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Eden

“ I f this family dinner is anything like the Wilder family dinners,” Mari says, “you should wear jeans and a sweatshirt and expect to end up with dog hair—if not vomit—and spit-up and a good amount of dinner on you. And that’s if they don’t make you play flag football or wiffle ball or—knowing the Hotts, it would actually be Nerf-blaster tag and Jell-O wrestling. ”

I set my favorite sparkly shirt back on the bed. “I’m not sure I should be going to this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it feels…presumptuous. I’m not family, and I’m not likely to become family.”

“Did he say, ‘I want you to come to family dinner so you can practice being my future wife’?”

“No,” I say. “But I feel like it’s…implied. And I already feel like I have a history of rushing into relationships—and then rushing toward the altar—and regretting it.”

Mari shakes her head. “When a lot of stuff goes wrong, it’s easy to start second-guessing yourself.

But that’s actually when it’s super important to lean in to trusting your instincts.

You know what you want. And just because you can’t guarantee a perfect future doesn’t mean you shouldn’t let yourself enjoy what’s happening now. ”

“You sound like the voice of experience.”

“I may have a bit of that,” she admits. “Hey, how’s the quilt show going?”

“So well!” I say. “We got a piece in the Oregonian and one in the Seattle Times and Five Rivers Arts and Crafts has been flooded with visitors.”

“That’s amazing! I bet that makes you feel better about driving halfway across the country.” She gives me a sideways smile. “Not that you have many regrets.”

“No,” I admit. “Not about the drive, anyway. Just about the chain of events that caused the drive.”

“Speaking of which, what happened with getting Paul to take responsibility for returning the gifts?”

“I called him and said, ‘I need you to return the gifts.’ I was ready to say he owed me, but I didn’t have to. He just agreed to do it.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s too little, too late, but at the least the fucker said he’d do it.”

I laugh at her vehemence. It’s good to have a bestie. “I told him I wanted them all returned by the end of the month, and he promised me he was on it.”

“Good work,” she says, beaming. “Is he back in Rush Creek?”

“Yup. Packing up the condo. I saw him briefly yesterday. I’d left some books behind. He said he’s selling the condo and moving to Bend. He thought that would be better for both of us, and I couldn’t argue.”

“How are you feeling about the whole thing? Seeing him?”

“It was honestly fine,” I say. “I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought he was a good idea, and that was about it. I’m definitely starting to think my pride was hurt worse than my heart by what Paul did.”

“And you have a great distraction.” She grins.

I’d come home and confessed everything that had happened with Rhys to Mari, who was sitting up waiting for me with a knowing look on her face.

“How are things with him?” she asks.

“I mean, there’s no chance that it could actually go anywhere. I’m basically viewing it as a rebound.”

Well. I’m trying to remind myself that I should view it that way. And not to float away on a kissy cloud.

Mari’s eyebrows go way up.

“I am ,” I say. “And I’m sure he is, too, because he works in New York City .”

“Have you asked him?” she says.

“No, but when I said something about his family making assumptions about us ending up together long term, he said, ‘I’ll set them straight if they do that.’”

“And how did you feel about that?”

“Relieved,” I say. “It would be absurd for me to jump straight out of Paul’s frying pan and into Rhys’s fire.”

Even if every time I think about what happened last night, my body goes white hot and I tingle from head to toe.

I like Rhys’s fire—I’ll say that.

“Just because the timing utterly sucks doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” Mari says.

“Just because you’re happily married to the perfect guy doesn’t mean I have to make another dumb mistake right after the last one,” I say.

She grins at that. “Okay, okay, I’ll shut up. But I think you can safely go to one family dinner without risking ruin.”

“I don’t want to get roped into the whole weird mystique about the will matchmaking people.

Quinn and Sonya, Ivy and Shane, Natalie and Preston.

It’s a combination of coincidence and probably a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you think something’s fated, confirmation bias will make you lean into it. ”

“Hmm,” Mari says. “Hadn’t exactly thought of it that way.

You know,” she says, “when I was trying to figure out whether Zara and I should stay in Rush Creek with Kane, it was a little like that, too. Lucy was already with Gabe, Rachel with Brody, and Jessa with Clark. And there was this family lore that if Gabe’s dog, Buck, chewed up a girlfriend’s possessions, she was The One.

I thought it was total bullshit…until Buck ate one of my shoes. ”

“And then confirmation bias set in and you determined that you and Zara should stay with Kane, and you lived happily ever after, because confirmation bias has a fifty-fifty success rate at happily ever after, just like chance, dating sites, and arranged marriages.”

“Whoa,” she says. “Now who’s the cynic?”

“Maybe I’ve been spending too much time with Rhys.”

Although Rhys, to be fair, hasn’t said anything cynical about marriage since the beginning of our road trip.

And I remember how Hanna said that he wanted to introduce premarital counseling to the wedding-planning business.

Hanna had dismissed that as more cynicism…

but what if it wasn’t? What if Rhys and I have swapped perspectives on happily-ever-after?

It’s a disturbing question.

“Just go to dinner and enjoy the good company and don’t worry too much about what it means,” Mari says. “You deserve some fun after everything you’ve been through.”