Let's Get Lost (22 page)

Leila laughed and gave Timmy a good-natured punch to the shoulder. Meanwhile, Sonia pulled her quickly dying cell phone out of her pocket. “Holy shit. Leila, if we go right now, we can just make it before the wedding starts.” She turned to Timmy. “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

Timmy pulled on his cigarette, the smoke lingering around him almost as if it were just another part of him. He turned his profile toward the Tim Hortons adjacent to the gas station, holding the pose as if to make sure everyone knew he was deep in thought. “No. I'll be fine right here.”

“You're sure?” Sonia said. Leila had already given Timmy a quick hug and was moving toward the driver's seat.

“Go,” he said, still holding the pose. “You've got a quest to fulfill.”

7

WHEN LEILA TURNED
into the hotel parking lot, Sonia checked herself in the visor mirror. She could see all the signs of her strange night. Her eyes were swollen from crying, her clothes wrinkled from the ride in the trunk, and a couple of tiny green leaves clung to her matted hair from the ill-fated walk through the forest. Throughout the drive, her relief at making it to the wedding on time had given way to a growing anxiousness over Jeremiah.

Sonia snapped the visor shut and looked out at the hotel. It was vaguely castle-like, with a few lakeside cabins spread around the premises to fit in with the surrounding woods. It was a beautiful hotel in a beautiful town, and when Liz had announced it as the site for her wedding reception, Sonia hadn't been able to imagine a more fitting location. The lake was a shock of metallic blue every time she saw it, the roads so calm that they almost seemed like extensions of the lake.

“Think we're on time?”

“Should be, yeah.” Sonia opened her door. “I have to go look for Jeremiah.” She hesitated. It felt like the time for a good-bye, but Sonia didn't want one yet. Especially not while she was rushing out the door.

“Yeah, you do that. I can meet up with you in your room,” Leila suggested.

Sonia smiled and told Leila her room number and the name it was under, so that she could get a key from the front desk. Then Sonia climbed out of the car, grabbing the tuxedo jacket from the backseat. She crossed the lobby hurriedly, keeping her head down so no one would spot her and ask where she'd been. She reached the elevator and pressed the button more times than was necessary. A
ding
sounded, and then the golden doors slid open, revealing Martha, wearing a turquoise dress and a matching shawl draped around her shoulders, her hair and makeup done elegantly.

Sonia braced herself.

“There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you,” Martha said, stepping out of the elevator, holding her arm across the doors to keep them from closing. “You should go get ready! You know Liz will hold it over your head forever if you're even a little bit late. Trust me, don't give her that power.”

“Um,” Sonia said.

Martha laughed. “Did you have trouble sleeping last night too? I was so excited, I tossed and turned all night and in the end just gave up and read a book in the tub.” She put a hand on Sonia's shoulder, guiding her into the elevator. “Now go get dressed! We'll do your makeup in the car. I'll wait down here for you. Hurry!” With that, she pulled her arm back and gave a little wave, disappearing behind the closing elevator doors.

Faced with a distorted reflection of herself in the golden doors, Sonia staggered back against the wall and exhaled. At least Jeremiah hadn't told anyone. Realizing the elevator hadn't moved, she pressed the button for the third floor, the ball of tension in her stomach easing just a little, only to tighten back up when the elevator stopped, and she approached Jeremiah's door.

He answered her timid knocks in his tux (minus the jacket), his bow tie still undone, draped around his collar lifelessly. He looked surprised to see her, and relieved. But not necessarily pleased.

Sonia bit her lip, waiting for him to say something. She longed for that lopsided grin to appear, a hint that he was about to attempt a joke. It felt as if she hadn't kissed him in a very long time, like the whole ordeal of making it back was not to deliver a jewelry box and a tuxedo jacket but to stand in his arms and kiss him.

“You made it,” he said drily, still his phone voice from the night before.

“Yeah.” She handed him the jacket and rings, her stomach flipping as their fingers brushed against each other. She lingered by the door, silently cursing fingers for always doing that, as if something couldn't be handed off without incidental contact.

Jeremiah pocketed the rings and then slipped on his tuxedo jacket, taking a few steps into his room and taking a seat on a corner of the bed. It was still unmade, the sheets strewn about, one pillow on
the floor. He looked up at her, those eyes never failing to stir something within her, especially when they shyly glanced away.

