Regrets Only (16 page)

“I
was wondering what this was!” Rebecca said, swaying in the dining room in front
of the grid.

“Mmm-hmm,”
Suzanne answered, digging in her pantry for something chocolate.

“So
is this just a list of people who might be stalking you, or everyone you’ve
ever dated?”

“Well,”
Suzanne answered from deep inside the pantry, disappointed to find that what
she had thought was a bag of Oreos was actually a blue bag of potato chips. “It
started as just potential stalkers, but the police said people I’d dumped would
be the first people to consider. Then when I started making the list, I decided
to include everyone. I thought it might help me figure out what I want in a
relationship.”

Rebecca
seemed to consider this for a while, scanning the grid and muttering the names
of guys and reasons Suzanne had stopped seeing each one, like a spell. She
waved away Suzanne’s proffered potato chips, and looked at her. “Did you figure
it out?”

“What?
The stalker?”

“No.
What you want.”

“Oh,
that. No. I guess I found a long list of things I don’t want, so that’s a
start, right?”

“Is
it?” Rebecca asked.

It
had not occurred to Suzanne to question this reasoning. “Well, how else do you
figure it out, besides trial and error? Eliminating what doesn’t work.”

Rebecca
made a noncommittal sound.

“And
on the positive side, there’s William,” Suzanne said. “All this led me to think
maybe I made a mistake letting go of him.”

“Isn’t
he the one who proposed to you? The country club guy? I thought you turned him
down and he never spoke to you again.”

Suzanne
reddened, trying to ignore what she thought might have been a note of
satisfaction in Rebecca’s voice. “Yeah, but I hope that’s water under the
bridge now. I mean, it’s been so long.”

“You
hope? You haven’t
talked
to him yet?”

“No,
I can’t seem to track him down yet, but I did find his parents and I think—”

“Suze,”
Rebecca said. “How on earth do you know you made a mistake breaking up with him
if you haven’t even
seen
him? What if he’s married now, or gay or
something?”

“He
is
not
gay,” Suzanne said emphatically. “That was not the problem.”

Rebecca
laughed. She crossed the big open room to the couch and flung herself on it
with a deep sigh. “You know what? I always resented you.”

This
was a sobering change of subject. Suzanne had felt it over the years, of
course, and had never been Rebecca’s biggest fan either, but hearing it stated
so plainly was a little jarring. Rebecca’s face clouded as she concentrated on
her words in a way that only a very drunk person can. “I never told you this.
No, I didn’t. Never said it out loud, out loud. You know? But I felt it. I
always felt like you had everything I wanted—a name people respect, money,
connections. All handed to you. It was like you were born into the life
I
was supposed to have.”

Rebecca’s
lip curled into an unattractive snarl as she said this last bit, and she was
staring at the floor with a deep, absorbing bitterness. She seemed temporarily
unaware Suzanne was still in the room. A thought flickered into Suzanne’s head:
Could it be Rebecca? Is it possible that I’ve just gotten smashed with
someone who tried to kill me and brought her back to my apartment, alone on a
Friday night?

As
though sensing Suzanne’s thoughts, Rebecca turned to her. “I’ve always liked
you,” she said baldly. “But I kind of hated you, too. You could have been a
legacy at the sorority I’d always dreamed of being in, and you didn’t even
rush. Your mom had to
drag
you kicking and screaming into the Junior
League, where you skipped provisional status somehow. Meanwhile, I had to
scrounge for a sponsor to get me in, plus I’ve been stuck on the thrift shop committee
for three years…”

“I
didn’t realize—” Suzanne started.

“It’s
okay,” Rebecca said. “I just need to say this to you. After all these years, I
want you to understand. My dad was a mailman in a small town; my mom was a
housewife. My parents were
pissed
when I called to tell them that I was
staying in Atlanta. They could care less about the Junior League. They said I
was acting like I thought I was better than them.”

They
had known each other for more than fifteen years, and yet Suzanne felt she was
somehow seeing Rebecca for the first time. “I don’t fit in anywhere. When I go
home to Alabama, I’m a snob, and here, I’m nobody. Even with you and Marci.”

“That’s
not—”

“No,
it’s okay. I know I’m not easy to be friends with,” Rebecca said, nodding in
vigorous agreement with herself and wiping tears with the back of her sleeve.
“And I don’t want pity. It’s actually a relief, tonight. I’ve spent so long
trying to be you and wishing I had what you had, and now…”

Suzanne
turned to look at the dining room wall where Rebecca was pointing with an
expansive wave of her arm. After a moment, it dawned. Suzanne concluded for her:
“Now you realize I’m just as fucked up as the next person.”

Rebecca
nodded, wiping more tears. “No offense.”

Suzanne
sat down hard, on the floor right where she was, and began to laugh. Rebecca
looked at her hesitantly, and then began to chuckle through snot and tears. The
soggy noises that resulted struck them both as funny, too, and soon they were
both helpless to stop—Rebecca rolling on the couch, Suzanne on the floor.

When
the laughter subsided, neither of them had much else to say, and a small
measure of their usual awkwardness returned. But Suzanne flipped on the TV to
Project
Runway
, plopped on the couch next to Rebecca, and rumpled her hair.

They
watched in companionable silence as the contestants tried to make eveningwear
out of the contents of a recycle bin. When Suzanne stood a little while later,
she covered the snoring Rebecca with her favorite throw before wobbling to her
own bed. Drifting off easily, Suzanne realized it was the first time in years
she had let anyone other than Marci sleep over at her place.

Following
the instructions Yvette had emailed to her, Suzanne set out from Atlanta at
10:00 a.m. and arrived in the surreal little vacation town of Gatlinburg,
Tennessee a little more than four hours later.

