Page 51 of Friends to Lovers

chapter thirty-one

Everything moves quickly. Ren and I probably only sleep for an hour or two, and by the time we blink awake there’s already commotion in the house.

We scramble to get dressed, shoving things into suitcases, going where we’re needed to help clean up, gather gifts, get the house in order.

Stevie and Leo are off to a four-day honeymoon on San Juan Island before the tour starts.

Sasha and Alex have to be back in Portland to catch their flight by five; Thad, Gemi, and Katie are spending a few days with Hannah and Greg at their house.

Ren is helping to drive some of Stevie and Leo’s presents back to their apartment this afternoon.

My flight leaves at two, so after stuffing the last of the twinkle lights into my parents’ car, I grab my bags and head back to the rental car from hell. Everyone is out front, in various states of hungover, ready to hug goodbye and send me off.

“You could live here for a while, if you needed to,” Hannah says after she’s let me go. “Get things settled.”

“Thank you,” I say, hesitant, not sure she liked what she heard at the rehearsal dinner.

“Joni,” she says, sensing it. “You do what makes you happy.” My eyes drift over her shoulder to where Ren is talking to Thad on the porch.

Hannah turns to follow my gaze, then back to me.

“I hope that what Stevie meant is that he finally got it together and told you how he feels. I didn’t bet on you, but I’ve been hoping. ”

My forehead creases in confusion, and Hannah’s mouth curves into a chastened smile. “Amanda’s wonderful,” she says. “But she’s not you. And I wanted him to find some way to be happy, if the two of you weren’t going to be together.”

I don’t have the heart to tell her that we’re not. Together. Instead, I hug her one last time before I move on to my dad, my mom, everyone else heading back inside to get things together.

Ren is the last one, standing near my bumper. He’d come down the porch stairs when I was saying goodbye to my dad, leaned against my car in a pair of faded jeans and the same gray T-shirt he arrived in, a classic Ren outfit if I’ve ever seen one.

“I’ll call you,” I say in his ear as I hug him. He holds me tighter, and I breathe him in, squeeze my eyes shut when they begin to burn.

“I could drive you,” he says once we pull apart. There’s something conflicted on his face, like he doesn’t want to say goodbye either. “We could talk. We—”

“We will,” I say, stopping him. “We’ll talk. I’m not just leaving again.” Even as I say it, it feels like I am.

I watch him in the rearview as I drive away, until the break in the trees closes. Until he disappears from sight.

Every mile that stretches between us aches, and about halfway to Portland I can’t hold the tears back any longer.

For Ren, sure, but also for me. For all the mistakes I’ve made.

For how long I’ve spent ignoring my life in favor of giving everything to a job that was never going to love me back.

For every time I’ve ignored a phone call from my mom when I should have picked up, because I didn’t want to answer any of her questions.

For not confiding in Stevie sooner. For all the time I’ve wasted not paying close enough attention to the things that matter most. I’ve thought for so long that proving I could do it on my own was the most important thing, but in the end, it’s letting myself need people that’s started to bring me back to myself.

That’s going to carry me forward from here.

I wipe my eyes and return the rental car, check my bag before heading through security. I’m in leggings and, I realize too late, Ren’s black hoodie. He’d put it on me at four in the morning, half-asleep, scooping me up into his chest when I shivered against him.

At the security line, the TSA agent asks if I’m wearing anything underneath it, and I have to strip down to my tank top, hold my arms up in the machine. I watch the bin with Ren’s sweatshirt like a hawk as it goes through the scanner, lunge for it as soon as I can and slip it back over my head.

I wander toward my gate, grab a coffee on the way.

I find a seat, tuck my knees to my chest, and pull the hood of his sweatshirt on, and with it comes an onslaught of every memory from this week.

Ren in the kitchen, seeing him again for the first time.

Ren at the winery across from me, sunglasses shielding his expression.

Ren’s voice coming out of the dark, and his body against mine during capture the flag, his hands on my hips that night on the beach.

His arm around me yesterday morning, everything laid bare between us.

It strikes me as ridiculous, suddenly, that I asked him to wait. That as soon as he said he was worried I’d run if things got hard, I didn’t tell him he is the only thing I want right now, or ever, no matter how messy or undecided my life is.

I catch sight of a couple sitting near the windows, where planes are taxiing and people are getting ready to depart, to carry on with their lives. They’re laughing, leaning into one another, their faces together.

I’ve been wasting so much time worrying about what could go wrong that I never paused to consider everything that could go right. Every way life could continue to be beautiful, with Ren. There will always be something complicated, but that’s the point: I want to face those things with him.

I pull my phone from my bag, dial Ren’s number, but it goes straight to voicemail, my heart dropping. I’ve still never told him I love him. He said it yesterday, on the beach, and I didn’t say it back. I guess I assumed it was obvious, the way it was to everyone else.

“Hi,” I say to his voicemail, just as the gate attendant announces our boarding, loudly.

I raise my voice over it, avoiding the stares of the travelers around me.

“I know you’re probably on the road. Or maybe you’re like, halfway to somewhere else, taking a second for yourself.

” It all comes out quickly then. “I didn’t handle things like I should have before.

I shouldn’t have run from you. From us. I know I can’t change what I did, but I can say I’m sorry for not trying to fix it sooner.

And I’m never going to leave you like that again, but I did forget to tell you that I love you.

That I’m in love with you too. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.

“But I want you to know that, even when I didn’t know, it doesn’t mean I didn’t love you that way.

It’s always been us. It just took me a while longer to figure it out.

I think that maybe you’ve always been the smarter of the two of us.

Anyway,” I say, as another announcement rattles out overhead.

“I’m getting on a plane, and I love you, and I already miss you so much.

Like, there was just a guy in line at bag check with a sock stuck to his pants and I was going to tell him but then he was such a dick to the airline agent and—this isn’t important.

I just wanted you to be there. I wanted you to witness it with me and I want to witness everything with you.

And I know I messed it up before, but I don’t want to waste any more time.

I want you, and I want to figure everything out together, no matter how messy.

So, that’s all, okay—I better go before I tell you another stupid story or the voicemail cuts off, so bye. Bye.”

I hang up, a ringing in my ears.

That’s it, I tell myself. That’s all I can do.

It’s what I tell myself as I cue up the playlist Ren shared with me for my flight, the first one he’s made me in years, “Mr. Brightside” the opening song.

What I tell myself through my entire flight.

When I check my phone after landing, and I still don’t have anything from him.

On the car ride back to my apartment.

When I fall asleep that night with my phone next to my face, just in case.