He doesn’t care about cars. He has one for emergencies, but says there’s no need in Boston, given that he lives right on the T. It’s a life I’ve borne for many years now—shuffling through knee-high snow, climbing onto a bus that’s standing-room only—the interior a sniffling, coughing petri dish of flu and RSV and COVID and common colds, then sweating as I overheat in a heavy winter coat.
I don’t want to go back.
The realization shouldn’t hit with such a wallop. Maybe it just never felt like a safe thing to think until now. I’ve spent so much of my life believing that prestigious degrees and a fancy job were the only way to prove to myself and everyone else that I’m not another useless Walsh child, that I rose above my station in life.
And it turns out that nobody cared.
“Easton, are you listening?” Thomas asks, cupping my elbow. “Can we get out of here?”
“No,” I reply, shrugging out of his grip. “They’re only leaving for show, so the older folks can go to bed if they’d like.”
Across the way, Elijah stares at me. He’s so beautiful in his tux, even if he’s currently scowling.
“Well, I’m one of the older folks,” Thomas says, “and I’d like to go to bed.”
Is he expecting me to sleep with him tonight? He can’t, right? I know he seems to think that attending the wedding was some unbelievable act of generosity on his part, but I didn’t even want him here and we’re not together so I owe him nothing.
Maybe a few days from now, or back in Boston. I just can’t right now.
“Feel free to go,” I tell him. “But I’m the maid of honor. I’m staying at the after-party as long as Kelsey does.”
He shakes his head. “She isn’t going to care whether or not you stay, and I think we’ve both done enough damage for one night, don’t you? You’ve had two drinks, we ate a really late meal, and then you had cake. It’s now after eleven. You’ve paid your bridesmaid dues.”
The words sit like a weight on my shoulders. What I’m hearing now? It’s my entire future if I stay. It’s having a man eleven years my senior judge me every fucking step of the way, the way he has for the two years we’ve been together.
Telling me I was wrong to want warm weather, and a decent car, and a piece of wedding cake once a year, and the kind of love that is capable of stopping my breath.
I think I might prefer seventy wild, free years to a thousand anxious, careful ones.
“Here they come!” someone shouts. Hawk bursts through the open doors first, holding Kelsey’s hand. They’re both glowing as we shower them in rose petals on their way to the car. In them, I see all the things Elijah and I might be doing together if this had gone another way.
Yesterday, when Bridget was flipping out about the weather and how everything had to be perfect, and I was sort of agreeing with her, it wasn’t because she was right. It wasn’t because Kelsey’s wedding had to be perfect.
It was because I was putting myself in Kelsey’s shoes, imagining myself marrying Thomas, and in that situation, themost important thing would have been the wedding and not who it was with. If I’d pictured the groom as Elijah yesterday, I’d have seen things very differently. I’d have seen things the way that Kelsey did, and I wouldn’t have cared if we were being married in the middle of a hurricane, or if it was just the two of us in City Hall.
When the wedding matters more to you than what it’s accomplishing, it’s probably a sign that you shouldn’t be getting married at all.
I turn toward Thomas. “I’m going to go to the bridal suite to see if Kelsey needs help. I think they’re pulling around to the back, and she’ll sneak in that way. Once that’s done, we can talk, then you can go to your hotel, and I’ll go to the after-party?”
He seems pleased by this and tells me he’ll wait at our table while I go inside, heading for the grand staircase. Just before I reach it, however, someone is grabbing my arm.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Elijah asks between gritted teeth. He’s so close that his breath rustles my hair, that the scruff on his jaw scrapes my ear.
“I was going to see if Kelsey needs help.”
“You know she doesn’t need your fucking help,” he says, pulling me down the hall that leads to the library.
Already I’m weakening. Already I’m memorizing the heat of his hand on my bare arm, the way his palm is rough unlike Thomas’s smooth one. Already I’m closing my eyes, picturing the way that mouth would feel against my neck, against my inner thighs.
He pulls me inside the library’s powder room.
I know what’s going to happen, and a better person wouldn’t be here.
“Bend over, Easton,” he hisses, locking the door behind him. “Bend over and pull up that fucking dress.”
My panties are soaked at the sound of his voice, at the fury in it. I have spent my entire life wanting him, and only him, and here he is...beside himself at seeing me with someone else.
I pull the dress up while he moves toward me, unzipping his pants. They fall, his belt clasp clanking against the marble floor, and he slides my panties over to the side.
