Page 87 of A Storybook Wedding

It’s not who I am.

I follow rules. I study. I work hard.

And I don’t fail well.

Case in point: Bryce and Jamie. I know in my rational brain that what happened with them was a timing thing, in much the same way that Alice Devereaux and Nate experienced their “similar themes” issue at Boone. Right place, right time. Or maybe wrong place, wrong time—depending on who you are in the story. In the case of Bryce and Jamie, he was in a bad emotional place, she was a familiar face, and whatever happened after that happened. When Jamie asked me—and to be fair, she did ask me first—of course it felt like a major blow to my self-esteem. So I started writing about it. Writing seemed like a safe space to take those feelings. It didn’t help that the online dating scene is a cruel manifestation of every reality show that’s ever existed. (Love Island? Double Shot at Love with DJ Pauly D and Vinny? Or, perhaps my all-time favorite, Love Is Blind?) There was no way to manifest winning at love out there in cyber-hell.

So I redefined the idea of winning by pursuing the only thing that was making me feel better: words, arranged into sentences, crafted into paragraphs, and woven into stories about girls who don’t need love in order to live a fulfilling life.

I thought I was one of those girls.

Now, I’m not so sure.

I’m mad at Nate. Like, really mad. If he had just kept his mouth shut, I wouldn’t have any of these issues. I could have talked my way out of the public FaceTime debacle with a few swift lies and a phone call to my family later on to clarify everything.

Probably.

It didn’t have to go this way.

Now, everything we worked for is gone—poof! Out the window like an accidentally erased Microsoft Word document. And for all the let’s snag an agent by adding accolades to my query letter business, now I’ll have even less to report on those letters. What am I going to write? Dear Agent, I was in an MFA program, but I got released after defrauding the program’s director. Please sign me though, because my writing’s hella strong. I don’t think so.

I’m royally fucked.

It doesn’t help that I’m not much of a fighter. Lots of people enjoy a good fight; they like to prove their points and be right. But I’ve always been of the mindset that it’s more important to be happy than it is to be right, so I just don’t fight with people. I’m an introvert at heart. I don’t like to scream and yell my feelings out there to the whole world. Plus, people don’t fight fair. They’re not genuinely listening to what points you make or what you have to say. In my experience, anything that looks like listening is actually just your opponent grimacing while internally constructing their rebuttal. Some people may find it annoying, but when life gives me lemons, I just ask the lemons to please leave me alone until I can figure out what to do with them. Which is what I am doing with Nate for the moment.

I hear him close the door behind him, and I am grateful for the lack of drama with which he leaves the room. I’m not sure where he’ll go—Nate and I have never fought before, so I don’t know what his standard operating procedure is for arguments—but I figure maybe he’s headed to one of the rooms downstairs to sit and read, or maybe he’ll grab a drink at the party (or even from the kitchen staff, who all seem to find him pretty charming) and try to talk Dillon Norway into reducing our sentence. I don’t know what his plans are, but it’s nice not to have this already embarrassing situation get even worse with the two of us engaging in a useless shouting match.

It’s tempting to make a list like I normally would, but right now I know the first thing I need to do is clear the air with my parents.

I wash my hair, and I give myself a much-needed scalp massage, then rinse all the suds off my body and wrap myself up in the towel hanging off the back of the bathroom door. My eyes peruse the shelf of split toiletries and notice our toothbrushes, side by side. Crazy to think that just six months ago, Nate was just a professor at my school, a presumably arrogant award-winning author whose weak stomach would likely never see another lobster again.

Man, how things change.

I dry off, pull on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and wrap my hair in the towel. Then I park myself at the little desk and brace myself as I swipe through my phone, FaceTiming my mom.

Her tear-streaked face appears on the screen.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hi, Cecily,” she replies.

“I owe you an explanation. Where’s Dad?” I ask.

“He’s right here.” My mother shifts the camera angle so that I can see them both.

“Are Jamie and Bryce there too?”

“They’re downstairs. Should we get them?”

“Please don’t. At least not yet. Did Jamie see the livestream?”

Mom nods.

I exhale, making a mental note to call her next. “Is she okay?”

She shakes her head. “No, she’s not.”

“That’s fair. Don’t worry—I’ll talk to her.”

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