s just us and my mom, the friend who got ordained on the Internet to marry us, and a few others.”

  “It’s going to be perfect,” Lauren said.

  “Oh, totally,” Maya added. To me she said, “What are these?”

  I glanced over to see her holding a box of small cards, tied with a bow. “Oh, those are for the wish wall. Or, were.”

  “Wish wall?” she said. “What’s that?”

  I looked at Ambrose, wanting to offer him the chance to explain. But he looked clueless. So much for already being an expert. “At the ceremony, we were going to set up this bulletin board on an easel,” I told her, pointing to where it was leaning against a nearby chair. “Then during the reception, everyone writes out a wish for the bride and groom on one of these cards and tacks it up. At the end of the night, we take them down and arrange them back in the box. The idea is that every night from the first one you are married, you open one, together.”

  “Oh.” She looked at the box. “That’s kind of cute.”

  “It’s big right now,” I told her.