Slightly Married (27 page)

Look, I’m no beach bunny and I’m not wearing a bikini, by any means. But I have to say it’s good to put on a bathing suit and not be tempted, for a change, to pull one of Jack’s old T-shirts on over it.

“So…why is today different?” I ask Buckley.

“Because…there’s no one else around right now. That’s why.”

“You can’t discuss this with anyone else around?”

“Nope.”

Hmm.

I probably should treat this topic like a sun-baked leather seat under a bare butt, and get off of it, pronto!

But you may have noticed I’m not the most prudent gal in town.

“Okay,” I tell Buckley, after another swallow of icy lime-tangy Corona, “Why didn’t you come to our engagement party?”

“You really want to know.”

“Yes, Buckley, I really want to know.”

“I don’t think you do.”

I let out an exasperated sputter. “Yes! I do! Tell me!”

“Okay. Here goes…”

Suddenly, a banner-toting plane buzzes overhead, and we both glance up at it, shielding our eyes.

I see that the sky is darker blue now, tinted with telltale pinkish-orange. It’s getting late.

I also see that the plane’s banner reads: BRING ABATE TO YOUR NEXT BAR-B-Q!!!

The copywriters at Blaire Barnett came up with countless clever slogans for the Abate/Barbecue campaign, but that’s the one the Client chose. What a waste of creative talent.

I’ve been rethinking my plan to become an ad agency copywriter lately. I don’t know if I want to deal with arrogant Clients and their ridiculous demands for the rest of my career.

I have no idea what I want to do instead—but I’m pretty sure agency account management isn’t it. It’s great for now, but after the wedding, when things settle down again and it’s time to think about moving out of our apartment, I really have to give my career path some serious thought, too.

I turn to tell this to Buckley, then remember that we’re on the verge of a big breakthrough revelation here. My professional soul-searching can wait.

“Go on,” I prod, wiggling my bare toes in the sand, “I’m listening.”

“Tracey, I swear to God…I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I say in return. “Even if you didn’t show up for me on one of the most important nights of my life. So just tell me why—”

“No, that
is
why,” he cuts in. “I just told you.”

“What?”

Why am I not comprehending him? Is it heatstroke? The beer? Bride brain?

I wish I could see his eyes and get a clue.

“I love you,” he says again. “That’s why I didn’t come to the party. Because I didn’t want to watch you celebrating with Jack. I was out-of-my-mind jealous. Because I love you. I’ve loved you for a few years now. I could never do anything about it because we were both with other people. Okay?”

Whoa.

Now I’m glad I can’t see his eyes, and I’m sure as hell glad he can’t see mine.

Speechless, I just gape at him.

“I told you you didn’t want to know,” he says with a shrug, and sips his beer, turning to look out over the water.

I follow his gaze, wishing Jack and the others would come splashing back in to disrupt this insane conversation, but they’re way out there, tiny dots in the waves.

“I don’t know what to say,” I tell Buckley at last.

“Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t. I probably shouldn’t have told you, but…my sister said I should be honest with you. Just in case…you feel the same way.”

“What?” I’m floundering, so far over my head that I might as well be out there in the surf.

Buckley takes a deep breath and looks at me again. This time, for real: he props his sunglasses over his forehead.

What I see in his green eyes takes my breath away.

“Tracey, I’ve never known anyone like you. You’re clever and big-hearted and gentle and crazy and magnetic. Sometimes when we’re together, just hanging out talking and joking around, you have no idea that I’m thinking about grabbing you and kissing you. And that I wish I could just grab your hand and run away with you.”

The first wave—that heartfelt
I love you
—knocked me off my feet and now they just keep on washing over me, pulling me in way over my head.

“Buckley,” I say hoarsely, “no. You can’t…”

“I know.” He nods. “I can’t. But I do.”

I turn to look at Jack. He’s a speck on the horizon at the moment.

He has no idea that my friend—that our friend—Buckley is in love with me.

But I knew.

That’s what I realize.

Maybe I wouldn’t have used the word
love.
But deep down, I did know all along that Buckley had unresolved feelings for me.

