Meeting Mr. Wright (4 page)

I can understand what drew her to this place, though. The land is gorgeous, and the house, it’s absolutely breathtaking. Somehow both large and quaint at the same time, the Wright home is hugged by a wide wraparound porch. Brightly colored azaleas line the perimeter, popping against the white siding. There’s a smaller guest house down a short path connected to the back of the main one, which is where I’m staying along with the rest of the wedding party, whenever they arrive. The guest house is nicer than the one I grew up in. I’m admiring the cozy looking patio attached to it when the screen door behind me opens with a high-pitched squeak. The wood planks along the length of the porch creak as someone walks toward me. Every nerve in my body comes alive before I even turn around. My body knows who it is before my mind can even process it.

“Mind if I sit?” Nate asks.

I look up at him, squinting against the glare of the sun. “No, I don’t mind,” I reply, shaking my head.

He sits down next to me, stretching his long legs out in front of him, and he’s quiet for a few moments, fiddling with a string that dangles from the frayed hem of his khaki shorts. As I watch his fingers, I wish there was some way to get rid of this light nervous feeling I have in my stomach.

“So,” Nate says. “I have to admit that you were a first for me. I’ve never been so bad in bed that a woman felt the need to leave before the sun even came up.”

Regret fills my chest, making its way up my throat, and I have to swallow it down. Nate must understand the look on my face, because he bumps his leg against mine to let me know that he’s just kidding, even though I’m sure he would like an answer as to why I abandoned him while he was still naked and wrapped up in the sheets on the bed in my hotel room.

“I think you know you were anything but bad,” I say. I can’t help but smile at him, like I don’t have any control over what my body does when he’s around me.

“But you wanted to leave.”

“I
had
to leave,” I clarify. “I’m sorry that I did it the way that I did, but I went to the airport that day to catch a flight here, not…to do that. I was totally not expecting it. Even after I did it, strange as that sounds.”

He studies my face, and I don’t like the way his eyes seem to cut right through me, down the parts that I don’t want anyone to see. “It’s okay,” he finally says, and I get the sense that it really is.

“I don’t date,” I blurt out. I immediately regret saying it, because while it’s the truth, it makes it seem like I think he wants more from me when all we shared was some meaningless sex. A one-night stand. “I mean, I wasn’t sure how to say goodbye to you, so I figured it would be best to go while you were sleeping. I just…I haven’t done anything like that before.”

“So you said.” Nate’s grinning, and he’s seemingly beyond expecting an explanation. He’s just enjoying watching me tie myself into knots while trying to rationalize my behavior.

“I’m sorry, I’m bungling this,” I tell him, frustratedly running my fingers through my hair.

“So what you’re telling me is that you used me for my body?”

“It’s such a nice body.” The words slip out before I can even stop myself from saying them, and I know, I just
know
my mouth is going to get me into some big trouble around this man.

Nate laughs again; it’s a deep, genuine laugh and his eyes are so bright when they look into mine. “You’re welcome to it anytime.”

Even though he’s just teasing me, I know he means what he said. My cheeks grow hot, and I accidentally knock over my glass. Tea seeps across the bottom step, and I bend down to pick it up at the same time Nate does. Our heads bump together and Nate presses his palm against my forehead at the same time I do, and we’re sitting there with our fingers kind of entwined against my head. The situation is so weird that I’m fairly certain it’s a concussion-related hallucination.

“Are you okay?” Nate asks, concern in his voice. “Do you want me to get my dad to check you out? He’s a doctor and-”

I stand up, not completely steady on my feet. But that isn’t because of my head.

“No, I’m okay. You? That’s good. I, uh…” I point somewhere behind me. “I better go. I was just gonna…do some stuff. There’s lots of stuff to do. Over there. In my room.”

There’s an adorably crooked smile on Nate’s face, and he must be trying really hard not to laugh at me because he has to know that we didn’t hit our heads hard enough for me to be acting like this. His words did a number on me. His damn flirty, sexy, knock-me-off-my-feet words.

“I’ll see you later? Maybe tomorrow, or sometime after today. Just not now. Later. Bye,” I say, watching my feet as they make their way down the stone path. I’m too embarrassed to look back at him. He’s got to be laughing at me by now. If he isn’t there’s something wrong with him.

“Callie?”

“Yeah?” I turn, and there’s that crooked grin. Why does he have to be so gorgeous? Why do I have to be such an idiot?

He points in the opposite direction. “The guest house is that way.”

Sure enough, he’s right. I mean, he would be right, wouldn’t he? He grew up here. And…god, I just want to die. What is it about him that twists me into knots and makes me act like a complete moron? I really wish there was some way I could make myself disappear.

I give Nate a small, shy wave before I go running towards the safety of the guest house, far away from him.

L
ATER THAT
evening I’m standing in front of the mirror in my room, applying a coat of mascara. After I slide the wand back into the tube, I take a step back and give myself a once-over. At home, I usually wear my long blonde hair in a ponytail, but there isn’t any humidity here in the early fall air, so I wear it down, tumbling over my shoulders. The navy blue dress I’m wearing looks good against my skin and makes my eyes pop. I feel pretty for the first time in a while.

I can hear everyone laughing outside the window, can smell the smoke from the barbecue, and I’m impatient to go out there and join in on the fun. I dab some gloss on my lips before I turn and leave. When I open the door, I see a small cooler at my feet. I bend down and open the lid; it’s full of ice. I’m a little confused, but then I see that there’s a large basket just to the right of the cooler. Inside the basket is an ice pack, a bottle of ibuprofen and a pink helmet.

