Meeting Mr. Wright (15 page)

Marco shrugs, and his face gets serious all of a sudden as he looks around the table, like he doesn’t know how to answer her. “I’m not sure if she’s the one.”

“Ah,” Amy sighs. “It’s best to wait then.”

“How do you know?” Shelby asks. “When somebody’s ‘the one?’”

“I knew when Jack flew across the Atlantic from Paris to Philly while he was still studying abroad, just so that we could be together on Christmas,” Amy says, and unlike the other night at dinner, not a single one of her children playfully groan at this story.

Jack chimes in, taking hold of Amy’s hand. “And I knew when she spent her entire Christmas break trying to mend me back to health.”

This sweet, almost bashful smile pulls at Jessa’s lips. “I knew when Ryan was the first person I wanted to call whenever something good happened. Or when I just wanted to tell someone about my day.”

I look over at Ethan, and his eyes meet mine. There’s a sadness behind them, and I’m wondering if he’s thinking the same thing that I am. He was never—not once during the course of our relationship—that person for me. I always called Gabby with good news, or whenever I wanted to talk.

Gabby’s got this distant look in her eyes. “Ben and I went away for a long weekend in Austin,” she says, looking over at him. “We had tickets for this play that I’d been wanting to see forever.” What she doesn’t say is that she’d had an aversion to going to the theater ever since her parents died, and that weekend was a big step for her. But she doesn’t need to tell the people at this table that, everyone who she cares about knowing the story already knows it. “It was really important to me that I wear this bracelet that belonged to my mother. But I was so nervous that somehow I managed to leave it behind. It seems so trivial, this piece of jewelry, but there was a story behind it, and I just…I needed to wear it that night.” She smiles at Ben with unshed tears in her eyes, and he’s watching her like she’s the most precious thing in his world. “Ben drove all the way back to Dallas to get it, just so I could wear it. That’s when I knew.”

She touches Ben’s cheek and leans in for a kiss.

“Usually Ben’s the forgetful one,” Amy says.

“Like how he forgot the wedding rings.” Jessa’s eyes widen, and she slams her palm against her mouth when she realizes she let something slip that she shouldn’t have.

“Relax,” Ben says, stroking the back of Gabby’s hand. “Nate picked them up on his way out here.”

“And then he missed his flight because he stopped to get barbecue and got stuck in traffic,” Jessa says, and my stomach just…drops.

But there was a weather delay that night. He told me he couldn’t get a flight out until the next morning.

Nate looks over at me, his eyes wide and uncertain. The words his sister just said replay on a loop in my brain.

I
T’S WELL
past one in the morning when everyone finally begins to shuffle off to their rooms, tired from a long night of eating and laughter and fun between friends. Even though I haven’t known most of the Wright family for long, and I haven’t spent any quality time with my friends in the bridal party for a while, there was something very homey and familiar about this evening that makes the end of it bittersweet.

I’m not very tired, and it seems that Nate’s still wide awake, too. I have a feeling that he’s just waiting to get me alone so that he can explain the whole airport story that Jessa let slip. I can admit to wanting to know the reason for it probably as much as he wants to tell me, which is much more than I should.

We told Amy and Jack that we’d take over the clean-up duties so that they could take the rest of the night off. They’ve done so much for this wedding that it only seems right, and it gives Nate and me a nice neutral ground on which to talk things over. Neutral ground is good; with Nate it’s the least dangerous. Nate’s standing on one side of the long picnic table, and I’m on the other. We’re both holding huge black plastic bags: one for trash, the other for recycling.

Nate dumps paper plates with uneaten bits of food on them into his bag, and I toss remnants of wine into the grass before throwing the plastic cups into the bag to be recycled. The crickets are chirping, and there’s a soft breeze in the air. It’s light enough to cool our skin, but not strong enough to make a mess of what’s left on the picnic table.

The two of us are quiet, a silence that’s not altogether comfortable. I think he’s waiting for me to ask him why his sister thinks that he missed his flight from Dallas when he’d told me that it was delayed until the next morning. He seems kind of uneasy about it, and because I always think the worst, I assume that it’s because he had me pegged as an easy target for airport sex and he isn’t quite ready to own up to that yet. I mean, I
was
an easy target for airport sex; I was looking for it, for crying out loud. But knowing that would ruin the whimsy of the flirting, the magnetism that I felt when we were together. I want him to tell me the truth, but at the same time I don’t want to know it at all.

“Nate,” I begin. His eyes snap up to meet mine like he’s been waiting for just that one signal to confess. So, he does.

“I lied to you that night,” he says, his eyes searching mine. “My flight
was
canceled because of the storm, but I booked one for later that evening. I was just killing time in the bar; I wanted to catch the end of a game. And then you walked in.” He takes a deep breath and sighs, and there isn’t anything in the world that could make me look away. “I was glued to the seat, Callie. I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t leave. I
had
to keep talking to you, I can’t explain it. It was…as necessary to me as breathing.”

“Then why did you lie?” My voice cracks as the words come out.

“Strangely enough, because I didn’t want you to think I was using you. I can see now that wasn’t the best plan. My mom, she tracks my flights, and I didn’t want to have to explain why-”

“Why you skipped your flight to have sex with some woman you met in a bar?” I try to sound lighthearted about it all, but it falls flat.

“No,” he says, closing the distance between us. Without even realizing it, I’ve walked a few steps towards him. Nate drops the bag, then reaches out for my hand. He holds just my fingers, lightly skimming the pad of his thumb across my nails. “I didn’t ask you to leave the bar to have sex with you. I mean, I wanted to have sex with you. I
want
to have sex with you.” He lets out a breathy laugh as he shakes his head, and the frustrated smile makes a warmth blossom in my chest. It’s cute, the way he stumbles over the words, and he looks at our entwined fingers as he continues. “If you had just wanted to talk that night? I would’ve sat there and talked to until the sun came up. I would’ve missed ten flights if I had to.”