The
sudden hustle and bustle of the packed little tourist town was overwhelming
after the long, peaceful drive through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
She had to pee by then, but didn’t see a convenient place to pull over.
Gatlinburg seemed to be one of those places where tourists parked their cars
for the whole day and crowded into store after store, buying trinkets and ice
cream and t-shirts for hours on end. There seemed to be nowhere to pull in for
a minute to use the restroom in exchange for a bottled water purchase. Yvette
had mentioned that the cabin was closer to Gatlinburg than anywhere else, so
Suzanne opted to wait, rather than pay to use a parking deck and search
frantically for a public restroom. Perhaps there would be someplace clean along
the way.

Dylan’s
cabin, in fact, was a solid twenty minutes into the mountains from Gatlinburg. Suzanne
cautiously followed a series of long and curving two-lane roads that scaled
gradually and consistently upward. They were not well-signed, which led her to
constantly question whether she had missed a turn or was on the wrong road
altogether. She even turned around once to go back to the last intersection and
make sure she had followed the directions correctly. Her cell phone had only
spotty reception up here, and as she passed hand-painted signs warning dourly against
trespassing, she wondered what she would do if she really did become lost. Or
when her need to pee became a true emergency, as it shortly would.

The
route eventually narrowed to a seemingly endless high country lane, surrounded
by dense forest on either side. Houses—or at least mailboxes and gravel
driveways leading into the thick—popped up every quarter mile or so, becoming
more spread out as the road became rougher and civilization seemed increasingly
farther away.

To
Suzanne, every grove of trees looked like a rest stop at this point, but there
was hardly any shoulder on which to pull off to get out of the car. Even if
there had been a place to stop, something about peeing in the woods on her way
to see a celebrity bride just didn’t seem right. So Suzanne danced in her seat,
deeply regretting the choice to pass up an earlier gas station that didn’t look
very sanitary on the outside, and praying that Yvette’s directions would not
steer her wrong.

The
mailbox at the top of the cabin’s driveway was unremarkable, but the street
number was clearly signed, and the gravel drive freshly maintained—wider than
most she’d seen. She followed it for thirty yards or so to a large, sturdy iron
gate that crossed the drive at a creek. The gate was open, the tiny guardhouse
empty. She wondered whether it had been installed just for Dylan or whether he
had purchased the cabin from someone else who valued his privacy. As she
crossed the creek, thinking almost exclusively of her overinflated bladder,
Suzanne realized that keeping the press and other interested onlookers at bay
for Kate’s wedding would be her responsibility.
Sheesh
.

She
was not sure if the driveway was
actually
ten miles long, or if it
simply felt that way to someone in urgent need of a bathroom, but it twisted
and turned up through the mountain woods for quite some time. Eventually it
left the larger trees behind, emerging into the clear top layer of the
mountain, where bare rocks were numerous and only scraggly little trees had a foothold.
Finally the path crested over a rise, revealing the house tucked snugly into
the side of the mountain on the other side amid a few trees, and returning her
gratefully to civilization.

It
turned out that the place Dylan and his entourage referred to as a cabin was
actually more a lodge, and a big one at that. At least two stories from the
front side, the gray wood was trimmed in white, and lots of big, clean windows
added to the striking first impression. Both the ground floor and the upper
level had wide wraparound porches on which ceiling fans turned lazily in the
mountain breeze. She would later learn that there was even more to the house
than that, including an enormous terrace level beneath the first story, built
into the side of the mountain, and a back deck the size of her condo that
jutted over the slope of the mountain behind the house.

But
she could be amazed by all of it later. For now, all she could do was leave her
car in front of the house and skitter up to the front door. Yvette answered her
knock promptly—
thank God
—and showed her to the closest powder room with
an air of reluctance, as though someone without enough foresight to manage her urinary
tract was obviously a poor choice to plan a wedding.

When
she emerged from the bathroom, feeling as if she might float away with relief,
Yvette led her into the den, which was actually a two-story great room with
polished wood walls, a double-sided stone fireplace, and a full wall of windows
looking over the green mountains beyond. Several people were in the den,
lounging on assorted couches watching TV or playing checkers, and two guys were
picking softly at guitars in one corner, murmuring to each other.

She
recognized one of these last two as Dylan, but he was absorbed in conversation
and did not notice her. Some of the others looked familiar from the Braves game
and the night at the High. She spotted Misty, sprawled on one of the couches,
painting her nails and looking bored. Next to her were two women Suzanne
recognized as a pair of Dylan’s older sisters. Her humiliating experience at
the High came back to her in flashes. Suzanne’s stomach churned, and she fought
hard against the fervent desire to turn and run back out the door.

“Wait
here,” Yvette murmured softly, leaving Suzanne to stand uncomfortably on the
edge of the room. A girl with long, light brown hair was curled into an
overstuffed chair on the opposite side of the den, near one of the colossal
windows. She had a blanket pulled over her and was reading a well-worn
leather-bound book. Yvette touched the girl’s shoulder, and the latter looked
up to meet Suzanne’s eye and give her a broad, endearing smile.

Suzanne
waved awkwardly and followed the girl’s beckoning motions to meet her in the
next room. As she made her way across the back of the den, she glanced at
Dylan, who nodded perfunctorily in acknowledgement of her presence. As he
turned his gaze back to his fingers working on the acoustic guitar, she thought
she saw the corner of a crooked smile.

The
kitchen was open and sunny, with soft yellow walls, glossy white cabinets, and
light wooden furniture. The room was at the back corner of the cabin, which
meant large windows let in daylight on two walls. Kate and Suzanne sat across
from each other on stools at the breakfast bar, going over the binders and
Suzanne’s notes. Yvette flitted in and out, asking periodically whether they
needed anything and pausing to look at whatever Suzanne was writing.