Just as deep down, I have unresolved feelings for him.

Which we both need to resolve, right here. Right now. Because…

“I’m getting married,” I say firmly, “in less than two months, and—”

“No, I know. Enough said.” His sunglasses are back on. He resolutely lifts his beer bottle to his lips.

“No,
not
enough said. I mean, you haven’t said anything at all, except that…”

“I love you. Yeah—” his laugh is as bitter as the hunk of lime in my Corona “—I think that’s way more than enough.”

“But…what did you expect me to say to that?”

“Nothing.” He reaches for the cooler on the sand between us. “I didn’t expect you to say anything. I just needed to say it.” His empty bottle lands in the cooler with a clanking sound, and he retrieves another bottle.

I watch him looking around for the opener.

“Here,” I say, handing him Jack’s shoe, discarded earlier in the sand by my chair.

“Huh?”

“It has a bottle opener built into the sole.”

Buckley just looks at it.

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t know. Is it bad form to open your beer with a guy’s shoe when you’ve just told his girlfriend you’re in love with her?” he asks then, and his mouth quirks with a wry smile.

Instantly, the mood is lightened. Thank God.

I laugh a little.

So does he.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think it’s bad form. Open your beer, Buckley. And open one for me while you’re at it.”

He does.

“Fiancée,” I say, trading my nearly empty bottle for the icy one he hands me.

“What?”

“I’m Jack’s fiancée. You said girlfriend.”

Silence.

“You know I’m going to marry Jack, Buckley, don’t you?”

He nods. “That’s what I told my sister.”

“You talked to your sister about me?”

“Yeah. You came up a lot, actually, while I was out in L.A.”

“Because…”

“Because she wanted to know why I wasn’t getting married, and I told her.”

“What?”

“You’re not the only reason I broke up with Sonja, Trace,” he says quickly. “Just part of it.”

“Does she know?” I ask, trying to take this all in. “Sonja?”

He hesitates.

“Yeah,” he says reluctantly. “She knows. I probably shouldn’t have told her, but I did.”

“That would explain why she never acknowledged the engagement party invitation. And she cashed the check I sent back to her for the bridesmaid dress last month, so I know she’s still alive.”

“I’m really sorry you went through all that with her,” Buckley says apologetically.

We sip our beer in silence, listening to the waves and the gulls and the Edge’s wailing guitar riff.

I think about how, just a few months ago, he was planning to marry Sonja and she and I were making plans to be a suburban foursome someday.

Maybe Buckley was thinking the same thing…only we’d be a suburban swinging foursome?

Nah.

He’s as much a one-woman man as I am a one-man woman….

Which I am, aren’t I?

Of course I am.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t have sent Buckley packing way back when I realized I cared so much about Jack.

Jack is The One.

Buckley is…well, The One Too Many.

“So what do you want me to do with this?” I finally ask Buckley. “Just file it away and forget about it…?”

“That would be good.”

“…because I don’t think I can. We should resolve this.”

“Resolve what? I’ve got feelings for you, you’re about to marry someone else. I’d say that’s pretty much resolved.”

“No, I mean…it’s not just you.” I can’t believe I just said that. In a mere whisper, but I said it, and he must have heard, because I can feel him gaping at me from behind his shades.

“Before I make the wrong assumption here…can you elaborate?”

“You’re not the only one who—”

Nope. I can’t say it.

“You mean you feel…?” Buckley can’t, either.

“Something. Yeah.”

I know what you’re thinking, but look, I’m just being honest here.

Because that’s what Jesus would do.

Oh, who am I kidding?

“Oh my God.” The words rush out of Buckley on a gust of hope and I realize I’ve made a gargantuan mistake.

“But Buckley,” I say quickly, “that doesn’t change anything.”

“It does. For me, it does. Just knowing—”

“It can’t,” I say firmly. “It can’t change anything. I mean…yes, I’m attracted to you. But I’m not in love with you.”

He winces.

“Maybe there was a time when I could have been, if I had let myself.” I’ve softened my tone, fighting the urge to reach out and touch his arm. “But that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it didn’t. And because I’m in love with Jack.”

