The Wedding Beat (22 page)

“That’s not what most brides want to hear.” Her face flushed, and she turned away from me.

What the hell was I doing talking to her about divorce at her engagement party? I changed the subject. “So, this house is where you grew up?” I asked.

“Hardly,” she said, still facing away. “I grew up in a six-hundred-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side. My father was what one could call a very stubborn man.” Her fingers lightly grazed the top of the picture frame. “My grandfather took me in after he died.”

Good one, Gavin. Take the conversation from divorce to death.
“I think this bedroom might be six hundred square feet.”

She laughed again. “I think you’re right. It’s a bit much. When I was young, I used to think my grandparents lived in a foreign kingdom. Even though it was only a few miles away. We would visit for holidays, and I felt like a fairy-tale princess with velvet dresses and silk pajamas.” She curled her fingers around a bedpost and swung girlishly from it for a moment. “You’re very easy to talk to.”

“I
hope that’s a good thing,” I said, meeting her gaze with brazen longing.

“It’s like talking to my therapist.” Maybe I was barking up the wrong bedpost. “Why aren’t you married?” she abruptly asked me.

“Is that something you ask your therapist?”

“My therapist is married.”

I would have loved to have had an epiphany about my life at that moment. Something I could have shared with her, but epiphanies are hard to come by.

“I wish I knew why I wasn’t married,” I said. “It seems like something I should know.” There were the obvious reasons. Poor choices. Heartbreaks. I thought of Laurel and how it felt watching her pack her tea infuser and her dental floss in a recyclable Whole Foods grocery bag. It felt like I had failed. That was the part I couldn’t get over. That and the fear of not knowing how to prevent it from happening again.

Melinda crossed her arms and scrutinized my face, like an artist deliberating how she wanted to paint me. “I think you know the answer, but you’re keeping it a secret from yourself.”

I only wished. “That sounds highly unlikely.”

“You’re just going to have to trust me,” she said with a playful tilt of her head.

She seemed to be flirting again, so I flirted right back. “Oh, now I’m supposed to trust you, but a week ago you wouldn’t tell me where you really live.”

“I never tell anyone where I live,” she said.

That wasn’t true. “You told Alexander.”

“Are you kidding? I didn’t even tell him my last name until after he proposed. I’m a little paranoid.” Her caution was endearing, but completely contradictory to what he had told me. “The first time Alexander came here to meet my grandfather,
he nearly had a coronary. He was very upset with me for not coming clean with him.”

Either she was lying to me for some reason, or Alexander was lying to her.

“Speaking of coming clean, there’s something else I should admit to you.” Her voice dropped an octave. She
was
lying about something, and I dreaded finding out what. “I should have told you this before, and I guess I’m a little nervous how you’re going to react.” That made two of us.

“The truth is that when we were introduced at Balthazar, it wasn’t the first time we met.” My mouth opened but words didn’t come out. “You probably don’t remember with all the people you meet, but we were at a party together on New Year’s Day. Well, not together, but we were both there, and we spoke. Not much. Just small talk about travel and Thomas Mann. I don’t know why I didn’t say something sooner. I think I was just embarrassed that I remembered and you didn’t.”

I was such an idiot.

Waves of desire pelted my nervous system. Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed. Or at least changed enough for me to take a gamble and tell her how I felt about her. It was like everything I wanted was right in front of me, and all I had to do was seize the moment. “Melinda, I—”

“Melinda, your husband is looking for you.” It was the security guard, once again standing in a doorway and blocking my progress.

“He’s not my husband yet,” Melinda corrected him.

“Well, he acts like he is.” The old guy must have been some kind of butler rather than a guard. A crusty family retainer who liked to put his nose in everyone’s business.

“Gavin,” Melinda said, “have you met my incorrigible grandfather?”

Oh, God.

“We met,” he harrumphed before quickly changing the topic. “Alexander wants to make a toast before dessert.” He followed this announcement with another spate of coughing. Melinda put a protective arm around his shoulders.

“Did you take your medication?” she asked.

