Page 16 of One-Star Romance

A moment of silence, then he forced the words out. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh.” She waved a casual hand through the air, her tone light. “I published a novel.”

“Your DIY graduate school worked out for you, then.”

“Thank you, yes. I’m proud of the book.” She beamed at him, even if the beam didn’t reach her eyes. “And it’s doing well. By and large, people really seem to love it. Especially the people whose opinions I respect, so that’s nice, you know?”

The more she talked about it, the tighter his hands clenched on the steering wheel. If she kept talking, perhaps he’d leave dents in the leather. That, or his knuckles would explode. The prospect held a certain appeal.

It was almost fun, almost delicious, to see the discomfort she was causing him. Almost.

He pressed down on the gas, finally going that ten miles per hour over the speed limit that she’d been wanting. “Well, congratulations,” he said, then turned the music up as they sped back to the wedding.

Natalie sat back, staring straight ahead.

Let him give her life’s work one star. She couldn’t care less. He could have whatever opinion about her book that he wanted and share that opinion with whomever. For instance, he could tell his mother. He could tell strangers on the street. He could even tell Satan, because Robert Kapinsky could go to hell.

9

Any other day, Natalie would’ve told Gabby about Rob’s review immediately upon seeing her again. That fucker, Gabby would’ve said, drawing up a ten-point plan for how to ruin his life. Gabby held her grudges as tightly as a dog’s leash at a busy intersection.

But instead, Nat plastered on what she hoped was an everything’s great here smile as she walked back into the bridal suite. “Okay, bottled water, umbrellas, and fans acquired! People will make it through the ceremony fine and then come inside for the reception—” Dimly, she registered that the room had become even warmer than the outdoors. Then, less dimly, she registered Gabby’s face, a mask of despair.

“What happened to the air-conditioning?” she asked slowly.

“Broken,” Gabby whispered. She seemed frozen, etched in marble, a classical sculpture of a tragic goddess in a silky pink bathrobe. Then, all at once, she came to life and grabbed Natalie’s hand. “Please accompany me to the bathroom!”

Gabby dragged Natalie down the hallway, shut the door, then turned on the water in the sink. “Everything is going wrong,” she said. “And you know I don’t believe in signs.” She paused. “But is this a sign?”

“Of what?”

“That…we rushed things! That we’re too young, we’re not ready.”

Nat kept her face carefully neutral. But in some ways, this was everything she had been wanting to hear. She still didn’t understand this relationship. And, more than that, her favorite person was going to stand up in front of everyone and declare that her favorite person was somebody else. It felt selfish to grieve. That was just the way life was. Your friends were the most important people to you until you found your partner. (But why? she wondered. Why did everyone accept that it had to be that way?)

Over the past months, as Gabby had been consumed by wedding planning, a new depth of feeling had begun to separate the two of them. For so long, they’d experienced life together. Now, Gabby was embarking on an adventure that still seemed fuzzy to Nat.

“Adventure.” That was the word that people kept throwing around in the lead-up to this wedding. (Since Nat had signed up for online dating, it was also the word she’d seen most frequently in profiles, except for maybe “cocktails” or “tacos.” Every man in New York City wanted to “go on adventures with you” or find their “adventure partner.”) “Adventure” conjured excitement, thrills, an expansion of opportunity. But when Nat imagined tying her life to any of the men she’d dated so far so that she could get some nice matching towels, she felt her throat constrict. Rather than opening new doors, marriage seemed to shut them. You always had to consider another person’s wants and needs right alongside your own. If you were offered your dream job in a new state, would your partner be willing to move there too? What if you needed total silence to sleep, but your partner snored? Would you just never get a good night’s sleep again? So many people talked about weddings with excitement (“The best day of your life!”) but then spoke about marriage itself as a slog. Weren’t sitcoms always making jokes about nagging wives or how boring it got to have sex with the same person for the rest of your life? To jump into something like that seemed inconceivable, and Natalie had never met anyone who’d made her reconsider.

So even now, on the day of Gabby’s wedding, Natalie couldn’t quite stop herself from believing that Gabby was exaggerating her feelings in service of checking off an achievement. Because the alternative—that Gabby had accessed a level of love Natalie could not imagine or ascended to a level of maturity still far beyond Nat’s reach—indicated a terrifying gulf between them. Like they’d been looking at one of those optical illusion pictures together for years, agreeing that it was a vase. And then Gabby had blinked one day and said, Wait, it’s also a couple, kissing. Nat could not make herself see the second image no matter how hard she focused, and now it was the first thing Gabby saw.

“Well,” Natalie said as Gabby paced back and forth, “do you feel like you rushed into this?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t before today, but now I’m freaking out!” Gabby said. “And I am trying really hard not to cry because it’s going to mess up my makeup, and that’ll be one more thing going wrong.”

“If this is just about the heat, it’s not that bad!”

“It’s not just the heat. Everyone has so many opinions—the mothers are driving me up a wall, and it’s impossible to please them both, and I know you’re supposed to just say, ‘Screw it!’ at a certain point and accept that whatever happens is outside of your control. Literally. I read it in this wedding prep book. You find a moment where you say, ‘Screw it, things will go wrong but they’re not my problem anymore,’ and then you focus on enjoying your special day. But I’m so in my head that I can’t! I just can’t!”

“What if we said it right now, together? Ready? Screw it!”

Gabby blinked. “Screw it,” she said half-heartedly, then shook her head. “That didn’t work.” She rubbed her temples, her voice going all high and tremulous. “And I haven’t even told you…Angus wanted it to be a surprise for everyone…”

Natalie steeled herself. The way Gabby was talking, it sounded like Angus was planning to pick one wedding guest to be a human sacrifice.

Instead, Gabby whispered in horror, “He’s going to zip-line into the ceremony.”

Nat blinked. “I’m sorry. What?” Gabby bit her lip. “I think I misheard you. Did you say ‘zip-line’? Like, the thing where you hang on to handles and glide around?”

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