Other People’s Weddings

Excerpt

Prologue

The Fourth Wedding
South Lake Tahoe, California

I looked at the empty cake platter, and the emptying dance floor, and smiled. The bride and groom were on their way to the absolutely beautiful lodge they’d rented for their first night as a married couple, the guests were happy, and I could finally breathe after a long day of wedding cake presenting, serving duties and one near disaster involving the photographer.

Not a feat I’m in a hurry to repeat. But the end result was worth it.

I wouldn’t call myself a romantic. But I do love weddings.

Weddings are, fundamentally, not about romance, anyway. Not really.

They might start out that way, but they evolve. When a person proposes to another person that they love very much (this has never happened to me, and I’m not in a hurry for it to, but I’ve had it recounted to me by many friends, brides, grooms and maybe I’ve watched the occasional flashmob proposal on YouTube) it’s about them. The couple.

Unless it’s a flashmob, then I usually assume it’s about someone’s ego.

But generally speaking, the proposal is between two people. The wedding is about two people, their competing tastes, the influence of their friends, and all their familial issues coming home to roost.

That’s the part I like. The whole glittering tapestry of connections between all the people involved. Which can often devolve into spectacle, but I enjoy that too.

I love what a wedding says about – not just the people getting married – but everyone in their lives.

Like when a couple chooses to get married in New Orleans during Mardi Gras but don’t want their Baptist grandmother to know they drink. Or are having premarital sex.

People are fascinating. And very, very strange.

I love to bake because I loved my grandmother with my whole heart. I love to bake wedding cakes, because I love the strangeness, romanticism and uniqueness of other people, and the parties they choose to throw when they optimistically promise themselves to another human being for all eternity.

I might not be a romantic, but I’m not a cynic either. That doesn’t mean I can ignore the glaring stat that more than half of the happy unions I bake cakes for won’t last.

So far, though, only six of the two hundred and eighty-eight wedding cakes have gotten divorced. That I know of.

One of them did recently change her profile picture to a selfie, along with a quote about seasons, so it’s possible we’re at seven now.

Yes, I do friend everyone I bake a cake for. Or they friend me. But it would be weird not to. This is a very small town.

Personal and professional lines get very blurry when you frequently run into clients in the grocery store. And at the dentist. Or at your gynecologist.

Worse when it is your gynecologist.

It’s unnerving, to say the least, when the nurse looks at you with very large eyes and says: Poppy, if you could bake my cake, I’d be so honored and I know it’s short notice but…well, I’m pregnant but you can’t tell anyone.

Possibly the worst place I’ve ever been asked if I’d bake a cake for someone. Also, though, I could hardly say no to a pleading pregnant woman while I was laid up in stirrups.

I didn’t want to say no anyway. I love my job.

And all its perks.

A common thread between brides in my hometown is the desire to get married anywhere but the town. It’s too common. Everyone has the same pictures. No out-of-town family wants to spend time in a tiny Oregon town whose population hasn’t grown since the gold rush era, et cetera.

That’s how I end up traveling for work. Often. Not a complaint.

This particular wedding was staid compared to the New Orleans wedding I’d gone to the year before, but it wasn’t quiet by any stretch of the imagination. The outdoor dance floor at the lodge had cleared hours ago, and the bar was packed now.

I was buzzing on the triumph of how smoothly everything had gone, how gloriously the cake had blended with the theme and how good it had all tasted. I wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours. Quinn had been a bridesmaid and I’d been the baker, and I was effervescent with the way it had all gone. In spite of the earlier kerfuffle.

Caitlin had been a beautiful bride. And if I ever had a tendency toward being a romantic it was in these moments.

It’s impossible to resist the glow of a newly married couple.

Because the event itself is behind them, and life stretches out before them in all its infinite possibility, unspoiled yet by reality.

Moments like that, I can admit that I want that. Someday.

I don’t need it right this second, but if I didn’t want to get married, I wouldn’t be in a long term relationship. I’m in the dress rehearsal phase. Can we cohabitate together without killing each other? Can I imagine this man living alongside me like this every day forever?

That’s the thing. I’m not going to get married if I can’t be reasonably certain it will last.

