Page 25 of How to Say I Do
Without Liam’s haranguing, I wouldn’t have been in Dallas/Fort Worth that afternoon. He knew it, and I knew it, and he was going to ride that showhorse of a fact all the way into the sunset.
“Well, welcome, Noël! Any friend of Wyatt’s is a friend of mine. Come on, let’s get you settled.” Liam ran through brief introductions of Savannah’s parents before he pointed Noël toward the bow, where everyone else was lounging in the net.
Noël was not as surefooted on the catamaran’s netting as he’d been gliding across the lobby yesterday. Yachts and luxury liners were more his go-to. A racing catamaran was Liam’s. Knowing my brother, this sail out to our snorkeling spot was going to hit jet-takeoff speeds.
I hung back and waited for what I knew was coming.
Liam didn’t disappoint. As soon as Noël was out of earshot, he jumped me, grabbing me around the waist in a loose hug and jumping up and down like the Cowboys had finally made it through the playoffs. His eyebrows shot for his hat brim as he settled on his heels, holding on to my shoulders. “Is it time for the champagne?”
It didn’t matter what I tried to say. The blush burning up my cheeks was going to do all the talking for me. “No. It’s not like that. It’s not what you think.”
“Uh-huh.” He dug his finger into my chest. I smacked his hand away, but he slapped my stomach. I glared. He was in far too fine a mood to be bothered by me being realistic and reasonable. “Bro, are you for real? Youfinallymet someone! How did this happen? What’s he like? Is it amazing? It’s gotta be amazing if you invited him with us.”
I had never brought a man around my family. “He’s just a friend, Liam.”We’re actually on our honeymoon.
“Oh,suuuure. That big hug you gave him and your ridiculous smile are all part of the ‘just friends’ deal, huh?”
Liam had been waiting eleven years for this. It was what he’d been born to do, all a part of the baby-brother package: to tease and harass and be damn annoying about it all, but also to throw himself wholeheartedly into supporting my barely-flickering love life. Never mind that, in actuality, there was no real lovin’ going on. Liam knew me. He knew what I looked like every day of the year when I wasn’t falling head over heels in love. Today, he’d seen a completely different Wyatt, and, being a college-educated man, Liam could add up my heart-eyes with Noël’s presence and figure out what was what pretty dang quickly.
He knocked down the brim of my hat and looped his arm around my neck while planting a wet and obnoxious kiss on my cheek. “You deserve it, bro. God, you deserve it. I can’t wait to get to know him.”
Then he flew toward the bow and somersaulted into the netting, rolling himself to Jason. Jason was at the edge of his safety line and straining for freedom. Liam blew raspberries on the back of his son’s neck before he knee-walked them both back to Savannah. Savannah double-checked Jason’s life vest and his sunscreen, and then let Jason go back to his Spider-Man fantasies. Savannah and Trish were lounging and sipping frozen Bahama Mamas while the sun worked overtime to bronze the miles of skin they had on display, courtesy of their itty-bitty bikinis.
And Noël perched delicately and uncomfortably at the edge of the net, holding on to the catamaran’s guide wire. He looked a little stiff and a little unsure, and like he desperately wanted his confidence and his poise back but he had no idea where to find either.
I sank beside him and passed over a grapefruit-vodka seltzer. “Liam wanted to bring you a beer.”
“This is much more preferable. Thank you.”
My family was a considerate bunch. They waited for Noël to down half of his vodka seltzer before they began interrogating him. Where he was from, and why he was in Cancun, and what he did for a living, and how, again,exactly, did we meet? Noël was effusive in his replies—other than how we met and why he was here—regaling them all with tales of celebrity meltdowns and A-list party woes. Ed Sheeran, Jalen Hurts, and Drake walk into a bar. No joke, those were Noël’s Thursday nights.
“And you met in Dallas? At the airport?” Savannah was still digging.
“We met over drinks in between our flights. I was coming down from New York, and Wyatt…”
I’d taken a puddle jumper from San Antonio up to Dallas. Of course, Liam knew exactly where I’d flown in from because he’d dropped me off at the airport, gamely putting up with my grumbling and my fourth-time repetition of my chore list he had to take care of at the ranch while I was getting a head start on his wedding.
“Wyatt introduced me to Tito’s.” Noël rested his hand on my chest.
Liam rolled out a smile that could put the damn Cheshire Cat to shame.
Jason was in fine form, clambering over everyone and shouting about everything, from the whitecaps on the waves to a dozen different cloud shapes to how fast the catamaran roared at racing speed. Savannah and Trish’s hair billowed like streamers, and Liam held Jason up to the bowsprit and pretended he was baby Simba. They both laughed into the wind, shaking their heads at the sea spray.
Noël clung to the netting and my leg. “This goes fast.”
“I won’t let you fall.”
He shot me a grateful smile and scooted closer.
The resort vanished behind us. In ten minutes, there was nothing between us and the horizon except for an endless expanse of unbroken ocean. Noël shifted against me, leaning more squarely into my chest. I rested my arm outside of his and laid my fingers on his elbow. Across from us, Savannah smiled into her drink. I closed my eyes and turned my face to the sun.
Waves broke into spits of foam and slapped at the catamaran’s hulls. The hue of the waters gradually shifted, moving from Prussian blue to sapphire to ultramarine before melting into a vibrant peacock and glittering turquoise. They looked like an ink blot done in reverse, lightness spreading out from the middle of a deep, deep blue. We’d gone from hundreds of feet of depth to a handful, and we were smack in the middle of a spread of sandbars.
We’d arrived.
Unlike at the cay, there was no beach here, no perfect land rising out of the water. At the shallowest point, two inches of water burbled over a glittering stretch of underwater sand. Reefs surrounded us on all sides, and beyond those, the bottom of the world seemed to fall out of the ocean.
We jumped off the catamaran, splashing in ankle-deep water while the snorkel gear was brought out. Jason was a good swimmer, but he stayed in his life vest and his safety line got reattached to Liam. Father and son grabbed goggles and snorkels, and he showed Jason how to float on his stomach and breathe through the mouthpiece. Then they were off, Liam’s arm around his son’s waist, and they followed the line of reefs north. Trish and Savannah seemed content to let the heat and the waves roll over them both, and Savannah’s parents were happily getting tipsy in the boat’s cockpit.