It became clear that he wasn't going to speak first. He wasn't going to offer a reconciliation, but at least he wasn't continuing the fight.

“I should probably go get changed,” Sonia said, her eyes fixed on his face, begging it to slacken into its usual soft expressions.

“Yeah,” he said, leaning his forearms onto his knees, studying the carpet. “You cut it pretty close.”

“I know.”

She wasn't sure if his silence was a sort of ultimatum—tell them, or we're through—or if he was simply hurt. She wasn't sure what her own inability to broach the subject meant, whether her reluctance to let go of Sam was a willingness to let go of Jeremiah. “I guess I'll see you at the ceremony?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking up at her for a second. He gave one of those mouth shrugs that might pass for a smile with a stranger but, coming from a loved one, only showed how unlike a smile it really was.

Sonia sighed, feeling on the verge of tears yet again. “Okay,” she said, then made her way back down the hall, in a daze.

She knocked on the door to her room, hoping Leila had succeeded in procuring a key.

“Did you find him?” Leila asked as she opened the door. “How'd it go?”

Sonia entered the room, shrugging. “I don't know. He didn't tell anyone. So there's that.”

“Did you guys talk things out?”

“Not really,” Sonia said. “I had to come get changed.”

She rummaged through her suitcase, pulling out her case of bathroom products. Sonia felt sluggish, as if suddenly the slightest movement was too much to endure. She left the bathroom door cracked as she waited for the water to heat, a habit left over from showering at Sam's family's house, since they all communally hated foggy mirrors.

Sonia tested the water and climbed in, standing for probably a full minute under the hot spray, just staring at the single speck of black on the white shower curtain and trying to build up the energy to move. She cleaned the forest off her skin, and the smell of doughnuts, the hours of crying.

She rinsed her hair halfheartedly, going through the motions of bathing as if it were a Monday morning she did not want to be awake for. She shut the water off and grabbed two towels, wrapping her hair with one, wrapping herself up in the other. The air outside the shower was cold, and Sonia sat down on the toilet lid, absentmindedly chewing on the towel that hung down from her hair. For some reason, this was when story ideas would always come to her. They used to, anyway, opening lines that would spawn whole worlds, a single character popping into her head and begging to come to life.

“Leila?” Sonia called out.

“Yeah?”

Sonia pulled a thread out from the towel with her teeth, barely aware she was doing it. “Nothing. Just checking to see if you were awake.”

She tried to shake the emptiness she was feeling and started blow-drying her hair. Picturing herself at the wedding, standing on the bride's side, while Jeremiah stood out of reach on the groom's side, Sonia knew she'd be stealing glances at him throughout the ceremony, trying not to get caught by Martha. The guilt came on so fiercely that it felt like a cramp, forcing her to drop the blow-drier and leave the bathroom.

Leila was standing at the window, gazing out at the parking lot, or maybe at the woods beyond. Sonia knelt over her suitcase, trying to push everything out of her mind.

“You okay?” Leila said from behind her.

Sonia sprang to her feet. “Yup.” She smiled, turning back to the bathroom to start getting dressed. The shower had reestablished her normal look, the puffiness gone from around her eyes, her hair back to falling in non-crazed waves past her shoulders. She still looked tired, but a little makeup and Martha's assumption about not getting any sleep out of excitement would account for that.

A knock came from the bathroom door as she was just finishing putting her underwear on. She opened it and smiled at Leila, who was leaning casually against the wall in front of the door. “You seem a bit...”
She gestured vaguely with her hands before dropping them down to her sides. “I don't know. Off.”

Sonia opened the closet and unwrapped her bridesmaid's dress from the plastic bag it had been delivered in the day before. She laid the peach-colored dress on the bed, shrugging exaggeratedly, like tearful children sometimes do when asked what's wrong.

“Pretty,” Leila said, balling up the clear plastic and tossing it into the wicker wastebasket in a corner. She took a seat near the foot of the bed, careful to avoid wrinkling the dress. “What's on your mind? Need to make more tea?”

Sonia shrugged again, scrunching up her mouth. Sam used to call the expression her “Blues Face,” and he'd swear that she only made it the second she realized why she was upset about something. She picked up her dress halfheartedly, unzipping it slowly, as if the act was an arduous one. “It's going to sound really dumb,” she said softly.