I need certainty.

Though now wasn’t the time to reflect on my own issues. Everyone was happy, the wedding was through and it was time to celebrate.

Quinn was still in her berry-colored bridesmaid gown and her hair still twisted into an elaborate updo with two strands pulled out to ‘frame her face’ (the hair stylist’s words) but Quinn was the sort of person who could pull off any look simply because she decided it worked, and she projected so much confidence no one would dare question her.

I was in black, which was not best practices at a wedding if you were a guest, but I wasn’t really a guest. I was the cake lady. And the cake lady worked best when blended neatly into the background.

My cake was the star, not me.

I was okay with that.

“Drinks are on me, Poppy,” she said, making her way toward the bar. “Because you did exquisite work today, and should I ever get married I’ll need you to make my cake.”

“Should you get married, I’ll be the last one standing.”

“You’ll probably get married before me,” Quinn said. “You and Josh have been together forever.”

Seven years. Four of them cohabitating. And yes it was beginning to feel like if we didn’t get married soon we might not ever. But I also felt…paralyzed. I didn’t want to disrupt what we had if he was happy. I didn’t want to take something that worked and make it not work.

But I wanted…

I craved the stability of marriage. After my childhood, no one would blame me, I knew that for certain. My therapist had confirmed it was wholly understandable given the circumstances. So…

It also made me feel wary of projecting my own issues too aggressively at Josh.

“I’m not in a hurry,” I said. It was maybe a lie. I felt much more in a hurry than I had for a while. But maybe that was just because of…well. I wasn’t going to ruminate on that. “Besides, I go to more weddings a year than anyone I know.”

“I’m sure he goes to as many as you do. If not more.” Quinn’s left shoulder shifted outward, a gesture in a direction I was trying to avoid looking in.

Because I already knew who he was. I already knew where he was.

He being the wedding photographer.

He being Ryan Clark.

            He being…a complication. A scowly, recalcitrant entirely-too-compelling-complication.

            One who hated me nearly as much as I hated him. Or perhaps hate was too strong of a word.

            But then, after today’s events, maybe not.

“Sure,” I said.

It was like her statement conjured him up. Out of thin air.

Because there he was, striding toward the bar – and maybe us – with intent and intensity. A hallmark of his entire…thing. It irritated me. We were at a wedding. Well, the afterparty. It wouldn’t kill him to smile.

Except then he did, and I’d never be able to explain the reaction I had to it.

It shifted his whole face.

I’d known him since kindergarten. It wasn’t like I’d never seen him smile.

But on his thirty-year-old face, it seemed new.

And I found myself smiling back.

Only to realize he hadn’t been smiling at me. Or heading my way at all.

He stopped at the bar and clapped a man sitting there on the back, who stood and greeted him like they were long lost brothers.

“Who is that?”

Quinn was looking over at Ryan and his friend with very intense interest.

I wanted to say something cutting and clever about the fact that he was clearly someone important because he’d made Ryan, of all people, smile, like an actual human man and not a robot, or maybe something about how I couldn’t possibly know if Quinn didn’t know.

Instead, I managed a shrug.

And Quinn marched right over there as I shrugged, so I had to hurry and follow along.

“Hi, Ryan,” she said.

This time, Ryan did look at me. And then back at Quinn. “Hi, Quinn.” He looked at me again. Then at the man sitting at the bar. “Quinn,” he paused for a beat, “This is Noah.”

And Quinn looked lit up. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Chapter One

Even if I believed in fate, and I don’t, I would never subscribe to the belief that Ryan Clark was the master of it.

Quinn would tell me – and anyone listening – that he was, in fact, the architect of her romantic destiny. The arranger of her stars. The very hand of God.

It makes me want to die.

But I can’t die. I have a wedding cake to bake.

The cake I’m making for my next wedding is the most important cake I’ve ever been asked to bake.

I’m assuming I’m baking her cake, of course. No one else would be able to make a cake that is as quintessentially Quinn as I would.

Nobody knows Quinn better than I do. Well, arguably her fiancé does, I guess. But in the scheme of space and time, I feel that Quinn barely knows him.

