When Mike heads upstairs to get Ivory for the ceremony after lunch, I follow Preston’s parents, down to the beach where a few chairs are set up in front of the arch decorated with white linens and flowers. A speaker is set up on one of the chairs and Miller fiddles with the music before joining Preston where he stands with the officiant.
Her scent catches on the breeze, and I smell her before I see her. A mix of gardenia and vanilla seeping into my senses, taking me back in time. Her proximity sets my soul on fire as the visions of a similar beach wedding assault me while she stands in front of me now. Her eyes lock on the gold ring on my finger—a physical reminder of the connection we share.
It hurts.
It heals.
It frees me from a purgatory I’ve been living in.
Because as I watch Preston and Ivory exchange vows on that white sand beach, I’m transported to a beach in Belize where I’m exchanging my own wedding vows with the love of my life. She’s beaming up at me on the edge of a pier. The wind in her wild hair, a flower tucked above her ear and a simple white dress hugging her body as the captain marrying us recites the words of her favorite poem. The same words the officiant reads now about two souls predestined and forever intertwined.
Just like hers and mine.
Applause breaks me out of my trance. I clap on autopilot.
“Get a room,” Miller shouts. Preston and Ivory break apart and raise their arms, eliciting more cheers from our small crowd.
“Let’s party!” Taylor storms past me and back to the house without making eye contact with anyone around her. I wonder as I watch her walk away if she was remembering it the same as I was.
Does she regret our time together?
Does she remember it fondly or is she jaded by the pain of it all? That would have been easy to lean into, and it’s a trap I almost fell into more than once after she left, but to be jaded and hate her felt like hating myself.
I couldn’t do that.
I couldn’t regret her.
Never.
Not one single day did I wish it away.
Not the pain.
Not the heartbreak.
Not the loneliness.
None of it competed with what it felt like to be loved by her. To love her.
I may have been her once upon a time, but she is my always.
She’s had me wrapped around her finger since those first early days in New York and seeing her now is no different. All throughout cocktail hour and dinner, I feel it. It doesn’t matterhow long it’s been. It doesn’t matter that she clearly wants nothing to do with me, or how much space is between the people we are now and the people we used to be, I’m drawn to her with a magnetism I can’t explain.
After dinner has ended, and Preston and Ivory have snuck off to do what newlyweds do, Taylor rises, excusing herself from the group sitting around the outdoor dining table. Seeing my opportunity to confirm if she still feels this spark too, I follow her into the hallway. “You haven’t told them, have you?” I call out after her.
She stops in the middle of the hallway she had been retreating down. Her back goes rigid at my accusation—no, not accusation. Truth. Because it’s clear after spending all day with them that her friends have no clue we already know each other or exactly who I am to her.
“No,” she hisses. “And I’d like to leave it that way. Especially right now.”
“Then you may want to stop looking at me like you want to kill me. You’re raising suspicion with the daggers you’ve been glaring at me out there.”
She huffs, leaning back against the concrete wall. “I wasn’t prepared for you to show up here, today of all days.”
The pull to get close to her is too great, so I step into her space.
“You were remembering it too,” I say, crowding her against the wall, and with my left hand, I brush the hair loosened by the breeze out of her face. Her eyes connect with the gold band on my finger as she sharply inhales. I don’t wear it often, but it’s always with me. Just like the memory of her.
“Why are you wearing that?” Her words are barely audible, the pulse in her neck rapidly firing.