“It’s just allergies,” he said, waving her off. “Now, if you put off dessert any longer, they’re going to be serving the gelato with straws.”

She hurried out of the bedroom. In a daze, I followed down the stairs and through a limestone archway into an immense candlelit dining room where everyone was gathering. I was uncomfortably aware her grandfather was just a few feet behind me while I tried to process everything that had happened. I must have had an odd expression on my face, because the fellow standing next to me kept staring at me. He looked vaguely familiar, with acne scars and unruly dark hair.

“Aren’t you the bloke from New Year’s?” he inquired. The Australian accent was the giveaway. The evening was becoming an excruciating trip down memory lane.

I halfheartedly extended my hand to Jamie, my once imagined rival for Melinda’s affection. If only things had been that simple.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, seeming perplexed by my continued existence on the planet. I explained my job at The Paper, but he remained mystified. “Blimey! What are the odds?” I couldn’t answer that one for him. “You know she totally had a thing for you.”

“Excuse me?” I said, unwilling to believe I heard right.

“Melinda,” he said like I was daft. “Did you guys ever hook up?” All I could do was shake my head. “Too bad. Have to admit, I was a wee bit jealous. I never got anywhere with her,
and not due to a lack of trying. But if a chick doesn’t fall for you when she’s pissed on plonk on a beach in Goa, it’s never going to happen.” He looked at me for confirmation. I was still too stunned to speak. “You must have the magic mojo, because I could barely get her out the door of that party on New Year’s, and then I had to stop her from going back inside.”

I had to stop myself from throttling him. “She wanted to go back to the party?”

“I had to drag her into a taxi. Don’t know what she was thinking. Was a lame party if you ask me, but she thought you were quite the Jackaroo. She couldn’t stop yabbering about you until, well, until she met Alexander.”

There was a bell-like ringing in my ears. I saw Alexander clinking his champagne flute with a small spoon. “I just have a few words I want to say,” he said with a Cheshire cat grin, dramatically unfurling his prepared speech.

The room was spinning. On more than one axis. Like a gyroscope. Like I was inside a giant gyroscope. I was sweating. My breathing was shallow. I was afraid I was hyperventilating.

“I’m the luckiest man on the planet,” Alexander exalted.

The luck-a-luck. The luck-a-luck.
The words reverberated in my head. Round and round.
She totally had a thing for you. Just small talk about travel and Thomas Mann
.
Only an idiot would let a woman like Melinda get away.
Faces mixed and matched and blurred together with the candles and the champagne. And Melinda’s smile. Melinda’s lips spreading apart. Alexander’s lips drawing toward them.
The luck-a-luck
.
The luck-a-luck
.

“When you meet the woman of your dreams, you don’t waste a moment,” Alexander said as their profiles merged and the crowd cheered.

I turned around. I couldn’t watch anymore. But it was even worse seeing the beaming reactions of the other guests. There
were tears in her grandfather’s eyes, and he was holding his hands to his heart.

No, he was clutching his chest.
Shit
.

I ran toward him while calling 911 on my cell phone. His legs seemed to collapse, and I scrambled to catch him before he hit the ground. As I held him in my arms, he whispered hoarsely, “Promise me you’ll take care of Melinda.”

Then he passed out.

The sliding doors opened and closed, and another bloodstained gurney was wheeled into the emergency room. Still no sign of Melinda.

I had been pacing for twenty-five minutes. I didn’t know if I should stay or go. I wasn’t sure she remembered I was there. I was even less sure that I should have been. It all happened very quickly. One minute I was checking her grandfather’s pulse, the next I was jumping into the ambulance with her while Alexander was offering to stay behind and take care of their guests. But when we had arrived at the hospital, she was escorted by the paramedics into the ER, and I was left to fend for myself in the waiting room. A place that made the Port Authority bus terminal look inviting. The harsh lighting, uncomfortable seating and proximity to mortal ailments made me jittery. The two cups of coffee also weren’t helping.

I couldn’t stop thinking of what her grandfather had said to me. He was obviously confused. Probably delirious. Yet I couldn’t resist thinking it was some kind of sign.

