The Way Back to You (26 page)

B
y the time Sonia’s groom reaches the table where Matty and I are sitting, I’ve already come up with (and dismissed) five different explanations to give him for why we’re here.

Matty stands, so I hop to my feet as well. Are we going to bolt?

“Big day for you,” Matty says. “Congrats, man.”

Okay, then. He’s decided to fake like we already know this guy, so I don’t even have the option of pretending we’ve shown up to the wrong wedding.

Paco smiles. “Thank you. I’ve seen both of you in pictures, but I’m so bad at names.” He wags his finger and squints a little. “You’re . . . Ashlyn’s boyfriend. Kyle, right?”

I’m too shocked to speak; I just nod like a bobblehead doll.

Paco turns to Matty. “And that means you are . . . ?”

“Matt.” He puts out his hand, which Paco shakes. “I lived next door to Ashlyn. I’m also the cousin of her boyfriend.” He nods toward me. “And the ex-boyfriend of her best friend, but we’re only friends now.”

“Gotcha.” Paco exhales a laugh. “Very tangled relationships.”

“You have no idea,” Matty says, grinning.

Paco glances over his shoulder. “Her best friend is here, too? Stormy, is it?”

“Cloudy,” I say.

“That’s right! I knew it was something to do with the weather—”

“Excuse me.” The woman in the pink dress (whose name tag reads “Bernadette—Wedding Coordinator”) sets her hand on Paco’s arm. “Sonia is going to be coming through the main doors here any minute. We need to get you down the aisle before you and your bride accidentally bump into each other.”

“Sure, sure,” Paco says, smoothing down the front of his jacket. “But I thought she was hidden away somewhere.”

“She was. Then she took a field trip. But we can work around it, no problem. Are you ready?”

“Very ready.” Paco nods at Matty and me. “Great to meet you both. See you in there.”

We wish him luck as he follows the wedding coordinator to the open chapel doors, where the minister, best man, assumed dad, and a bridesmaid in a flowing coral dress are already gathered.

“Should we get our seats now?” I ask Matty.

“Let’s wait a minute.” He grabs his backpack from the floor and pulls his phone from the front pocket. “I’ll find out where the Marlowe sisters are.”

I
left Sonia by the sinks, giving her the alone time she’d come for, and told her I’d be waiting out in the hallway. And I am. I want to be. No more running away.

Hearing Ashlyn’s heartbeat was astonishing. It isn’t an instant fix, but pieces of me are mending together—starting to, anyway. So I’m hoping Zoë will answer my text, or meet me here like I asked her to. Her words are on repeat in my mind, and they’re a deeper stab on each replay. Zoë was only being Zoë, and instead of meeting her halfway, I faulted her for it. Her help wasn’t good enough for me.

I’m not sure I deserve it, but all I need is a chance to tell her that.

My phone beeps, sending a jolt through me, but it’s playing “I Touch Myself.” I jab the ignore button without checking the screen.

The dead-end corridor outside the ladies’ room is perpendicular to a larger hallway that connects ballrooms and conference rooms. I’m sitting on the cool floor, slumped back into the wall, watching a stream of people walk by. Some are
in casual business attire, some in T-shirts like me, but it’s the ones in dressier clothing who put me on edge. Sonia is set to glide down the aisle in minutes and I don’t know what I’ll do if Zoë refuses to see me before that. She’s never been this pissed at me.

I tilt my face up to the ceiling, my palms rubbing nervously along my jeans. I shut my eyes so tightly that when I open them, I’m dizzy and my vision doubles.

Double Zoë.

I shoot up from the floor. “You came.”

She shrugs.

“Where’s your suitcase?”

“I checked it.”

This is painful. I don’t ever have to tiptoe around Zoë. “I’m sorry for what I said to you. I was horrible, and I didn’t mean any of it.”

“Cloudy.”

“
Fine
. I meant it when I said it, but I was wrong.” I bite my lip and cross my arms over my chest. Then uncross them. “I’ve been having a hard time since Ashlyn died. And I don’t think I knew it, but I was floundering a little—a lot, actually. That’s not an excuse,” I rush to add. “But it’s the truth. And I’m really, really sorry.”

Zoë toys with the thin chain of her gold necklace as she examines me. I’m sure my puffy, discolored face is one big confirmation of my breakdown. “It wasn’t fair of Matty and me to blindside you by coming. I should have mentioned it.”

