Page 45 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

“So you’re planning to just wallow on the couch and do nothing?”

I look at him through the blur of tears that I can’t seem to hold back.

“The Kendra Munroe I knew was way too impulsive and made some really horrible choices, but at least she acted. She wasn’t a coward.”

“Yeah, well, that was a lifetime ago. Maybe two lifetimes.” My voice cracks. Is that really how he sees me? As a coward? “And those horrible choices finally taught me that you can’t just go charging into a situation without considering the consequences.”

We look at each other. Me through the blur of those blasted tears. Him through the distorted lens of memory.

“You have to see her,” he says. “This is not about us. Not now anyway. You have to at least try.”

The floodgates open. Hot tears slide down my cheeks. I cry atthe futility of trying to fix what I’ve broken. At his belief that this is even possible. I cry because I’ve been called a coward by someone who once loved and respected me. And because he’s right.

“I don’t understand how you can just sit here and donothing!”

My head jerks up at the accusation. He may think he still knows me, but I don’t see how that’s possible. I don’t even recognize me anymore.

“I’m not doing nothing, damn you! I’m grieving.”

Lauren

Spencer and I spend a good part of Sunday afternoon wandering around downtown Manteo. We linger in front of the Tudor-style Pioneer Theatre, which has been owned by the Creef family since the ’30s. “It’s the longest-running family-owned movie theater in the country,” I say proudly, as if I’ve had something to do with this other than growing up watching movies here. “Bree and I used to come to the matinee every Saturday.”

“What did you see?”

“Didn’t matter. Then we’d go browse Davis’s Everything to Wear or the Attic Addict and end up at Title Waves, where we’d read all the back-cover blurbs and opening paragraphs of the new releases and imagine our own novels on the shelves.”

“It’s not everyone who makes as many of their dreams come true as you have.”

“No.” I look into his eyes and a smile tugs at my lips. “We’re lucky, aren’t we?”

“Ummm-hmmm,” he agrees. “What’s that old saying? The harder you work...”

“... the luckier you get. My mother...” I stumble on the word. “She used to say that to me.”

“Lauren...”

“No.” I can tell by his tone that he intends to use my mention of her as an opening, and I’m nowhere near ready for that. I turn and head for the waterfront and am relieved when he falls in at my side without argument. In silence, we stroll the boardwalk past boats bobbing in their slips at the marina then walk out the dock to the Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse. Sunlight dances on the water and marsh grass sways gently in the breeze on the opposite bank where theElizabeth II, a reproduction of the ships that sailed from England to Roanoke Island in 1584 and 1587, is moored.

I keep the conversation casual. I tell him about how the waterfront was revitalized—turned from a working port into the idyllic setting it is now.

“This is really lovely.”

Despite my efforts to keep things light, my head is still spinning with yesterday’s revelations and the arrival of a father whom I’m thrilled to meet but who showed my mother to be so much less than I’ve always thought. “Sorry. What did you say?”

“I said, the waterfront is lovely.”

“Oh. Yes...”

We watch a boat leave a nearby dock and head out into the sound. My brain keeps circling back to the one place I don’t want it to go.

There are so many things I planned to show Spencer. A week is nowhere near enough time to do the Outer Banks justice. Or to look at even a portion of the possible places to hold a small, intimate beach wedding. Not that I have any desire to get married here now that my past has been so radically altered.

My mind stumbles on the wordalteredand I realize that it’s not just the venues that have lost their allure. Now that I know my mother ran from my father and never actually got married in it, THE DRESS no longer feels like a harbinger of happily ever after.

Bottom line, if it weren’t for Jake I would have driven us straight back to the airport yesterday. We’d already be home in New York.

“You really need to talk to your mother.” Spencer says this quietly, but with determination.

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