Happy Place

WE’RE TRAPPED IN the kitchen for the length of three more toasts to undying love before Wyn finally asks our friends to excuse us and pulls me away to “settle in.”

Kimmy purrs throatily, and Parth high-fives her for it, which makes Cleo shudder because high fives are her personal fingernails-on-a-chalkboard.

As Wyn and I are all but running up the steps, we silently struggle for control of my suitcase.

By which I mean, I’m carrying it until he pulls it easily out of my hand and shifts it to his opposite hand, where I can’t reach it.

“I’ve got it,” he says.

“Stop trying to be charming,” I hiss. “No one’s watching.”

“I’m not,” he says.

“Are too,” I say.

“No.” He jerks my bag further out of reach as I lunge for it. “I’m doing this for the sheer pleasure of annoying you.”

“If that’s all,” I say, “then you don’t have to try so hard. Your mere presence is doing the trick.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, “you’ve always made me want to aim a little higher, Harriet.”

We’re nearly home free when Sabrina appears behind us at the top of the stairs. “I forgot to tell you. We put you in the big bedroom this time.”

Wyn and I not only screech to a halt, cartoon-style, but he snatches my hand, like if he doesn’t, Sabrina might scream and drop her champagne in shock at discovering us in a strange reversed flagrante delicto, everyone fully clothed and no one touching.

At least he didn’t go straight for a handful of ass.

“The big bedroom,” he repeats, his hand relocating to the small of my back. I lean into him so hard he has to catch the wall with his shoulder so we both don’t topple over.

I wonder if we look even one percent like a couple in love, or if we’re fully projecting “rivals in a spaghetti western showdown.”

“We’re always in the kids’ room,” I say.

That’s what Sabrina’s family calls it, because it has two twin beds, rather than one king, like each of the other two bedrooms.

“Cleo and Kimmy offered to take it this time,” Sabrina says. “You two only get to see each other like once a month—we’re not going to make you spend your visit in separate beds.”

As long as Wyn and I have been together, we’ve pushed the twins together.

“We don’t mind,” I say.

Sabrina rolls her eyes. “You never mind. You’re the queen of not minding. But in this case, we do. It’s a done deal. Clee and Kim already unpacked.”

“But—”

Wyn cuts me off: “Thanks, Sabrina. That was thoughtful of you all.”

Before I can feebly protest, he herds me into the largest bedroom, like he’s a cattle dog and I’m a particularly difficult sheep.

The second the door snicks shut, I whirl on him, prepared to attack, only to be hit with the full force of his closeness, the strange intensity of being behind a closed door together.

I can feel my heart beating in the back of my throat. We’re close enough that I can see his pupils dilating. His body has decided I’m a threat he needs to analyze as quickly as possible. The feeling is mutual.

It was easy to be angry when we were downstairs, surrounded by our friends. Now I feel like I’m standing naked on a spotlighted platform for his inspection.

He finds his voice first, a low rasp. “I know this isn’t ideal.”

The ludicrousness of the statement jump-starts my brain. “Yes, Wyn. Spending a week locked in a bedroom with my ex-boyfriend is not ideal.”

“Ex-fiancé,” he says.

I stare at him.

He looks away, scratching his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know what to do.” His eyes come back to mine, too soft now, too familiar. “She called me with a speech. About how this was the end of an era. About how she’d never asked me for anything and she never would again. I tried calling you. It only rang once, but I left a voicemail.”

There was a very good reason I hadn’t gotten the message.

“I blocked your number,” I say. I got tired of lying awake late into the night with my thumb hovering over his contact number, practically aching from wishing he’d call, tell me the whole thing had been a mistake. I needed to take the possibility away, to free myself from waiting for it.

His eyes go stormy. His lips part. He looks toward the balcony, grooves rising between his eyebrows. He just has one of those vaguely tortured faces, I remind myself.

He can’t help it, and he certainly doesn’t need my comfort.

He’s the one who derailed our life together in a four-minute phone call.

His jaw muscles leap as his pale-fog eyes retrain on me. “What should I have done, Harriet?”

Found an excuse.

Simply told her no.

Not have broken my heart like it was a last-minute dinner plan.

Not have made me love you in the first place.

I shake my head.

He steps closer until he’s a question mark, hanging over me. “I’m really asking.”

On a sigh, I drop my eyes and massage my temples. “I don’t know. But now there’s nothing we can do. You can’t break up at a wedding. Especially when the guest list is four people.”

“Maybe we give them tonight,” he says. “Celebrate everything, tell them tomorrow.”

I look up at the ceiling, buying some time. Maybe in the next four seconds the world will end, and I’ll be spared making this decision.

“Harriet,” he presses.

“Fine,” I bite out. “I’m sure we can stomach each other for one more night.”

His gaze narrows, limiting the intake of light to his eyes and sharpening their focus to better suss out my expression. “Are you sure?”

No.

“I’m fine,” I say. “It’s fine.” I slump against the edge of the bed.

After a beat, he shakes himself. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

“Sure.”

He nods. “Fine.”

“Fine.” I push off the bed.

