Don’t read into this, Natalie told herself.He’s not a professional writer.Except that Natalie had worked with students long enough to know the difference between style and content. She’d tutored gifted writers whose elegant prose revealed nothing, and kids with no grasp of grammar, diction, or rhythm but whose clunky sentences still communicated intelligence or humor or passion.
“Is it okay?” He sounded nervous. “Don’t hold back. I want your notes.”
“It’s… lovely. I just wonder if there might be room to make it a bit more… specific to you and Marigold.”
“Oh.” Jonathan frowned. “Yeah, no, I can see that.”
“Maybe something about when you knew she was the one?” Natalie asked, unsure whether this was the impulse of a skilled editor or just a masochist.
Jonathan’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s easy. She gave me the most incredible card for my birthday. We’d been dating for a few months, and I was pretty smitten, but then she gave me this card—twenty-nine reasons why I love Jonathan—for my twenty-ninth birthday. It was thoughtful and creative, it made me a little teary. I have a photo of it.” Jonathan reached for his phone andbegan to scroll. “Listen to this: number seventeen, ‘I love how you scoop ants out of the shower before you turn on the water.’ Or number twenty, ‘I love how your forehead wrinkles when you cut vegetables.’?” He ran his hand through his dark curls, embarrassed. “I know it’s stupid, but I was like: this woman gets me. That’s when I knew I was all in.”
Natalie stared at him, a frozen smile on her face as she tried to process what she’d just heard. Surely Jonathan was oversimplifying things for the sake of his vows. Thatcouldn’thave been the moment everything changed between him and Marigold. That’s not how things worked in real life. You didn’t decide to propose just because someone gave you a nice birthday card! But as she watched Jonathan smile at his phone, reading it for the umpteenth time, Natalie couldn’t ignore the coil of regret that had been tightening inside her for the past four years.
Jonathan was about to marry the wrong woman, and it was all her fault. A woman she’d practically thrown into his arms because Natalie had been too cowardly to confess her real feelings.
Jonathan glanced up from his phone and frowned again. “You okay, Bumpy? You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine.” Natalie jumped off the bed lest he place a hand on her forehead to feel for fever. She felt so hollow and fragile, she was sure she’d shatter under his touch and lose any semblance of self-control.
“So what do you think? Do I mention the card in my vows? Because it’s true—that’s the night I realized: I could spend the rest of my life with this woman.”
“I don’t know,” Natalie said weakly. “It might not work for the vows. Maybe add some humor? Some promises, not minding that she always falls asleep during movies?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jonathan placed the laptop on the bed and rose to his feet. “Do you need some water?”
I need a time machine, Natalie thought. Marigold hadn’t done anything wrong. Natalie was the one who’d screwed up time and again. She could’ve made a move anytime during the first ten years of their friendship, but she’d let her insecurities get in the way. Jonathan loved Marigold. And only a truly terrible person would try to sabotage what they had. The day before the wedding. When the bride’s mother was fighting cancer.
“I need to go. Lots to do before the rehearsal dinner tonight. Good luck with the vows. I know they’ll be great,” she said, then hurried out of the room before he could respond.
It was their five-year college reunion, and Natalie had stayed for the annual campus dance—a party for students and their families, alums, and faculty outside on the main quad. Between the fairy lights glowing in the trees, the jazz band, and the surprising number of older alumni in tuxes, Natalie felt like she’d been transported back to the 1920s. It would’ve been supremely romantic, except for the fact that she was the only one of her friends who was currently single or hadn’t found someone to hook up with that weekend.
“Why don’t you ask Jonathan to be your date?” her old roommate Chloe had asked when they’d arrived on campus a few days earlier. “Didn’t he just break up with that girl from med school?”
“That’s exactly why Ican’task him out. It’s too soon and it’ll make me look aggressive and desperate, like I was just waiting for the right moment to pounce.”
Chloe had sighed heavily, looking pained. “You always havesome excuse. He either has a girlfriend, or just broke up with a girlfriend, or seems too stressed about exams. Why can’t you admit that you’re just too afraid of rejection?”
“Because it’s the most painful, humiliating outcome I can imagine? And why are you acting like it’s entirely in my control? He’s had more than half a decade to ask me out. He’s clearly not interested.”
“That’s because you give offstay away from mevibes. No, don’t shake your head, I’ve seen it! Anytime things get mildly flirty, you make up some excuse to leave. Or you ask about some girl you assume he has a crush on. The man’s not psychic, Natalie. He can’t read your mind.”
“I’m not his typeat all. You’ve seen the girls he’s dated. Remember Kelsey? The freaking pageant queen who got a full scholarship to Harvard Med School?”
“Give me a break. She was Ms. Teen Delaware. That’s the second-smallest state in the country. How stiff could the competition have been? I know you think Jonathan’s some kind of god, but I promise you: he’s just a nerdy guy with good hair. Don’t give me any of this ‘out of your league’ shit.”
They hadn’t spoken about it again, and Natalie had gone to the dance solo, resigned to being a third wheel with Chloe and her girlfriend, Luna. But once she’d arrived, she struggled to find them in the crowd. Feeling supremely awkward, she snuck around the back of Wilson Hall and sat on a bench while she decided between toughing it out and heading back to the dorm. It’d gotten a bit chilly. Even after many New England winters, she still shivered whenever the temperature fell below seventy.
“Hey, Bumpy,” a voice called from the shadows. She lookedup to see Jonathan standing in front of her, more handsome than ever in his gray suit. “What are you doing back here?”
Natalie racked her brain for an explanation that wouldn’t make her seem pathetic. “Just soaking it all in. It’s nice to be back, isn’t it?” She’d underestimated how hard it’d be to settle back into life in the Cleveland suburbs after four years amid ivy-covered clock towers, coffee shops and bookstores tucked into decommissioned eighteenth-century churches, and apartments with working fireplaces. Every time she pulled into a strip mall, attended a high school friend’s baby shower in a newly built tract home with wall-to-wall carpeting, or dropped by a coworker’s birthday party at the Cheesecake Factory, a little piece of her soul died. She was ashamed of her newfound snobbery, but she knew she just didn’t belong there anymore.
“Sure is. Okay if I join you?”
She’d been about to protest and say something like,I’m fine! You should go have fun!, but then remembered what Chloe had told her. So instead, she’d said, “Of course.”
Jonathan settled down next to her. “Remind me, when do you leave for Scotland?”
Against all odds, Natalie had somehow won an obscure but well-funded scholarship to do an MFA at the University of Edinburgh. It covered tuition, housing, and even included a travel stipend. Natalie hadn’t been able to afford to study abroad junior year—she’d never been out of the country at that point—and was more excited than she’d ever been in her life.
