Save the Date

I didn’t know what I was expecting—raised voices, maybe, or Mike refusing to talk to my parents. But none of that happened. Mike shook my dad’s hand, leaned over and kissed my mother’s cheek, gave them both a smile, and then practically shoved Jesse at them as he turned and headed over toward us. It was the interaction my parents might have had with one of my second cousins—not their son who they hadn’t seen in a year and a half. It looked like my parents were making small talk with Jesse, but they kept glancing to where Mike had gone, like they were trying to figure out what had just happened.

“You guys are not subtle,” Mike said as he approached us, his hands in his pockets.

“Hey!” Linnie said, smiling wide at Mike and pulling him into a hug, Danny following suit. “You’re here! It’s so good to see you!”

“You too,” Mike said, smiling at Linnie. “Congratulations. You look beautiful.”

“Michael!” J.J. gave Mike a hug that picked him up off the ground. “What do you think?” he asked, looking at Danny and Rodney, Mike still hovering a few inches off the ground. “Mike Drop?”

“No!” I said quickly. Mike Drops were something that J.J. and Danny had done a lot when Mike was in elementary school and they were much, much bigger than he was. It was true to its name—Danny would pick up Mike, yell “Mike Drop!” and toss him in the air and J.J. would dash in and catch him just before he hit the floor. All of which had worked out great when Mike was six. But as they’d all gotten older, J.J. sometimes forgot to catch him, and they had a way of getting people injured, sometimes all three of them in the same Mike Drop.

“Good to see you,” Rodney said, giving him a hug after J.J. finally set him back down. “We’re both so happy you’re here.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Mike said to Rodney. I was on the verge of saying something snarky about how he’d somehow been able to miss Christmas and Thanksgiving, but held it back. “Charlie,” Mike said to me.

I nodded. “Hey.”

“Hi, everyone.” I jumped and turned around—Jesse Foster was standing right behind me, leaning slightly over my shoulder. He touched the small of my back, so quickly it was over before I could register it, as he walked over to stand next to Mike.

“Hey, Jesse,” Linnie said, giving him a quick hug as he shook hands with all my brothers and Rodney. “It’s been a while.”

“I know,” he said, giving her a polite smile. Then he looked at me, gave me a smile, and mouthed Hey.

Hi, I mouthed back. My pulse was hammering, and I couldn’t stop staring at Jesse, at his hair, which was combed back, at the tiny pocket square folded into his blazer pocket, at his hands. . . .

“And this is Brooke Abernathy,” Danny said, and I snapped back to reality to see Danny making introductions. “My girlfriend.”

“Oh,” Mike said, looking from Brooke to Danny, surprise clearly written on his face. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Brooke said, with another tight smile.

“And this is my friend Jesse Foster,” Mike said, gesturing to Jesse, who gave Brooke a smile and shook her hand.

“So Jesse is your plus-one?” Rodney asked, looking from Mike to Jesse. “Not that you’re not welcome, of course . . .”

“I thought I could use some moral support this weekend,” Mike said, glancing back to the side of the room where my parents were standing, now with the Danielses.

“Plus, I always like seeing the Grants,” Jesse said. His tone was easy and light, but his eyes kept finding mine, and I found myself unable to look away. Now that he was here, it was of course making sense why he’d said he’d see me soon—he must have assumed Mike told me basic facts about his life. “It’s been too long.”

“Definitely too long,” I said, giving him what I hoped was just a normal welcoming smile. I noticed Linnie, though, glancing between me and Jesse.

“What do you think?” Danny asked, slinging an arm around Mike’s neck and another around Jesse’s. “Quick stop at the bar?”

“Coming with you,” J.J. said, following them across the room.

“Lin?” Rodney asked.

“I’m good,” Linnie said. “I just need to talk to my sister a second.”

“What—” I started, but Linnie was already grabbing me by the hand and pulling me across the lobby. I looked back to see that Brooke was now standing alone, where, a moment before, she’d been part of our group. I felt a flash of sympathy for her, but a moment later this turned into annoyance. Why was she standing by herself? Surely she could join Danny and everyone at the bar—it’s not like she needed an invitation or anything.

Linnie pulled me across the lobby and then down the hallway. I could still see the rest of the room—Danny was at the bar, taking two drinks from the bartender, then walking a few steps away and handing one of the glasses to Mike, who immediately took a long sip.

“So.” Linnie looked at me expectantly.

“What?”

She shot me a look. “Jesse. What’s going on with you two?”

I thought about pretending I didn’t know what she meant, but I was pretty sure that would raise her suspicions even more. “Nothing’s going on,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, right this minute. We . . . um . . . hooked up over Christmas break.” Linnie’s jaw dropped open and I hastened to add, “We didn’t sleep together.” I figured that right this instant, Linnie didn’t need to know just how close we’d come to it.

“So, was this a drunken hookup? Like a one-time thing?”

“Not for me.” I took a breath, suddenly wishing I’d told Linnie all this years ago—that I’d talked to her the very first moment I’d looked at Jesse and felt my face get hot, suddenly not sure how to work my hands and feet when I was around him. She should have known about this from the beginning. “I don’t know,” I said, not sure how to explain it. It seemed like the second you tried to tell someone why you loved someone else, it took the luster off it, like pinning a butterfly down in a case—it never quite captured it. But it also occurred to me that this would not be a helpful metaphor for someone who would be speaking vows about why she loved someone in front of a hundred-person crowd tomorrow. “He’s Jesse.”

“I know he’s Jesse,” she said. “I just want to know when he became Jesse.”

I shrugged with one shoulder, looking at the wallpaper, dotted with black-and-white pictures from when the Inn wasn’t an inn at all, when it was just a family home, people who lived in these rooms and called them their own. “It started as a crush,” I said, my voice hesitant as I tried to find the right words, realizing that I’d never had to explain this before. “Like, just the kind of crush you have when you’re a kid. Nothing’s ever going to happen. But then . . .” I flashed back to the night of his party, how dreamlike and fated it had all seemed, like a line of dominoes being nudged just the right amount, then falling perfectly. “At Christmas, it was like he saw me for the first time.”

“Uh-huh.” I could practically feel all that my sister wanted to say but was holding back, like air pressure outside a car window.

“He’s just . . . ,” I started, then let out a breath as I realized that even if I could articulate this, Linnie wouldn’t understand what I meant, not really. She’d almost always had a boyfriend in high school, and she’d found her soul mate three months after graduating. She didn’t know what it was like to look and wish and want, always two steps behind the person, always on the edges of their life. What it was like to stand next to someone and know you weren’t registering with them, not in any meaningful way. That you thought about someone a thousand times more than they’d ever thought about you. To know that you were just a face in the crowd scenes while they were center stage. And then, all at once, to have the spotlight finally swing over to you. To suddenly be visible, to be seen, no longer one of the people in the background who never get any lines. To suddenly be in the midst of something you’d only ever looked at from the sidelines. What that felt like when it finally happened, dropped in your lap when you were least expecting it, like a gift you were half-afraid to open.