Back at the house, Carly hurried into the kitchen and pulled the remaining flowers out of the fridge. Clutching a few bud vases in each hand, she carried them out into the backyard and arranged them carefully on the half-dozen rented tables that were set and waiting. A few minutes later, Izzy arrived, hands full of vases, and together they ferried back and forth from the kitchen until the fridge was empty and the tables were full.
“Matches?” Izzy asked, looking down at the votive candles on the table in front of her.
“Two boxes on the kitchen windowsill, and a spare box hidden inside the barbecue,” Carly said automatically. Heather really had thought of everything.
Izzy strode into the house and returned with two boxes of matches, tossing one to Carly. For a few minutes, they worked in silence, moving slowly along each table to light the candles and drop them carefully back into their little glass holders.
“Hey,” Izzy started tentatively from the table behind her, and Carly had an unpleasant suspicion about what was coming next. Apparently she hadn’t held it together as well as she’d hoped to today. “Are you okay? You seemed pretty emotional up there. Is something wrong?”
Carly took a deep breath and deposited a lit candle into a cup. The green sign in the middle of the table said GRANDCENTRALSTATION, and the familiar font of the street sign made her suddenly homesick for New York.
“I’m fine,” she said to the sign, doing her best to affect a light, happy tone. “Just so happy for Heather, you know?” So happy for Heather, so completely heartbroken for herself. Trying to remember that, today of all days, one was far more important than the other.
It had been hard to remember that fact as she’d stood just behind Heather during the ceremony, barely five feet away from Nick, who looked like a delicious, dashing dream in his suit and his bare feet. Who wouldn’t stop looking across the aisle at her. It had taken every ounce of control she possessed to keep it together as she’d listened to Alice talk about friendship and commitment and a love so strong that it broke and then changed ANB’s strict no-dating policy. Heather was gaining so much today. A new family, a new future. Carly had stood there, hoping her trickle of tears wouldn’t become a flood, and trying to focus on Heather’s joy, instead of on how much she herself had lost in the last twenty-four hours.
Carly took a deep sniff, then smiled and turned to face Izzy. “Heather got so close to marrying the wrong person. It makes me happy to see her marry the right one.”
Izzy leaned against the table and looked at Carly skeptically. “Sure. But, listen, I don’t know you that well, but I know how much she loves you, and I reckon that if something was upsetting you, even on her wedding day, she’d want to know about it. You don’t have to tell me, but she’d want you to tell her.”
Carly nodded tightly. “I know, but really, I’m fine,” she lied.
And even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t make it Heather’s problem today, she thought, turning back to the table to finish lighting the candles. Look what had happened last time she’d asked someone for help. She’d solve her own problems, just like she should have done from the start. She’d fend for herself.
A few minutes later, they heard the sounds of happy chatter filtering from the front of the house, and then guests began arriving through the side gate and wandering into the back yard. They looked around at the transformed space—the twinkle lights hanging over the tables, the wood-fired pizza truck parked in one corner, the speakers and slabs of wood Davo had laid down to create a dance floor between the tables. Before long, people were wandering up to the back deck, where the friends of Alice’s brother who had agreed to do the catering had set up a bar and were offering up beer, wine, and the cocktails she and Nick had invented together.
Carly went up to the deck and tucked the matches inside the barbecue, then grabbed a Freshwater 75 from the table, wishing she could just swipe the gin bottle from behind the bar. By the time she’d downed half her drink, the backyard was full of guests chatting and laughing. She spotted Davo and Justin, plus a few other dancers she recognized from ANB company class, but she felt no desire to join in their joyful conversations.
As she watched guests mingle and locate their assigned seats, Alice and Nick came through the side gate. Alice looked delighted, glowing with triumph from officiating the wedding. Nick looked like he was trying to look happy, and as she watched him, Carly felt hot liquid rage rush through her veins. What the hell did he have to be unhappy about? He’d gotten everything he wanted. He had his dream job, the kind of real professional success he’d been faking this whole time. Plus a little holiday fucking around on the side, without ever having to dump her once he got sick of her and her broken vagina. He hadeverything, and he had the nerve to look unhappy about it.
At that moment, Nick glanced around the garden, and before she could look away, his eyes found her. He froze and stared at her as Alice chattered beside him, and even from twenty feet away, she could see the deep, fathomless blue of his eyes, and the wrinkle of a frown across his forehead. She saw him take a step toward the deck, but a second later, Alice glanced over her shoulder, then turned back to face the guests, grinning.
“All right everyone, grab yourselves a drink and take a seat, and please welcome, for the first time as a married couple, Marcus and Heather!”
Heather and Marcus appeared in the corner of the garden hand in hand, both of them beaming, the picture of love and slightly dazed delight. Everyone, including the bartender next to her, burst into applause, and Justin put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. Carly’s eyes found Nick again, but he was no longer watching her.
She drained her drink. “Another one, please. Heavy on the gin if you can,” she told the bartender, who gave her a knowing nod and grabbed the bottle from beneath the bar.
Every wedding reception should have a wood-fired pizza truck, Nick had decided. Who wanted to chew rubbery chicken or lukewarm pasta in an airless hotel function room when you could eat fresh hot pizza by the slice under the pink and orange sky and crisscrossing lines of fairy lights?
The pizza had almost been enough to distract from the loud silence between him and Carly as they’d sat across the table from each other. She’d avoided his eyes throughout the entire meal, maintaining a determined conversation first with Linda, who was seated on one side of her, and then with Izzy, who was on the other. Every now and then, Nick noticed Izzy flicking a questioning glance at him, and then at Carly, but he ignored it. He would have time to get Carly alone and apologize to her, to explain everything, he reminded himself.
At the head of the table, Marcus and Heather were all smiles, leaning briefly away from each other to chat with the people next to them, or with guests who stopped by the table on the way to the bar, but swaying back towards each other immediately, as if each was the other’s magnetic pole. He looked across the table at Carly, who was deep in conversation with Linda again, and who seemed to be leaning away from him as if they were each the north end of a different magnet. His heart gave a painful throb.
“Leanne, Linda, Carly,” Alice called down the table. “About ten minutes, and then we’ll do speeches, okay?”
Nick saw Carly nod and mutter something to Linda. Then she picked her purse up from the table and headed up onto the back deck and disappeared into the house. He hesitated for a moment, indecisive and fully aware that Izzy was watching him again. Then he stood and strode into the house.
Inside the kitchen, every available surface was covered in dirty rented plates and glasses, and every available container was full of ice. The one exception was the countertop next to the stove, where a three-tiered wedding cake sat waiting on a white paper doily. Artistically uneven white icing covered the layers, and perched on the top tier was a small and carefully painted New York–style street sign that matched the table numbers out back. It read “Heather and Marcus Ave.”
Carly wasn’t in the kitchen, and he was about to go in search of her when he heard the toilet flush and the sink run. A moment later she emerged with her purse in her hand, wearing freshly applied lipstick that made it even harder than usual to keep his eyes from her mouth. She stopped short when she saw him, and then made to walk past him.
“Wait,” he said, stepping forward to block her path. “Please, just let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” she said firmly, her eyes on the end of the hallway.
“I calledVogueand asked if you can be part of the first shoot I do for them. I told them I didn’t want to work for them if I couldn’t work with you, and they were fine with that. I know it’s not the promotion you wanted, but it’ll boost your profile more than Instagram posts ever could, and that might help with promotion. I owe it to you, Carly. I wouldn’t have gotten this job without you.”
She still wouldn’t look at him. “Will you please just listen to me, just hear me out?” he pleaded.
