Twenty-Seven
When I came out of the bathroom, Aaron was gone. I hadn’t been expecting that. I called and texted his phone like a madwoman only to get no answer. So I drove like a maniac to the restaurant. Since I was, presumably, the last person to arrive at the swanky Italian joint, I had to park around the block and walked like a toddler playing dress-up in the ridiculous heels. A blast of cold hit me so hard it was as if all the adrenaline fled my body at once.
What had I done? My mind was a complete jumble. Before it happened, it was the best idea in the world, it was all I wanted, and most importantly, what Sadie deserved for everything to turn to shit. While it was happening I don’t think anything short of the Rapture could’ve stopped us. Coincidently, I was kind of surprised we didn’t get gobbled up by the Devil himself for what we did in that church.
I was sure that if I explained the story, a lot people, more than a couple would side with me, but what I did was so wrong. It wasn’t even about right and wrong anymore, though maybe it should’ve been. It was all about getting back at Sadie and taking control of my life again. I had to do that and I was hurting everyone in the process. Maybe that was the only way to do it.
I imagined Sadie doing all sorts of terrible things to me after she found out. I imagined almost everyone in my life hating me. My future was looking pretty bleak, but then again, everything sucked since I’d lost Brooks. If everything was fucked, it might as well be extremely fucked—that was signature Ollie style, anyway. Never mind my revenge plan ended after Aaron and me having sex. I forgot I needed a part two. What did I expect to happen? I didn’t want to be with Aaron, but would I walk into the restaurant holding his hand so he could break up with Sadie? Did I really expect him to call off the wedding at the last minute? What was I thinking?
I barreled through the double doors with my heart racing and the scent of marinara sauce making me sick. Conveniently, I had to pass the bar before I made it back to the private room. I scooted around to the empty set of stools and plopped down, not yet ready to face the situation. Drinking would be the perfect excuse.
“What’ll it be, sweetheart?” The bartender was young and cute and no Brooks.
“Ginger ale and tequila,” I said, hardly looking at him in case he decided to card me. The makeup had to add a couple years, and the cleavage had to make him not care.
“There you are, Ollie,” Lydia said as she approached the bar. “Did you have trouble finding the place?”
“Yes, I missed a turn or two.” She’d given me the perfect excuse I never even thought of.
She hustled me to the room and showed me to my seat at the end of the long white linen-covered table.
Sadie and Aaron were sitting on the other side of the table in the middle. Aaron had one arm round the back of Sadie’s chair and a drink in the other. I couldn’t help but notice the two other empties in front of him. He was looking in the opposite direction from me and appeared totally uninterested while he talked to his brother. Sadie talked to everyone, without any alcohol, and even gave me a smile and wave when I was seated.
The room was beautiful. Lush flowers covered almost every surface, candles flickered off all the mirrors placed precisely on the walls and tables, and there were enough organza bows to choke a horse. The hundreds of forks and glasses in front of me meant I’d never know which to use. But most importantly, all the people in the room looked jubilant. Everyone was happy for the young couple.
Taking a few calming breaths, I relaxed. Aaron hadn’t done anything crazy; the wedding was still on. That meant I still had some time to figure out what my next move would be. Just knowing I had sex with him the night before they married might be enough for me. Hell, I could most likely get him to do it again.
Mariah sat to my right, with Drew sitting to her right. The sexual tension between them, which quite possibly would be relieved in the bathroom at any minute, was palpable. But I’d just had sex in a church with an engaged man, so who was I to judge? Still, that left the seat to my left empty.
“Hey.” The familiar velvety voice came from behind me.
Brooks had a drink in each hand and placed them on the table. The seemingly ordinary gesture was anything but to me. He was bracing himself for my wrath.
“Hi.”
“Please don’t create a scene,” he whispered. “If you want me to leave, just say it and I’ll go without a fight. I don’t want to ruin this night for anyone. Especially you, Ollie.”
The words were on the tip of my tongue. I heard myself saying “Leave” but I couldn’t do it. He wore all black, and I fantasized he did because he was feeling so lost without me, because it made him feel closer to me. He looked inspiring, like someone a giant stone sculpture would be carved for.
I studied his face, his perfect face, and sketched a tattoo of it in my mind. Then I met his eyes.