He squeezes my hand, looking down at me, and the soft light from the lanterns makes his perfect face seem almost ethereal. My breath catches, right in my throat. I want to ask him why, why he wanted to talk to me so badly. Me, the girl whose father left and whose boyfriend turned to another woman for comfort. The girl who’s never been quite good enough to make people want to stick around. But somehow, he wanted to.

He searches my eyes, and maybe he knows. Maybe he can see all the doubt inside of me.

“You flipped a switch in me that had been off for a long time,” he says. “That night, with you, everything just…lit up.”

My heart skips, and the air around me feels so heavy all of a sudden. I don’t care about cleaning up or about the trash we’re going to leave out here, I don’t care about anything other than Nate’s smile, and the warmth of his hand, the way his skin feels against mine. I want to feel his hands on me, everywhere.

I slide my fingers through his and we just go together, like my palm was made to fit against his. I lead him across the yard and into the house, through the living room and down the long hallway that leads to our rooms. We pass mine, and walk into his. I turn on the light and close the door.

Nate looks a little surprised, and I want to kiss that surprise right out of him. He has questions, I know he does. I don’t have many answers, not yet. Maybe I never will, but I think he understands that about me. He understands a lot about me without really knowing all that much. He’s brought back some of the confidence I lost when I found Ethan cheating on me all those months ago. He’s made me feel desirable again; it’s something I’ve been missing for far too long.

I untangle our fingers and bring both of my hands to rest on his chest, using his body as leverage as I push myself up on my tiptoes to press my mouth against his. The kiss is soft and tender; very slow, and exactly what I need. Nate’s hands come to rest on my hips, steadying me, his fingertips slipping beneath my shirt, branding the skin there. I pull away for just a second to unzip his sweatshirt.

“Callie,” Nate says, his voice very tight. “What…” My fingertips stretch across the taut muscles on his abdomen, up along his chest, and the question gets caught in his throat.

As I slide the sweatshirt off his shoulders and into a puddle on the floor, I whisper, “You flipped a switch.”

N
ATE CRADLES
my face in his hands, his eyes locked with mine as he gently drags the pads of his thumbs along my overheated cheeks. There are specks of gold buried under all that blue. I’ve never noticed them before, even though I’ve been close enough to see them. Maybe I never truly looked for them; maybe I’ve been too afraid to really see them, been too afraid to look deep enough to see the emotion that hides beneath the surface of Nate’s beautiful, expressive eyes.

The air between us holds a current; it’s charged with something that’s making every single nerve in my body stand on end. Every time Nate touches me, the electricity doubles, creating this sublime, almost unbearable surge of energy around us. It’s so completely unlike our last time together, but still incredibly familiar. Everything about this feels amazing, wonderful.

It feels inevitable.

Nate’s hands slide back and cradle my head as he gives me a gentle, tender kiss. Then those soft, perfect lips ghost across my cheek and brush against the shell of my ear. He buries his face in my hair, breathing deep, and I cling to him, running my fingers through the short hair at the nape of his neck, tugging gently the way I know he likes. One of his arms bands around my back, the other around my waist, and he holds me so tight. Tight enough that I think he’s trying to imprint my body with his, tight enough that I think he might be afraid to let me go. Like if he lets me go, I’ll disappear.

I want to tell him that I’m here,
I’m here,
I’m not going anywhere, but I can’t tell him that. Trying to convince him otherwise would ruin this anyway.

He lifts my shirt over my head, tossing it to the side and then he unclasps my bra, sliding it down my shoulders. His fingertips gently ghost across my collarbone, down the valley between my breasts. His palms slide up and down my sides, cupping the swell of my breasts before the pads of his thumbs tease my nipples. He touches me very slowly, testing out all the ways he can make my body respond to him, and he watches me like he’s trying to commit every single second of this to memory. Then his mouth and tongue follow the path his hands have just taken.

I let my hands explore his chest. I memorize the ridge of every muscle, the raised plane of every scar. I taste the salty sweetness of his skin, licking and sucking and nipping him with my teeth, doubling my efforts whenever he gasps or sighs or groans, which is often.

Curling my fingers around the waistband of his jeans, I pull him with me as I walk backwards, falling onto the bed when the backs of my knees hit the mattress. Nate laughs, god it’s my favorite sound, and I make quick work of his zipper, pulling his jeans and boxers down until they fall around his ankles. I skim my fingernails along Nate’s upper thigh, across the dips in his hips, drawing a light hiss from his mouth and making goosebumps bloom all over his tanned skin. I slide my palm down his erection and his head tilts back as he exhales in complete satisfaction. I can’t help but smile, and I’m driven by this newfound power that I feel just knowing that I have this gorgeous man completely at my mercy.

My hands slide from his hips to the curve of his ass, and I spread my legs as I grip him, giving him room to come closer. I lick him from shaft to tip, gently taking him into my mouth. I hollow out my cheeks, taking him as far into my mouth as I can, and every muscle in Nate’s body seems to tense up, although he still seems very relaxed. His hands tangle almost lazily through my hair as he watches me sucking him, his eyes a little unfocused and his lids hooded to the point where I can only make out the faintest hint of blue. Just when he’s on the brink of coming—I can tell by the way his breathing speeds up and the way my name is falling from his lips, like he’s praying and begging at the same time—he gently pushes me back on the bed, sliding me up towards the headboard. He holds himself up over me as he reaches over and grabs a condom out of his nightstand, then he finds a pillow somewhere behind me, fluffing it up before he lifts my head and slides the pillow underneath it.