He winces again.

“Yeah. Okay.” He plunks his beer bottle into the sand, sticks his feet into his flip-flops, and abruptly stands up.

“Where are you going?”

“For a walk on the beach.”

“Should I come?” I start to look around for my own flip-flops.

Then Buckley says, “No.”

And walks away.

“Do you ever think about what either of us would be doing if we had never met?” I ask Jack late one night a week later, when we’re sitting at the table addressing three hundred envelopes.

Yes, three hundred.

That’s how many people we’re inviting. It really was a compromise, I swear.

I read in
Modern Bride
that you should count on two thirds of your guests showing up, so by inviting three hundred, we’re actually throwing a wedding for two-hundred.

Forget that Jack’s ideal number was fifty guests, tops.

I didn’t say the compromise was an even split.

Fifty is just completely unrealistic. I mean, the wedding party alone eats up almost half of that number.

Anyway, we’re not as worried about the guest list now that we’ve banked several thousand dollars courtesy of that engagement party Wilma threw for us.

We even booked a Tahitian honeymoon—another compromise.

Really, it is. I agreed to trade the hut-on-stilts for the less exotic but more affordable Sheraton.

So lately, life is overall pretty good, if a little more hectic than I’d like. All right, a lot more hectic.

I fully expect Jack to ask me why he would even be thinking about what we’d be doing if we’d never met—which is, of course, the safest answer.

But he doesn’t say that.

He seems instead to be giving my question serious thought.

In fact, I address an entire envelope to Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Sellers of Armonk, New York, whoever they are—Wilma’s friends, I presume—in the time it takes Jack to come up with a suitable answer to my question.

Well, an answer, anyway: “I guess we’d both be with other people.”

“Really?” I’m stunned, I must say. “Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know…what did you want me to tell you?”

“I didn’t want you to tell me anything specific. I’m just surprised you can see yourself with somebody else.”

“You said if we had never met. Not now.” He sounds a little defensive.

“No, I know!”

“What, you
can’t
see yourself with somebody else?”

An image of Buckley pops into my head.

“No way,” I say firmly, shoving Buckley out.

“So you think there’s just one right person for you in the world? And I’m it?” Jack grins and reaches for another envelope.

“Don’t you think that?”

He tilts his head.

“You don’t,” I accuse.

“Not really. I think it all comes down to timing.”

Yeah, I guess I pretty much think that, too.

But I’m afraid to agree aloud.

“So you’re saying that if you and I weren’t together, we’d both still be out there looking for each other?” Jack asks.

“I’m just glad I found you. That’s all I know.”

Jack reaches across the stacks of envelopes and pulls me close. “Me, too.”

I find myself wishing he were more the romantic type; that he’d told me I’m the only woman in the world for him. That it isn’t about timing; it’s about true love.

Maybe it’s not realistic, and maybe neither of us believes it, but it would be nice to hear anyway.

In all this disruptive wedding planning, I can’t help but feel like something—some part of who we were, or are, or wanted to be—has been…well, not lost, exactly. At least I hope not. More like temporarily misplaced.

And I really hope we can get it back.

“Oh my Gawd, Tracey. You look—”

I’m sure big-eyed, big-haired Brenda, who is perched on a cushiony red bench nearby, said
go-aw-jus
, but I blanked out for a second there.

Staring at myself in the mirror of the bridal salon, I’m pretty much stunned.

Suddenly, I really look—and feel—like a bride.

That’s because, for the first time, I’ve brought my headpiece to the fitting. Jeannie made it and it’s beautiful. Instead of illusion, she used a piece of exquisite French lace. It falls from a silk-covered comb: simple, old-fashioned and very unique. I even put my hair up in a bun to simulate how I’ll have it done on our wedding day.

In this gown, with a veil on my head, I’ve gone all Natalie Wood in
West Side Story,
dreamy and swoony and I-feel-pretty.

“We’ll have to take it in some more here,” says Milagros around a couple of pins clenched in her mouth. She bunches some fabric at the waist. “See? You lost weight again.”

So I did. A couple of pounds, by the looks of it.