They’ve been together ten months. And are now engaged.

In contrast, I lived with the same man for seven years without even a discussion of marriage, before it all fell apart last winter.

I don’t believe in destiny, or the one, or anything like that. That’s the sort of mindset people who don’t want to take charge of their lives buy into. An excuse for why they don’t have to make a relationship work, an excuse for drifting along in life, waiting for love, wealth or otherwise to come slap them in the face.

You have to go looking for special things in life.

If you want to chase your dreams you have to run.

To LA if need be.

At the expense of your child, if need be.

Though, this wasn’t about my mother. Who was certainly better known for playing a mother on TV than being one in actual real life.

But she’d succeeded in her dreams after she’d left me behind. Because we make choices. And that’s okay. How can you argue with a choice that hurts for a while but results in a person’s dreams coming true?

I mean, you can’t. Or at least, I can’t.

Given my personal viewpoint on the whole subject, I can’t really claim that Josh and I weren’t ‘meant to be’. In the end, I think it wasn’t a relationship we wanted to do the work for. And that’s fine.

It hurt when he broke up with me. Especially given I’d thought we were on the cusp of a proposal, not an ending, but I’d grown since then. Painfully, and with great effort.

But that’s my perspective on love in general. It isn’t a matter of ‘meant to be’ or ‘not meant to be’. You work at a relationship, and then you work to get over it. I wish things were as easy as fate.

Quinn says that kind of thing all the time, because Quinn is a romantic. With eleven months between her first meeting of Noah and their engagement, she kind of has to be.

Quinn would say that she and Noah were fated.

How could they be anything else?

After that chance meeting in the Lake Tahoe bar, it had to have come from something bigger than them. Bigger than all of us.

I looked at it this way. If you think a guy in a bar is hot and finagle your way into an introduction, is it fate, or are you horny? No judgment.

And if you then decide that this is going to be the thing you make work, because he makes you smile and he’s handsome and you have an easy time weaving your life into his, great.

I think fate is a very strong word for what are really mundane, daily occurrences that you choose to apply meaning to – or don’t. And once you’ve given something meaning, you tend to hang onto it a lot harder than if you hadn’t.

So maybe it’s more than fate that has Quinn and Noah rushing to get married. Not that I think she shouldn’t marry him. He’s a great guy and she’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her. I just think it’s more choice than magic, that’s all.

She’d asked me out to dinner tonight and I was sure it was going to be the will-you-be-my-maid-of-honor will-you-bake-my-cake dinner. Which meant I needed a truly stunning outfit, because honestly, it made more sense to dress up for your best friend than for a man.

Men didn’t care what dress you had on, in my experience.

Your best friend was the one who would be delighted by effort put into hair, makeup and the perfect shoes.

I’d rather dress for Quinn than some guy any day.

I was half ready when my doorbell rang.

I frowned and wondered if I’d forgotten I’d ordered something I had to sign for – I ordered a lot of kitchen gadgets online during late night doomscrolling sessions before bed and I often had no memory of it.

 But when I walked toward the front door, in a clingy red dress, barefoot and with red lipstick on, and saw the top of a familiar head in the high windows in the oak door I froze for a second.

This was not fate.

So there, Quinn.

But as I moved to the door and jerked it open, I realized that Quinn had never even implied that Josh might be my fate.

Which was the prevailing thought in my mind as I came face to face with my ex-boyfriend.

He smiled. Boyishly. I’d always liked his smile. He had dimples and pale blue eyes, blond hair that often fell into his eyes. And I felt a rush of warmth. Familiarity. I missed feeling this comfortable.

But that dissipated when I remembered he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore, he’d hurt me, and I didn’t know why he was here.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Hi. I…realized I left some things here.”

“Six months ago?”

“Yes.”

“I…yeah come in.”

I stepped back and let him walk inside the house he’d once lived in. An unexpected guest now and not a cohabitant.

Weird.

It felt destabilizing and uncomfortable and I hated it.

I didn’t hate him though. That was the tough thing. I never had.