“Sonia, I spent my night helping a stranger enter Canada illegally. I let a man named Stoner Timmy put me in the trunk of my own car and handed him the keys. On this trip, I've received three speeding tickets, four parking citations, and driven on the wrong side of the road twice, all because I was crying. I spent days—seriously, days—thinking about a boy I haven't heard from in two months.

“I sincerely doubt that whatever is on your mind is actually dumb, but even if it is, dumb is a natural part of the human condition. Especially when it comes to emotions.”

Sonia wanted to sit down, but in the back of her mind she knew that Martha was waiting for her. She glanced at the bedside clock, the kind with the green fluorescent display that all hotels liked to stock.

“Okay,” Leila said, “I think I know what's on your mind anyway.” She combed a tress of black hair behind one ear, licked her lips, and took a breath.

“I know you thought Sam was the love of your life,” Leila said, bringing her legs up onto the bed and curling them beneath her. She looked up at Sonia, who held the dress against her chest.

“Love's rare, absolutely. But it's not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime thing. No matter how many people you're with for the rest of your life, how many people you love, there's no changing the fact that you loved Sam. But I'll tell you this. It's not gonna be that many,” Leila said, pausing for a beat.

“You've been lucky to fall in love twice in your life already. The timing of it may be a little confusing, but don't think for a second that it cheapens either of those relationships.” Leila stood up, reaching for the tissues by the bed and handing one to Sonia. “If losing Sam's family is the price you have to pay to be with Jeremiah, I say, pay it gladly.”

Sonia walked over to the window, looking down to see if she could spot Martha waiting for her. There was nothing to be seen but the parking lot, though, the cars gleaming in the sun, like a crayon box crowded with repeats. She thought about not having to lie to Sam's family anymore, being able to kiss Jeremiah whenever she wanted to, to slip her fingers in his. A wave of giddiness tingled up her spine, making her smile.

“What if they hate me for it?” Sonia thought about what it would feel like to not be invited back to their house, to go back to the family life she'd had before Sam and his family stepped in. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the window and was reminded of Stoner Timmy holding his poses, trying to meaningfully stare out into the distance. She couldn't help but crack another smile, realizing how clichéd it was to stand near a window and make a dramatic statement.

“Then that's the way it'll be.”

Sonia leaned her forehead against the glass, a knot of worry returning to her stomach, though the giddiness didn't go away. She turned away from the window and picked up the dress again, stepping into it. “Help me zip this up?”

Leila stood up to help, then accompanied Sonia to the bathroom as she piled her hair up into a bun.

“Shit, I'm keeping Martha waiting,” she said, once she was done. She grabbed her makeup bag off the counter and strapped her feet into the heels that she and Liz had picked out together. Then she grabbed the peach-colored clutch that matched the dress and shoved in her phone and the hotel key that Leila had acquired from the front desk, as well as a couple of tissues pulled out from the box in the bathroom.

Sonia led the way to the elevators. Before she pushed the call button, Sonia faced Leila, trying to figure out what to say. “What you did for me, I'm not sure anyone else will ever match.” She shook her head at the floor, maybe realizing herself for the first time how much Leila had done for her. “I feel like I owe you so much more than just this rushed good-bye.”

“Don't be silly,” Leila said. “You don't owe me anything. Our adventures introduced me to the man of my dreams. Right after we're done here, I'm heading straight back to Tim Hortons.”

Sonia laughed, then reluctantly called the elevator. “Seriously, you have my number. If you ever need anything, just let me know.”

The elevator announced its arrival with a
ding
. When they stepped inside, Leila pulled Sonia in for an unexpected hug. “Thanks,” Sonia said, hugging back. “I don't know where the hell you came from, but I'm glad you did. I'd have been lost without you.”

“Me, too,” Leila said.

They stepped apart, and Sonia was surprised to see a tear scurrying down Leila's cheek. Then the doors opened, and Sonia spotted Martha sitting on a leather couch in the lobby, her purse on her lap. She was looking straight at the elevators, and when they made eye contact, Martha waved and started gathering her things.

“Bye,” Sonia said, the word feeling small as it left her mouth. Then she smiled at Leila and hurried out the elevator, her heels clomping loudly on the marble floor.