A laugh escapes my lips as I kneel down and read the small card that’s tied to the basket’s handle. I smile when I see what I’m certain is Nate’s messy handwriting.

You definitely suck at fleeing.

A
S IF
it’s not enough of a nightmare having Ethan in attendance at this wedding, somehow, because somebody somewhere hates me, he and his girlfriend
du jour
end up in the guest room right next to mine. Thankfully I haven’t heard the headboard banging against my wall, but at the moment the two of them are milling around in the hallway right outside of our rooms. I’m watching them through the small crack in the door like a true stalker, waiting for them to leave so I can go outside and catch up with Gabby, Ben and Nate. We’re supposed to be going down to the river, but Ethan and his lady friend are keeping me from dipping my toes in the water, which is annoying. I could just grow up and walk out there, but I’m not ready for all that yet.

Ethan is still very tall and very slim, still handsome in that bookish, nerdy kind of way that I always liked about him. He’s wearing new glasses and his dark brown hair is longer than it used to be, the way I always liked it. It’s curling just over his brow, and I used to love the way he’d push it back when he was reading, concentrating really hard. In college, I used to study his face almost as much as I studied my books.

Much as I hate to admit it, he looks good. I was hoping he’d show signs of being wrecked by the realization that I’m no longer in his life, but that appears to be a lost cause. It was probably a lost cause the moment I found him fucking that woman in our bed, but my heart is slowly catching up to my head. I’m making progress.

The girl he brought here as his date, Emily, is the complete opposite of me. She’s tan with long, dark brown curly hair that’s gorgeous and thick, and I kind of hate her for that. God, she’s tall. Ethan used to tell me that he loved my height, loved tucking me under his arm, but seeing him laughing and wrapping his arm around that giraffe of a woman is making me feel like that’s just another lie he told me, the asshole. I want to yank the door open and start yelling at him, but I don’t do it, because I’m really trying to be less bitter about our breakup.

Finally the two of them make their way downstairs and I poke my head out into the hallway to make sure that the coast is clear. I can hear Emily’s throaty laughter disappear outside after they shut the front door. I walk over to my window and watch them walk past Gabby, Ben and Nate. I’m such a creeper. And of course Gabby catches me looking. She glares at me, and instantly I know that I’ve got some public embarrassment coming my way.

“Get your ass down here, Callie.” She yells so loudly that I’m sure even the people in the main house can hear her. I want to flip her off, but I manage to restrain myself. By the time I make my way out of the house, Ethan and Emily are halfway down the trail that leads to the river.

I get a good look at Ben and Nate standing next to each other, and if I didn’t know that they were brothers, then I never would’ve guessed it at first glance. They’re both tall, but that’s about the only similarity they have to one another. Ben is a beanpole and Nate’s built like a brick wall. Ben’s hair is dark brown and curly, Nate’s is a nearly brown dark blonde that’s cropped short. Ben has a long face and a sharp nose, and Nate’s face is angular, with a jawline most people would kill for.

Because Nate, Ben and Gabby are preoccupied talking about something or other, it takes them a minute to realize that I’m standing here waiting.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” Ben says.

“Hey,” I reply, pointing in the direction of his best friend who’s about 50 yards away, reminding Ben that he played a small part in my tardiness by inviting Ethan here in the first place. “You don’t get to say anything about that.”

Ben, good guy that he is, has the decency to look contrite. “Sorry, Cal.”

“You need to find some new friends.” I smile to hide the honesty in my words, then look over at Nate, who’s watching me intently. He’s probably wondering what that exchange was all about, assuming Ben and/or Gabby haven’t already told him the long story of how my heart was broken by the man I once thought of as the love of my life.

“Hi,” Nate says, offering me a gentle grin.

“Hi.” I grin back, wishing he wasn’t so damn cute. Everything that I found charming about him in the airport that night is so amplified here. Maybe because I know I should stay away from him. Maybe because I know that I
can’t
stay away from him while I’m here.

We all start walking and I gravitate toward Gabby, needing some kind of buffer between me and Nate.

“Are you still okay with Ethan being here?” she asks.

“Yes,” I reply, and I mean it. Ethan being around is something that I’m going to have to get used to. Gabby’s going to be Ben’s wife soon, and Ethan is going to be a part of her life for as long as he’s still friends with her husband. I don’t want to make this situation awkward for anyone, most of all Gabby. It’s been six months since Ben and I broke up. I need to get over it.

“Crap,” Gabby says dramatically. “I forgot my sunscreen.”

“I have some,” I tell her, digging for the bottle I have stashed in my bag.

“No, I bought some especially for this trip to make sure I didn’t get any tan lines. I can’t have that in my wedding pictures.” I love Gabby to death, I really do, but she’s a horrible liar. “I need to go back to the house. Ben,” she says, grabbing his hand. “Come with me.”

Ben doesn’t really seem down with this plan, but the last thing he’s going to do is get on his fiancée’s bad side a few days before his wedding. So he goes along with her scheme. Because that’s what this is, I’m sure of it. A scheme. Based on the look on Nate’s face, he knows it too.

“I guess we’ll meet you down there,” Ben says, looking innocently over at us as Gabby pulls him toward the house.

Nate looks over at me. “You know Gabby’s trying to set us up, right?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “She’s a horrible actress.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”