Standing at the edge of the lawn, camouflaged in dress pants and a navy suit jacket, is…
My breathing comes to an abrupt halt. Now I think I’m the one having an aneurism. I rub my eyes to make sure we’re notexperiencing some sort of group hallucination before I remember the fifteen layers of mascara the makeup artist plastered on me a few hours ago. I turn back to my friends to confirm, but even Will is slack-jawed.
Caleb raises a shy hand in a wave as if cuing my heart to detonate into a million flaming pieces. What thehellis he doing in Montecito?
I look to Jules, who’s beaming like a searchlight.
“Jules, what in the actual?—”
“You promised not to be mad!” she squeals, jumping to hide behind a still-heaving Marianne.
“I think I’m having a panic attack,” I mutter, trying to down the glass of Perrier in front of me. I spit it out when I realize it’s Will’s vodka tonic.
“Go!” Marianne wheezes at me. “For the love of Goddess, woman! Don’t let me die for nothing!”
This is just like the jump from the deck. If I don’t do it now, I’m going to sit here flailing like an idiot until someone pries my fingers off the ledge. I stand up, propelled by fragile fumes of courage and half a glass of red wine, and stride confidently to the path he’s standing on. And by stride, I mean take teeny tiny Fred Flintstone steps to make sure my heels don’t sink into the grass.
When I reach him, I grab him by the sleeve and pull him behind one of the large oak trees that flank the path. I’m not sure whether it’s to move him out of sight or to make sure he’s actuallyreal. I can feel the flex of his bicep beneath his sleeve.
Very, very real.
“Caleb, what are you doing here?”
He swallows, and I notice how three months have changed him. Despite being undeniably gorgeous, Caleb is an absolute wreck. His eyes are borderline bloodshot and his hair, which he clearly tried to gel back, is sticking out in all the wrong places. One of his buttons is in the wrong hole. And I’ve never seenhim so visibly nervous. Come to think of it, I’ve never really seen him nervous at all.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me, and it comes out like a hiccup. “I know this isn’t… I’m not sure what I was thinking. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Classic Caleb. He’s flown God knows how many miles to be here for reasons still unknown and is still the picture of politeness. I, on the other hand, am practically feral. I fight the urge to jump at him; to drag my hands through his already unkempt hair. Now that he’s in front of me, I want to tie him to this tree and never let him go.
“Caleb, why are you here?”
He takes a deep breath to say something, but it takes a few, agonizingly long seconds before the words actually come out.
“Jules invited me. She kind of threatened me, actually. For a small woman, she can be pretty terrifying when she wants something.”
He’s not wrong. I have a feeling this post-honeymoon conversation with Jules is going to be very, very long.
“But if you want me to go?—“
“No!” I protest, markedly louder than I mean to. “I just meant—why would you even want to be here?”
“I had to see you,” he says, and my breath stops. Of all the reunions I’ve fantasized about in the last few months (and trust me, there weremany), Caleb crashing my sister’s wedding wasn’t one of them. I answered every telemarketing call hoping it was his number. I even ordered a book on sailing to serve some wild delusion that I’d run into him at sea. But the ending of these fantasies was always the same: Caleb wanted nothing to do with me. The only feelings he had for me were anger and regret.
“Why?” I ask him, my traitorous voice trembling as it escapes my mouth. “After I ruined your life?”
“Ruined mylife?”he repeats incredulously. I can feel theheat coming off him, and I’m suddenly terrified that this is some horrible intervention where Caleb tries to get closure for the wrongs I’ve done to him. The fragile layers of scotch tape I’ve plastered over my heart since we last spoke tremble and threaten to pull apart.
“Stella, how many times do I have to tell you? Ichoseto be with you. I knew what I was signing up for the moment you grabbed me in the damned elevator. You didn’truinanything.”
“I—” I stammer to get the words out through the lump that’s rising in my throat. “I thought you were done with me. I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
But Caleb looks like I’ve just accused him of stealing silverware.
“How could you think that?”
“Because you said I was a mistake!” I remind him emphatically. “And… I was a coward. Instead of standing up for you, I just stood by and watched your life fall apart when I should have told them the truth.”
“What, so you could blow up three lives instead of one? It wasn’t your job to watch over the ship, Stella, it was mine. And I was fired because of my own decisions. I never expected you to dig your own grave just to lie next to mine.”
