Page 27 of Friends to Lovers

We hardly talk the rest of the afternoon, awkwardly maneuvering our way around the yurt. I get ready quickly and leave without telling him, rush down the path to meet my parents. The flash of anger I felt earlier is gone, replaced by something hollow, like I’ve lost some essential piece of me.

The wedding is in the meadow behind the barn, green dotted with golden poppies and purple lupine.

We gather there for the cocktail hour. When my mom waves us into various arrangements for photos, I put my dad between Ren and me every time, motion for her phone so I can take a picture of the three of them before she can get a picture of the two of us alone.

We almost hit a record for not speaking to each other. After moving into the barn for the reception, all through dinner, toasts, Charlene and Mavis’s first dance. We float in and out of each other’s orbits, but never exchange more than a cursory glance.

It feels like I’m looking over my shoulder for someone who isn’t there, when I almost cry during the vows and have to stop myself from leaning over to see his reaction; when Mavis’s uncle gives a toast that involves a god-awful slideshow, and my mom doesn’t seem to find it as funny as I do.

I decide that, if this is how things are going to be between us, I need to start having fun without him. It’s a beautiful wedding, my family who I don’t get to see all that much is here, and I don’t often have opportunities to fully unwind like this.

I spend an hour dancing with a couple of my cousins, even Claudia, to a slew of wedding classics, nineties hits, songs they played at bars when we were in college.

All around us, people are celebrating, champagne glasses in hand and the sky going dark.

I dance with my dad to ABBA, let my mom tell me I look more well rested today.

But there’s no one to smirk at her comment with.

By the time an extremely drunk Charlene takes control of the playlist and leads everyone in a rousing rendition of “All Too Well,” Mavis beaming up at her, the camaraderie around me is too much.

I’ve been putting all my energy into proving I can have fun without Ren, into ignoring what’s going on between us, and I’m tired.

I wonder, vaguely, as I sing half-heartedly along to the last verse, if it’s not just work that’s been wearing me out, but my relationship with Ren.

When I leave the dance floor, cheeks rosy, Ren is waiting for me at the table, a glass of champagne in each hand. Selfishly, I don’t hate that he looks a little like I feel. But there’s some hope too in the way he tilts toward me, offers me one of the flutes.

I take it, still wary, one arm crossed in front of me like a barrier between us.

“Phone’s off for the rest of the night,” he says.

“Is it?”

“It is.” He taps his knuckles against the back of a chair, a nervous tic. His eyes lock onto mine. “I’m sorry. Can we enjoy the rest of the weekend?”

I want him to mean it, more than anything. Ren has never given me any reason not to trust him. But this weekend has shown me that something real has shifted in our relationship, and the idea makes me unsteady. I try to smile. “Of course.”

Ren nods toward the open barn doors. “Want to?”

We walk out to a seating area set up between the barn and the goat pens. There are even more stars than the night before, sparkling in the deep blue sky. I angle my head back to look at them.

When I drop my gaze, Ren is staring at me.

I let the silence sit between us as we communicate something wordlessly.

I’m sorry and Me too . And maybe You don’t need to be and But I do, because I’ve been doubting our friendship and there’s no way Ren is actually getting all of this, and I’ve gone and made up some metaphysical connection.

A breeze wafts down from the treetops and I suppress a shiver.

Ren sets his glass on a nearby fence post, shrugs off his jacket, and settles it over my shoulders, standing in front of me and tugging at the lapels like he’s trying to bring it tighter around me.

He takes a breath, then lets go and walks us in another direction.

We drift over to a small circle of chairs, sinking into two next to each other.

I kick off my heels and curl my legs under me, burrow deeper into Ren’s jacket, which smells like him.

We look up at the stars, until the silence begins to last too long.

I want us to figure this out, not just silently agree it’s over.

I’m tracing the line of the Big Dipper with my eyes when I ask the question I’ve been holding back.

“Does Amanda not trust you?” This has to be why he’s been aloof this weekend.

