Page 27 of The Lovers
I’ve never worked this hard to keep the side of my thigh from brushing against another person’s body,ever. I’ve never tried to ignore the scent of someone’s perfume, shampoo, or skinharder. And none of my efforts are actually working.
Not because I can’t control my attention. I am a master of self-restraint. I could teach lessons on compartmentalization, especially in stressful work scenarios where getting thrown for a loop simply can’t happen.
It’s not my self-control that’s in question.
It’s the driver’s ability to navigate a rocky road without sudden, sharp corrections. The bus takes a turn down a new, lonely road, and in the distance I see the glow of the Glamp-Out. But only for a second, because his overcorrection of the wheel jostles me in Kit’s direction. My hand drops to the seat between us as I try to maintain my balance, but the jostling goes both ways. Her hip rolls over the leather seat and right on top of my hand.
“Sorry,” she gasps. We go over a bump and my hand slips farther beneath her.
“Sorry,” I say, yanking it fast, forming and unforming a fist. She clutches the beaded bag she’s holding until her knuckles go white.
“You could have sat literally anywhere else,” she hisses through tight lips.
“In the fray of bridesmaids and bachelorette mayhem?” I reply, looking down the length of the bus to where two of them—Natalie and one of the twin influencers Millie invited for the kickoff of her marital bliss events, Lisa—twirl around the pole giving the bride-to-be a show. They somehow manage to stay upright and on beat to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” despite the haphazard driving pattern of this journey.
Kit’s eyes follow my gaze, fighting back a smile. She wants to agree. And I want to play along. The camaraderie we once shared as best friends flares between us like a freshly lit wick.
“You don’t want to sit next to Piper?” The tenor of her voice raises a tad at the end of Piper’s name. The sign of a person trying for casual and failing.
She’s already figured out that there is some kind of connection between Piper and me. Somehow. And no, not because she’s psychic. Kit Larson has exceptional people reading skills. Always has. A gift to her, a curse to everyone else.
And, anyway, I don’t believe in psychics.
I look away from her, ignoring the draw I feel to rekindle our connection. It’s just muscle memory, nothing else. It can’t be more, not with how things ended between us that summer.
Kit texted me a goodbye before she left for college. It had onlybeen a week since we were making plans to go on a date. It had only been a week since I told her I loved her after we hooked up. It had only been a week since she stood me up.
She said she was sorry. She said she hoped I would be happy at NYU.
She said she would miss me.
It shouldn’t be this easy to talk to her now. I shouldn’t want to know everything that’s happened since she walked away from us. I shouldn’t care about her at all.
But somehow, I still do.
Millie rises, calling all of us to attention as Rihanna belts out the final “shine bright like a diamond” through the speakers and the engine shuts off. The pink, purple, and blue neon lights beam over the backdrop of Millie’s white dress and fair skin, turning her into the bi flag.
“Before we get swept up in the magic, I wanted to make sure to thank each one of you for being here.” Her eyes drift over the bodies of her bridesmaids and friends, even dropping briefly to land on me and Kit. I feel weird about being here, trespassing on her meaningful moment with the women she calls her friends, just because I want to keep Piper and Kit away from each other. A feat I still do not know how I’ll actually manage since Kit will be giving tarot readings to every member of the bachelorette party, and Piper is a panther on the prowl, impossible to trap.
“Marriage is a wild adventure, and you all know Sean is expecting me to take the wheel and steer us on the road,” she says, chuckling. Her friends snort and hoot, and Heather, the full-figured fandom model, makes a swift reference to Captain America’s ass, which seems to be some kind of inside joke I don’t evenwantto understand.
Sean may be the consummate bro, but where his frat boy exterior and lucrative job should make him a chauvinistic dick, he never fails to pivot in surprising directions. In our first meeting, as Millie passionately laid out her vision for the wedding of her dreams, Sean quietly dipped her tea bag in hot water and nodded in agreement with every word she said. “Millie knows best” feels like more than a platitude. It’s a mantra he happily lives by.
“It’s just fate we’re all here together,” Millie says, blinking back tears.
Goose bumps rise on my skin at the sound of the f-word. My eyes reflexively slide to glance at Kit.
And I mentally kick myself for it.
?“The sky is trippy,” Coco says, her massive brown eyes searching the expanse above her.
The sun set while we were driving over, turning everything outside an inky black. The stars blanket the sky as far as we can see. Vast, tiny, twinkling diamonds, just like that Rihanna song. Somehow, the black isn’t solid, but infused with a wash of deep purple and indigo, glowing silver around the full moon.
The Glamp-Out is designed for parties of ten to twenty guests max. There’s the ceremonial yurt at the center, the focal point which everything else is designed around. The smaller sleeping tents spiral out from it, so that from above it looks like a shell in the sandy desert. They light the paths with electric lanterns that look like old-fashioned gas lamps, but that aren’t a fire hazard to the groves of Joshua trees surrounding the area. A little way off from the main campground is a firepit area that sits low in the earth and is surrounded by a basin of water for safety.
I trail behind the bachelorette group and Kit as we make our way toward the center yurt. The canvas tents are all prepared with name plaques for each guest who is spending the night on the grounds. Neither Kit nor I have a spot, so at the end of the festivities we will have to take the bus back together.
Alone.
