He sat down on the bed next to me. “Isn’t it bad luck for us to see each other before the wedding?” he asked.
Relief washed over me. “So there’s going to be a wedding, then?”
“Well, I’m all dressed up and so are you.” He kissed me on the cheek. “You look great, by the way.”
“Where did you go?”
Shifting, he said, “I just needed some time to think.
I’m ready now.” Leaning toward me, he kissed me again, this time on the lips.
I drew back. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I told you, it’s all good. We’re getting married, right?
You still want to get married?” He said it lightly, but I could hear an edge in his voice I’d never heard before.
“Can’t we at least talk about what happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jeremiah snapped. “I don’t even want to think about it again.”
“Well, I do want to talk about it. I need to. I’m freaked out, Jere. You just left. I didn’t even know if you were coming back.”
“I’m here, aren’t I? I’m always here for you.” He tried to kiss me again, and this time I pushed him off.
He rubbed his jawline roughly. Then he stood up and started pacing around the room. “I want all of you. I want every part. But you’re still holding back from me.”
“What are we talking about here?” I asked, my voice shrill. “Sex?”
“That’s part of it. But it’s more than that. I don’t have your whole heart. Be honest. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“No!”
“How do you think it makes me feel, knowing I’m second choice? Knowing it was always supposed to be you two?”
“You’re not my second choice! You’re first!”
Jeremiah shook his head. “No, I’ll never be first. That’ll we’ll always have summer · 283
always be Con.” He hit his palm against the wall. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t.”
“You can’t what? You can’t marry me?” My mind was spinning like a top, and then I started talking, fast. “Okay, maybe you’re right. It’s all too crazy right now. We won’t get married today. We’ll just move in to that apartment.
Gary’s apartment, the one you wanted. I’m fine with it.
We can move second semester. Okay?”
He didn’t say anything, and so I said it again, this time more panicked. “Okay, Jere?”
“I can’t. Not unless you can look at me right now—
look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t still love Con.”
“Jere, I love you.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. I know you love me.
What I’m asking is, do you love him too?”
I wanted to tell him no. I opened my mouth. Why wouldn’t the words come out? Why couldn’t I say what he needed to hear? It would be so easy to just say it. One word and this would all go away. He wanted to forgive and forget it all. I could see it in his face: all he needed was for me to tell him no. He would still marry me. If I would just say the word. One word.
“Yes.”
Jere inhaled sharply. We stared at each other for a long moment, and then he inclined his head.
I stepped toward him and filled the space between us. “I think—I think I’ll always love him a little bit. I’ll always have him in my heart. But he’s not the one I choose. I choose you, Jeremiah.”
All my life, I never felt like I had a choice when it came to Conrad. Now I knew it wasn’t true. I did have a choice. I chose to walk away, then and now. I chose Jeremiah. I chose the boy who would never walk away from me.
His head was still bowed. I willed him to look at me, to believe me just one more time. Then he lifted his head and said, “That’s not enough. I don’t just want a part of you. I want all of you.”
My eyes filled.
He walked over to my dresser and picked up the letter from Susannah. “You haven’t read yours yet.”
“I didn’t even know if you were coming back!”
He ran his finger along the edges, staring down at it. “I got one too. But it wasn’t for me. It was Con’s. My mom must have mixed up the envelopes. In the letter she said—
she said she only ever got to see him in love once. That was with you.” He looked at me then. “I won’t be the reason you don’t go to him. I won’t be your excuse. You’ve got to see for yourself, or you’ll never be able to let him go.”
“I already have,” I whispered.
Jeremiah shook his head. “No, you haven’t. The worst part is, I knew you haven’t and I still asked you to marry me. So I guess I’m partly to blame too, huh?”
“No.”
He acted like he didn’t hear me. “He will let you down, because that’s what he does. That’s who he is.”
For the rest of my life, I was going to remember those words. Everything Jeremiah said to me that day, our wedding day, I would remember. I would remember the words Jeremiah said and the way he looked at me when he said them. With pity, and with bitterness. I hated myself for being the one who made him bitter, because that was one thing he’d never been.
I reached up and laid my palm on his cheek. He could have pushed my hand away, he could have recoiled at my touch. He didn’t. Just that one tiny thing told me what I needed to know—that Jere was still Jere and nothing could ever change that.
“I still love you,” he said, and the way he said it, I knew that if I wanted him to, he would still marry me. Even after everything that had happened.
There are moments in every girl’s life that are bigger than we know at the time. When you look back, you say, that was one of those life-changing, fork-in-the-road moments and I didn’t even see it coming. I had no idea.
And then there are the moments that you know are big.
That whatever you do next, there will be an impact. Your life could go one of two directions. Do or die.
This was one of those moments. Big. They didn’t get much bigger than this.
It ended up not raining that day. Jeremiah’s frat brothers and my actual brother moved the tables and chairs and hurricane vases in for nothing.
Another thing that didn’t happen that day: Jeremiah and I didn’t get married. It wouldn’t have been right.
Not for either of us. Sometimes I wondered if we had rushed into getting married because we were both trying to prove something to the other and maybe even to ourselves. But then I think no, we truly did love each other. We truly did have the best of intentions. It, we, just weren’t meant to be.