Page 110 of The Wedding Favor

He hummed and kissed the tip of my nose, the corner of each eye. “It was your birthday and you looked angry and sad all at the same time.”

One of his hands slid to the back of my neck as he kissed me again, less urgent, slow, languid. I melted.

But then he pulled away and rested his forehead gently on mine, sadness in his eyes.

I swallowed. “We’re still just friends when we get out of this car, aren’t we?”

He sighed. “Yeah. This was probably a big mistake.”

“But maybe⁠—”

He gave me one last kiss, before he slid away and got out of the car, standing awkwardly with his hands in his pockets as I climbed into my own car in a daze.

My hands shook as I drove home, maybe from the effects of those kisses, or the anger rising up. It was hard to know where one feeling ended and the other began.

I wanted to relive this night over and over again but instead, all my brain latched on to were his words: “This was probably a big mistake.”

My hands gripped the steering wheel, and I realized I was driving ten miles over the speed limit.

I was so tired of everyone else telling me what I should do. What was right and wrong. No one, not even Abe, asked me what I wanted. And bristly, tough Iris had always been too afraid to tell them all.

I pulled up to my house, stomped inside, grunted a greeting to my mom, and marched to my room. After changing into a pair of sleep shorts and a tank top and washing my face, I crawled into bed.

And I fumed.

The more I thought about all the people in my life who liked to make decisions for me, the hotter my blood boiled. Aidan and all the tiny ways he tried to control me. Mae and her magic grad school plan. My father who’d made me feel less than my whole life. Even Ellie assuming I’d be quitting. The more I thought, the more I wanted to scream.

But the worst of all was Abe. I thought he understood me. I thought he saw me. I wanted him to see me.

I spent another hour tossing and turning before I gave up on sleep altogether.

In the kitchen, I drank a glass of water. What would Gloria do in this situation? I had no idea. But I knew exactly what Iris was going to do.

ME: I’m at your front door.

Then I waited. But not for long. Abe opened the door, much too alert to have been sleeping for the last two hours. Good. I marched up to him and poked him in the chest. “Listen. I’m tired of everyone telling me what’s best for me. You know what I want? I want someone to ask me what I want. Just once.”

Wisely, he did not try to interrupt me.

“And another thing, if that kiss was a mistake, I want to make the same mistake again. That’s what I want.”

I grabbed the front of his t-shirt, twisted it in my hand as I pulled him toward me, and kissed him. I just meant it to be an exclamation point to all my ranting, but it quickly changed into something else when he took over, hands roaming. When we broke apart, both of us were breathing fast and every inch of my skin felt hot. I shuffled back a couple of steps.

“So, let me be very, very clear here—what I want is you, if you weren’t getting that.”

I stomped back to my car, got in, and pulled away. All the while, he stood in his doorway, watching me.

It was only as I was about to finally drift off to sleep, I realized he hadn’t said a single word.

FORTY-FOUR

“I longed for one true friend; so I got a dog.”

—excerpt from the unpublished memoir,

Darling, I Must Say by Gloria Hayes

I didn’t feel quite so brave the next morning. Had I really stormed over to his house in the middle of the night, mauled him, and left?