Page 46 of How to Say I Do
I remembered the feel of his stubble against my belly. I remembered cupping my hand around his cheek. I remembered kissing him for the very first time.
A month ago, I wascompletelynormal, or as normal as I got. I was engaged, I was putting the finishing touches on my wedding plans, I held down my job, and my mind didn’t spin out of control at the drop of a Texas drawl or a hint of tropical sunshine.
Now? I was a comprehensively fucked-up mess. Homeless—save for a scuzzy graduate student with dubious ethics, subletting to someone he didn’t know for a cash payout and half a pizza—dumped, alone, and a complete lunatic, trapped in memories that whirled and spun and replayed like an amusement park ride that had lost its brakes.
And it wasn’t my ex-fiancée I was losing it over. No, it was my beach hookup after her.
How was I supposed to get through this? I’d gotten over Jenna by running away, and then I slammed face-first into Wyatt. Now I’d run from Wyatt, but the thought of someone else, a new Wyatt, someone to get me over him—
The first time I imagined it, I vomited. I hacked and coughed and sputtered until the thought of another man rose out of me like a purge. I couldn’t even go near the thought of moving on.
Women, too, seemed to be a dead end. A stunning brunette had tried to flirt with me at a gallery exhibition. She had racetrack curves wrapped in a knock-out dress, and she’d been handsy enough that I knew with dead certainty she was interested. She’d asked if I wanted to grab a drink, but I’d feigned important art-world work, something-something about canvases and insurance and making sure about this, that, and the other, and she moved on, bored with my excuses.
If I wasn’t working, I was daydreaming. And if I managed to wrest myself free of those heartbreaking fantasies, I typed. I mashed out my anguish and woe in an endless, rambling email draft.
Dear Wyatt, I saw an ad for a tropical vacation on the subway and I remembered us,again. I remember when you first took my hand—
Dear Wyatt, You know, I was so nervous to meet Liam and Savannah and Jason I thought I was going to pass out, but I adored them, I did, and now I miss them—
Dear Wyatt, I dreamed about you again. This time you were ten years old. You had dirt on your face and you were digging a hole that you filled with grapes, big bunches you got from the store, and when Liam turned on the kitchen faucet, wine came out—
Dear Wyatt, I can’tstopdreaming about you—
Dear Wyatt, I don’t know how to move on. I wasn’t supposed to fall for you. Why, why did you save me? This is worse now, so much worse, than it would have been if I’d just been blitzed and miserable for a week in Mexico. I got over Jenna, but Ican’tget over you, and now I’m fucking miserable all the time—
Dear Wyatt, I wish I’d never left you—
Dear Wyatt, I wish I’d nevermetyou—
Dear Wyatt, I can’t do this without you—
The world was precarious. I was unmoored. I’d wake up sobbing. I’d wake up gasping. I’d wake up with Wyatt’s name on my lips every damn day.
At work, my coworkers had moved from cutting side-eyes and vicious behind-the-back gossip to acting like I didn’t exist. Dinner invites somehow missed me. My phone never chimed with an invite to Tao Downtown or 1 Oak.
But that was fine. I didn’t want to be social. I didn’t want to get back out there, or find someone, or turn it all around. I didn’t want to read a sidebar in the gossip mags or on the dirt blogs about Noël Bettancourt appearing in public again. I didn’t want the faux reassurances, or the pitying looks, or the dating advice.You want love? Go to Queens. You want to climb that career ladder again? There are three power women right now who will snap you up for a dinner date, a see-and-be-seen kind of deal. Scratch each other’s back. Want me to call?Micah tried to help, in his way.
No, what I wanted was simpler.
I wanted to stop at the bodega on my way home and peruse the wine. I wanted to pick through the bottles, hunting for a sirah or a tempranillo or a Sangiovese, or, even better, something from Texas. I’d found three Texas wines in the city so far, each one sweeter and cheaper than the last. They were nothing like what Wyatt had ordered for us, rich and velvety and muscular, bursting with mystery.
I wanted to tip whatever wine I found into my chipped coffee mug, slip into one of my unwashed resort t-shirts, and sit on that gross futon and lean my head against the windowsill. If I was careful, I could avoid the drips from the air conditioner twelve floors up. And if I was lucky, when the planes on departure out of JFK passed overhead, I could imagine they were stars twinkling down on Wyatt and me, and that he was really there, just a hand’s reach away, and I hadn’t actually fucked up the best thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.
Dear Wyatt—
It was five a.m., and I was still out thanks to a staggeringly horrific bottle of Texas wine I’d bought from the bottom shelf for less than $8.00. In New York, that’s cheaper than the dollar store. I’d known I was basically buying paint varnish, but the label had an outline of Texas and a longhorn, and I’d been in a fucking awful mood. Everywhere I’d turned yesterday, I was reminded of Wyatt or Mexico. I saw a man in a Stetson on the subway for the first time in my life after rushing past a travel stand advertising $499 specials to Cancun. My memories kick-started, and I’d whirlpooled away, lost to waves and sea breezes and Wyatt’s laugh.
The only way I could deal was to get smashingly drunk on awful Texas wine and listen to ancient twangy country songs. I’d ditched the birthday party the firm was managing for an investment bro at Marquee, and, by eleven p.m., I was in my studio, wearing a dirty resort t-shirt and briefs and singing with Waylon Jennings, crooning about Luckenbach, Texas, as I upended the last of the syrupy sweet Texas wine into my mug.
So I was unconscious, for once, when my cell phone began to scream.
I fumbled for the phone, knocked over the empty wine bottle, and swiped to answer with my eyes still closed as I took a deep inhale of my Cancun dirty laundry. Little by little, the smell was fading out of those resort t-shirts. I’d gone full-tilt crazy, putting the last of the them into sealed plastic bags like I could hoard Wyatt’s aroma for the rest of time.
“'Lo?”
“Noël, ugh. It’s Dinah.”
The incredibly bitchy voice slurring through the line belonged to the other senior associate at Harrison, Dinah Williamson.
