Chapter Twelve

 

Roxie

 

“You're going to have fun, I promise.”

Luca looked at me with uncertainty written on his face but leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek before walking down the steps of the main building to join the group of men waiting for him. It was finally the day before Thea's wedding, and there was one last male bonding activity on the itinerary. Up until now, Luca had managed to slide under the radar and participate only in the activities I went to with him, but this morning at breakfast they had insisted he come along. When he asked what they would be doing, they all exchanged glances and then leaned toward him conspiratorially.

"It's a secret," one of Thea's cousins whispered.

"A secret?" Luca replied.

He sounded uncertain, but I couldn't blame him. People he had known for less than a week were asking him to head out into the woods with them without knowing where they were going or why. From a quick outside examination of the situation, it didn't seem like the best idea. Finally, though, one of them leaned across the table and whispered something into his ear. Luca shot a glance my way when the man first spoke but seemed to think about what he said for a few seconds before nodding.

"I'm in," he said.

Later, when I asked what they were doing after breakfast, he refused to tell me. It was as though they had taken some sort of solemn vow to not divulge what they were doing to the delicate women-folk. It was adorable, if somewhat unnerving. I was fairly certain that secret plans developed by a small group of men was the root of many of the disasters that have befallen the human race. At the same time, though, I noticed a few of the men seemed to be carrying bottles of water and boxed lunches, and one gripped a handful of life jackets. He tried to keep them out of my view, but considering this was Jonah, the cousin of Thea's who had been referred to as Ichabod more than a few times in his life, he wasn't doing the best job. I pretended not to notice them, however, deciding there was no harm in playing along. I sincerely doubted that too many of the plots to take over the world started with boxed lunches and water for men too worried to canoe without bright orange life jackets.

Serena had asked Thea for some special mother-daughter time that afternoon, so she could share the wisdoms of marriage with her only daughter, so when the men walked away, I was left to my own devices. I only had a couple of hours until I needed to start getting ready for that night's festivities. After surviving a week of hiking, making and then taking pictures of encouraging sentiments out of rocks on the beach, playing yard games, and finalizing every tiny detail I could possibly imagine existed in a wedding, I was now preparing myself for the rehearsal dinner. Although I was looking forward to the dinner and speeches, it also meant there were only two days left with Luca. We had carved out a little bit of time together the last couple of days, but we were so busy and exhausted that the only time we were alone was when I curled into his arms to sleep at night.

We never actually talked about him sharing the bed with me. But somehow, Luca had gotten into bed with me the night we watched movies and slept together for the first time, and never left. The blankets he had set up continued to lay on the floor, but at night he slipped under the covers with me and I woke with him by my side. I was thinking about that now as I walked along the porch at the side of the house. Hearing someone call my name freed me from my thoughts, and I reluctantly turned around to see Brad approaching from behind me. I guess he didn’t go out with the other men on their bonding experience, and now I felt distinctly aware of the isolated settings around us.

"What are you doing up here all by yourself?" he asked.

"I could ask you the same thing," I said. "Why aren't you with the rest of the guys?"

On the one hand, I actually appreciated the fact that Brad stayed behind. I didn't have to worry about what was going on between Luca and him when I wasn't there. But at the same time, I just wanted him to be anywhere else but right next to me.

"I've seriously had enough of all the ‘hold hands and sing Kumbaya’ family togetherness shit," he said. "I’ll never understand why my sister had to drag her wedding out for an entire week. Doesn't she know that nobody likes these things? People go to weddings because they have to, not because they want to. No one wants to sit through a stuffy, sappy ceremony and celebrate a relationship that's probably going to end eventually."

By the end of his little speech, he had started to slightly slur his words.

Real classy, Brad.

"That is such a lovely sentiment," I said. "You should really consider putting that on your wedding invitations. I'm sure your fiancée would love to hear how whimsical and romantic you are about your future marriage."

I started to walk away and heard Brad take a step toward me.

"Oh, Roxie, don't be that way."

A thought suddenly occurred to me. How many times had I heard him say those very words before? How many times had he hurt my feelings or not shown up when he was supposed to? Or embarrassed me in some way but use that line to lure me back in? So much of our relationship could be summed up in those four words. Don’t be that way. Looking back, he was saying that to manipulate me. He wanted me to blame all our relationship issues on myself. He wanted me to believe that I could make everything better again by just not "being that way."

"Don't be what way, Brad? What exactly is it you don't think I should be doing? Holding you accountable for your behavior? Forcing you to recognize that you're acting like a complete ass? Those are definitely things I never did before, but have no problem with doing now."

