13
Now Seven Days Until Bridget’s Wedding
Bridget is still in her room when I awake. I can hear her gentle snores through the door. When we lived together, she’d sleep in on weekends, and I’d sip my coffee to the tune of her little snorts. At first, I found her snoring hilarious, but after a few months, I stopped noticing it. The sound became the white noise of my Saturday mornings. I hadn’t realized it before now, but I miss that sound. I miss our routines. Her Sunday evening ironing sessions.
Our weekly treks to my aunt’s house. Face masks, Thai takeout, and a movie —our Wednesday night plans for years. I miss the globby mashed bananas on toast she asked me to make for her when she was sick. So gross. I miss having someone to come home to.
I need a heaping dose of fresh air in my lungs and caffeine in my veins, so I fix myself a coffee and step onto the deck.
Felix is lounging outside with a mug of tea and a book, both legs flung over an arm of the chair, feet bare. He’s wearing track pants and a T-shirt, and another version of Lucy peels away from me and drapes herself on his lap. The part of my brain that screams more whenever I’m near him hasn’t faded overnight like I hoped.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were out here.” I turn to go back in the house.
“Stay,” Felix says, glancing up from the page. His stare is deadly in the daylight. He takes in my hair. I’ve let out the braids, and it falls in waves to
just below my collarbone. And then my nightgown, which is sheer in the sun apparently. He swallows.
“I think we can handle being in the same room,” he says, voice rough from sleep. “Or on the same deck.”
Considering how we ended up pressed together in the bathroom last night, I’m not sure I agree. But it’s better if Felix doesn’t know that. So I curl into my usual spot at the end of the sofa and take a stab at normal adult conversation. I should be able to do this.
“What are you reading?” It’s not the same book he had at the airport.
Felix holds it up. Pride and Prejudice. Is he kidding me?
“What?” he says.
If I didn’t know Felix, I’d assume he was setting a thirst trap. But he’s not aware his degree of hotness plus a Jane Austen novel is pornographic.
He swings his legs around and sits upright, facing me. He’s so comfortable in his skin. You can see it in the ease of his movements. I remember the second summer I visited the island. Felix wore his confidence like a white tuxedo—a highly visible flex. I’d wondered if it was something of an act. But there’s no faking the assured way Felix carries himself. There’s no art to it. He’s simply Felix. Genuine. Strong. True.
“You’ve read it before.”
“I’ve read it more than once,” Felix says. “I grabbed it when I was
packing yesterday.”
“How was the thriller?”
He gives me a look that’s so plainly guilty, I’m already laughing before he says, “I didn’t finish it.”
“I knew it.” His favorite book is Great Expectations, and he doesn’t like gore.
“Joy gave it to me. She said I had to read it.”
I don’t even blink at the mention of Felix’s ex. I’m a champion. “And?”
He hedges. “It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t my thing.”
“You’re such a liar. You hated it.” I love that I know his taste in books better than almost anyone.
“There were so many dead people,” he says. “And body parts in cupboards, and sock drawers, and hot tubs.” Felix’s vibe is manly—the square stubble-covered jaw, the expanse of his shoulders. Even his fingers are hypermasculine, blunt at the ends—so when he shudders, it’s in such contrast to his appearance that I laugh harder.
“So now you’re soothing your mind with Elizabeth and Darcy.”
He offers me a half grin. My heart squeezes at the sight of the dimple. I knew it was there, stowed away under his beard all this time, but I forgot how much I adore it. I could get lost in that crevice and never find my way out; it
would be a good death.
“You got me,” he says.
I do, I think. I’ve got you. A beat of silence passes, and I search his eyes for a sign that last summer meant more to him, that it wasn’t just me who felt the ground shift, but all I see is a playful glimmer.
“Your sister must have perfected her guilt trip,” I say. “What did she say to change your mind about staying?”
“She didn’t say anything. I’m here because I want to be.”
“You’re worried about her?”
He gives me a long look. “Bridget’s never really needed anyone to worry about her.”
“I know, but that’s why this is weird, right?” I gesture to myself and then him and then the deck. “This is not where any of us is supposed to be. She missed her final dress fitting. I canceled the bachelorette party I was supposed to throw tonight.”
It was simple, and Bridget gave me explicit orders for what she wanted.
Nosebleed seats at a Jays game followed by dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory with a small group of her girlfriends.
“Our wedding is going to be chic as fuck,” she’d said. “I want to drink beer and wear jean shorts at my bachelorette.” She’s been looking forward to
it for months.
“She’s not herself,” I tell Felix.
“No, she’s not.” He takes a sip of his tea. Earl Grey with a spoon of honey and a squeeze of lemon. Both he and Bridget prefer it to coffee in the
morning. “I tried talking to her on the way to pick you up at the airport, but she didn’t give me anything. What has she told you so far?”