He’d gotten me through such a hard time in my life. When I’d lost Gran I’d really felt like a part of me had died with her, and Josh had been so good to me. But even outside of the bad times, he’d made me feel important. Needed. And I really, really liked that.

But it was like I couldn’t find that feeling now either. Any more than I could find hate.

He was looking at me like he expected me to say something that would make this situation less awkward, and my brain started to do a desperate tap dance, trying to find the right words because I still wanted to make things easy, I wanted to make him comfortable, even if I shouldn’t.

It was ingrained in me.

After all, why would anyone want to stay with someone who made life harder?

He didn’t want to stay with you.

My mental tap dance ended on a thud.

“I haven’t gone through the closet in your game room,” I said.

“That’s probably where it is. Just…my sheets and some stuff from school. My D.A.R.E t-shirt.”

“Your…D.A.R.E t-shirt?”

“Drug abuse resistance edu –”

“We were in D.A.R.E together, I know what it is. I didn’t know the shirt was important to you.”

He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t do drugs.”

“Well. I think statistically the program wasn’t very successful, but yay to us outliers, I guess.”

He smiled. “I guess.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to another and it was like I felt it inside my chest. A shift, a weird longing. I didn’t want to kiss him or anything but I wanted to hang onto him. For just a second. Because in the six months since we’d broken up it had felt like I was in a storm with nothing to hold onto. Everything I’d thought about myself and my life and my future had changed, and for a moment I just wanted it to go back to how it had been.

Quinn was getting married.

I felt like a sad, lonely cliché. Gazing at my ex like the past had the answers because the future was a blank space.

“You can go look in the game room,” I said. “I’m getting ready.”

That was so firm. I was proud of myself. I was trying to rescue myself more than I’d been trying to be firm, but whatever.

He nodded and headed back toward what had been his game room. Where he’d had his PC set up for gaming, and a table for D&D sessions – which I’d sometimes participated in too. Dungeons and Dragons was maybe my favorite thing I’d learned from Josh. What wasn’t to like about a few hours of total escapism where you could pretend to be a Druidic Wood Elf instead of a regular girl?

Nothing, that’s what.

I wrinkled my nose and went into the bathroom to finish putting my makeup on. I was getting nostalgic. Nostalgia felt dangerous right now.

I looked at myself and tried to make a stern face at my reflection before I walked back out of the bathroom and practically ran into him in the hallway.

“Sorry,” I said, feeling silly and awkward as I walked quickly into the living room.

He followed me. “Poppy.”

I turned around and looked at him, standing there holding a cardboard box filled with stuff that was apparently very important to him. “We can be friends, Poppy” he said. “We were together too long to just be nothing.”

I blinked. “I…”

Maybe he was right. I’d been angry when he’d broken up with me, of course I had been. I’d been blindsided. Who would respond to that well?

But we had been together so long.

We’d known each other since elementary school.

Maybe that was part of why I wanted to sink into him now. Because he’d been one of the steady things, one of the constant things, and losing him entirely was absurd.

“Would you think about it?” he asked.

He looked hopeful, and entirely different to the image I’d constructed of him in my head, pasted together from moments during our breakup. I’d fashioned him into a brand-new Josh in my mind, who was only the one that had hurt me because that made it easy to never regret it and never miss him.

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t…hate you.”

That was the truth. It surprised me a little.

His shoulders sagged with what looked like relief and my previous statement became even truer.

I didn’t want an enemy wandering around the streets of Pineville anyway.

Well, not another one anyway. I already had the one.

Ryan.

I did not need to think about Ryan now. Anyway, thank God I hadn’t seen Josh’s best friend/my professional nemesis in six months. Not even randomly on the street.

A minor miracle in a town this size.

Which was why what Josh was suggesting was the dream, really. If you had to break up in a small town, wasn’t it better if you didn’t have to cycle through the stages of grief every time you saw your ex?

Friendship was potentially the best solution.

“I’m glad you don’t hate me. I know I said…” he winced. “I said some things I wish I hadn’t.”

“Did you not mean them?”

“I did. But I think I might have…sometimes it’s hard to know what you actually feel.”

