Page 45 of How to Say I Do
Each morning, I’d lose an hour down memory lane, remembering the look of him as he took his first sip of real wine, and how the candlelight had flickered across his sun-pinked cheeks. I remembered him and me in the lagoon that first day, and thought about thesomethingthat had drawn us together.
At least, I’d thought something had been drawing us together. I’d thought there had been a mutual pull. Him sitting on his back deck and waiting for me to walk up the beach, him falling asleep against my chest after finger painting the stars, him kissing me…
I thought that it all meant he wanted where we were heading just as much as I did.
I thought a man didn’t make love the way we did unless he believed it meant something.
But what did I really know? Noël was the only man I’d ever made love to.
Disillusioned.That was a word for what I was feeling. Spent. Worn out.
Heartsick, too.
And lonely. Lord, I missed him.
For one week, my life had been full, and alive, and filled with brilliance. I’d had it all: Liam and Savannah and Jason, the four of us together, whiling away long afternoons and family dinners and joyful days. And I had Noël. I’d felt alive in a way I hadn’t in nine years.
I’d never realized—until I got back from Mexico—how quiet and still my life had become. At seventeen, with Liam coming apart at the seams, Jason on the way, and my father’s dreams laid heavy across my shoulders, what I’d craved more than anything was stability. Solidity. Nearly ten years on, everyone else had beautiful lives, but I still haunted this house and lived with one boot planted in my past.
Even so, this was my life, and I wished Noël had wanted to see it. I wished he’d believed there was something worthwhile here, something to visit and explore and maybe find delightful or charming. It’s one thing to chase your own dreams for your entire life. It’s another thing entirely to have someone else be beguiled with what you’ve created. Noël’s absence, as unfair as my contemplations had turned, felt like a reprimand.
Heartache makes the back strong, though. The ranch and vineyard had never looked as beautiful. Spring was bounding into summer, and the vines were lush and glossy with glory. There wasn’t a weed or dandelion or wayward shoot poking its head up across all my acres. Every turn of dirt that could be spun had been. Wildflowers flourished along the vineyard perimeter in high-frequency colors. On the vines, grape blossoms grew in robustly.
I was damn near running out of work for myself, and I was starting to eye up fence posts to replace when I knew good and well that they were just fine the way they were. Hell, I could take apart the truck’s engine and give it a good clean if I got desperate.
I settled in on the porch steps with a cup of coffee and stretched out my legs. It was that time of day when I sat and thought about Noël’s smile. I should have put all these memories away, but I didn’t want to yet. Not yet. Not when I could still hear his laugh sometimes on the breeze, or when I swore I felt his fingertips running along the outside of my thigh when I was groggy and trying to wake up in the morning.
The roses planted in front of my house were in frenzied bloom, bundles of golden yellow swaying on jungle-green stems. I thought of our hike and moving elephant ears out of Noël’s way. Picking him a hibiscus. Him buying a straw hat after I’d teased him about his sunburn.
The light shifted, settling into a twilight glow across my fields. Cattle clustered in lazy groupings, tails swishing and grama grass hanging out of their furred cheeks. Oak trees polka-dotted my land. Bluebonnets grew in a ruckus. Ruby geraniums and cotton candy tulips thrived. Along my cross fence, sunflowers swayed with a hello wave.
Liam had texted again, inviting me over for dinner and brotherly bonding and the distraction of Jason’s hyperactivity. If I were smart, I’d have accepted, along with his two dozen other invites, but I never claimed to be a smart man, only a stubborn one. No, I wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up yet. I needed another night of solitude and time with my memories.
And with Noël.
This house was filled with ghosts and broken dreams, so what was one more night, or one more lonely stretch of hours? I settled in, remembering the arc of his throat when he’d thrown back his head and laughed, and how I thought, with him, that all my long-lost hopes were finally coming true.
CHAPTER12
Noël
My days smearedinto a blur of accounts and clients: a brunch meeting with Alexander McQueen, an afternoon atElite,a charity tennis tournament—tenniscore was the new athleisure trend and it wasn’t goinganywhere, thank you nineties revival,again—three photo shoots to accompany magazine features, and a movie premiere. I was constantly busy, constantly moving, never resting until I fell face-first into that disgusting futon and my t-shirt that still smelled like Wyatt.
If I stopped, for even one moment, or if the sun spilled a golden glow across the city, or someone’s perfume or sunscreen reminded me of plumeria or coconut, or I caught the hint of a honey-sweet drawl, or I saw a plaid button-down or cowboy boots or the contours of a pair of muscular deltoids that didn’t belong in Manhattan—
If my thoughts drifted atalltoward Wyatt, I was fucked.
I was drowning in sorrows over the loss of a love life I hadn’t led, spiraling into a vortex of might-have-beens and if-onlys. I constantly relived the six days I’d shared with Wyatt and then propelled those memories forward, imagining a future so intricately detailed and vivid it was like I’d lived it. I missed that future, and I wanted it back, even though I’d never had it to begin with.
Every night, I dreamed that I saw his smile as soon as I opened my eyes, and then, when I woke up, I screamed into my pillow when I realized he’d never smile at me again. I made love to him, too, in my dreams, and, I swear, it was like he was there, like I could feel him in my arms—
Until I opened my eyes.
My fantasy life with Wyatt was so tangible and complete that it could rip me out of reality. I rode the 2 train all the way to Yonkers while lost in a replay of Wyatt’s laugh, and I’d ended up in New Jersey on accident while imagining the two of us dancing cheek to cheek at the Met Gala. I heard his voice singing along with Nat King Cole’s “L.O.V.E.” the same way he’d sang to me on the beach.
Once my memories got going, they wouldn’t stop. I started working the late-night party circuit, and didn’t go back to my shitty studio until after three a.m. I hoped exhaustion would beat Wyatt’s memory out of me, but, without fail, I was awake by five, shivering through another dream with Wyatt’s voice in my ear. I couldn’t escape.
So I gave in. I bought a coffee maker at Duane Reade and prayed I wouldn’t burn the building down when I plugged it in. Now my mornings were built around fortifying myself with a caffeine overdose and hours spent wandering in my fantasy life that I built with Wyatt. All my daydreams unfolded as I stared up the air shaft, projecting happier times and beautiful imaginings onto the moldy bricks and shadows.
