Diary of a Single Wedding Planner (Tales Behind the Veils Book 1) (6 page)

“Okay, see you at four.”

“See you then.” He hung up and my feelings swirled in a whirlpool of anticipation, giddiness, hurt, and resentment. One minute I couldn’t wait for four o’clock to get here. The next I wanted to call him back, tell him I was busy, and I didn’t have time to talk.

As the day progressed, my raging thoughts built to a tempest. How can you just drop someone’s friendship and disappear? Especially your best friend? On some level, I understood his relationship needed to come first. If I married someone, I wouldn’t want some other chick hanging around being his best friend and confidante. So I got that. Really, I did. I wanted what was best for Cabe. I wanted him to be happy even more than I wanted me to be happy. So if me being gone would make him happy, then I was willing to do that for him. I did do it. But it hurt like hell.

It still hurts now, more than I’ve cared to admit all this time. I don’t like feeling like I didn’t matter. Like our friendship didn’t matter. I wanted to be as important to him as he was to me. I thought I was. But evidently, I was only a chocolate chip cookie.

I couldn’t even focus on the files on my desk. The more I thought about it, the madder I got. I decided I didn’t want to be at his beck and call. Who calls someone up after virtually no contact for months and expects them to drop everything and be available? What kind of idiot person says, “Okay, I’ll be there”?

I snatched my phone and texted him to say something came up. We’d have to meet tomorrow instead. A stronger person probably would have canceled altogether, but I wanted to see him. As much as I needed to make a point, I also missed my friend.

Part of me hoped he would say tomorrow wouldn’t work. Then I could feel justified somehow and stay mad at him forever. Another part of me wanted him to insist on seeing me today as though he couldn’t wait any longer.

He did neither. He just texted me back.

“Tomorrow at the lake at four. Got it.”

Pins and needles here.

Tuesday, October 15th

The clock moved as slow as molasses today. By the time I got to the office this morning, I’d worked myself into a frenzy over putting Cabe off last night, especially since he sounded upset. Maybe he didn’t call to let me know he was coming home because something was terribly wrong. Like an emergency that required him to come home with no notice. What if he has cancer or something? What if his mom is sick? What if Monica is sick? What could have made him sound so sad?

I felt guilty for not going to him yesterday. Here I was, criticizing him for being a bad friend, yet I was being completely selfish and not thinking about him. It took considerable effort all day to resist the temptation to call and ask if he wanted to meet earlier. How funny that after so long without any contact, I felt like I had to analyze and pre-think something as simple as calling Cabe. It used to be so natural and normal. It didn’t require thought or planning. But suddenly it felt like trying to figure out the dance steps with some guy I just met. Aargh.

By two-thirty, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I left the office, figuring I’d rather be on the road and headed toward him than sitting at my desk watching the clock every five minutes. Time wasn’t moving fast enough, and I wasn’t getting anything done anyway.

I stopped by a deli to pick up a sandwich and check my hair and makeup in the ladies’ room. How odd. I don’t think I’ve ever checked my hair and makeup to see Cabe before. He’s seen me first thing in the morning numerous times when we crashed on each other’s couches. More often than not after a raucous evening out that didn’t exactly make for the best appearance the morning after. He’s brought me Gatorade and saltines when I was throwing up nonstop with the flu, held my hair back while I puked, and then wiped my face with a wet cloth while I lay motionless on the bathroom floor. I usually never bothered to put on makeup if we were hanging out, so it felt weird to suddenly be all self-conscious about how I looked.

“It’s just Cabe,” I kept telling myself. Not seeing him for so many months combined with a tad bit of insecurity about our friendship had me rattled. Stupid, I know. It’s not like he would have sacrificed his relationship with Monica to save our friendship if I had looked prettier. Maybe it was a girl thing. You want someone to see you looking great and thinking you have fared well without them. Which I had. But it hadn’t always been easy.

Even though I arrived twenty minutes early, he was already there. My heart lifted as soon as I saw him on the bench. I felt nothing but complete happiness. No hurt or resentment. No self-consciousness or awkwardness. Just Cabe. My best friend. I could relax and completely be myself. More so than I have ever been with anyone else.

I snuck up behind him and reached my hands around to cover his eyes.

“I’ll give you three chances to guess who I am, and the first two don’t count.”

He grabbed my hands and tried to pull me over the back of the bench and into his lap as he laughed. I wrenched free and he stood up, turning to hug me. His face shocked me. He had a full, messy, thick, curly, Grizzly Adams beard going on.

