Page 77 of The First Kind of Love
The truth fluctuates from my lips with a croak. “Shiloh. She’s gone.”
Murmurs of disbelief break out through my team, and Bristol steps forward like he would during an intermission. “What happened?”
I can see the bridesmaids out of my peripheral, talking amongst themselves in hushed whispers and unified worry. I pray that the guests haven’t caught on to my hyperventilating, because the last thing this wedding needs is a lunatic ruining the mood and sobbing over his girlfriend of three minutes.
“She just…she left. She got a call from her parents about some investor waiting for her in Riverside. He can give them a business loan, and she couldn’t pass up the opportunity.”
I feel like shit for disclosing her financial situation.
“I didn’t know her business was in trouble,” Kit comments. He’s bouncing baby Eda on his hip, who’s outfitted in an adorable, pastel-pink dress with puffy sleeves.
The girls—with some kind of sixth sense for broken hearts and equally pathetic men—cross the makeshift stage, holding up the hems of their bridesmaid dresses so their heels don’t catch on the ankle-length material.
“You just let her leave?” Cali exclaims, looking like she’s seconds away from taking her bouquet and whacking me over the head with it.
“Why didn’t you go after her?” Lila inquires at the same time.
Ouch. I mean, I deserve the judgement. What idiot lets the love of his life catch an Uber to the airport after she tells him she’s on a one-woman mission to save her family’s business?
The last thing I want to do is try and save my own ass, but everything kind of just expels out of me like a projectile word vomit. The temperature’s already doing nothing for the sweat seeping through my dress shirt, and my pulse is so unhealthily fast that if the heatstroke doesn’t take me out, tachycardia will. And I only know that term because I’m a hypochondriac.
“I didn’t know what to do. I was in shock. And then we got into this fight, and I made things personal, and I didn’t even consider how hard the decision must’ve been for her, and I let her leave thinking that I hate her, and?—”
Hayes baits my attention, practically grabbing me by the scruff. “Dude, I’m saying this to you as one of your best friends: you need to ditch my fucking wedding and chase after the mother of your future children.”
“That’s a little presumptuous…”
He rolls his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Fulton. You know what I mean.”
“But what about the wedding?”
Even with the support from my friends, my anxiety has taken on a form of its own, mutating into a gigantic hive mind that can’t be destroyed without burning the host. Not only am I going to miss my best friend’s wedding, but I’m racing against a countdown clock to catch Shiloh before she boards that fucking plane.
“We’ll halt the wedding. Just go! Before she leaves!”
“You’d halt the entire wedding so that I can chase after thegirl I love?” Subsumed in an immeasurable amount of love, it feels like a jar of butterflies has been uncapped in my belly, and if I wasn’t being pulled in all different directions right now, I’d probably allocate enough energy to cry.
I thought that baring my soul was the scariest, most painful thing I could ever do, but the truth is, vulnerability is the gateway to creating something stronger, something lasting, something that transcends time and every obstacle the world could possibly throw at you.
“We’re family, dumbass. We’d wait forever for you.”
Come back to me,Sunshine. I need you.
About thirteen minutes later, after running two red lights and driving Hayes’ rental car like I was inGrand Theft Auto, I pull up to the airport with zero direction and even less confidence. According to the airline’s website, the next flight to Riverside takes off in T-minus four minutes, and Shiloh’s presumably at Gate B15. I bought an insanely expensive ticket just so I could enter the airport and bypass TSA.
I’ve left her about thirty texts and twenty-five voicemails, but she hasn’t answered me—whether it’s due to an external circumstance or a broken heart, I have no idea. The bottom line is getting ahold of her is going to be impossible.
I realize how idiotic this plan is—hell, it isn’t even aplanat all. And that’s not just the pessimism talking. This is one of those grand gestures I see in romance movies all the time, except this isn’t a movie, and the possibility of finding Shiloh and smoothing things over in the next four minutes is peak insanity. I haven’t even rehearsed what I’m going to say to her.
Hayes and Aeris stopped their fucking wedding for me. Me!
As much as it pains me to consider this alternative, I might just have to live with the fact that I’ll be watching my bestfriend’s wedding through a shoddy recording on some rando’s phone. In some deep, dark, unplumbed part of my conscience, I know that I can’t ask her to come back with me. I just can’t. If that means following her to Riverside to be the support system she’s always been for me, then so be it.
She’s drifting out to sea. Don’t let her get away.
Pushing past people and mumbling short-of-breath apologies like I’m a mother of five reaching for the last pressure cooker on Black Friday, I rush to the elevator, bursting out of those metal doors with a speed I’ve never even reached during hockey games. Shiloh’s name leaps from my tongue and harpoons into the air, roaring above the mindless chatter that weasels through the teeming crowd.
I’m going to run out of time. I’m going to lose her. Fuck! I need to move faster. Come on, Fulton!