“Not much. Homesickness. Stress. She had a complete meltdown yesterday and said something about things slipping away, but nothing that makes sense. You know her—she hoards problems until she can solve them.”
Felix nods and stares into his cup, then looks at me from beneath his lashes. “Do you think he did something?”
“Miles?” I take a deep breath, turning this question over yet again. If there’s one thing I know about Miles Lam, it’s that he’s hopelessly in love with Bridget Clark. And I like Miles. He’s been an unwaveringly good partner. He worships Bridget, supports her career, cleans up. He arranged a surprise trip to Australia for their anniversary. He asked her to book the time off work but wouldn’t tell her where they were going, saving Bridget from going into vacation planning overdrive, as is her way. He makes heaps of money, but he never brags about it. And he’s put up with endless shit from me.
Once, after two glasses of wine, I told him he’d stolen my friend and that I was jealous he spent more time with her than I did. It was supposed to be a joke, but it came out sour. Miles said that was the only logical response to having to share the best woman on the planet, and then he poured me more wine.
“I think this has to be about him,” I say to Felix. “But I don’t think Miles would cheat.”
Felix runs a hand over his face. “Me neither.”
Bridget and Miles’s relationship progressed at warp speed. It happened exactly like I expected it would—Bridget fell fast and she fell hard. She came home after their third date and announced that he was the one. Miles was similarly smitten. Theirs was a straight path to marriage, a mortgage, and babies.
My aunt had her share of “lovers,” but she never settled down. She didn’t want to. Stacy believed in finding your own path to happiness, and hers didn’t include a partner. But she was happy when Bridget found Miles—and
thrilled that the fourth member of our family knew his way around the kitchen.
“If you don’t marry him, I will,” Stacy told Bridget after he’d made us a rack of lamb with herbed polenta. I’m pretty sure she was serious.
“I don’t know what else it could be,” I tell Felix. “Bridget has been obsessed with the wedding since they got engaged, and now she doesn’t want to talk about it. She wants to explore the island and do all this touristy stuff, pretend like it’s our first trip here together.”
There’s an asymmetry to Felix’s face that I find captivating. The lopsided smile and solo dimple. That speck of brown. Right now, a single eyebrow
arches. “Oh yeah?”
“Ha, ha,” I say. “Obviously not that.”
“Obviously not.” His eyes sparkle like they once did. “I’m not sure I can go three rounds in a night anymore anyway.”
I almost spit out my coffee. It’s funny, though I doubt it’s true. Felix is laughing at my laughter, and for a short moment, it feels fantastic.
But then our eyes catch, and Felix’s smile falls.
I can feel the way our energy shifts in the air, like the smell of rain in the distance. Felix’s body runs hot, but it’s the weight of his stare that has my chest heating. There’s always been a charge between us, but this isn’t the usual rush of desire or a flirty little glance. It’s deeper than before, enthralling
like a spell. Bedazzling.
The truth escapes my lips.
“I missed you.”
Felix blinks, surprised. “Did you?”
“Of course,” I tell him. “I want to—”
The sliding door opens, and Bridget steps out in flip-flops, a toothy grin, and a ratty terry cloth robe that has been hanging on the hook in her bedroom since she was a teenager.
“I had a feeling you wouldn’t be able to stay away, Wolf.”
She looks between the two of us. Felix is watching me. My mouth hangs open in the middle of what was going to be an apology for how I behaved last year. “What did I interrupt? Why are you two being weird?”
“We’re not,” I say.
She hums, surveying Felix and then me and then Felix again.
“You are,” she says. Her eyes narrow, catlike, but before she can say
anything else, Felix gets to his feet.
“I’ve got to get going.”
“What?” Bridget says, her attention diverted. “I was thinking we could do the beach this morning, find Bee a lobster roll, and then maybe Green Gables Heritage Place in the afternoon.”
“Can’t,” Felix says. “I’m not going to be around until tonight. I offered to
pick up a shift at the restaurant.”
“You still do that?” I ask.
“Not really,” he says. “But I told them I was out this way if they needed help. And I could use the practice.” Shucking, he means. The competition is tomorrow evening.
“In that case,” Bridget says. “We’ll stop in for lunch.”
Felix nods at his sister, rubbing the back of his neck. “Great.”
As he turns to go into the house, he looks over his shoulder at me, a question in his gaze.
Once he steps inside, Bridget spins on me. “You two are being weird.”
I deflect. “We are being weird?”
“Did something happen last summer?” she asks.
Guilt rises in me like a tide. I hate lying to Bridget, but this is not the moment when I’m going to come clean. “Of course not.”
“Hmm.” Her gaze slits. “The Clark family theory is that Wolf made a
move on you, and you turned him down.”
“Is that so?”
“Yup. It would explain why he’s not at your feet like usual.”
I roll my eyes. “The Clark family,” I tell Bridget, “needs to find a bigger island so they have something else to gossip about.”
