Page 60 of How to Say I Do
“Noël—”
“You should read my emails. You should read all of them. You should know—” His voice cut out, and he pressed his lips together until they went white.
“I peeked at the end,” I admitted. “You never finished. You didn’t sign off. You—”
He was shaking his head. “No, never—”
We were talking over each other, suddenly, now that we had too much to say and no time left. “Email me again,” I said. “On purpose. Send me emails because you want me to read them. I want to get them, Noël. I want to hear from you. I want to hear from you all the time, every day—”
“I’ll—” He swallowed. “I’ll call you when I’m back in New York. Wyatt, I…”
And then he was out of my truck, a whirlwind of movement as he jumped down, grabbed his bag, and slung it over his shoulder. I clambered out and stood on my running boards, peering over the roof of my truck to watch him go.
I thought about calling to him. Maybe we’d have a movie moment, where he’d turn around and come back to me, and I’d jog out to meet him, and then we’d kiss like we had in Mexico when I thought he was going to be my whole entire future.
But I didn’t call his name, and he didn’t turn back.
And once again, we were apart.
CHAPTER17
Wyatt
I read his emails.
I read them once, twice, three times, the words blurring, then melting into each other. While I read, I had to hold on to the edge of my desk and root my boots to the floor so I wouldn’t grab my keys, fly out of my house, and point my truck east, drive straight through the night all the way to New York.
I had so much I wanted to tell him.
I wanted to tell him that I, too, thought about him constantly. That I dreamed about him, and that I had to hold a pillow tight and pretend it was him so I could fall asleep. That I would talk to his memory while walking through the blocks, or washing dishes, or staring at the sunrise, asking him what he thought about thinning out the tempranillo a few weeks early, or telling him that Jason had gotten his first talking-to about being a chatterbox at school, and he was really taking after Uncle Wyatt, much to Liam’s consternation. Sometimes I imagined Noël next to me, so vibrant andthere—
Reading his emails, at least, helped me understand a few things. I hadn’t been wrong in Mexico, but I hadn’t been right, either. I’d gotten swept away with my feelings, and I’d taken for granted that he was falling in love alongside me. But I was the first man he’d been with, which was a big enough shock to the system, and our first kiss had happened days after he’d been left at the altar.
I’d been not just over the moon, but miles and miles above it. When it came to Noël, I wasgone.
The way he’d written, it seemed like maybe he was a little bit gone for me, too.
I watched my phone, tracking the airplane icon that carried him away from me as I sat on my hands and counted down the minutes until he landed in New York. I was waiting for his text and imagining all the things I’d tell him.
What to say first? How much I thought of him—still—and how deeply, how intricately, I remembered our week? All of my favorite memories were looping: how he’d listened to me ramble that first night about the ranch, and how his eyes had lit up at his first sip of wine. That time we’d bobbed in the ocean and held hands while we bronzed beneath the sun. The cay, and him watching those baby sea turtles, and how I’d held him inside the shelter of my arms on the edge of the deep blue sea. His carefree laughter when he’d popped up from the water after his first trampoline launching.
Noël had been a dream, someone who seemed to have walked out of my deepest, most cherished, and most fragile hopes. I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe that he was real, that we were—
Did I tell him that I was already in love with him, as ridiculous as that was? Six days together, six weeks apart, and he still had my heart in his hands. I didn’t know his favorite food or his favorite movie or what kind of toothpaste he used, but I knew he was a man who was kind to a child, who told stories aboutBlueyandPAW Patrol, and who’d looked like his own heart had broken when I’d told him about my father.
Did I tell him I was willing to try for a future together if he was? I wanted the emails and the texts and the long distance flights, if all that meant we could be together. I wanted to miss him every day, and I wanted to dream about him and hold a pillow that smelled like him against my face when he wasn’t there if that meant I got thechanceto be his man.
By the time his digital airplane touched down at JFK on my screen, I was more jittery than Jason on a sugar rush. Heels bouncing, knees knocking, my teeth biting blisters into my bottom lip. I was still sitting on my hands. I waited. And I waited.
And I waited.
Maybe he was in the subway. And airports were crowded, even here, so it was surely a zoo in New York. Maybe he couldn’t text right after he landed. I’d be patient.
But the night passed, and I spent nearly all of it staring at my silent phone.
It was after three in the morning—four in New York—when I scraped my phone off the counter and dragged myself to bed.
My sheets smelled like Noël. I buried my face in the pillow he’d used that afternoon and wondered—again—where it had all gone wrong. My despairing thoughts were grim and relentless. I felt like I was being pulled apart from the inside.