Why that moment in the yurt had shut something down in him, why he slept on the ground when he never would have in the past, why he’s been glued to his phone.

I can hear Ren shift in his chair. “Yes, she does. Why are you asking me that?”

I glance over at him. “You just seem so stressed about keeping in touch with her, and she should trust you even if you’re not checking in 24/7. I don’t like seeing you feeling this way.”

“It’s not like that,” Ren says. He leans forward, forearms on his knees, champagne flute dangling between them.

“You’ve hardly looked up from your phone all weekend.”

Ren sits back in his seat again, letting out a sigh. “She just got freaked out,” he says. “When I stopped responding for a while.”

“So she doesn’t trust you,” I say, defensiveness on Ren’s part flashing through me. You have the best person in the world , I’d say to Amanda if she were here now. You have nothing to worry about.

“That’s not it,” Ren says. He thinks for a minute, and my eyes catch on the spot where his teeth sink into his lower lip. “Her last relationship ended badly. The guy was carrying on a whole other relationship for months before she found out. So I think this weekend is just hard for her.”

“Fuck,” I say on an exhale, knowing for sure that I’m the asshole, trying to draw Ren back into every moment like he belongs to me. “If I’d known that, I—”

“No,” Ren says. “I should have reassured her more before I came. If I had, she wouldn’t be calling so much.”

“She knows we’re just friends, right?” I say.

Ren pauses for a moment, then nods. “She does. And, I honestly didn’t think about it until we got here, but—I mean, we’re staying in a room with one bed.”

“We didn’t sleep in it together.”

“You’re right,” Ren says. He goes quiet, then says, “I like Amanda a lot.”

“I gathered.”

“I think it’s reasonable for her to be unsure about this weekend. I mean, what about Collin?”

“What about Collin?”

“How does he feel about this weekend?”

“He doesn’t—” A pit forms in my stomach at the reality that I don’t even know whether Collin is upset about me going with Ren to this wedding instead of him.

When Ren told me Amanda was fine with this weekend, however wrong he was, I just assumed Collin was too.

I never thought to ask him. I clear my throat. “He doesn’t care.”

“Why not?” Ren asks, confusion in his voice.

“He just…” I trail off. “He knows we’re just friends.

We trust each other.” But as I say it, I realize how shallow that statement is.

I trust that Collin is a good person, that he’s not dating other people and that he won’t, I don’t know, suddenly turn out to be a wanted criminal.

I trust that Collin will go out with me on a Saturday night.

I don’t know that I trust him to take care of me while I have mono, or enough for me to call if I have a panic attack, or to somehow anticipate my emotions before I even know they’re coming.

We lapse into silence again. I study Ren’s profile as he looks back up at the stars, all these parts of him I’ve memorized.

His thick eyelashes, the strong line of his jaw, the curve of his neck when his head is angled back like this.

Even if our relationship is shifting, he’s still him.

My favorite person. The realization softens something in me.

“I really want you to be happy,” I say. He lowers his gaze to mine. “And, look, I don’t love you being so attached to your phone, but if this is you happy, then so be it.”

“I promise I’ll be more present,” Ren says. “Just figuring out a balance.”

I settle farther back into my chair, try to open myself up to this new part of his life. Maybe Ren hasn’t told me more about his romantic life because I haven’t invited him to. But Amanda is different, I can tell. Important. “What do you like so much about her?” I ask.

His mouth lifts at one corner into a half smile. “She doesn’t worry too much about anything,” he says, then quickly adds, when I shoot him a dubious look, “Outside of this weekend.”

“Fair enough,” I say. I take a sip of my champagne.

“I don’t know. She doesn’t second-guess things. I do enough of that for any relationship.”

“You’re cautious,” I say, hackles rising again. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Maybe,” Ren says.

I decide not to press the issue. “What else?”

“She’s funny,” he says, and for some reason, my stomach twists. He nods in my direction. “Tell me what you like about Collin.”

