Page 64 of How to Say I Do

Well. Tomorrow I’d start on the barn.

My phone buzzed at 3:02 a.m. Three rapid vibrations, texts coming in one after another.

Is it too late? Have you gone to bed?

I just walked in the door.

God, what a night.

I’m up.

My phone rang a few seconds later. When I swiped to answer, I was hit with a barrage of noise: Noël dropping his keys and bag, kicking off his shoes, then sighing loudly before he launched into a rapid deconstruction of his day, starting with how he’d left his phone charger at the café he had been working at, and, all afternoon, everyone had been just late enough that he could never step away to snag a new one. Then he was on board the yacht and pushing away and he had nothing, no cell phone, just him and a boat full of millionaires.

“Your battery died?”

“Yeah, I’m up against the kitchen wall right now. The only other cord I have is, like, two feet long, so I’m sitting on God knows what has been spilled on this linoleum.”

A bottle of carbonated something fizzed open on Noël’s end of the line. Sparkling mineral water, most likely. Noël drank that by the liters, especially after getting home late.

“I, uh… I thought maybe you were out.”

“Out? Out where?”

“Just… out.”

“What, like, at a club? You know I don’t do that.”

He was buzzing, amped up from being on for hours, still sharp and anticipatory and on edge. He’d told me that he sometimes struggled to come down from the late nights, and that there were times he had to be so turned on that he couldn’t switch off, and, when that happened, he’d stay awake until he collapsed. It sounded like he was being hammered flat by the pace of the city.

“You could have been out with someone.” To my own ears, my voice sounded strangled.

“Why would I be outwithsomeone?”

“’Cause there are eight million people in New York City”—eighteen million in the greater metropolitan area—"and at least a million of them have to be smart enough to recognize that you’re…” Amazing? Wonderful? Perfect? Way out of everyone’s league? I sighed. “There’s got to be someone there, Noël.”

“There’s not. There’s no one,” he snapped. “Why are you— Are you trying to tell me something?”

“No.”

“Are you— Is there someone in Texas?”

“Noël—”

“I haven’t been with anyone since Mexico. I don’t want to be with anyone. Jesus, Wyatt, how could you think—”

“Whywouldn’tI think that? It’s nothing but grapes and crickets out here for me, but you’re surrounded by celebrities and supermodels—”

“And what, in your experience of me, makes you think that I enjoy any of that?”

“You and Jenna were engaged. You guys nearly got married.”

He said nothing.

“I just… I don’t understand why a thousand people aren’t trying to give you the world,” I finally said. “And someone out there, in the city, with all that opportunity… What they could offer you…”

I’d never felt smaller, huddled outside the edge of my desk light and rubbing my thumbnail around a knot of wood, alone in my dark little corner of the world. I was so, so out of my league with Noël.

“Wyatt…” Noël sounded incredibly far away. “You know, when people get to know me, they don’t actually like me.”