Once and for All(84)

FOR YOU, I WISH FOR SECOND CHANCES.

I folded it shut, then put it on the wall before I could change my mind, right above Jilly’s. As Michael Salem called out to her and she started his way, I crossed the backyard, moving toward the music. When I looked back at the wish wall from a distance, it was a sea of squares: I couldn’t even find mine among them. So many things we ask for, hope for, prayers put out into a world so wide: there was no way they could all be answered. But you had to keep asking. If you didn’t, nothing even had a chance of coming true.

On the dance floor, Roger and Maya were in the center, holding hands, him even sweatier, her flower crown lopsided. Andrew, his white shirt also damp, bopped beside them, along with Maya’s mom and some other friends, all in a circle. Behind them, Bee was twirling in the arms of the contractor neighbor, while Lauren boogied with Kevin Yu, Bee’s med student groom-to-be. Yet again, I found myself on the outside of all this, a line only I could see dividing us. This time, though, there was no rule: I could cross over it. Isn’t that the way everything begins? A night, a love, a once and for all.

When I saw Ambrose coming toward me from the other side of the floor, the moment seemed even more fated, like my wish had come true. All this time I’d been waiting for my second chance. Maybe he’d been here all along.

“Hey,” I said to him, holding out my hand. “Dancing is healing. Want to heal?”

“Yeah. Sure. Of course,” he said quickly, but didn’t move. “It’s about time, right?”

I cocked my head to the side. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, equally fast, too fast. He flashed me a smile, compensating, then dropped it when he saw my own serious expression. Behind me, I could hear someone whooping: a girl in a black dress twirled past, her hem brushing my leg. “I was just . . . at the truck, talking with Jilly.”

“Oh,” I said, confused. “Okay.”

He looked over at Bee, doing a shimmy as Kevin clapped his hands. “I told her . . . how I feel about you. How I’ve felt.”

This was big, I knew. Huge. But it didn’t match—what he was saying and how he was saying it. Like a rhythm slightly off, the beat you somehow can’t clap to. “And?”

His face softened, and he stepped closer. Around us, the music was picking up, faster, people whooping it up. “Why didn’t you tell me? About the shooting? About Ethan?”

Ethan. It was the last name I wanted to hear. It didn’t belong in this place, at this moment. All around me people were happy, flushed and in motion, the way the world had been on that crisp fall morning not even a year ago. How stupid I was to think Ambrose and I could somehow be happy, too, after such a bumpy, uneven beginning. To really be happy, you needed epic, like Ethan, and we weren’t that. Not even close.

“Jilly told you?” I said, my voice sounding light, like it was rising away from me.

“She was looking out for you,” he said. “She’s protective. I get it. What you went through . . .”

“Don’t pity me,” I said quickly, stepping back. “Don’t do that. I don’t need it.”

“I’m not,” he replied, moving closer to close the gap between us. “I just feel like an idiot, all that stuff I said about breakups and you being cynical. You must have felt—”

“I don’t feel anything,” I said, cutting him off. “It’s fine.”

“Hey.” He reached out for my arm, but I shook him off, the response reflexive, immediate. “Look. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I didn’t know. And if I said stupid things. I’m just . . . sorry.”

The music was changing now, the current song winding down, another, slower one coming in behind it. A perfect transition, and how common is that? I hated that I noticed.

“I’m sorry, too,” I said, stepping back farther. “And I should go, actually. I told Ben I’d meet him.”

He blinked at me. “You did?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t know I’d won the bet, yet. And I kind of like this dating thing. I can see why you’re so into it.”

“I don’t want to do it anymore, though,” he said immediately. “And I don’t care about the bet. You’re more than that. You always have been. That was just a way to win you.”

I wished the music would stop. I wished everything would stop. But wishes don’t mean anything. I’d been right about that all along.

“You don’t want me,” I told him. “Nothing will ever be as good as what I had. I’ll never be what I was.”

“Louna.” He tried to reach for my hand; again, I pulled away. “Don’t say that.”

“I have to go,” I said, my voice breaking. “I have somewhere to be.”

He looked at me for a second, and I wondered about all the other ways this might have gone, possibilities spinning out into the future. Not that it mattered.

“Fine. Go,” he said. “But know this. I meant what I said to Jilly. How I feel about you. Nothing’s changed for me.”

That must be nice, I thought. Me, I could never count on anything without it shifting shape right before my eyes.

Somehow, I was moving off the edge of the dance floor, across that line. Then I went farther, over the grass, through the gate, and out to my car. I’d always wondered about the people who leave weddings early, the impetus for not seeing the whole thing through to the end. Everyone has their reasons, as unique and varied as faces and thumbprints. You could speculate all you want and still never get close. But I felt sure that as I departed, alone, no one was watching me.