Page 24 of Friends to Lovers

“So we have to milk this weekend for all it’s worth,” Ren says, turning on his blinker to switch lanes. “I’ll go first. Your mom makes some comment about you looking tired within the first thirty minutes.”

“Ugh, no thank you,” I say and lean back against the headrest.

He taps his elbow against mine on the center console. “Your turn,” he says.

“Mmm, I don’t know. It’s hard to come up with stuff without everyone else there.”

“I predict we have a great time,” Ren says. He smiles at me in that slow, familiar way, and I find myself sinking into this moment. I reach up, rub the top of his head. He leans into my palm, pulling a laugh out of me.

It’s okay that we don’t talk every day anymore. We’re still us.

* * *

We make it to the venue half an hour later than planned due to construction on the road. We were meant to be at the rehearsal dinner fifteen minutes ago, a fact my mom has reminded me of in no fewer than three texts, all sent in five-minute increments.

We swing by the main building to check in before Ren guides the car down a loop dotted with the green-painted luxury yurts where the wedding guests will be staying. They blend in with the trees, and we almost miss number eight even though we’re practically crawling, craning our necks to find it.

Ren gets our bags out of the car while I step up onto the tiny front deck, unlock the yurt door, and hustle inside.

Ren changes in the bathroom while I throw on my dress in the main room and paw through the huge welcome gift basket on the bed.

It’s stuffed with not only what Charlene and Mavis consider wedding essentials, but themed products from the farm too.

“Can’t Goat You Outta My Head” shampoo and conditioner.

“Forgoat Me Not” lotion. Two felted goat key chains, one of which I gleefully attach to my own key ring.

“You have to use the other one,” I say when Ren comes out of the bathroom.

After a beat of silence, I glance up to see him hovering by the door, tapping out a message on his phone. He’s in a white button-down and charcoal pants, his hunter green tie loose around his neck.

“Sorry,” he says, pocketing his phone. “What?”

“For you.” I toss him the key chain. “We can match.”

He smiles, tucks it into the front pocket of his suitcase.

“I do have one prediction,” I say as Ren walks over and zips up the back of my dress without my asking.

“Charlene makes everyone sing some song with her at the wedding tomorrow night.” I turn around and fix his half-done tie.

“Remember my parents’ anniversary party a couple years back?

She got everyone to sing along to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’? ”

“How could I forget.” Ren lifts his chin as I straighten his collar, plucks an errant string out of my hair that must have come from my T-shirt when I slipped it over my head.

But he doesn’t let go. He brushes my hair back into place, absently rubbing it between his fingers. His eyes lower to mine, lips parting slightly, and my breath hitches as Stevie’s words suddenly come back to me. How do you think Amanda feels about this whole weekend?

I swallow, jab a thumb toward the door. “Shall we?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Ren says, releasing my hair. “Let’s go.”

But he doesn’t move.

“Ren?”

He shakes his head and steps away, holding the door open for me to pass and locking up behind us.

As we head down the globe light–lined path, a breeze rustles the trees, the evening sky orange above the mammoth treetops.

It feels so similar to Oregon this far north, it could almost be home.

I try to focus on this fact, to put the image of Ren’s hand in my hair, mine on his collar out of my mind.

“This place reminds me of your parents’ backyard,” I say as we rush down the trail.

“Yeah?”

I look over at him, worried that he’s in his head now about zipping up a dress for a girl who isn’t Amanda. His eyes are fixed on the ground, hands shoved in his pockets; he’s not totally here with me.

“You know,” I continue. “A little removed from the rest of the world.” It was one of my favorite things about his house growing up: how their backyard abutted the river, so that there were spaces where you couldn’t tell we were even in town.

It was a good substitute for when we couldn’t be at the beach house.

Ren doesn’t respond, and I leave him to his thoughts.

As soon as we walk into the barn, I’m swept into a hug, my mom’s familiar lilac scent enveloping me. She doesn’t ask where we were or mention her texts, but any hint of guilt I feel about assuming she would evaporates when she holds me away from her, inspecting me, and says, “You look tired.”

Ren rubs a hand over his mouth to hide his smile before my mom is moving on to him.

“Kiddo,” my dad says, drawing me into a one-armed hug. “Good flight?”

“Good flight. Sorry we’re late.”

He waves a hand. “Cocktail hour has hardly started. You’re fine.”

