Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“Can’t wait.” I grin and wrinkle my nose and cup his chin. I can ham it up just as well as he can. “We should probably get going. We have to pick up our luggage from the Chevalier before we leave for the airport.”
My parents send us out with lingering embraces and wistful words that come off more scripted than genuine. In a way, they’ve been waiting twenty-four years for this moment. Maybe it gives them a sense of accomplishment or ushers in a new era. Either way, there’s an air of finality around us and the longer we stand here, the less this house feels like it ever was my home.
“Safe travels, sweetheart,” Mom waves from the front steps as we head to Slade’s rented Mercedes. Dad slips his arm around her and sends us off with a nod. “Send pictures!”
The silence in the car as we drive away reminds me of last night in the hotel, when he was helping me out of my dress and had nothing to say except that he was going to take a shower.
26
Slade
My father once told me marriages are like business deals. I was eleven at the time and he had a tendency to go off on tangents, offering life advice in the form of rambling lectures that tended to go in one ear and out the other.
But that day, his words stuck with me.
“You’ve got your contract, of course,” he rambled. “And you’ve got your financials, your communications, your commitment to making your joint venture be the most successful it can be. Once you separate the emotion from all of that, you realize that marriages can be managed in a way that everyone benefits. Everything is negotiable. Remember that, son. Everything. And not all marriages have to be built on love. If you’re lucky, of course, they are. But not everyone’s lucky. Sometimes people marry for reasons that have nothing to do with love at all—and that’s okay. Don’t believe all the bullshit you hear, and especially don’t believe all the crap you see on TV. Some people are trying to sell more greeting cards and movie tickets and roses. Love—or the idea of it—is a lucrative business in the right hands.”
He went on to clarify that he loved my mother more than anything in the world and that he was one of the lucky ones, but he’d seen many men ruin their lives all for something they thought was love, and he didn’t want me to do the same.
“Whether or not you love Campbell is irrelevant,” he told me that day. “As long as you approach the marriage like a business deal, you two will have a long, happy life together.”
“Are you going to say anything or are we going to spend the next twenty years in radio silence?” Campbell asks when we’re halfway to the airport.
Our luggage is already in the trunk as we checked out of our suite this morning. Maybe she’d had enough Blythe and Cedric for one day? They’re decent people—in their own ways—but sometimes a minute of their company feels more like an hour.
“What do you want to talk about?” I sail through a green light, then another. At this rate, we’ll be sitting on the tarmac with nothing but time on our hands as we wait for our scheduled departure.
“Um … anything?”
“Is that a question or a statement.”
“Both,” she says.
Finally, we hit a red light.
“I’m not sure what there is to talk about.” I keep my attention straight ahead, though I sense the liquid-hot sear of her watchful stare. “Is something bothering you? Oh, I know. Was it the bedazzled Lucite platter your Aunt Cindy gifted us? I thought it was hideous, too, but I wasn’t going to say anything.”
I’m being facetious, of course, but I don’t see the point in discussing anything heavy when we’ve just survived an over-the-top wedding and we’re about to be stuck on a plane together for the next several hours.
“I realize I’m asking the world of you, but would it kill you to be with me for two seconds?” she asks. “It’s exhausting for me. It has to be exhausting for you, too. Can’t we just … stop?”
“What’s the point?”
Campbell tips her head back against the headrest, groaning. In all our years of knowing each other, I’ve never seen her so defeated.
“This is going to sound crazy,” she says, her voice soft and almost apologetic, though I’m not sure to whom she’s apologizing. Herself, maybe? “But part of me really wanted to love you. And part of me still thinks I could. Which makes no sense.” Her hands lift before falling lifeless into her lap. “Because you’re pretty awful. You’re kind of the worst.”
Fair observation.
“And maybe I’m imagining it, but I swear I catch these minuscule glimpses of the person you could be if you put your guard down for two seconds,” she continues.