Brad gave me a look that I could only describe as snake-like and took a swaggering step toward me.

"Wow, Roxie. You just keep surprising me, don't you? I think I kinda like what the city has done for you. You have a backbone now. I didn't know you had something like that in you." By this point, he had forced me to back up until my back was pushed against the porch railing. Grinning wide, he got even closer, causing me to lean back away from him. "How about you let me in you?"

I felt like a bucket of cold water had just been thrown over me. I instantly recoiled from him.

"What the fuck did you just say to me?" I snapped, taking another step back.

"Come on, Roxie. For old times’ sake. It seems like both of us have some free time this afternoon. Why don't you come back with me to my cabin and we can get into the spirit of this whole wedding thing?"

He reached for me and I drew my arm back away from him. My eyes filled with disgust and I could feel my chest rising and falling harshly.

"What's wrong with you, Roxie?"

At that moment I realized all the sadness and longing I previously felt for Brad was utterly gone. They weren’t concealed by my anger anymore or hiding behind my defensiveness and lurking in the back of my mind. They were simply gone. In their place, I felt a new sense of clarity. I could remember all the bad parts I had ignored so I could romanticize and justify our relationship. How he treated me. And now I felt like I was looking at him in a completely different light, finally able to see him for what he truly was. When he cheated on me, everything between us was already over. I had blamed myself for his cheating and had tormented myself about it for two years, looking back on that day as the precise moment the future I always envisioned was stolen from me. Now I knew that even if Brad hadn't cheated on me, we never would have lasted. Even if he was completely faithful to me, it wouldn't make up for the man he was. And I knew now that he wasn't the type of man I needed or wanted. He would never treat me the way I deserved.

It was an empowering and refreshing realization to come to, but it didn’t get me out of my current predicament. As Brad stared at me, all I could see was the sickening, hollow look in his eyes, and all I wanted was to find a way to get away from him. He took another step toward me, trying to force me into the corner of the porch. It was a tactic I now realized he had used many times before. I would never say that he was physically abusive during our relationship, but he definitely knew how to use his size to his advantage. Like now, there had been times he purposefully made me feel trapped. I felt that way now, but I was far from the woman I used to be, who would let that intimidate her. I stood my ground and stared directly into his eyes.

"Don't play hard-to-get, baby. It was never your strong suit. You know you can't resist me. We're both adults. Let's have some fucking fun together. One last fling for the road."

"Get out of my way, Brad."

He didn't move an inch. But not even a second later, I heard a loud thud and saw Luca standing behind him. He had swung himself over the side of the porch rather than going around to the steps and had landed on his feet behind Brad, a look of pure rage on his face. Luca's eyes were locked on him now as he straightened up. I wondered how much he had heard. Obviously enough to infuriate him.

"She told you to move," he said.

His voice was a burning ember. It was calm and even, but it concealed something fierce.

"Who do you think you are?" Brad asked.

"I'm the man Roxie chose to be here with this week. And I'm the man who's telling you to back off my girlfriend. You should already be ashamed of yourself for the way you're behaving at your sister's wedding, but that's a family issue. When you disrespect Roxie, that's when I get involved. And I promise you this – I will leave you laying on your pitiful ass if you bother her again."

I felt like I couldn't breathe. My heart was pounding hard in my chest, but I felt hollow. I didn't know what was going to happen. Finally, the tension between the two men broke, and Brad scoffed and stalked away. When he was gone, Luca closed the space between us.

"Are you alright?" he asked. "Did that fucker do anything to you?"

I shook my head.

"No," I said.

"Then why are you crying?" he asked.

I looked up at him and he brushed a tear from under my eye. I hadn't even realized they had been falling. I was so angry and so overwhelmed with emotions about the entire week it had just overflowed. I let out a frustrated sigh.

"I feel like I wasted so much of my life," I said.

"How long were you with him?" Luca asked.

"A few years," I said. "But that's not really what I’m talking about. It's not the time I wasted when I was with him. It was all the time after. I spent so much time thinking about him and missing him and wishing we hadn't broken up and trying to figure out how to get back together. You know it wasn't really until a few weeks before Thea got engaged that I stopped thinking about the possibility of Brad being part of my future. Being my whole future. I hate that I gave him that much control over me for so long."

Luca wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in close. I buried my head in his chest and drew in the smell of him, closing my eyes so I could pretend we were the only things in existence.

"No one has the right to have that much control over you, Roxie. If you only knew how amazing you really are. If you could see yourself the way I see you, all that shit with Brad wouldn't even matter. You are worth so much more than anything he could ever offer you. You deserve to be appreciated and treasured, and the only thing Brad will ever think about is himself."

