Page 54 of How to Say I Do
All I wanted to do was huff my shirt, which had picked up Wyatt’s scent off his filthy barn jacket, and lose myself in memories.
I ignored Harrison, swung by the Murray Hill bodega, and grabbed another bottle of shit Texas sweet wine to pour my evening into. I settled into my horrible futon with my coffee cup full of sugared ethanol and pulled up my long-running email draft.
Dear Wyatt,
I promise I won’t let anything happen to your father’s dream. I know you can’t trust me after everything, but I swear, Wyatt, I swear—
Only then, alone, with my shirt pulled up over my nose and the smell of Wyatt surrounding me, did I let my tears slowly drip from the corners of my eyes.
Tessa and Tyler began excitedly pulling together their dream sheet of color palates, flower arrangements, and shabby chic wedding decor. My job became figuring out how to connect the dots between their very wide-eyed daydreams and cold, hard reality.
A reality I realized was nowhere close to actualization.
Wyatt’s place had the bones of a great venue, but nothing else. The to-do list for the ranch kept growing, and, after some back-and-forth emails, it became painfully clear that Wyatt needed major help if he was going to bring Tessa and Tyler’s dreams to life.
Which meant I had to go back to Texas.
Tessa needed her private jet for Coachella—I had a perfect record of successfully avoidingthatfestival, thank you very much—so I ended up having to book a ticket commercial to San Antonio.
And Wyatt insisted on picking me up. Personally.
Airport pickups opened a new front in the cold war between him and me. We weren’t talking about Cancun, or about us, or about how I’d left him without a goodbye kiss or a scribble of my digits, but we argued the hell out of him coming to get me. It was two hours out of his way, I said. A four-hour round trip for him just to roll up to the curb. I could get a cab. Okay, not a cab, but surely an Uber. Okay, not an Uber, but I could hire a car service. For God’s sake, Wyatt, I could drivemyselfin the absence of everything else modern and civilized.
No. Wyatt put his foot down about picking me up, and he kept insisting that I send him my flight details.
It was all so hectic. At the office, I was juggling rancid glares from Dinah, who had to cover for me while I was out, and Harrison, who wasn’t at all sold on this fairy-tale ranch-vineyard in the middle of Texas, and who believed that my emergency logistical trip was proof that this was the beginning of a bad idea.
I couldn’t tell Harrison that if there was any way to back out of this, I would. But what would that look like?Sorry Tessa, so sorry, but we can’t use the Gran Cielo Viñedo. There aren’t enough toilets or lights, and also, I fucked Wyatt. Literally and figuratively. I think I’m in love with him, but he can’t even look me in the eyes. So sorry, but your perfect dream wedding will have to be somewhere else.
And what would I say to Wyatt?Turns out, your ranch isn’t worthy. Sorry. But we’ll leave a five-star review.
I didn’t respond to Wyatt’s insistent emails asking for my flight details. Instead, I got smashed again on bad Texas wine and sang along with Willie Nelson at the top of my lungs, and then I passed out face-first in my Prada shirt saturated with Wyatt’s scent. I woke up groaning, squinting at yet another email from Wyatt. He said he would be at the airport to pick me up even if he had to go terminal by terminal, searching all the planes arriving from New York City. That nearly pushed me to switch my departure to Newark just because, but Newark was a shit hole, so.
I shot him my flight info and went face-first back to the futon.
Five hours later, I was jumping from the 6 to the A train, my overnight bag in one hand and a giant coffee in the other, scrolling through a requirements sheet for a SZA appearance, when Wyatt emailed again.
Noël,
Would you please send your flight info?
Sincerely,
Wyatt McKinley
I sent it this morning,I shot back.
We were using email like text messages, which worked because my cell phone was glued to my hand and I didn’t have his phone number. Wyatt had kept up a steady formality of professional exchanges between us, emailing carefully-typed business letters with proper greetings and polite sign-offs and thanking me for my time, always signingSincerely, Wyatt McKinley.
Noël,
I think you sent me the wrong email by mistake. I’m still waiting on your flight information.
What the… IknewI’d sent it to him, and there it was, sent at 6:45 a.m.,To: Wyatt McKinley, Subject: Flight Info, and the preview of the message beganDear Wyatt—
Oh,fuckme.
Fuck me every single way, because I hadn’t sent him my flight info. No, I’d sent him my rambling and incoherent email draft, almost a hundred entries all addressed to him. God, I’d written him somanytimes, and I’d said somuch. I’d written drunk, sober, and sobbing, huddled up on the train at two a.m. or staring up the air shaft before dawn. I’d emptied out my broken heart, and I’d meticulously detailed each and every one of my many insecurities. I’dwhinedabout how horrible my life was, and most of all, how dreadful and awfulIwas. Those drafts were crayon drawings of my soul, bitchy scribbles veering far outside the lines, all the wrong colors on torn sheets of paper.
