Page 35 of Friends to Lovers

chapter twenty-one

Ren rests an arm on the window, his other hand on the steering wheel as we wind our way to the coast the next morning.

It feels like summer back in Oregon, salt air whipping through the open windows while music from the festival yesterday plays through the speakers, Ren occasionally nodding along to a song.

We arrive at the sandstone mansion where Willow and Martin will get married tonight, check into the hotel just adjacent to it, what Willow referred to as a “terrible eyesore” when she called to tell me she was so excited I’d be coming to the wedding.

The “terrible eyesore” is actually a half estate itself, sprawling and historic, with ocean views on one side and sweeping garden vistas on the other. Ren and I luck into a corner room with a balcony that overlooks the water.

Once we’ve hung up our wedding attire, I spot a fluffy white bathrobe and shrug it on over my clothes, hold my arms aloft, twist my hips side to side. “Is this the fanciest place we’ve ever stayed?” I ask. “Should I wear this to the wedding?”

“The hat really ties it all together,” Ren says from where he’s lounged on his bed, one hand behind his head, nodding at the Red Sox baseball cap I put on this morning. “You’ve really got a handle on the whole black-tie thing.”

I laugh and lie on my stomach next to him, feet kicked up behind me. He untucks his hand and reaches down to tweak the brim of my hat.

“Far cry from the screen porch,” I say, glancing over at the open balcony door, a sea breeze coming through, bringing with it the sound of waves rolling in, seagulls swooping for dinner.

Ren follows my gaze. “I think I prefer our view on the West Coast.”

As the afternoon wears toward evening, we take a short path through a garden to the mansion, joined on the way by other people in ground-sweeping dresses, suits, laughter bubbling around us that sounds very old money.

We enter the candlelit space, everything done up in cream tones, roses lining every surface, and pluck cocktails off a passing tray—an elderflower martini and an old-fashioned, only the first signature drinks of the evening—and wander over to where three banks of doors are thrown open to a huge stone balcony overlooking the ocean.

We find a spot to one side near a pillar.

Ren squints at the glass in his hand. “Pretty sure this bourbon would be in high school by now,” he says. He hands it to me and I take a sip.

“I’m getting notes of whiskey,” I say. Ren’s eyes crinkle with laughter, and I smile over the rim of the glass, test another drink before handing it back to him. “Since when are you up on your bourbon game?” I ask.

“I’m not,” he says. I raise an eyebrow, and he relents, sinking one side against the pillar. “Amanda’s dad was big into whiskey. Tried to study up to impress him.”

“Ah. Well, you impressed me.” I take a long drink from my own glass, let the sweet of it wash away the bite of the old-fashioned, the mention of Amanda, the smell of Ren’s woodsy hotel shaving cream.

We sit through the elegant, if over-the-top ceremony, drink wine at dinner with some people from art school who I only vaguely recognize.

When the plates are cleared, desperate to escape the small talk, we excuse ourselves and observe the room from the bar: the ornate gilding on the ceiling, the crowded dance floor, Willow and Martin floating through it all like they were made for the spotlight.

“That guy,” Ren says, leaning down so our faces are level. I follow his nod toward a man in a deep blue tux, the flop of blond hair on top of his head obviously fake. “He’s the richest guy in the room.”

“Look at his tux,” I say. “You think that’s old money?”

“I never said old money. I said richest in the room.”

I face him as he stands to his full height. “You make a habit of knowing what tells rich people have?”

Ren laughs as I reach up to tweak his tie, some invisible force drawing my hand there. His eyes lift across the room again. “Obviously,” he says. “You have to know who to bump into at the right moment. Who else is going to invest in all my million-dollar ideas?”

“Name one million-dollar idea you’ve had,” I say.

Ren pretends to think. “Quick-freezing ice.”

I snort. “Okay, Webster, you go wow Mr. Toupee over there with your idea for quick-freezing ice .”

“Fine, I admit it,” Ren says. “I have no ideas. I want him to invest in a high-speed, cross-country railway so it’s easier for us to see each other.”

“You think a high-speed railway would be faster than flying?”