“I shouldn’t have exploded like that.”

She fixes her glasses. “I didn’t realize I was, I don’t know,
fruit-flying
you.”

I exhale. “I felt like you were invading my space. I mean, you used to tease me about cheerleading, and then one day, you’re on the team—without even telling me first.”

Zoë’s hands fall to her sides. Then in one swift motion, she turns and drops to the floor, leaning into the wall where I’ve just been. When she hits the marble, she winces from the chill against her bare legs but tucks her dress underneath her.

When she yanks at my arm, I know I’m forgiven.

I settle in beside her, but it’s more of a full-body collapse.

“I only joined the team because it was a chance to be around you more,” she says. “You’ve been impossible to reach lately. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

The muffled sound of Matty’s ringtone comes from Zoë’s purse. She plucks out her phone and hits a button, cutting it off. “But I wasn’t trying to invade your space. I guess I hoped that if I was around a lot, you’d talk to me.”

I hug my knees to my chest. “Sometimes talking is the easy part. If I focus on when Ashlyn was alive, I can trick myself into believing everything’s fine. For a little while, anyway. But talking about her dying is like accepting it. I couldn’t admit that it really happened.”

“It did, though,” she says softly, kindly.

“It did.”

“I used to be jealous of her.”

I smother a surprised laugh. Zoë is so secure; I didn’t think she knew what jealousy felt like. “Of Ashlyn? Be serious.”

Zoë sniffs. “You two could spend, like, infinity together and you never got sick of her. You got sick of me all the time,” she says, throwing me a pointed look.

“That’s not true. Ashlyn and I fought sometimes; you know that.”

“Not like you and me. Once you didn’t speak to me for a week.”

Now I do laugh. I was twelve and I had this gorgeous pink-and-white scallop shell in my room. I hadn’t even found it on the beach—I’d bought it with my allowance at a shop on the Cannon Beach boardwalk—but I’d decided it was my favorite charm. Zoë had smashed it after reading that seashells in the house bring bad luck.

“We’re sisters,” I say. “Our relationship is different. We say shitty things to each other because we know we’ll get away with them.”

“So, what? Sisters can be jerks to each other because they’re related?”

“No. It means that no matter how much of a jerk I’m being, I still love you the same. And I still want you around. Even when I don’t want you near me.”

She presses her lips together, squashing a grin. “Okay.”

I make the tips of my fingers touch, thumb to pointer finger, thumb to middle finger, and so on. “Did you really want to come on this trip?”

Zoë opens and shuts the clasp of her bag. “I was glad you and Kyle were taking it. But it would’ve been nice if you’d asked. Ashlyn wasn’t my best friend, but I miss her, too.” She
cuts me off by holding up her hand. “No more. You apologizing so much is kind of unnerving.”

God, how out of it had I been to disregard Zoë’s pain? She knew Ashlyn for as long as I did. They’d met when Zoë was only six years old.

“So how do you handle it?” I ask Zoë. “Missing her?”

“I let it be sucky.”

My head jerks up. “What?”

She carefully repositions her legs, crossing them at the ankle. “I let myself be sad and angry and confused. And then, before it’s too much, I swap it for happier thoughts of Ashlyn. That’s how I want to remember her.”

My body seizes at the idea of feeling all of that. Misery and rage and regret. Lightness and acceptance. Going through an obstacle course of emotions and making it through in one piece.

But I had, hadn’t I? I’d let the pain push me down and then, with Sonia’s help, I’d crawled my way out of it. Maybe the more it happened, the more I recognized the grief instead of stifling it, the less crawling it would take to get out.

“Eventually,” Zoë tells me, “the happier will come easier than the suckiness. It has to.”

I smile. “I’d like that.”

I don’t know when that’ll happen. But I know that right now, I’m sitting with my sister, on the cold floor in a hallway in Las Vegas, staring at the opposite wall’s white plaster molding. I know I had a best friend, who I love so much it’s stamped into my DNA. And I know that I can exist in a world where she doesn’t, because having her in my life gave me all the courage I
need to go on. She wouldn’t expect any less from me.

A few feet away, a door swings open.

I grab Zoë’s wrist and squeeze. “You are never going to guess who I met in the bathroom.”

A
ccording to the wedding coordinator, Bernadette, a wedding doesn’t truly begin until the bride is ready. By that measure, even though the benches are filled with guests, the sound system’s harp music was switched out with an energetic instrumental, and Paco has already made his way to the front along with his best man and the minister, this wedding has not yet started.