The four of us wander past the long tables to the bar.

Because so many people are spending the whole weekend here, most of the guests are also at the rehearsal dinner tonight, milling around under the paper lanterns hanging from the beams above us, meandering out to the grassy area in the back.

After we grab drinks, we pause to say hello to some distant family members.

I wave at Claudia and Clark across the room, their six-month-old sleeping in a carrier on his chest.

After cocktail hour, we sit down to dinner. Ren updates my parents on the adoption agency Thad and his husband are working with, and they discuss Sasha’s recent engagement to Alex.

“Did you hear about Stevie’s story?” my mom asks us. Stevie has been trying to expand her portfolio before she graduates next year, get more bylines under her belt.

“The site she wrote it for profiles a lot of up-and-coming acts,” I explain to Ren. “The piece she wrote was about a group out of Brooklyn.” I bump an elbow against his arm. “They’ve covered a couple Sublimity bands, actually.”

He glances over at me and nods. “Right.”

“Ren,” my mom says, and I watch as he sits up a little straighter, leans forward, face clearing when she addresses him. “Your mom told me you and Amanda are going to Italy this fall?”

“With her family,” he says, as something chilly slides over my shoulders. How does my mom know something about Ren’s life that I don’t? “For her sister’s wedding.”

His words push at some sore spot in me. It feels like I’m being shut out of his life the more serious he and Amanda get, and it dawns on me that there might come a time I don’t know anything about him at all. I pick up my fork to stop the spiraling.

It’s after dinner is cleared and we’re at the bar with another round of drinks that my mom focuses her attention on me. “I’m worried about you,” she says, seemingly out of nowhere.

I’m mid-sip of Mavis’s favorite Napa Valley white and extend it into a chug. “What do you mean, Mom?” I say, pressing my lips together in a tight smile.

Ren and my dad are next to us, discussing an upcoming golf tournament.

My mom frowns as she examines me. “You look exhausted,” she says.

“Just what every girl loves to hear,” I say, lifting my glass toward her.

“You’re still beautiful even when you’re tired,” she says. “But what’s going on? You never answer my calls. Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t know, how about I flew across the country this morning?

” I take another sip, trying hard to pivot in a lighter direction.

“And, might I remind you, we are a family prone to dark circles. It’s genetic.

I look like this whether I’m sleeping or not!

” I don’t mean it to sound hysterical, but it nearly does, wine sloshing against the sides of my glass as I gesture with it.

My mom peers at me in that therapist way of hers. “Honey. What if you took some time off? Come home for a while.”

I set my glass back on the bar, dig my fingers against the base of it.

“I don’t want to take time off, Mom,” I say, choosing my words carefully.

If I say too much, she’ll find something to latch on to, some way to make this a therapy session.

One day I’ll think I’ve demonstrated that I’m fine, through college or my job or my move to New York, and suddenly she’ll be here, telling me I should come home because my under-eye circles look bad.

“Did you tell Stevie the same thing?” I ask, picking up my glass again. My mom casts me a confused look. “She’s overwhelmed with her summer classes. Did you tell her she should take some time off?”

“Grad school is different,” my mom says. “ Stevie is different.”

I take a sip of my wine. Just because Stevie isn’t an anxious person, doesn’t mean she’s somehow more capable of taking care of herself than me. This is why I avoid my mom’s calls when I’m feeling stressed. Why I tend not to confide in her. Her worries just multiply mine.

I want to ask her to stop, to just talk to me like she talks to Stevie, but before I can say anything, Charlene is pushing through the crowd, calling my parents’ names.

My dad’s younger sister, Charlene, has always been one of my favorite relatives.

With a booming voice that carries across the room, she’s been a river guide, a substitute teacher, drove a Zamboni at an ice rink, and now works at the information desk at a library, arguably her least physically demanding job and yet the one where she somehow managed to break one of the tiny bones in her foot dropping a hefty Sherlock Holmes volume on it, which led to her meeting and falling in love with her podiatrist.

When I reintroduce her to Ren, she hugs him. “As if I could forget that face,” she mutters to me after she’s let him go and pivoted to me. “Is he still single?”

“Nope,” I say, eyeing Ren as he angles away behind her, quickly checking his phone before he pockets it again. “Happily coupled. As am I.”

“Pity,” Charlene says. My brow creases, but she’s moving on to my parents, asking them to come say hi to Mavis’s parents.