Page 17 of Give In

Heath

The rehearsal itself takes about forty minutes.

I remember approximately none of it.

This is not ideal given that I am the best man and tomorrow I will need to know where to stand and when to move and what to do with the rings. I will review the sequence with Jana in the morning. What I am fully occupied with this afternoon is the peripheral awareness of Clover that occupies roughly eighty percent of my available attention.

She is good at not looking at me. I’ll give her that. She stands where she’s told to stand and she smiles at her sister and she speaks when spoken to and she does all of this without once allowing her eyes to drift in my direction.

I am less disciplined.

I watch her when I can do it without being obvious about it. The way she tucks a curl behind her ear when Jana is talking. The way she laughs at something Juniper says, genuine and unguarded, tipping her head back slightly. There is a quality to her that I noticed the first moment I saw her at the airport and it has not diminished in the light of day. If anything, it’s gotten worse. Better. Both.

When Jana walks the couple back up the aisle, Clover takes my arm with the careful stiffness of someone managing something.

“Clover,” I say her name, low.

“I can’t do this right now.” Her voice is tight. Full.

There are a hundred things I want to say and none of them are appropriate for a rehearsal walkthrough on a beach with our families twelve feet away. So I say nothing. I walk her up the aisle and release her arm at the top and tell myself that I will fix this at dinner.

The dinner is held on the resort’s main terrace, strung with twinkle lights. Round tables, candles, the perfect kind of evening breeze that reminds me why I bought this resort in the first place.

I am seated at the head table because I am best man and father of the groom.

My ex-wife and Leo’s mom finally shows up about twenty minutes into the dinner.

I see her before she sees me, which is always my preference. She looks the same. Expensive and careful, the kind of beauty that requires a lot of maintenance. She spots Leo first, and the performance of maternal warmth that crosses her face is something I have learned, over many years, not to comment on. Leo handles her with practiced ease. My son made peace with exactly who his mother is years ago, and decided to love her. It is one of the more impressive things about him.

She finds me next. Offers a smile that is mostly teeth. Makes her look as if she smells something rotten.

“Heath.”

“Kiki.”

This exchange contains everything that needs to be said between us. We have been having it, in one form or another, for twenty years.

She does make a small scene because she’s not seated at the head table. But Jana, somehow gets KiKi to calm down. I make a mental note to give Jana a raise.

Meanwhile, Clover is at the far end of the same table, between Juniper and a woman I don’t know. She is doing the thing again where she doesn’t look at me. She is doing it with real commitment. I watch her talk to Juniper, laugh at something, and reach for her water glass.

I can’t stop looking at her. Remembering the way she felt, the way she tasted. I’d really wanted to see what she looked like waking up in my bed this morning.

She left before I could say anything. And now she’s sitting fifteen feet away and she might as well be on the other side of the island.

I force my attention back to the table in front of me, the speech notes I’ve been pretending to review, and the glass of bourbon I’ve been pretending to drink slowly.

Across the table, Leo is talking, animated and happy. Juniper beside him has her hand on his arm in that. They look familiar, as if they’ve already built that private language that couples construct. I think about what I said to Clover on the plane. When you know, you know.

I meant it as a general observation. I didn’t know yet that I was about to live those very words.

The courses come and go. The conversation at the table is good, easy, threaded with the kind of laughter that comes from people who are genuinely glad to be in the same place. I participate when I should. I make the right noises. I am almost completely present.

Almost.

If it weren’t for the gorgeous redhead at the end of the table. My gaze keeps drifting to her. I’m so attuned to her, I hear each of her laughs. They feel simultaneously achingly familiar and temptingly fresh. Promising both comfort and adventure.

She is careful and consistent but once, just once, in a pause between conversations, she looks straight at me. It lasts maybe two seconds. Then she looks away.