He retreats a step, keeping the space between us. “We can tell them things have been rocky for a while, and seeing how happy they were made us realize we’ve grown apart.”

My chest stings. It’s not the exact phrasing, but it’s close enough to what he said to me, months ago: We were kids when we got together, and things are different now, and it’s time we accepted that.

“You honestly think they won’t suspect anything?”

“Harriet.” His eyes flash. “They didn’t even know we’d been hooking up for a whole year.”

I step backward, only to collide with the bed so hard I rebound right into him.

We snap apart like each of us is convinced the other is made of wasps, but the faintly spicy scent of him has already hit my bloodstream.

“This might be harder than that,” I say stiffly.

Wyn’s hand rakes back through his hair, his T-shirt riding up to expose a sliver of his waist so sensually you’d think there was an art director in the corner barking orders.

I force my eyes back to his face.

“We can handle one night.”

He’s trying to make one night sound like a mere accumulation of minutes. I know better. When we’re together, time never moves at a normal pace.

I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. “We should’ve told everyone months ago.”

“But we didn’t,” he says.

At first, it wasn’t intentional. I was just too stunned, hurt, and—yes—in denial. Then, a few days after the breakup, a box of my stuff had arrived on my doorstep. No note, so abrupt I half wondered whether he’d dumped me while en route to the nearest UPS.

Then I was angry. So I mailed his stuff back to him on the same day. Even tossed my engagement ring in loose when I realized I couldn’t find the blue velvet box it came in.

Three days after that, a second package, a small lump of brown paper, arrived. He’d sent the ring back. I knew him well enough to know he was trying to do the right thing, which only made me angrier, so I’d immediately mailed it back to him. When he got it, he texted me for the first time in two weeks: You should keep the ring. It belongs to you.

I don’t want it, I replied. More like, I couldn’t bear it.

You could sell it, he said.

So could you, I said.

Five minutes passed before he messaged again. He asked if I’d told Cleo and Sabrina. The thought nauseated me. Telling them was going to destroy our friend group, ten years of history down the drain.

Waiting until I can catch them both at the same time, I said. It was only halfway a lie.

I’d told a couple of coworkers at the hospital but barely texted with Cleo and Sabrina. We were all so busy.

Sabrina and Parth worked late for their respective law firms most nights, and because running a farm meant lots of four a.m. wake-up calls, Cleo and Kimmy went to bed early.

Out in Montana, Wyn has the Connor family furniture repair business to run, and his mom to help out.

And then there’s me, in my own time zone out in San Francisco, two years deep into my training at UCSF. Most days I’m operating at a level of tired that goes beyond yawns and eyelid twitches to reach straight to my core. My organs are tired. My bones are exhausted.

My time off is usually spent at the pottery studio down the block, or watching old episodes of Murder, She Wrote while cleaning the apartment Wyn and I picked out together two years ago, before things went south with his mom’s Parkinson’s and he went back to Montana.

The long-distance arrangement was supposed to be temporary, only as long as it took for Wyn’s younger sister to finish grad school and move back, take over Gloria’s care. So Wyn left, and we made it work, until we didn’t.

I didn’t have to ask whether Wyn had told Parth about the breakup. I would’ve heard from everyone if he had. So instead I’d asked about Wyn’s mom. Does Gloria know?

Not the right time, he said. After a minute he added, She’s been trying to get me to go back to SF. She already feels so guilty I’m here. Tried to check herself into an assisted-living home without telling me. If I tell her now that we broke up, she’ll blame herself.

I loved Gloria, and I hated the idea of upsetting her. Still, I thought about suggesting Wyn tell her the truth. That as far as he was concerned, it was all my fault.

He messaged me once more: Can we wait to tell everyone? Just a little while?

And I’d not only agreed, I’d been immensely relieved to put off those conversations, to relegate them to the realm of Problems for Future Harriet. After two months, on a night that I found myself perilously close to calling him, I finally blocked his number. Though I’d occasionally unblock long enough to engage with him in the group chat; I’d always been a sporadic texter, so I figured the others wouldn’t notice. A month after that, I’d initiated the email conversation over how to handle the yearly trip, and we’d settled on the plan. The plan that currently lay in shambles somewhere in the kitchen.

That was two months ago, and now Future Harriet has some choice words for Past Harriet about her shitty decision-making abilities.

She’s the reason we’re in this situation.

I focus on the thin ring of green around Wyn’s irises rather than the entirely too overwhelming totality of him. “How will it work?”

He shrugs. “We just pretend we’re together a little longer, then come clean.”

I start to cross my arms, but Wyn’s standing too close, so rather than wedge my arms between our stomachs, I awkwardly return them to my sides. “Yeah, I got that. I’m talking about the rules.” I brace myself so I can say, nearly evenly, “Do we touch? Do we kiss?”

He glances sidelong, a little embarrassed, guilty. “They know what I’m like with you.”

A very diplomatic way of saying they’ll expect him to be touching me, constantly. Pulling me into his lap or hooking me under his arm or wrapping my hair around his hand and kissing me at the dinner table as if we’re entirely alone, burrowing his face into my neck while I’m talking, or tracing my bottom lip when I’m not, and—

The point is, some people live the bulk of their lives in their minds (me), and some are highly physical beings (Wyn).