"Do you really think that or are you just trying to charm me into bed again?"

"I don't need to charm you," he said. "Let's go back to the cabin."

He had his arm draped around my waist as we walked back to the cabin and I leaned over to rest my head on his shoulder. A second later I lifted it and looked at him again.

"I just realized something. What are you doing back here so soon?" I asked. "I expected you to be gone for most of the afternoon."

"Yeah, so did we," he said. "Jonah fell in the creek with all of our supplies. He couldn't handle a canoe after all."

 

Luca

 

"I think I need to have a serious conversation with Thea about the difference between a surprise and an obligation."

I laughed and finished hooking my cufflink. I checked my reflection in the large mirror over the bedroom dresser and glanced toward the bathroom.

"You have to hurry up," I said. "We're going to be late. It can't be that bad."

"I'm going to have to ask you to remember you said that."

The door to the bathroom opened and Roxie stepped out in a pink monstrosity of a dress. I couldn’t help but chuckle.

"Wow," I said. "That is a tremendous amount of pink. I thought your maid of honor dress was purple."

"It is," Roxie said. "But this isn't my maid of honor dress. This is my festive rehearsal dinner dress."

"Is that really what she called it?" I asked.

"Yes. Both out loud and in writing. Apparently, she bought one for all the women in the bridal party. She wants to make sure that we look perfect in all of the wedding pictures, starting tonight."

"And it was with that sentiment in mind she chose that dress for you?" I asked.

Roxie let out an exasperated sigh and crossed to where I was standing so she could look in the mirror alongside me. There was another full-size mirror in the bathroom, but I can only assume she hoped the reflection she saw in this one would somehow be improved over the other.

"What is it about getting married?" she asked. "Does becoming a bride just automatically shut off some of your brain cells? Does the engagement ring create some sort of force field around the decision-making and judgment portions of the brain so that a woman doesn’t realize the major leaps she's making until after the wedding?"

I laughed and tightened my tie.

"I don't know," I said. "I might not be the one to ask. I, personally, have never been near a bride in my life."

"Never?" she asked.

"Never. Remember, I'm an only child, so no sisters to lose their minds in a bridal craze, or any brothers to cause a woman to get sucked into the bridal craze. I'm also the youngest of my cousins, so by the time I was one or two years old, they were all already married. Only a few of my friends are married, and I was just a guest at those weddings. My interactions with the brides were mercifully brief and restricted to seeing her walk down the aisle, listening to the vows, and then shaking her hand in the receiving line."

"That's pretty impressive," she said.

"I wear it like a badge of honor," I said. "Are you ready?"

 

The resort seemed more alive that night than it had throughout the week. Though we were kept busy with activities and events, there were also stretches of quiet when the group would fracture off into smaller parties for different activities or handle the details of the wedding. Earlier that day, however, a steady stream of cars made their way into the parking lot as more extended family members and close friends arrived who hadn’t come in early. I knew the rehearsal dinner was reserved for only a small segment of those who would be in attendance at the wedding, but the number of people who had arrived that day made me wonder about the size of the wedding itself. From what Roxie had said, it seemed wholly possible that the entire town of Maple Grove would be temporarily relocating here for the wedding before returning home in one long convoy.

People were pouring out from various cabins on the walkway, and I noticed more cars were pulling into the parking lot with guests stepping out fully dressed for the evening. This told me they weren't staying onsite and instead had gotten rooms at one of the other hotels we saw in the nearby town. When we walked into the building, I saw the staff had been hard at work transforming the space for the first event of the official wedding celebration. Roxie and I were quickly ushered into the smaller of the ballrooms and brought to a table near the front where Thea and Bryce already sat. They still had on the same indescribably happy grins they were wearing during the ceremony rehearsal earlier that morning. They were glowing, and as we sat down at the table, it was hard not to share in some of their excitement.

We ate dinner and then the speeches began. Friends and family lavished the couple with words of wisdom, dramatically poetic sentiments, and funny stories – some of which probably should have been filtered out due to the decidedly G-rated audience of the evening. I looked over at Roxie during one of the speeches and noticed her smile had somewhat faded. Instead of holding in her laughter the same as everyone else, she had a wistful expression on her face as she gazed at Thea and Bryce at their table, Thea’s parents cuddled up together on one side, and Brad kissing Heather's neck to the other.

"Are you OK?" I asked.

She started slightly and looked at me with an unconvincing smile.

"Yeah," she said. "Just look at them. They’re so happy."

"Isn't that a good thing?" I asked.

"Of course, it is. It's wonderful."