I pretend to think, put my index finger and thumb to my chin, sink into the laugh it prompts out of Ren, triumph rac ing across my skin. The minute starts to last longer, though, and I still haven’t answered. And Ren isn’t laughing anymore. He’s just watching me, waiting.

“He—” I say, and even though there are a half dozen answers on my tongue, things like he’s a good cook and he has cool tattoos and his apartment is really close to Novo , I can’t get any of them out, like I’ve suddenly lost my voice.

“Seems like he has good taste in music,” Ren says, saving me.

It’s a joke, I know, because I texted him once that Collin had the last playlist he’d sent me on repeat.

“Yeah,” I say. “Great taste in music.”

I had thought what Collin and I had was good.

Fun. Easy. And maybe it is all of those things.

But as Ren looks back up at the sky, I realize I never once wanted to call Collin just to talk to him this weekend.

He didn’t text me just because he missed me, whereas Ren spent most of today on the phone with Amanda just to reassure her.

He’ll probably send her a good-morning text tomorrow, head to her place right when he gets back to Portland.

The worst part isn’t that Collin doesn’t do those things. It’s that I didn’t care enough to notice.

When the clouds roll in across the stars, Ren and I walk back to the party. We take our time, our bodies a few feet apart, the music and sounds of people celebrating wafting toward us. When we reach the sphere of light spilling out from the barn, he steps back, waves me through the doors first.

Ren’s question about Collin or, more accurately, my lack of response, follows me inside.

I wonder whether I’ll ever find someone I want to text or call all the time.

The only person I’ve ever wanted to do that with is Ren.

Something about the thought has my hands going numb, nervous energy tingling in my arms. When he looks over at me, I force a smile and give him back his jacket.

* * *

Our goodbye the next day is tougher than I expected. I hold on to Ren a little longer at his gate, pay attention to the exact way his arms squeeze around me right before he lets go, like he wants to remind me that we’re both still here , no matter how far away we may be.

On the plane, I get out the vacation book I packed with full intention of reading during some downtime this weekend, just like I’ve had every intention of reading it the past few summers at the vacation house.

I’m sure there’s still sand between the pages from when I dropped it on the beach as Ren pulled me up from my chair and dragged me toward the water, where we splashed in up to our knees and then ran back out because it was so cold.

But it’s not sand that falls into my lap when I open it.

It’s a strip of photos I’d forgotten about since I wedged them in there as a bookmark.

In the first Ren is laughing and I’m staring at the camera with my mouth half-open, and both of us are making faces in the second.

I can’t help but smile as I draw my fingers along the edges, remember Claudia and Clark’s wedding just before I left for New York.

As my eyes scan the rest of the pictures, the third photo sends a flutter through my stomach that has me wondering if the bottom of the plane just fell out.

I glance around like I just pulled a nude picture out of my wallet, clutching the evidence against my chest. But everything is normal.

The flight attendants are a row up, passing out cans of ginger ale and tiny bags of pretzels.

The woman to my right is snoring following the extralarge pill she took as soon as she sat down.

I turn toward the window and hold the strip of photos up to my face again. I remember taking the picture, remember trac ing the line of Ren’s jaw, the way his eyes fell to my mouth, the way I could feel every place our bodies touched, how it made me a little dizzy.

Deep in my belly, an old feeling bangs against the cage I locked it into years ago, shouts that if the flash hadn’t gone off, I might not have pulled away. That some alternate version of us might have stayed in that photo booth.

“Ma’am?”

I startle, jostling the arm of my sleeping seatmate. She doesn’t so much as blink. The flight attendant is smiling down at me expectantly.

“Sorry,” I say, throat dry. “Just a water, please.”

“Coming up.”

I shove the pictures back into the spine of the book and slam it closed. Tell myself that if the book was going to catch my attention, it would have by now, that it wasn’t work or my moving or anything else that had been getting in my way.

I won’t try to read it again.