Briefly I fantasize about pitching myself out the window, over the cliffs, and into the ocean, swimming until I reach Europe. I’d happily take Nova Scotia.

But as someone who’s not a highly physical being, I’d probably knock myself unconscious on the way down and awake to a shirtless Wyn performing mouth-to-mouth.

“No touching when no one’s around to see it,” I say quickly. “When we’re with the others, we’ll . . . do whatever we have to do.”

His head cocks. “I’m going to need more specific guidelines than that.”

“You know what I mean,” I say.

He stares, waits. I stare back.

“Holding hands?” he asks.

I’m not sure why that of all things makes my heart shoot up into my esophagus. “Acceptable.”

His chin dips in confirmation. “What can I touch? Lower back, hips, arms?”

“Do you want me to draw you a diagram,” I say.

“Desperately.”

“It was a joke,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “And yet that doesn’t make me any less curious.”

“Back, hips, arms, stomach are fine,” I say, stomach warming ten degrees for every word.

“Mouth?” he says.

I glance over at the side table. A black leather folder sits propped up there, like a dinner check waiting to be collected. “Are you talking about touching my mouth or kissing it?”

“Either,” he says. “Both.”

I grab the folder and flip through it, pretending to read while I wait for my synapses to stop screaming.

“Itinerary.”

At my evident confusion, Wyn juts his chin toward the document I’ve been “reading.” “We’ve got personalized itineraries.”

“But . . . we do the same thing every year,” I say.

“I think that’s the point,” he says. “It’s a keepsake. Plus, Sabrina planned some individual surprises for us for Saturday, so she and Parth can have a little alone time before the wedding.”

“Oh my god.” I study the page in earnest. “She’s got bathroom breaks on here, Wyn.”

When I look up, he’s caught off guard.

A memory flares bright, swelling from the back of my mind until it overtakes the present: Wyn and I hopscotching across the wet rocks at the bottom of the cliffs behind the house. Yelping and leaping aside as the tide’s icy fingers raced toward us. From down the beach, the sound of our friends’ laughter spiraled up into the night sky, carried by the smoke of our bonfire.

I’d volunteered to run up to the house for another six-pack, and Wyn, who never sat still if he could help it, came along. We raced each other up the rickety stairs to the cottage’s back patio, choking over laughter.

You’re a six-foot-tall block of muscle, Wyn. How am I beating you?

His hand caught mine as we reached the patio, the flagstone aglow with the strange green light of the heated saltwater pool. It was the first time he’d touched my fingers. We’d known each other only a few days then, on our first group trip here, and my whole body hummed from the simple contact. He murmured, You hardly ever say my name.

I must’ve shivered, because his brow pinched, and he peeled his sweatshirt, the Mattingly one with the tear in the neck, over his shoulders.

I told him I was fine, through chattering teeth. He stepped in closer, slowly, and pulled his sweatshirt down over my head, pinning my arms to my sides and making my hair wild with static.

Better? he asked. It terrified and thrilled me how, with that one quiet word, he could make my insides shimmer, shake me up like a snow globe.

When we were with the others, I could still barely look at him.

But because Wyn and I had been the last to arrive, or maybe because the others had decided our friendship should begin with a trial by fire, we’d been sharing the kids’ room all week, and every night, when we turned off the lights, we’d trade whispers back and forth from our beds on opposite sides of the room. Talk for hours.

I rarely said his name, though. It felt too much like an incantation. As if it would light me up from the inside, and he’d see how much I wanted him, how all day long my mind caught on him like a scar in a record. How, without even trying, I knew exactly where he was at all times, could likely cover my eyes, get spun around, and still point to him on the first try.

And I couldn’t want him. Because my best friend did. Because he’d become an important part of Sabrina’s and Cleo’s lives, and I wouldn’t mess that up.

Besides, I told myself, my reaction to him didn’t mean anything. Just a biological imperative to procreate, setting off little fireworks through my nervous system. Not the kind of thing you could build any kind of lasting relationship on. I told myself I was too smart to think I was falling in love with him. Because I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

If only I’d been right.

Now Wyn pulls the itinerary out of my hands, his gaze traveling across the open page.

“I genuinely love how organized Sabrina is,” I say. “But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. And when you’re mentioning bowel movements on your group vacation schedule, I think you’ve hit it.”

Wyn returns the folder to the end table. “You think this is bad, but it’s nothing compared to the packing list Parth sent me. He told me how many pairs of underwear to bring. So either my ‘personalized surprise’ on Saturday is going to end badly, or he thinks I’m incapable of counting my own underwear.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” I say. “I’m sure it’s a little of both.”

As he laughs, his dimples flash, little dark pricks in his scruffy jaw. For a second, it’s like we’ve come unglued from the timeline, tumbled back a year.

Then he steps back from me. “The next fifteen minutes are scheduled for relaxing before lunch,” he says, “so I’ll leave you to it.”

I nod.

He nods.

He moves toward the door, hesitates there for a second.

And then he’s gone, and I’m still frozen where he left me. I do not relax.