Looking at him made me realize how in love with him I always was. I wanted him to stay. Forever. No matter how different I thought I was, no matter how unlovable I was, no matter how little faith I had in marriage, no matter how young I was, no matter all my imperfections, my scars, my baggage, my insecurities, I wanted to be able to love him for the rest of my life.
“I don’t want you to go,” I told him in a soft whisper.
The relief that filled his whole entire body made me want to forgive him everything. Almost.
Brooks sat down in the empty seat but moved it over a bit so we wouldn’t touch. He seemed so nervous, his hands always moving but never doing anything at the same time. I didn’t know what to say, even though there were a million things I wanted to ask, so we sat in silence while everyone around us buzzed.
I caught Lydia’s eye from across the room and she made a point to look from Brooks to me and smile with a nod. I didn’t want to disappoint her, but she was going to be another casualty in the cyclone.
A few people got up for speeches and spared us some long awkward pauses, but then things got worse.
Toast after toast celebrated Sadie and Aaron’s love and it was all bullshit. I wasn’t sure either of them was actually capable of love, but there we were calling their relationship heavenly. The thing was, I couldn’t care less about them. I don’t care if Sadie was pregnant or that I just had sex with Aaron.
I cared about Brooks.
Just as Sadie’s uncle was talking about the “long and loving life built on trust and commitment” they would share together, I got up from the table, not caring how bad it made me look. Brooks, of course, followed.
“Ollie. Ollie, wait,” he called to me once we were out of the private room.
I walked straight past the bar, which had filled considerably, and out to the front entrance to the sidewalk. I was walking at a fast clip, but that wasn’t a problem for Brooks. It was more of a problem for me, with my feet slipping out of my heels with almost every step.
“Ollie,” he called again in a calm tone, but I could hear his panic right beneath the surface.
“No,” I said back for no reason in particular.
“I’ll chase you forever, you know.”
I stopped but I didn’t turn to face him. “Why?”
“Because. Because I love you, Ollie Oxmend.”
I turned around for that.
“W-what did you say?” My words came out in a stutter.
“I’m in love with you.” His blue-eyed gaze never wavered. “I’m so crazily in love with you.” When he said it, I knew he meant it, because he would never ever say something he didn’t mean.
“No, you’re not.” Which is not the response I dreamed of giving him when he said it for the first time. He was in love with who he thought I was, or who he wanted me to be. And even if he was in love with the real me, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t feel the same way after I told him what I did.
He grabbed my face and pulled me into a soul-crushing kiss that I felt in the center of my bones.
I hoped he’d taste Aaron on me. I hoped he’d feel nothing when he kissed me.
“I love you,” he whispered as I pulled away.
I shoved at his solid chest as people standing outside smoking stared at our little performance. We had turned into the publicly annoying couple standing on the sidewalk on a Friday night and fighting. Well, I guess calling it fighting wasn’t right. Brooks was professing his love and I was acting like a lunatic. That’s probably what we always looked like together—calm perfection and a lunatic.
“Please, stop saying that.” If he said it one more time I was just going to melt into a puddle of Brooks-loving goo.
“You aren’t saying you don’t love me back, Ollie. I know how much you love me, because it’s almost as much as I love you. Nothing else matters anymore but us. Don’t you see that?”
“Why?” I didn’t know what answer I was looking for but I needed to know his reason.
“I could say I just do, because it’s the truth. I could ask you to explain why anyone loves anything, but that’s not what you’re looking for. I love how passionate you are about your art. I love that you’re a hard worker. I love that you make me earn your affection every day and that you make it worth the effort. He tucked a curl behind my ear.
“I love how you feel everything so deeply and even the small stuff matters to you. I love that you’re so different. I love how when I look at you, not only do I see how beautiful you are, but how deep you are. You are so smart, Ollie. And you aren’t afraid to see the world for what it really is. You’re the kind of woman I could spend the rest of my life getting to know because there’s so much going on inside of you. Brooks slowly shook his head with a small smile on his lips, like everything was going to be okay.
“All those things—everything about you. I just love you.”
Cigarette smoke swirled in the air, my heels were so painful I couldn’t feel my pinky toes, and I was so cold my lungs ached, but none of it bothered me. Brooks had just given me the perfect response to a question I didn’t think could be answered.