A groomsman finished his speech and held his glass toward Bryce and Thea, and many more mostly-empty glasses swung in their direction as a variety of toasts rippled through the room. I stood and held my hand out for the mic as he turned to go back to his seat. I faced the room and looked out at the faces staring back at me. I tried to attach names to as many of them as I could, but they all blended together into a sea of stares, impossible to decipher with the white-hot heat of the spotlight focused directly on me.

"Hello, everyone," I said. "I know that I'm a new face to most of you. All of you, actually. For those of you who just arrived today, my name is Luca. I’m Roxie’s boyfriend. The maid of honor. The truth is that I haven't known any of you for more than a week, but that week has meant a lot to me. I promise I’ll keep this short. There are a few things I wanted to say. First, thank you for including me this week. Even though you didn't know me, and I think I came as a surprise to many of you, you still welcomed me with open arms, and I appreciate that. Second, I want to add to the congratulations for Thea and Bryce. The two of you truly exude nothing but love and adoration for each other, and that is something rare and precious in this world. But it's not just that. Yesterday I saw the two of them get into a rather heated argument over whether it's correct to put butter and syrup on your French toast or whether you are supposed to only use powdered sugar. It was a clash for the ages, but when I looked back at them just fifteen minutes later, they were feeding each other bites from their own plates. And I knew then that they were going to be alright. Because loving each other isn't just about that staring into each other's eyes and ignoring the world. Sometimes love is about standing up to each other and disagreeing, but still wanting to sit by each other's side and try to understand their point of view – no matter how weird, or in the case of French toast, as sticky and gross as you think it might be."

Some of the people at the tables chuckled and I turned to look at Roxie.

"Third, to Roxie. I wanted to tell you how proud of you I am. Even before meeting Thea, I knew she had to be a special person. She would have to be, for someone as incredible as Roxie to love her so much and want to be there for her like this. As I've watched Roxie with Thea this week, I've felt like I was getting to know Roxie even more. It even felt like I was seeing certain sides of you for the first time. It only made me fall more in love with you. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life learning more about you, falling even more in love with you, and finding every possible way to make you smile."

My eyes locked with Roxie's. There was the slightest hint of a smile on her lips as I handed the mic off to the next person and made my way across the room over to her, cupping her face in my hands to kiss that smile. I wanted to take a mental picture and remember this moment long after this week came to an end.

"That was beautiful," she said as I sat back down in the chair across from her.

I smiled and reached for her hand, kissing it when she gave it to me.

 

The speeches went on for another half hour before the dinner finally came to an end. As everyone started slowly filing out of the room, Thea rushed up to us, her eyes bright.

"Roxie? Does this mean the two of you are getting married?"

Roxie's eyes snapped up at me and then back to Thea.

"Yes," she said.

Thea looked at Roxie's hand and I instinctively took it in mine.

"I haven't gotten a ring yet," I said. "I've wanted to ask her for a while now but wasn’t sure of how to do it. Something just came over me today when I looked at her, and I realized I didn’t want one more second to pass without knowing if we going to spend our lives together or not. So, I popped the question. Even if my proposal started off as an accident, I’m glad I know she’s mine now."

Thea's eyes welled with tears and she clapped her hands in front of her.

"That's amazing!" she gushed.

"I hope we didn't steal your thunder or anything," I said. "I didn’t really mean to announce it like that.”

Yes, I did.

“Not at all!” Thea said. “Don’t be silly. It’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time. I couldn’t be more thrilled for you. Both of you.”

“We really should be getting to our rooms, honey,” Bryce said, giving his soon-to-be wife a squeeze around her waist. “We have a big day tomorrow.”

Roxie hugged Thea tightly, and we left the building and started toward our cabin. When we got there, I stopped.

"Wait here," I said.

She blinked at me. "What? Why?"

"Just wait."

I went into our bedroom and rummaged through the large wardrobe in the corner to find clean blankets. I tucked two of them under my arm and met her back outside. I led her down to the beach and into a curved section of the cliff I had found during my explorations. The sand here was coarser than closer to the water, but the location, surrounded by rocks, provided complete privacy. I spread the blankets on the ground and invited Roxie down onto them with me. We lay on our backs and looked up at the stars together.

"I can't believe it's almost over," she murmured.

"What do you mean?"

"Tomorrow is our last full day here. The next day, it's all over. We’ll go back home, back to our regular lives. We will have successfully pulled it off."

"Yeah," I said, trying not to let the inner turmoil I was experiencing seep into my voice. "We fooled everyone."

"I don't think I can ever thank you enough, Luca."

"Thank me when it's all over, and we’ve made it back to the city in one piece."

Roxie laughed softly.

"I will."