The glass doors opened again, and I saw Melinda’s mascara-stained face.

“He’s in the ICU,” she said as she tottered toward me. “No one’s telling me much of anything.”

I wanted to comfort her, but I wasn’t sure what was appropriate. I reached out my hand and she took it. I awkwardly patted her elbow with my other hand, and she slipped her arms around me, burying her face in my shoulder. I let myself enfold her. I could feel her heart beating. I could smell the faint scent of mandarin oranges in her hair. I was a terrible person.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled.

“For what?”

“For being such a wreck,” she said. “I appreciate your being here. I know it’s not what you get paid for. Or maybe it is. Comforting nervous brides.”

With her body pressed against mine, I wasn’t thinking of her as a bride. “I thought I was comforting a nervous granddaughter.”

“I’m both,” she said. As much as I wanted to be supportive and compassionate, that was the opening I’d been waiting for.

“Are you having doubts about marrying Alexander?” I asked. If it wasn’t destiny for us to be together, I was going straight to hell.

“How could I not?” she said, her head still resting on my shoulder. “I know how ridiculous it is to marry someone I barely know. He made this big romantic gesture, and I either had to say yes or risk being the girl who was afraid to take the leap.”

That didn’t sound like true love, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

“I’ve been looking for the right person for so long, you know?” She looked up at me. “How do you ever know it’s the right person? And how long do you wait? I’m already thirty-two. My mother was dead at thirty-five.” She retrieved a tissue from her purse and blew her nose. We were no longer touching, and I already missed the warmth of her breath.

“Of
course, there are things that bother me about Alexander,” she said quietly. “I wish he was here now. I wish he had taken my hand and stayed with me and said to hell with everyone else, but he’s very responsible. It’s one of the things I love about him. So how can I be upset?”

She had every reason to be upset, but I was grateful Alexander wasn’t there.

“You must hear this kind of thing all the time,” she said, gnawing on the nail of her index finger. She looked nervous and vulnerable. I didn’t want to say anything that would make her feel worse. “Lots of brides get cold feet, right? I’m not saying I’ve got cold feet, but if I did, what would you say to me?”

There wasn’t a question of what I should say. I had the words in my head. Words I had used with Amy about trusting her feelings. And trusting love. It was the right thing to do. The noble thing to do.

I just couldn’t do it.

“Don’t marry him,” I said. Melinda’s eyes widened. “He’s not worthy of you. Do you really believe he didn’t know about your money? Or that he stayed at the party for anyone’s benefit but his own? He’s not here with you right now because he didn’t want to be. Because you’re not his priority. And you deserve to be with someone who
always
makes you his priority.”

It all came pouring out without time to organize my thoughts. I was harsher than I intended to be. It was hard to hide my animosity for Alexander, but there was something I had left out. Something important, if I could just think of what it was.

“I’m such a fool,” she said.

“No. That’s not what I meant to say at all.” I had done this all wrong. There was something crucial I hadn’t told her.

“You must really hate me.”

Hate her? I’d just realized how much I loved her. That’s what I’d forgotten to say! I completely left out how I felt about her.

“I saw that article on Gawker,” she said, “and it didn’t even occur to me what you were doing.”

What did Gawker have to do with anything? “Melinda, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“You said enough. I get it. What better way to get a wedding-breakup story than to break it up yourself?”

“WHAT?”

“My grandfather could be dying, and all you care about is your pathetic blog.”

“No!”

“I have to hand it to you,” she said, her jaw tightening. “You’re very good at what you do. That whole sensitive-writer thing. Getting people to open up. You got me. You got me good.”

“That’s not what I was doing.” I had to find a way to convince her.

“Were you going to write about the poor little rich girl with abandonment issues? Or were you going to lead with how I didn’t trust my fiancé with my last name? Well, that’s not news. I never trust anyone. But I trusted you.”

Paramedics wheeled in a stabbing victim on a crimson-stained gurney.

“Melinda—” I reached for her, but she swatted my hand away.

“Stay away from me and stay away from my fiancé!” Anger flashed in her eyes. And betrayal. I had hurt the person I most wanted to protect.