He looked at me expectantly and I realized I didn’t know what he expected. I’d been an expert on that, once upon a time. I’d taken great delight in it. In knowing just what to do. Just what to say. Just how to be.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Right.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed. I’d known what I felt.

But then I was reminded of times when I hadn’t known and hadn’t been my best self at all and I felt like I didn’t have the right to say anything at all.

“I’ll get out of your hair. But maybe we can… see each other again sometime.”

“Yeah,” I said.

He was gone before I realized he hadn’t said anything about my dress. Proving my earlier internal musings a little too well.

I felt unsettled and weird. He seemed regretful, which was very, very strange considering he’d been the one to break up with me because he’d wanted to see what else was out there.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what you actually feel.

I shoved that thought aside and went to go choose my shoes because I didn’t need the specter of my past romance hanging over tonight.

This was about Quinn. Not Josh. And not the weird tug I felt toward the safety he’d once represented for me.

<line break>

When Quinn rolled up in the driveway I was a little surprised to see Noah in the passenger’s seat. I’d imagined the dinner was just us celebrating.

It wounded me just slightly that Noah would be here for this, which was silly because it was about Noah and Quinn.

I waved and tried not to telegraph my emotions as I made my way to the backseat.

And stopped.

Ryan Clark was in the backseat.

Like this was a double date.

Ryan. Clark. Who I hadn’t seen since the fifth wedding.

The fifth wedding in four years where I made the cake and he was the photographer. We hadn’t seen each other because I no longer lived with his best friend. Because he didn’t come to my bakery and I didn’t go to his studio. Because we hadn’t worked a wedding together since.

We hadn’t seen each other because we had no reason to see each other.

Unlike with Josh, I didn’t feel nostalgic looking at Ryan.

And this was not fate.

This was Quinn.

I was very aware that I was standing outside the car for far too long, being far too still, with my arms held loose at my sides like one of those dopey, bargain bin cat pillows you could pick up at a truck stop.

I also couldn’t move.

Until he did.

He shifted. Inside the car. Just a little. Not a smile. Just… his shoulders lowered. He sat back – just a small movement – and his eyebrows went slack rather than being held tight together, pinching his forehead.

So… I took a deep breath like I was diving off a cliff into freezing cold water and opened the car door, got in and closed it in one quick movement. I grabbed my seatbelt and tried to buckle with the same fluidity but found myself fumbling to get to the mechanism into the actual buckle and it took three tries. Three impotent clicks. When I looked up my eyes met his. And I know I sneered.

I did know it.

I didn’t mean to.

I meant to smile.

The result was, I could imagine, more like when my grandma’s old Australian Shepherd used to get caught doing something wrong. Just my lips lifted over my teeth.

I stopped. Quickly.

He looked away.

            I was going to say hi to him. I was about to.

“Good to see you, Poppy.” That came from Noah who was looking at me in the rearview mirror, and I did manage to smile at him.

“Good to see you too.” I like him. Really. He’s a great guy. My issue isn’t with Noah at all. It’s more timelines and of course fear for my friend’s heart. And the possibility she might choose New Zealand over the US and leave me forever, tapping into all my childhood trauma around abandonment that was recently compounded by the death of my grandmother.

That’s all.

“It’s been a while.”

It had been. Which was a given, since Noah had been in New Zealand the past few months, and that meant the tension in the car was so noticeable we’d been reduced to soap opera speech that barely rose above the level of as you know, Bob. Anything to fill the silence.

“Well,” I said, because if there was one thing I knew it was how to make conversation with a recently engaged couple. “Tell us the whole story!”

“I told you everything,” said Quinn, lifting her hand from the steering wheel very deliberately so that her ring sparkled.

“I want to hear Noah’s point of view.”

And as I thought they would be, they were off. Telling the whole story and stepping on each other’s sentences. It made it a lot harder for me to be worried about it, and them, timelines notwithstanding. They were in love, and it was beautiful.

I just needed to push off the weirdness that I felt from my earlier visit with Josh. That was why I felt so… off.

I did not look at Ryan to get a gauge on his reaction. I didn’t care what he thought.

I might not be a romantic, but he was the most anti-romance human being to ever come near the bridal industrial complex. I couldn’t imagine him getting starry eyed over an engagement story.

