“Mom, wake up,” I say, tapping her shoulder until her eyelids flutter. “Time to walk your daughter down the aisle.”
The reception is held in an old train depot in downtown Sweet Water complete with painted brick walls and at least twenty Swarovski crystal chandeliers. Now that the ceremony has ended, photos have been snapped, and we’ve taken the required limo drive for the past hour, we’ve finally arrived.
Heading for the open bar, I grab a glass of white wine and scan the room for my date. Er, the guy I’m dating? Whatever he is.
“Who does he belong to?” I heard a woman say to my left to her friend as she points.
Her friend cranes her neck. “I don’t know, but I don’t see a wedding ring …”
Following their greedy gazes, I realize they’re talking about Jude, who’s currently cutting a rug to some Earth Wind and Fire Song. His partner? The six-year-old flower girl.
I let them finish their dance before cutting in.
“Hey,” he says, taking my hand in his and giving me a spin as an Al Green song begins to play.
“Seems like you’re having a good time.”
“Told you. I love weddings.”
“I see that,” I say as he twirls me one more time. “Don’t look now, but there are a couple of ladies at the bar that were, uh, noticing you a minute ago.”
He looks anyway. Of course.
“Did you tell them I’m taken?” he asks.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Should I have?” I ask, nose wrinkled.
“Nah.” He smirks. “Just thought it would’ve been funny, you getting all jealous.”
“Never been the jealous type.”
“Good. Me neither.” He kisses me, something quick and appropriate in front of Bob and Cameo’s hundreds of wedding guests, and then he pulls me against him, swaying to the music. The boy can dance.
I’m smitten.
Utterly, irrevocably, shamelessly smitten.
But still, as I dance the night away with this too-good-to-be-true Romeo who waltzed into my life when I least expected it, I can’t help but wait for the other shoe to drop.
It always does.
Twenty-Six
Jude
* * *
I wheel our bags to our apartments Monday night, just past eleven. With a wedding that spanned an entire weekend and a six-hour layover due to mechanical problems, I’m feeling like I could use a good, hard sleep.
Stopping outside our doors, Love yawns as she turns to face me.
“I had a good time,” I say.
“You lie.” She yawns again. “My family’s insane. No one could possibly enjoy a straight week of their nonsense.”
“Nah. They’re more entertaining than anything else,” I say. She hasn’t begun to see crazy until she meets the rest of my family, and that’ll never happen, so …
Love’s mouth pulls into a drowsy smile.
“That’s putting it nicely.” She closes the space between us, her hand splayed across my chest as she rises to kiss me goodnight. It’s going to be weird sleeping alone tonight. I got so used to having her there. Her warmth and softness, her perfume clinging to the sheets and pillows. Waking up with her legs wrapped around me and her head tucked under my arm. If anyone else did that, I’d grab my shit and go sleep on a sofa, but with Love, I stayed put. And sometimes, through hazy eyes, I’d watch her sleep, listening to the soft cadence of her breath and smirking when she’d occasionally simper.
Love is peace and contentment.
Love is a soft place to land.
Love is a smile on my face when I wake every morning.
“Night,” she says, backing away, head tilted as she looks at me like I’m the best thing to ever happen to her.
“Night.” I watch her disappear inside her apartment, and god damn it, I miss her already. There’s this void where she was standing a second ago. I feel it in the center of my chest, like a cannon-sized hole, and that means something.
I think I’m falling in love with her.
I can’t do this.
I can’t hurt her—not the way Hunter wants me to, even if it means sacrificing my dream and everything I’ve ever worked for.
Jabbing my key into my lock, I head inside, leaving my bag by the door and shuffling down the hall. Peeling off my clothes, I climb in a cold bed by myself, body succumbing to exhaustion but my mind running a hundred miles per hour.
Closing my eyes, I roll to the side and shove my hand under my pillow. I try to imagine how I’m going to tell her. How I’d start the conversation. Whether she’d break down in tears or hurl a crystal vase at my head. I try to imagine the things she’d say back to me—all of which I’d have rightfully earned.
But every scenario I dream up always ends the same way.
I thought I could do this.
And I committed myself to being a heartless bastard.
But at the end of the day, that’s not who I am.
It’s not who I’ll ever be.
The man Love is falling for? That’s me. Every quip, every kiss, every lingering gaze and cheesy line … that’s one hundred percent me. And the crazy thing is, she likes me in jeans with messy hair, drinking beer in a dive bar. The apartment never mattered to her. Neither did the bullshit consulting title or the pretentious wardrobe.
She likes me for me.
Rolling to my back, I exhale and pinch the bridge of my nose. I need to get some sleep. I need to gather my thoughts and figure out the best way to tell her—if there even exists a best way—because tomorrow? I’m calling this off.
Only there’s one complication—Hunter had me sign a non-disclosure agreement.
I’m not allowed to tell Love about anything Hunter and I have ever spoken about, be it the weather or the intricate details of this arrangement.
All I can tell her tomorrow is that this isn’t working out.
And that I’m sorry.
No explanation … just an apology and a goodbye … and after the incredible week we just spent together, she’s going to be confused—rightfully so—and I’m going to walk away looking like an insufferable piece of shit—which I am.
I can only hope for her sake that this will feel like more of a sting than a sledgehammer to the heart. That maybe someday I’ll just be that guy she dated briefly one summer, her memories of us fading with the years. And eventually she might even forget me, even if I couldn’t forget her if I tried.
By tomorrow, Jude Warner and Love Aldridge will become a thing of the past. A brief, passionate fling that was never meant to be. And I should have known from the start that War and Love don’t belong together. They don’t even belong in the same sentence.
She’s all that is perfect and right in this world.
And I’m a destroyer, sent to demolish and ruin and devastate.
Twenty-Seven
Love
* * *
The break in the curtain pulls me out of one of the deepest sleeps I’ve ever known, and in my half-awake stupor, I reach to the other side of the bed before realizing he’s not there.