“I had sex with Aaron,” I admitted to him as soon as my heart stopped dancing because of what he’d just said. Those words, that confession, felt like a death sentence when they left my mouth.
His face fell.
“When?” he asked. That single word held so much hurt that everyone and everything else around me blurred.
“Just a couple hours ago.”
Then I finally got the reaction I was looking for. It was just a flash, a fraction of a flash, but he had a look of complete disgust on his face. Followed by anger that made his nostrils flare and his eyes wild.
But then it faded.
“Why’d you do that, Baby?” His voice sounded so crushed and so pained it was like I told him I’d murdered Boden just for fun.
“I–I–I…don’t know.” I broke down. “I didn’t want to, Brooks.” My lashes came off in a flurry as I cried for everything that was wrong, and the list was rather long. When Brooks pulled me into his chest, closed his jacket around me, and cradled my head, I started to cry harder.
God, I love him.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked through a clenched jaw.
“No.”
He pulled me back, swiped the hair out of my eyes, and bent down, considerably, so we were level. “Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t even know why you care.” I wiped the tears from my eyes, but only so my hands would stop touching him, trying to create some distance between us. He wouldn’t let me.
“I don’t,” he said and my heart dropped. I had called his bluff. “You keep trying to push me away, so if anything, this is my fault for not laying my heart on the line in the first place. We’ll get through this. Just tell me you love me too.”
“We won’t get through this.” I pivoted in his grasp to escape it and took a step back from him. He was looking at me like I was a wild animal, like he had no idea what I would do next, but with respect too because I had the ability to destroy him. “You had sex with Sadie.”
“I did?” he asked. “When?”
“You’re kidding, right? The underwear on the bed? Me leaving? Us not talking?”
“That’s what that was?” He sounded relieved and almost happy.
I blinked in utter disbelief. “Yes.”
“I never had sex with Sadie. I thought that was your thong. I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out why you left, but I never could’ve guessed this. Ollie.” He once again filled the space between us, pushing me back to the side of the building. “I will never want anyone but you. There is only you. I love you. Sadie is goddamned invisible, just like everyone else since I met you. I can’t have you and it’s killing me.”
My heart clenched, my stomach fluttered, and hope sprang out of the little cage I’d been keeping it in. But I couldn’t enjoy it.
“Then what happened that night? I found them shoved under your pillow, how’d they get there?”
“I think it’s obvious someone put them there. I may not be the smoothest when it comes to women, but I’d like to think I’d know how to cover an indiscretion better than by shoving panties under my own pillow in the bed we share.”
“So which one of them was it?”
“It had to be Aaron. He came over early that morning, before I left for work, asking me to jump his truck. I did, and then he asked if he could use the bathroom at my place so he didn’t wake Sadie.”
“Fucking bastard.” I clenched my hands into fists.
“Wait.” A look crossed his face that would’ve been entitled Dawn of Realization if it was featured in an art book. “You had sex with Aaron because you thought I had sex with Sadie?”
“You did what?”
Our heads both whipped around in the direction of the voice so fast I heard a whooshing sound. Sadie stood on the sidewalk in her puffy pink rehearsal dinner dress, on the night before her wedding, finding out that her fiancé and father of her unborn baby had just cheated on her.
“Sadie.” I approached her with the same caution I’d use approaching a stray dog. “It’s not like that. Everything’s okay now.”
I had no idea what I was saying. Maybe everything could be okay for me, and that was a huge maybe, but her reality was still bleak because Aaron was still a cheater.
“You had sex with Aaron?” She stumbled through the door and over to me so she could clamp both of her hands over my elbows.
I could’ve lied to her, maybe even tried to deflect her attention, but she at the very least deserved the truth.
“Yes,” I said in a whisper just above the sounds of the street.
“When?” She squeezed me tighter, leaned in closer, and I could feel her sadness rolling off of her in waves.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
I could feel Brooks hovering behind me, but I would’ve bet my bottom dollar he had no idea what to do. Sadie’s reaction was so unexpected I wasn’t even sure what to do. She was displaying real human emotions, and not only that, she seemed so hurt. The point of having sex with Aaron was to hurt her, but I never thought of what would happen beyond that. I never would have done it with him at all if I wasn’t positive she was sleeping with Brooks.