Beside me in the last row, Matty keeps bouncing his legs and alternating between staring at his silenced phone and the closed door. Cloudy and Zoë didn’t answer his calls. He was debating whether he should go looking for them when Bernadette coaxed us to please take our seats in the chapel.

So we did. And here we wait.

As the minutes pass, anxiousness is increasing for us both. He’s concerned over whether the Marlowe sisters will make it in time. I am, too, but I’m also wondering what it will be like to see Sonia, who will be walking through the doors at any moment. During this past week, I’d envisioned myself blending into the crowd without her ever knowing I’d come. That isn’t going to
happen now, since Paco knew me on sight.

The double doors open. Everyone in the room rotates to stare. Holding my breath, I do the same.

But it isn’t a woman in a wedding dress who steps inside. Instead, it’s a blonde in jeans and a brunette wearing glasses and a ruffled red dress.

Matty lets out a loud, relieved sigh and waves to them. Zoë slips into our row beside him, and Cloudy follows, making eye contact with me over Matty’s and Zoë’s heads. I can spot even from here that her face is red and her eyes are puffy because she’s been crying, which makes the smile she’s aiming my way even more of a surprise.

Cloudy takes her seat and disappears from my view—blocked by my cousin and her sister, who are now whispering together. After thirty seconds or so, Matty turns away from Zoë and says in my ear, “They ran into Sonia a few minutes ago. Cloudy was able to hug her and feel Ashlyn’s heart beating.”

“Wow! Really?”

Bernadette opens the door again and everyone swivels with even more urgency than before. This time, Sonia’s bridesmaid walks through and slowly makes her way to the front. Cloudy leans across Zoë and mouths, “Coral!”

We grin at each other; Ashlyn’s hatred of the color didn’t stop Sonia from choosing it for her wedding.

The music changes again and the minister speaks. “Please stand for the bride.”

Now
the wedding is officially beginning.

We hop up simultaneously. All eyes in the room are aimed
down the center aisle at Sonia and her father. All except for mine, which are seeking out Cloudy.

Matty glances at me over his shoulder. “Will you just go
sit
with her? I know you want to.”

He steps back and stands extra straight to make room for me to walk in front of him. Zoë notices his movement and does the same. I hesitate, but then Matty gives my arm a yank. I ride the forced momentum and stumble past them both. As I come to a stop beside Cloudy, she looks up with a smile, and I become warm all over.

“Hi,” I whisper to her.

“Hey,” she whispers back.

“How are you?”

“I’ve been holding in so much. But I need to deal with it.”

I nod. That’s something I need to do, too. Deal.

Sonia’s father delivers her to her groom. We all take our seats and I’m hyperaware of Cloudy beside me. There’s so much I want to ask her and so much I want to say, but I have to wait.

The minister goes into his speech, which has a lot of flowery phrases about the gift of love and the sanctity of marriage. It reminds me of every wedding I’ve ever seen on TV. Maybe this is how all traditional weddings go.

When my parents got married, it wasn’t like this. Their ceremony was at sunrise near a Sedona vortex. It included eagle feather blessings and Native American drumming. (And technically, Matty and I were there, since Aunt Robin and Shannon were pregnant.) On that day, Shannon promised to be with my dad for the rest of her life. I assume she meant it at the time.

But whenever things got hard, she couldn’t deal with him. She couldn’t deal with either of us. She wanted to be out of our lives and now she is. That might change someday, but I doubt it. Regardless, I have other people who have always been there for me, and who always will be, in whatever way they can. My dad offered to see a counselor with me, and I think I’ll take him up on it. Maybe we can finally talk about what we lost when Shannon left us.

Beside me, Cloudy’s eyes are bright with tears. Sonia and Paco finish their vows and the minister recites a prayer. He prompts Paco to slide the ring onto his bride’s finger and to speak another set of poetic phrases.

It’s possible every wedding at this chapel includes these words, but they have a deeper meaning for Cloudy, Matty, Zoë, and me. These certain words
make the four of us sit up straighter and exchange smiles. These certain words remind us of the girl we love, whose too-short life helped make it possible for this couple to say them to each other.

When it’s Sonia’s turn to repeat those same words to her groom, I take Cloudy’s hand and squeeze it. She squeezes back.

“With this ring, I give to you my heart. I have no greater gift to give. . . .”