“What the hell? Is this some kind of Seattle thing?” I asked, tugging on his beard. He laughed again, and I could see his perfect white teeth hidden in all that funky hair. He had such an incredible smile. Dazzling, the girls would say, which I teased him about without mercy.

His sandy blond hair had darkened since he left, and it hung shaggy around his face with thick curls almost grazing his shoulders. He looked thin, much thinner than I had ever seen him. His flannel shirt hung on his shoulders and the blue T-shirt underneath didn’t touch his chest or ribs. He seemed to be swimming in his khaki pants.

“Does that girl never cook for you?” I asked. “Or does eating all that organic hipster food not keep the meat on your bones?”

His smile faded and tears welled in his eyes, the moisture intensifying the clear blue.

“What? Cabe, what? What is it?”

He reached out his arms and I fell into them, squeezing him as hard as I could. Trying to make up for months without his big bear hugs.

“What’s going on?” I didn’t want to let go of him, but I wanted to know what was wrong. Every horrible disease imaginable flashed in my brain as I tried to figure out what could cause such a drastic weight loss in this guy who had been so muscular and meaty.

“She left me, Ty. She doesn’t love me. She doesn’t want me anymore.” His voice broke and sobs racked his body as he squeezed me so tight I couldn’t breathe. I struggled to twist my head from one side to the other against his chest, trying to find air. He let me go and almost shoved me away from him as he turned toward the lake, wiping his eyes with closed fists like a little kid.

“What? When? Oh, Cabe, I am so sorry. What happened?”

He squatted by the lake, pulling strands of grass to toss in the water as he spoke.

“Three months ago. She’d been working a lot, gone all the time. I didn’t see much of her. She spent most of her time with her friend Kristen. Going out after work every night. Coming in all hours. We were fighting a bunch. I mean, hell, I was lonely. I moved all the way across the frickin’ country to be with someone who was never home. I finally asked if she would rather be married to Kristen. I meant it as a rhetorical question, but she said yes. She said they were in love, and she couldn’t pretend with me anymore.”

I sank on the bench and exhaled. I didn’t even know I’d been holding my breath.

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Wow.”

He stood up and faced me, his hands in his back pockets. He looked so thin, so fragile. I had never seen this Cabe. This broken shell of the incredibly confident and outgoing boy I knew so well. My heart hurt to see him in such pain.

“She moved out that weekend. No talking it over. No counseling. Nothing. She moved in with Kristen, moved on with her life, and left me to pick up the pieces. She didn’t even want anything from the apartment. Furniture, dishes. None of it. It was like she wanted nothing at all to do with our life. She just left and never looked back.”

A selfish, immature part of me shouted somewhere deep inside,
“Hey, I know how that feels.”
Luckily, I shoved it back to the depths from which it came. Now was not the time to be nursing my own wounds. His were much more threatening at the moment.

“Cabe, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I can’t even imagine what you must be feeling. I’m sorry. Are you okay? Well, obviously not. Stupid question. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I keep saying I’m sorry. I just . . . I don’t . . . I just . . .”

“Yeah. Me too,” he said. He came and sat on the bench beside me. I leaned my head on his shoulder, resting my hand on his thigh.

We sat there for a few minutes in total silence before it dawned on me. I wish it hadn’t. I wish I could have never thought it. Because I feel like I must be a self-absorbed, vile creature if that popped into my head at a time when my very best friend on Earth hurt so desperately. But it did pop into my head. No matter how hard I tried to swallow it back down, I couldn’t. Then, I heard myself blurt it out, even though I was thinking the whole time that I shouldn’t.

“This happened three months ago? Why didn’t you call me? I mean, I would think you would have wanted to talk to me.”

I know, I know. Could I be any more self-absorbed? Really? The dude’s wife left him for another chick. He’s lost like fifty pounds in grief. Here I am concerned because I wasn’t the first person he called. I am truly a terrible person. A terrible friend. But my feelings were hurt.

Cabe didn’t look at me when he answered. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t talk to anyone. I was a zombie. I went to work, came home, and slept. I slept any time I wasn’t at work. I couldn’t eat. I just wanted to sleep so I didn’t feel the pain.”

I knew that feeling. All too well. I remembered the utter hopelessness when Dwayne left. Not wanting to talk to anyone because somehow talking about it made it more real. Unavoidable. Hearing what other people had to say made it harder to bear. Despite their best intentions and their most carefully-worded clichés of comfort, nothing helped. Talking about only made it worse.

