Page 5 of The Lovers
I blink, squeezing the bridge of my nose, exhaling a sharp puff through my nostrils.
I’ve had oodles of crushes on women, but I’m still not brave enough to take my yearning outside the safety of my daydreams.
I’m not straight—not even close. But, wow, the undeniable existence of my queerness doesn’t make it any easier tobe. How do you take a secret you’ve kept hidden away for all of forever and make it public? How do you say it out loud and have it not become the only thing anyone ever sees again?
Acceptance doesn’t mean it’s comfortable.
Or easy.
It doesn’t make you ready to process other people knowing; it doesn’t make you willing to change your life—because it does change your life. There’s no way it doesn’t. Maybe for the better, but then, I cite my previous experience and ExhibitMom’s B-Day Brunchas evidence to the contrary.
So…
I daydream. I yearn.
But my reality stays the same.
Why the hell does Mom have to shake everything up?
The Ideal Rom-Com Life Path is just fine. It’s a path Mom and Dad always made look iconic. It’s a path that was supposed toensure that all-important Happily Ever After. Hugh Grant in a ruffled button-down, Tom Hanks at the top of the Empire State Building,insert your favorite rom-com hero here, that’s what we’re going for.
That’s the path.
Your mother is leaving me for a thirty-two-year-old British chippie.Dad’s words ring again in my head. They land, a lead weight in my gut. The perfect Nancy Meyers couple is splitting up.
Maybe the path is fucked.
Chapter Two
Julia
There’s a spot on the collar of my button-down. Dark, like a bit of ink, and it’s dotted right where the swoop meets my collarbone. A small detail that’s not quite right, but the exact kind that I fixate on without any discrimination. I also prepare for such a time as this as if it’s an inevitability and not an inconvenience. My therapist—the most recent one—called it a trauma response. When she tried to schedule a follow-up appointment, I left her on read for weeks until finally I replied with my go-to excuse.
Busy.
Always busy. Never available even for myself.
I open my desk drawer and pull out the Tide to go pen standing upright in the tray. Easy access for me, or any one of my brides, in a pinch. I carry a few of these in my Wedding Day belt bag at all times. Along with a travel-sized hair spray, mouthwash, and touch-up mascara to make the bride feel blissfully at ease on her special day.
The pen does its work, and I breathe out a sigh of relief. I swearto God, watching stains disappear is an unmatched catharsis. My previous therapist wanted me to unpack that further. I ghosted him without any remorse.
Don’t you want to relinquish control?Well-meaning friends always ask this, always as if they are the first to inquire and this question will be the catalyst to my emotional rebirth. It’s sweet, and I usually humor them because, despite all the thorns on my skin, I crave connection and community like the only child and formerly motherless, desperately lonely woman that I am.
But that never changes the truth.
Relinquishis a synonym forlose. I only lose when I let go.
A quick rap of knuckles on my door pulls me back to the moment. Zoe Hayes, my assistant, peeks through the opening. Big brown eyes, tan skin, more hair than she knows what to do with. Mostly she braids it or wears it in a black mass on top of her head.
“Ten-minute warning,” Zoe says.
I cap the Tide to go pen and set it back in its place, shutting the drawer.
“Let’s go over the high points, just so I’m refreshed,” I say. Her smile is a bit dramatic, wide with very straight, white teeth. Dramatic, but lovely. Just like Zoe. She pushes into the room and closes the door behind her. She’s clutching an iPad to her chest like it’s priceless.
And I suppose it is, in a way. A priceless tool of the Morgan-Hayden wedding. A boho-chic, spiritually infused California dream set against the whimsical desertscape of Joshua Tree. Not only is Millie Morgan, the bride, a high-profile client with her two-million-plus social media following as a lifestyle influencer (yeah, that’s a thing), but this wedding is a first for me in more ways than one.
Zoe sits across from me, waking up the iPad, which is linked to my desktop computer through Bluetooth.
