Page 16 of Third Time is the Charm
Chapter 5
Beth unlocked the door to Jane’s – her old – apartment, stepping inside the warm space. She felt a twinge of sadness, the flat hadn’t felt like home in a long time – not since she’d moved in with Darcy, but the real root of that feeling was that she hadn’t found a place to feel like home since either. Her tiny, ‘cozy’ apartment in Boston was nice and it was her space – filled with candles and books, other peoples’ photographs of far-off places, but nothing had managed to make it feel likehome.
Lugging in her large overnight duffel bag, she walked through the familiar space, noticing the cardboard boxes cluttered around the space, slowly being filled with all of Jane’s possessions as she prepared to move. Beth turned down the hallway towards her old bedroom, smiling when she reached the doorway, seeing that Jane hadn’t really changed anything inside the room, except allowing it to become a little more cluttered.
You’ve only been gone like four months, why would she move stuff?
Beth sighed. Soon all of this stuff was going to be gone; it was one of the other things she had to do while she was down here – move the rest of her stuff out because Jane and Charles were going to be moving into their new place when they got back from their honeymoon.
Sliding the closet door open, she looked inside at most of her clothes still left hanging there from the night she left. Her fingers running down some of her favorite pieces, thinking that they would have come in handy for her date with Colin the other night.
Oh well.
Dropping her bag onto the bed, she opened it to take out her maid-of-honor dress – a sea-foam green, chiffon piece, floor-length and fitted in the chest area. Jane had found it at BHLDN, and thankfully there was one of those in Boston, so she hadn’t needed to come back into the city for a fitting. Putting the dress on a hanger, she went into the bathroom and hung it on the back of the door, hoping that the steam from the shower she desperately needed to take would eliminate all of the wrinkles.
She began to hum softly into the silence, unpacking the rest of her clothes that she would need for the weekend. Jane wouldn’t be back for a little yet; she’d texted Beth to say that her and their mom were out at Blue Hill going over a few last-minute details for the upcoming weekend.
Three days.
Until the wedding. Until Darcy. Beth groaned, collapsing onto the bed, the best way to handle that fast-approaching situation still evading her mind. They hadn’t talked since that night. I mean what was she supposed to say? He’d said it was over, she’d gone to explain herself, to fight for him, and he’d already moved on.
How do you act normally around each other after something like that?
For Jane and Charles, they would have to. And, if she knew Darcy at all, which was questionable, the one thing he was good at was never showing his emotions through that impenetrably intolerable mask of his – which meant that it was only she who was going to be left to struggle.
Honestly, it made her glad that she’d invited Col. Of course, she enjoyed his company, but now that she was allowing her mind to think through how seeing Darcy was going to go, she was relieved that she would have someone therewithher, to talk to, to distract her, anything.
Colin was flying in Friday night because of Contest stuff that he’d already had scheduled that day and then meeting her up at Blue Hill on Saturday for the ceremony and reception. All of the guests were to stay at one of the several hotels in Tarrytown, but the bridal party was reserved rooms at the Castle Hotel and Spa. The discussion had only been moderately awkward when she brought up about reserving him a room.
Yes, she liked him. No, there was no way they were staying in the same room.
He’d been completely fine with it too; he probably hadn’t even been expecting to stay with her, which meant that it was only she who felt that the conversation was awkward.
Beth got up from the bed and went back into the bathroom for that shower that she’d been putting off, lost in the maze of her own thoughts. Her vision faltered for a second, blood rushing from her head as she got into the shower, overwhelmed by an intense deja-vu from the last shower she took in this apartment.
The same man still on her mind.
She allowed his face to come to the front of her thoughts; as much as she’d been pushing it away these last few months, that method wasn’t going to help her this weekend. With him in front of her, next to her, touching her, walking her down the aisle, Beth needed to desensitize herself to Darcy and every remnant of feeling that she could possess for him.
It was just hard when welcoming him into her mind meant welcoming the intolerable ache that he left in her heart.
Beth turned off the water and stepped back out into the steam filled room; she’d left the fan off purposely to help steam her dress – which looked pretty good now. Wrapping her towel around herself, she opened the bathroom door and was greeted by her sister’s familiar voice from down the hall.
“Beth?” Jane’s questioning tone rounded the corner just before she did; her face lighting up with a smile at seeing her sister for the first time in almost five months.
“Jane,” Beth exclaimed, returning her sister’s excited expression just as Jane reached her and enveloped her in a hug.
“I’m so glad you’re here! I missed you.”
“I missed you too, sis,” Beth replied in turn, wondering if Jane could ever really know how much.
“How was the flight down?” Jane asked, pulling out of their embrace.
“Fine. Quick,” Beth shrugged. “I just wanted to shower and wash the airplane off of me. How are you? How is everything going? What can I do?” That was another thing that weighed on her – not just leaving Jane but leaving her sister as she was planning her wedding, with her being the maid of honor.
She’d done as much as she could from Boston, emailing back and forth, texting photos to each other, but Jane had held back. Her sister hadn’t even mentioned her upcoming wedding for the first two months that Beth had been gone. Finally, Beth brought it up because she wanted to be involved, even though it was painful. There was the unspoken guilt laced into Jane’s words every time she brought up the wedding or Charles, ashamed to be so happy when Beth was hurting so badly. Beth had done her best, forced excessive levels of excitement to ooze out of her to try and reassure Jane that it was ok for her to be happy. She didn’t need anyone else’s unhappiness on her conscience but her own.
“Everything is good,” Jane began, following Beth into her room so that she could get dressed; the warmth from the shower was starting to wear off. “I think I have everything under control, and if I don’t, mom does. I’m sure you can imagine how crazy she’s been over all of this – planning her first wedding. Well, I mean, there was Lydia’s, but that wasn’t anything…”