So I understood. Really, I did. But it still hurt. Like another nail in the coffin of our friendship. I felt even more unnecessary to him. Even more disconnected. How could I have been his best friend if this terrible, horrible thing happened to him, and he didn’t even want to talk to me about it?

“My manager suggested maybe I take some time off. I hadn’t showered in days. I looked and smelled like hell. I wasn’t exactly a productive employee, ya know?”

No matter how bad I felt for him and for feeling the way I did, I couldn’t stop. I had to ask the question burning the back of my throat.

“Cabe, how long have you been back in town?”

He sat up and leaned forward, resting his elbows on knees. He turned his head away from me and when he spoke, I had to strain to hear him.

“About two months. It took me a few days to clear out the apartment. I sold some stuff. Left some in storage. Packed up the rest and drove back across the country with way too much time and highway for so much on my brain. I gave up everything for her. Left my mom and my sister. Hell, I married her. Swore to spend the rest of my life with her. Gave her my name. Now’s it’s all gone. It’s bullshit.”

I battled within myself. I knew he was hurting. It honestly had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t personal. He was processing. Taking one day at a time. But anger boiled inside of me. Anger at Monica for doing this to my friend. Anger at Cabe for diminishing my presence in his life to a chocolate-chip cookie. Anger for him not calling, e-mailing, or texting. For not in any way giving a shit what was happening in my life for the past nine months. Anger at Dwayne for being an epic fail and giving me all the experience I needed to know what Cabe was feeling. And more anger at Cabe for not even coming to me when the very reason we’d been separated tossed him aside.

“So how many of those houses have people getting a divorce?” He nodded toward the Mediterranean mansions lining the little lake. When we created lives for our imaginary residents, at least one family ended up on the rocks. We figured it was a statistical probability and needed to be acknowledged. Life wasn’t all happy endings, so amid the parties and extravagant lifestyles we imagined them having, we also crafted all sorts of sordid and twisted things to happen behind the walls across the lake.

I didn’t feel like playing the game right then, but I didn’t trust myself to say what I should in my current emotional state. So I played.

“Two,” I answered. “That one on the left, and the third house over. The husband is a movie producer. He’s been in LA filming for a year. His wife is bored. She’s been rebuffed by the pool boy and the gardener. So she set her sights on the neighbor three doors down, who was recently laid off from his job in a research laboratory. He’s sitting home alone all day.”

“No, you missed what’s right in front of your eyes, Ty. In between that house and the guy three doors down is a sexy blond lady who has stolen the neighbor’s heart and ravished her body. Now she’ll leave her husband and kids behind and take off with the blonde in that red Ferrari.”

My heart sank. I was at a loss for what to say to make him feel better.

“Dude, again, I’m sorry. I won’t offer any stupid clichés like ‘it’s her loss’ or ‘time heals all wounds.’ Those won’t help. I’m just going to say it sucks. And I’m sorry. I’m here.”

He took my hand and kissed the back of it. “I missed you, Ty. It’s so good to see you. You being here already makes me feel better.”

The late afternoon sun illuminated the pain in his eyes, but he managed a lopsided smile as he pulled my hand tight against his chest, hugging my arm close. My heart melted as we locked eyes, and I saw the desperate plea in his gaze. How could I have been upset with him?

We stayed an hour longer, not saying much at all.

“Are you hungry? You want something to eat?” I asked, my Southern heritage coming through. There is no tragedy or loss that cannot be made better by throwing food at it. Preferably something fried.

“Nah. I’m good. I don’t eat much anymore. Not much of an appetite.”

“Where you stayin’?” I asked.

“Mama’s. She’s been cooking these big meals every night trying to get me to eat, but I don’t want anything. The fridge is packed with leftovers. She keeps having to throw stuff out to put more in.”

I thought of Maggie, and how this must be killing her. Cabe had always been her big, strapping boy. A true mama’s boy. She raised him and his sister Galen on her own after their dad left on Cabe’s third birthday. She was a tough lady who would move heaven and earth for her kids. I couldn’t imagine how she felt seeing him so distraught. She hated him moving to Seattle. I’m sure not being included in his wedding devastated her. So some part of her must be happy to have him home, no matter what the circumstances. I knew I was.

I patted the hand that held mine.

“Well, I was worried you were going to tell me you had cancer. Or Maggie was sick. So I guess all things considered, things could be worse.”

He groaned a bit, shaking his head. “I guess so.”