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IT WAS A MEAL UNLIKE any other I’d ever had. A reunion of the sweetest kind. While Dylan had remained nervously silent the first time we’d come over for dinner—hiding behind the news of Tommy and his baby—he certainly made up for it now. In fact, it would be fair to say that he dominated the entire evening conversation. He commanded everyone’s attention from the cheese platter to the main course.
Except, he wasn’t the one answering questions. He was the one asking them.
No detail was too small to escape his attention. No preference, anecdote, or story was too trivial to go unsaid. He asked about anything and everything. From prescription-fueled book clubs, to his father’s fishing excursions, to Tommy’s latest language exploits, to the status of the neighbors’ pets. When he was done with his immediate family, he turned to Lily. And when Lily was finished—even though we’d spent the entire last week talking—he turned to me.
It was like he was trying to catch up on seven years’ worth of information all over the course of a single meal. A task which was impossible, to be sure, but it had to be said that Dylan had made quite a career out of achieving the impossible.
He kept rather quiet about his own exploits, I noticed. Even going so far as to gracefully dodge direct questions asked of him with questions of his own. It was as if he didn’t like thinking about his life in New York when he was sitting at a dinner table in Wessler. Like the two worlds couldn’t, or maybe shouldn’t, collide. Whether or not he had a clear preference...? To be honest, at this point, I couldn’t tell.
I had seen him in the city. Seen him basking in the glory of everything he’d built. He was proud, beaming, and always very much in control. But was he happy there?
That was the question, wasn’t it?
Then again...was he happy here?
That was the other question.
He’d left for a reason. Did he miss home? Did he miss me?
Years ago, while Lily, Tommy, and I had thrived on these cobblestone streets, passing day after sunshiny day in the warm embrace of the little town we loved to call home—Dylan had found it suffocating. Claustrophobic. I remembered hearing the tail end of some of his rants in the weeks before he ended up moving away. How nothing important could ever come from a place like this. How he needed to get away if he wanted to do anything of any consequence. To make himself a person of any consequence.
In that...he had most definitely succeeded. At least, by any standard in the western world.
But was he happy? Of that—I wasn’t sure.
“So Lily tells me you four are entering a float in the parade,” Greta Mae finally broke through Dylan’s interrogation, taking a sip of her drink. “Any ideas as to the theme?”
Tommy’s hands tightened around Theo as he looked up at me with a crooked grin. “I don’t know...how about ‘quarter-life crisis?’”
I snorted and twirled my wedding ring. “The four of us could just stand up there in a solemn line. No decorations needed. Hold the confetti.”
“The three of you,” Lily countered sharply, “I’m not as messed up as you guys.”
Tommy looked up with a smile. “Said the girl who put in for maternity leave for a child that isn’t her own.”
Her face transformed into a bright smile, as she leaned forward to kiss the sleeping baby, her dark hair brushing up against Tommy’s chest.
“And who could blame me for trying to secure more time with this little guy?” she cooed, then glanced up at Tommy. “You never know...I’ll probably just move in before long.”
He grinned. “Is that right?”
“Enough,” Greta Mae commanded, “one calamity at a time. Now Rose, Dylan—when do you two have your interview at the courthouse?”
My heart sped up with a sudden wave of nerves. Much sooner than I’d like. And I had a sinking feeling that all the planning in the world wasn’t going to make it any easier.
“Tomorrow morning. Nine a.m.” Dylan took my hand beneath the table and shot me a quick wink. “It should be a piece of cake.”
Piece of cake. Right.
“As long as you guys remember that you slummed it up and had your first kiss in Miami, not Barcelona,” Lily said seriously.
“And you give all those letters we wrote for you to Barry after copying them down into your own hand,” Tommy added. “You don’t want to get through all the questions, just to get messed up by penmanship.”
Greta Mae shook her head. “In my day, it wasn’t this complicated to get married. You just picked out a dress to hide that baby bump and headed down the aisle. Simple as that.”
It was a testament to the fear the woman struck in the heart of everyone present, that no one sitting around the table even cracked a smile. Her eyes flickered to me for comradery, and I nodded with a thoughtful frown.
“That’s...just what I said.”
After the dessert course, followed by another round of julips, followed by another round of julips after that—the four of us packed up the baby and headed out into the balmy summer night. Lily and Tommy went back to his house, tucking a sleeping Theo into his seat from separate sides of the car. I sensed a vague pattern forming, but my mind was too occupied with other things to give the matter much thought.
Dylan’s mind was too, apparently, because he didn’t even realize I was speaking to him until I finally tugged on his arm to get him to stop.
“Sorry,” he glanced down at me, “what?”
I stifled a smile. “I said, we passed my car about five minutes ago. Do you want to head back so that we can drive home?”
His face tightened at the word home, and he shook his head. “Can we just...would you mind if we just walked for a while?”
“Sure,” I said quickly, slipping my hand into his as we headed down the path.
The full moon lit the air around us and tinted the long grass silver, glinting away in little shimmers as it swayed back and forth in the gentle breeze. It was one of those perfect Tennessee evenings I’d adored since I was old enough to remember them. The kind of night it seemed where anything was possible. Anything could happen...
“I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
...or not.
Dylan stopped suddenly on the path, pulling me up short beside him. His eyes flew around the peaceful countryside with something akin to panic. A manic energy that only got stronger in the quiet of the night.
I stared up at him for a moment, debating how to proceed, before saying softly, “I don’t know what that means.”
