Kiss Her Once for Me (28)

But the next morning, when I stumbled out of the trailer in tears, the Airstream felt more like a metaphor for her impermanence. We were never meant to last. And I was na?ve for thinking otherwise.

I grab the porch railing and try to breathe through the waves of anxiety rolling through me.

“Fuck, Dylan!” I hear Andrew’s voice before I see the source. A few dozen feet away, on a different balcony off the dining room, I spot Andrew stepping outside, quickly followed by Dylan, then Jack, then Paul Hollywood at Jack’s heels. The lights on my balcony are off, and in the dark, they seem collectively unaware of my presence.

“I just asked where you found her!” Dylan is yelling. “Did you hold a casting call for generic white girls who will ingratiate themselves with your parents?”

“She’s my fiancée!” Andrew shouts into the night. “We’re in love!”

I wince. I’m not sure we’re in love is something you declare quite so matter-of-factly if it’s actually true, but Andrew looks confident and stubborn in the glow of the porch lights. In front of him, Dylan looks positively feral.

“Is she pregnant?”

Jack breaks her silence with a guffaw. “Of course she’s not pregnant! Wait, shit, Andrew, is she pregnant?”

“No!”

“Is this a Walk to Remember thing? Is she terminally ill?”

“No, Ellie isn’t dying!”

“Does she need a visa? Is she Canadian?”

“No!”

“Are you secretly Canadian, Andrew?”

“No one is Canadian!”

“Then I just don’t get it!” Dylan throws their arms up. “What the hell? Years of running from commitment, and then suddenly you’re engaged after three months?”

“When you know, you know!” Andrew argues. “And with Ellie, I just know!”

The night goes quiet save for the sound of my own heartbeat thudding in my ears.

“What’s so special about her?” Dylan finally asks.

“Dylan has a point.” Jack exhales, and, concealed by darkness, I watch the wisps of her breath float around her face. “I mean, why her?”

The incredulity in her voice feels like a knife between my ribs. I gasp, like a wounded creature dying out in the wildness, and then I clamp my jaw shut and hope none of them heard me.

Of course, I’m not quite that lucky.

Paul Hollywood launches himself into a patio chair and begins barking frantically in my direction. I duck behind a covered grill, hold my breath, and wait until the barking stops.

Then I wait even longer, until the silence stretches for several minutes, and I’m certain they’ve all gone back inside for dinner. I wonder what would happen if I never went back inside, if I climbed down this balcony and disappeared into the night. Would Andrew come after me? Or would he just find someone else to help him get his inheritance?

It doesn’t matter, because I have no way back to the city. We’re up on a mountain, and as far as I can tell, there’s not another house for miles. I’m completely and utterly stuck. I carefully climb out from behind the grill and brace myself to face the family.

“Hey, there,” says a loud, husky voice in the night.

Jack is still outside, Paul Hollywood obediently sitting at her feet. She’s moved to the end of her balcony, and I’m at the end of mine, so we’re only fifteen feet apart now, separated by a gap of air and snow. “Are you okay?” she asks, just like she did that day in Powell’s.

“Oh, fine,” I say, dusting the snow off the back of my jeans. “I, um… couldn’t find the bathroom?”

“Incidentally, it’s not outside,” she says with a half-moon smile I can barely make out in the dark. “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” I try, “I was looking for the bathroom, as you know, and then I ended up outside, and then I heard Dylan asking if I was a dying pregnant Canadian, and I thought it might be best to pretend like I couldn’t overhear it, so I hid behind this grill, and—”

“No, Ellie,” Jack says. “What are you doing here? At my family’s cabin? With my brother?”

I take a sharp breath. “He’s my… fiancé.”

“Elle,” she says, and that one syllable rips through me like shrapnel. That name. My name. The name she called me that entire day. The name she called me when we were tangled in each other’s arms. “I haven’t seen or heard from you in a year, and then you show up for Christmas engaged to my brother?”

I turn away from her and stare at the Airstream nestled in the field of snow. “I thought you didn’t recognize me.”

“What?”

“In there. You acted like you didn’t know me. I thought maybe you forgot.”

“You thought… I forgot you…?” I glance back across the separated balconies. She’s staring off into the distance, too, her profile highlighted in gold from the lights. “I didn’t forget you,” she says. “I just… panicked. You were standing in my dining room, and I didn’t know what to do.”

She admits this so easily, always handing over the truth like she has nothing in the world to hide. Except she does. Or she did back then. I just found out about it too late.