“Right before I got here,” I admitted, feeling utterly ashamed.
“Ollie.” A sob swallowed up my name and she collapsed against me.
I stood there, supporting most of her weight, and let her cry on me. Brooks came around our huddled circle and positioned himself behind Sadie so he could see my face. He gave me the international signal for WTF. But then, in true Brooks gentleman fashion, he shed his suit jacket and draped it around Sadie and me.
“You’ll be fine,” I told her as I stroked her long strawberry blonde locks. “You don’t need him,” I said, because she didn’t seem to be angry with me.
“I’m not crying because of Aaron. I’m crying because of you.” She spoke into my chest and I wasn’t positive I heard her right.
“I’m really sorry, Sadie. Really, really, really sorry.” I tried to nudge her head up so I could look in her eyes, but she wasn’t budging. I was sorry, sorrier than I could ever express, and I needed her to know that. “But I can kind of explain.”
“How could you?” She sniffled. I’d never seen her so upset in my life.
“I’m not in love with him or anything. It was a very stupid, very huge mistake.” She had to believe me, but I was looking at Brooks when I said it. He had to hear it too.
“But what about me?” she asked.
“You’re my best friend,” I told her.
“No. Not that. This is the night before my wedding and you’re making it all about you.”
“I’m not, Sadie. This is all about you. You’re the pregnant one. You’re the one who was cheated on.”
She stood up straight, letting Brooks’s jacket fall off her shoulders and solely on me. I clung to it the way she had clung to me. Sadie took a deep breath and it was as if I could see all her resolve settle into her bones, turning them to steel.
“Don’t you ever say that again.”
“Say what?”
“That you think you had sex with Aaron.”
“Sadie, I did.”
All the time I spent worrying if I was insane could’ve been spent diving into Sadie’s psyche. First she was wrecked by the news, which was understandable, but now she was angry. Calling me a liar was such a cliché thing to do.
“No, you didn’t. Why would he do that? Why would he want you? Why would anyone want you? You’re so pathetic.”
She shoved away from me even further and with more force than necessary.
“Okay, Sadie.” I would not engage in the fight. Of course I wasn’t going to get physical back.
“Have you told anyone else?” she asked.
“No.”
“Good. I can’t have your desperate attempts to outshine me ruin my night. I knew you never got over him dumping you for me, but I thought we were friends.”
I had lost Brooks, taking my eyes off of him to keep them focused on Sadie. After a deep breath and another look, I noticed him leaning against the brick building at a safer distance. He was still watching me, so I felt he was trying to convey he still cared, but this conversation had turned extremely crazy.
My revenge plan was a success and failure at the same time. Having sex with Aaron crushed Sadie, I could see how badly it did, but it crushed me too. The only positive in the whole situation was I could finally dismiss my lingering doubts about my feelings for Aaron.
Looking at Brooks standing in the cold, without a coat, waiting for me to finish telling my best friend I’d just fucked her fiancé, made his love for me seem more real than the words. I was done wanting revenge, I was done caring about Sadie and Aaron.
“You still want to marry him?” I asked.
“Of course. And I need you to not ruin it. So don’t ever say those words again.” Sadie’s icy gaze returned as she spewed her implied threat.
“It’s just that…” I chewed my lip, stalling for perfect words that would never come. “You both seem to really be struggling with this quick wedding. And in light of”—oh man, what to say?—“recent events, don’t you think it’s best to wait?”
She took her perfectly manicured hand and patted her stomach as if that single gesture would answer all questions in the world. “That’s not really an option anymore.”
“But still, he—”
“Ollie, enough.”
“I’m sorry, Sadie.” I would only say it so many times. “You’re right. You’re having a baby together, you should marry him.”
“I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry or what you think. All I care about is the rest of my wedding weekend going perfectly. I refuse to be left at the altar and pregnant. Now, I need you to get back inside that restaurant, toast us, have a great fucking time, and show up tomorrow looking more beautiful and happier than you ever have in your life. She swiped a finger under her eye to check for smudged eyeliner.
“If you can pull that off, I will completely forgive you and we can live the rest of our lives like this never happened. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.” I kept my face expressionless. “Sure. I just need a couple minutes.”