Same, Thomas. Same.I pull my hand free.
I go to the bar and order a gin and tonic, which gets a serious side-eye from Thomas, though he’s wise enough not to comment. We move slowly through the crowd as half the people here know exactly who Thomas is and stop us to take selfies. The other half couldn’t care less. I’m on their side.
“So that’s him, eh?” Mrs. Cabot asks. “He’s handsomer on TV.”
I introduce him to Mark Patton, the high school boyfriend whose ass Elijah threatened to kick—Thomas isn’t jealous in the least, but gets a little annoyed when Mark gushes about how smart I was in high school—he prefers all the gushing focused on himself. Then we talk to Mrs. Stapleton, who owns the one fancystore in Oak Bluff, and Mrs. Adamson, who led the Girl Scout troop I couldn’t afford to join, and Martha, who runs the Stop-n-Shop. They all seemed to look down on me when I was a kid, and I wanted each of them to bepeevedby my success, to be taken down a peg, and none of them are.
“You were always such a clever little girl,” Mrs. Stapleton says, turning to her husband. “I told you about her. She was the kid who told me my stomach lining would replace itself every three days so I ought to go ahead and eat what I wanted. I laughed for days—it was so cute.”
Martha says, “I knew all that brilliance would be put to good use.”
“You always acted like I was there to shoplift,” I counter, and she raises a brow.
“You oftenwerethere to shoplift,” she corrects. “I told my friends you’d either wind up in jail or you’d take over the world. I’m so glad it seems to be the latter.”
These people didn’t hate me. They didn’t look down on me. They might have felt pity, at worst, but I can hardly fault them—I was a banged-up kid wearing her brothers’ hand-me-downs, suffering from a lack of parental care. I told myself so many stories about my youth, about this “fuck you” moment I’d give up everything for, and there’s no one to even say it to.
I slam my first gin and tonic and go straight to the bar for a second one. “That’s really going to impact your sleep,” Thomas warns.
“I’m aware,” I tell him. “I actually have the same degrees you do.”
I’m drinking to get through this, to relax my grinding jaw, to stop resenting Thomas for coming. Mostly, I’m drinking because I want to be with someone so much that I’d have followed him anywhere, but he’s not interested in letting me do it.
Dinner begins, and we spend most of it discussing the UCSD study. This is where Thomas and I are at our best—arguing, countering each other, adding to an argument the other has made. I’d almost be at ease if it wasn’t for my toast.
Eventually, the meal ends and I’m called to the stage. I’m nervous as hell, but fortunately, nerves just piss me off, and that anger gives me the dopamine rush I need to walk to the microphone and face the crowd as if there’s nowhere I’d rather be.
“Kelsey,” I begin, “eighteen years ago, we made each other a sacred promise: that we would both marry a handsome male prostitute like Nick from our favorite movie,The Wedding Date. Hawk, you’re a decent back-up option, but I want you to know that Kelsey will never truly be happy until you’ve changed professions.”
Everyone laughs, and then I hold up a note written in purple magic marker. “I also have our bet from sixth grade, when you swore you’d marry Niall from One Direction. I’m sorry to bring this up here, but you now owe me a trillion dollars, per this contract you signed eighteen years ago.”
Everyone laughs again.
“Also, now that it’s all done and legal—” I glance off to the side, toward the officiant. “Itislegal, correct?”
He nods.
“Great, great. Then as I was saying, now that you can’t back out, Hawk, you should know that Kelsey also bet me a trillion dollars that she’d name her first daughterKaren. And granted, it was a less controversial choice at the time, but a bet’s a bet. Her legal counsel was Elijah, who was thirteen. You can take it up with him.”
My gaze darts to Elijah, and there’s a tiny crack inside me.
I turn away fast. “There was only one bet Kelsey and I made that didn’t involve money. Obviously, she lost this one too. Shelost every bet—by the way, Hawk, you might want to avoid ever taking her to Vegas because evenyoucan’t afford the sort of losses she’d incur. Anyway, this bet meant I got to call in a favor. And what I asked her to do, a year and a half ago, was to go down to a hotel bar in Paris and meet a handsome stranger, because I found her obsessive long-distance crush on Hawk tiresome. You all know the rest. Hawk showed up at the hotel, was furious to find Kelsey in the bar talking to someone else, and the rest is history. Now Istillhave to listen to Kelsey discuss her obsessive crush, but at least it’s reciprocated. Kelsey, I love you. You’ve been my best friend for twenty-two years and you’ll remain my best friend even after you start doing rich people stuff like complaining about the caviar. Hawk, you struck gold when you found our favorite ray of sunshine, so please don’t forget it. And now, everyone, let’s raise a glass to Kelsey and Hawk. May they continue to make every other love story pale by contrast.”
This time I don’t look at Elijah, but at Thomas.
We get along well; we make each other better. But ours is definitely a love story that pales by contrast.
And I guess I’ve pretty much accepted my fate.
Kelsey and Hawkare ready to leave, though it’s mostly for show: a raging after-party will begin in a separate tent on the other side of the house minutes after they depart.
We all gather on the front steps of the Boudreaux mansion while the wedding planner’s assistants hand us each tiny baskets of flower petals.
The guy on the other side of me gives a low whistle. “Porsche Speedster,” he says, nodding at the shiny black convertible parked in front of the house, with cans and streamers tied to theback and a huge “just married” sign affixed to its trunk. “Must be seventy years old.”
My car back in Boston is a twenty-five-year-old Jetta that sporadically just chooses to stop working and has one window taped together after someone broke it to steal my backpack. It looks approximately a thousand years older than the car we’re staring at.
“Can we get out of here after this?” Thomas asks, ignoring the man and the Porsche.
