And she felt…sad.
Just a little bit sad.
But also determined that this was the right thing. Them getting married was the best thing.
“You look beautiful,” Catherine said.
She turned to face her closest friend, and did her best to smile. Catherine didn’t know all the details of everything that was happening with her and Romeo, and she was pretty skeptical of the fact that he had suddenly become a decent human being. In fact, she had called Heather sex addled on more than one occasion.
But now that she was here, at the wedding, she seemed to be a lot more accepting.
Or maybe she had just accepted that Heather was going to do what she had decided, and wasn’t going to be deterred from it.
“Thank you for making me your maid of honor.”
“You’re my best friend,” Heather said. “I thought about having a whole big bridal party, but all of those people… I don’t really know them anymore. Mind you, we have a huge contingent from our years at Fairfield here. Because the absolute spectacle of the two of us getting married was too much to resist.”
“I would say. I never got to see the two of you spark off of each other. You were obsessed with him.”
She looked back at her own reflection. The largeness of her eyes, the color in her cheeks. “I’m still obsessed with him.”
“That’s good, since you’re marrying him.”
“I guess. I guess it’s good. But we have to raise a child and not implode. We don’t have a lot of practice with not imploding. We’re…a whole storm.”
“I’m glad that the sex is good,” Catherine said, dryly.
Heather laughed. “That’s not the only thing I meant.”
“I know. But clearly the sex is good.”
“It’s all-consuming. Which concerns me.”
She was hedging around the truth.
“He’s gorgeous. So, I get it. Though I’ve had sex with some pretty gorgeous men who turned out to be disappointing.”
“Nothing about Romeo is disappointing.”
“I think you might just love him.”
She stopped, and of course Catherine was going to say that, because she didn’t know about the contract, about the agreement. She didn’t know about the connective tissue of all the moments they’d spent together since then. That he had never professed to have any sort of emotional connection with her. Nothing other than a desire for friendship, which was why he was determined not to touch her.
“You think I love him?”
“You’re marrying him. In a gorgeous white dress. You look like you’re glowing. You’re having his baby. You’re obsessed with his body. What part of that doesn’t sound like love to you?”
“Isn’t love supposed to be soft and wonderful?”
“No,” Catherine sighed. “Listen, I’m not an expert. I’ve had some relationships that have burned themselves out quickly, and I’ve had some that have lasted longer. I haven’t found the love of my life. I certainly never wanted the same man for nearly fifteen years, and nothing, not the passage of time or the way that he treated me, or the way that I treated him, could change the way that I felt. So I mean, there’s that. Mainly though, I think love is a lot like the rest of life. It changes with us. Moves with us. I think it can be comfortable. Something lived in and lovely. But sometimes it has teeth. Sometimes you leave bite marks all over it because you’re trying so hard to hold on. I don’t think love is any one thing. It’s too big for that.”
Her words echoed through Heather. And it was difficult for her to deny them.
It had been him. From the beginning.
When he had stood there by the pool looking at her over the top of his sunglasses like she was nothing, and he had suddenly become everything.
She had watched him go from a beautiful boy to a beautiful man. She had tried to want something else, and she had never quite managed it.