Or, indeed, anything.

Thankfully, we were close to the restaurant, and I all-but tumbled out of the car when we pulled up to the curb.

Then we walked into the restaurant, and down the stairs to what was a rather cave-like dining room that had been the epitome of class and fanciness back in the 1960s, with its stone walls and red lamps on the tables. I had always been fond of the retro nature of the place.

“You can’t see anything in here,” Ryan said after they sat down at their table.

“I like it. It makes me want a fancy cigarette case and a martini,” I countered, not even being contrary for the sake of it.

“This is why I like Poppy,” Noah said. “She’s hard case.”

Noah had called me that before, and I was sure he was doing it again just because I’d been so amused by it last time.

I looked at Noah. “Try to explain what that means again.”

He did try, but when the waiter came to take our drink order it got lost in the shuffle, and then we spent the next five minutes talking about wine until the drinks arrived and the appetizer and dinner order were taken.

I reached into the bread basket at the same time as Ryan and our fingers brushed, and I took a half breath and made the deliberate choice not to respond like an angry cat who’d gotten her tail stepped on.

I let our hands stay touching. I lingered even.

His eyes caught mine, and I knew whatever game I’d been playing… I hadn’t won.

I pulled my hand out.

And forgot my bread, dammit.

I couldn’t reach for more bread now. It would look like touching Ryan’s hand had flustered me.

I couldn’t have it looking like that.

I watched him butter the bread he’d gotten and felt a little salty about it.

The appetizers arrived, which felt like a blessing because then I got to pretend I’d been waiting for the blue cheese crème brulee rather than awkwardly avoiding the bread.

I attacked it with relish, enjoying the crispy-topped, creamy cheese and trying to ignore that my hand still felt warm.

“Have you thought about theme, Quinn?” I asked. “I think a naked cake would be so good for you. With pines and fresh berries…”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “I might want something more traditional. With a cake topper.”

That did not please me.

“Oh…” I frowned and then tried not to.

“But we haven’t really… committed to anything yet.”

I nodded. “Sure. Of course.”

Maybe Quinn didn’t want me to make her cake? It would be okay if she didn’t.

Maybe.

But Brittney Keller had me make her wedding cake and she’d hated me in high school so it would be a little weird if Quinn didn’t want me to make her cake, that was all.

But I was distracted from my cake worry when Noah and Quinn took each other’s hands and gazed meaningfully across the table at Ryan and myself.

“We wanted to bring you both out tonight,” Quinn said, her eyes shining in the dim light, tears shimmering there and making my throat tight even though I didn’t know why she was crying, “because you’re our best friends. Ryan, you brought us together. You’re our North Star.” Noah shot Ryan a rueful smile that seemed to be apologizing for Quinn’s dramatization. “And Poppy, you’ve been there for me always. We don’t have sisters, we have each other.”

Well, that really made me want to cry.

“Poppy, I want you to be my maid of honor.”

“Ryan, I want you to be my best man.”

Ryan and I turned to look at each other slowly, very slowly. Our eyes caught. And held.

“We’re going to get married in Queenstown, New Zealand,” Quinn said. “And we really want to have the wedding party and family there for two weeks. For excursions and sightseeing and just… hanging out.”

Quinn’s voice faltered, and I knew why.

She was having her wedding in New Zealand. She wanted us all there for two weeks to spend time together because she was leaving.

She really was leaving.

I’d been worried about this. It had been sitting in the back of my mind, gnawing at my brain for weeks. Months. As she’d fallen harder and harder for Noah and I’d found myself vacillating between joy at her joy and fear over the inevitable change it would bring.

Where would they live?

I asked myself that question a lot.

I’d deliberately avoided asking Quinn.

Oregon was beautiful. My understanding was that New Zealand was one of the few places that rivaled it for beauty.

Noah was from Queenstown, and though I’d never been I had googled it extensively and I, who had never considered leaving Pineville in my life, could even imagine being very happy there.

So I worried.

My worry was founded, it turned out.

Very founded.

She wanted to spend quality time with her family and the bridal party for two whole weeks because she was leaving us forever.