“Joni,” he says, almost incredulous, eyes sparkling as they focus intently on me. “Yes.”

When Willow is in her third dress of the night, the classier, early-evening band is replaced by a DJ, the music loud , and it occurs to me that Martin might know how to throw a party as well as Willow knows how to attend one.

Their playlist is mostly comprised of songs that played in frat house basements in college, and bottles of something that costs as much as my student loan payment are being passed around.

“Hey,” Ren says as we sway on the dance floor. “What if I came to visit you in New York this fall?”

“This fall?” I say, as he draws me closer, something about the sight of his hips moving in time with mine making it hard to think beyond this room. “If you want to,” I tell him.

He brushes the hair from my shoulder, thumb smoothing absently back and forth along the strap of my dress, straightening what doesn’t need to be straightened. He’s watching the movement, his face serious.

“I do want to,” he finally says.

He’s looking at me in a way that has every late-night phone call, every moment in our lives I found myself wanting to move just a little closer to him crashing over me, tugging me under like a rough wave.

I’ve never been your boyfriend plays in a loop in my head, and suddenly I want to ask why not.

Suddenly, all I can think about is yesterday, Ren so casually cool onstage, his fingers sliding over the guitar strings.

“I need some air,” I announce.

Ren’s answering nod is quick, a crease appearing between his brows. “Of course. Let’s—”

“No, you stay.” I smile, but it’s difficult. I wonder if I had more to drink than I thought, but I know I didn’t. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I don’t give Ren a chance to respond and instead push through the crowd of bodies until I’m on the other side of it.

I step out onto the balcony, but it’s nearly as loud out here as it is on the dance floor, so I clomp back inside and over to a table of coupes filled with champagne, grab one and toss it back.

I bring a hand to my forehead. Am I losing my mind? I feel like I can’t hang on to any one thought, palms gone clammy, a constant fluttering in my stomach since the night started.

But it’s not long before my eyes scan the room, searching for him.

I crane up on my toes, step to the side, and there he is, standing by the bar, attentively talking to a couple we sat next to at dinner.

He laughs at something they just said and smiles, and it’s at that moment that it flits across my brain, filling my heart up until I think it might burst.

There you are.

The room tilts, or maybe it’s the earth under me, its axis reorganizing itself after a molecular shift.

I’ve felt like this before. Of course I have. Or I’ve felt some version of it. I stare at the cut of his profile, and realize I’ve felt this way before about Ren .

History is rewriting itself in real time as I think back over the weddings, over our college years, our entire lives: Ren in a photo booth, hand on my thigh; Ren on the beach, skin glistening under the July sun; Ren at the bar, singing along to the Killers while I laugh; Ren’s soft breathing on the screen porch, a rhythm I could fall asleep to; us on the phone for hours; the smell of his old Sublimity shirt I never gave back; Ren’s eyes and arms and mouth and shoulders and chest and hips and—

How didn’t I know? Or did I? Again, my mind is stumbling over itself, every memory something new, a before and an after.

That’s when Ren looks at me. I’ve been staring at him for who knows how long, eyes stuck on his face. The polite set of his mouth disappears into a concerned frown, cheeks that he shaved again this morning hollowing.

I know what I must look like. My lips are parted and I think my expression must be somewhere in the realm of someone who’s just received reality-altering news.

Ma’am, welcome to the multiverse. A meteor is headed for the city.

The aliens have landed. The news hasn’t quite hit yet, but I’m stunned, even awed, at its magnitude.

His gaze latches on to mine and the room goes still, music quiets.

An image suddenly flashes through me, of Ren under a streetlight at twenty-one, head leaned back as he laughed at something I said.

There’s a week-old tattoo on his arm, proof that we are a part of each other forever, and I want to reach into that moment, pause it, pluck us out so I can examine the evidence that’s been there all along.

My heart turns over in my chest at the way his eyes travel across my face now. But then he tilts his head toward me in an are you okay? move, and I’m yanked back to the pounding bass and raucous celebration of the room. Get it together, Joni .

But I can’t get it together. I bob my head yes and dart away, ducking behind a large potted plant where I can be alone to sit with the way that the world has just changed.