I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t actually handle hearing the words come out of her mouth.

The cake didn’t matter.

Nothing really did.

“I need to… excuse me. I need to use the bathroom.”

I hustled up the stairs and down a long hall, and ducked into the tiny bathroom that was in bad need of an update.

I looked in the mirror and silently called myself a coward. My dark hair was askew, my blue eyes red even though I hadn’t shed a tear yet. But I looked shell-shocked. I looked like someone who was afraid of losing her best friend.

“Get a grip, get a grip, get a grip,” I muttered, running cold water over my wrists and splashing some onto my neck.

I just couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to live without Quinn right down the street from me. She’d been my best friend since I’d moved here in second grade and we’d only ever been separated temporarily by college. Even then we’d seen each other here when we were on break.

When I’d come to Pineville I’d clung to people. My grandmother. Quinn. Later to Josh.

I’d lost my gran and Josh. Losing Quinn felt unbearable.

It felt like being a kid who didn’t know when she’d ever see her mom again.

Someone walked into the bathroom and I took a deep breath, and walked back out.

And nearly tripped over Ryan, who was coming down the same hall in the opposite direction.

He reached out and steadied me, his eyes meeting mine. I overcorrected, I admit that. I pushed him. I didn’t mean to. I meant to sort of push off of him like a spring board, to get away from the solid wall of his body, but it really was more of a shove.

“Well. Watch where you’re going,” I said.

It was like I was in sixth grade all over again, when I’d accidentally dropped the bowling ball from my gravity-themed science project onto his solar system.

I’d tried to be nice to Ryan when we’d first met and I’d been given nothing but hostility in return.

The way I coped with my life, with my maternal abandonment, with everything, was to make myself the brightest ray of sunshine around. I was a people pleaser, I knew that. I’d done a stint in therapy in college. I had great reason for my issues.

My mom and I met up with Gran in Lake Tahoe when I was seven. We spent three lovely days together and then she sent me home with my grandmother. She hadn’t told me that’s what she was doing. Hadn’t told me I wouldn’t be going back to LA with her. I’d just been… sent off. With a backpack that only contained a few of my possessions.

I’d only seen her a scattered, handful of times since then. The last time was five years ago when I’d been in LA for a wedding industry convention and it had been… fine.

I did the thing with her I did with everyone. I was smiley. I never asked her why she left me. I didn’t want her to cut off contact with me altogether.

The point is, I try. I’ve always tried. And nine times out of ten, it works.

It had never worked with Ryan.

With him, I’d always managed to be wrong.

“She’s happy,” he said, his voice hard. “And so is he. Don’t ruin it by making it about you.”

My jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

“I get that you don’t want to make a traditional cake, and you don’t want her to move to New Zealand.”

“Christ Jesus our Lord, are you really putting the cake on par with them moving to New Zealand? And do you know about them moving to New Zealand?”

“Noah talked to me about it.”

Quinn had not talked to her.

And he knew.

“Why didn’t Quinn talk to me? She hasn’t even actually told me – it’s just so obvious and…and…”

“She doesn’t want to hurt you.”

I hated him right then. He had no right to give this news to me so casually, acting high and mighty and above it. He had his family here. I didn’t have anyone.

Maybe, just maybe, my reaction was affected by my earlier encounter with Josh. Or maybe it was just the Ryan of it all. When I’d seen Josh earlier, I’d felt this deep need to smooth it over, and with Ryan…

I never felt that.

Ever.

“Well… she should treat me like an adult and speak to me, then.” And I was determined to act like an adult and not a wounded child, so I walked past him, down those stairs and back to the table with my chin lifted high.

My heart was breaking.

The only thing that softened the blow was the slow realization that seeped through all the shattered cracks.

Two. Weeks.

In New Zealand.

I was the maid of honor.

He was the best man.

Two weeks.

Ryan sat down at the table, and we looked at each other as if we’d both had the same thought.

We were going to be stuck with each other, in a foreign country, for fourteen days. Like the awkward car ride, but for three-hundred thirty-six hours.

It was going to kill me.

If I didn’t kill him first.

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