“My life isn’t here anymore, Rose. You were right.” He raked both hands back through his hair, adding to the image of a much messier, younger-looking man than I’d seen in New York. “Everything I have is back in the city. I don’t know how to just...” His voice cut off with a sudden sigh, as his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I don’t know what to do.”
Of course he didn’t. It wasn’t like we could pretend the last seven years just didn’t happen. Then again, it was time to move forward. Right?
Thinking back on the advice that Tommy gave me, I squeezed his hand and forced his eyes to mine. “What do you want to do? Truth. No games.”
He considered for a moment, before blurting, “I want to do it all. I want to live in the city, but not miss out on anything that’s happening over here. I want to be with you, as man and wife, but in a place where both of us can do the things we love.” His eyes found mine, tightening with emotion. “I’m tied to this company, Rose. I’ve never put more of myself into anything in my entire life. This company...is me. I don’t know who I am without it.”
I nodded thoughtfully, giving him time to think. I felt the same way about my practice here in town. It was something I’d built from the ground up—I couldn’t imagine just walking away. I certainly couldn’t imagine asking Dylan to do the same.
“Well...” I finally said, “maybe there’s a way to do both?”
He looked at me sarcastically. A beautiful portrait of midnight doubt.
“I’m serious.” I hastened to defend myself, even though, realistically, I felt as dubious about the notion as he did. “We could split our time between the two cities. You’d still get to see everyone over here, and I...I could try to figure out something in New York.” My heart sank in my chest, but I pushed onward—striving to find any sort of compromise. “Maybe I could hire a partner here for my practice—someone to split the time with me when I was gone. It could work, Dylan. There are things we could do to make it work—”
A soft finger touched my lips and stopped me in my tracks.
No. It couldn’t work. And there was no point in saying so.
“You know, I lied to you on the plane—on the way back from Vegas,” he murmured, stroking back a lock of my hair. “You were asking about the ring, and I said I didn’t care who gave it to you, I just wanted you to have it.” He took a deep breath. “But I did care who gave it to you. I wanted it to be me.”
My throat clenched up, and I lowered my eyes, avoiding his gaze. I didn’t know how many more times we could keep having this conversation. How many more times we’d keep ending up together on the other side, instead of apart.
He sighed suddenly and took a step back. “It’s just the mother of all ironies, you know? I left Wessler because of you, and now here I am, forced with the choice of—”
“Wait,” I interrupted suddenly, “what does that mean? You left Wessler because of me?”
His eyes cooled sarcastically. “Oh come on—don’t act like you haven’t figured that out by now.”
I wanted to say that I did. I wanted to be all ready with a pithy comeback. But I honestly had no earthly idea what he was talking about.
“You left to go to college,” I protested. “You just...didn’t come back. What the heck do you mean—you left because of me? I would have given anything for you not to go!”
“Not to go—you left me no choice!” he fired back.
I took a step back as well, emotionally whiplashed from how suddenly the night was spinning out of control.
“I left you no choice?” I repeated incredulously. “What exactly did I—”
“You thought Tommy hung the sun! You still do!” Dylan said. “What could I do but go out and try to make myself something better? I certainly wasn’t going to be able to do it in Wessler.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I understood that he was in a tough spot here and a good part of this was misdirecting, but I couldn’t believe he would go so far as to blame the whole thing on me.
“I have never been anything more than friends with your brother!” I yelled back. “And if you thought that by running off to a city I hate and diving into a corporate world I care nothing about would impress me, then you clearly don’t know me at all!”
“Maybe that’s true,” he snapped back. “Maybe I don’t. I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? Tomorrow, at nine a.m.”
A host of angry tears welled up in my eyes, but I glared them back—unwilling to concede even an inch of ground. I’d loved him enough to protect his future, so I left. I’d then embraced him when he decided to stay. I’d even suggested a compromise so that we could take a real shot at this thing.
But now here he was blaming me for problems I’d warned him about from the beginning? I didn’t think so.
“Why do you even want to do the interview then?” I asked softly. His head snapped up to mine, but I set my jaw and shrugged. “If this whole thing is just some huge mess that’s derailing your life and taking you away from your precious company—why don’t we just go in there and say that it was real, but it was also impulsive and we changed our minds?”
He threw up his hands, eyes flashing in frustration. “Oh, come on, Rose, you can’t go giving me an ultimatum like that! It’s either you or the rest of my life? How is that fair?!”
“I’m not giving you an ultimatum!” I cried for the second time. “I was the one who was just trying to figure out a way that we could do both, when you—”
“Why do you even want to be with me?” he asked suddenly.
That stopped me in my tracks.
“...excuse me?”
“You heard me—why would you even want to be with a guy like me? A guy who walked away from his friends and family and never looked back. A guy who dedicated his life to creating something that you couldn’t care less about. A guy that’s absolutely nothing like the teenager that drove away from this place all those years ago.”
A few tears snuck past my defenses and raced down my cheeks.
“How can you say that?” I exclaimed. “How can you make yourself out to be—”
“You’re in love with a guy you knew seven years ago, Rose! I can’t be that guy! I’ve changed.”
Okay. Enough was enough. He wanted to play? Then let’s play.
“You’re an idiot—do you know that?” I growled, crossing my arms tightly across my chest. “I’m in love with a guy who got lost seven years ago. I’m still waiting for him to find his way back.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
“You have a reading nook at the top of your stairs,” I blurted suddenly. “And I found the picture of me inside your book.”
All the color drained from his face as he froze, staring at me in the dark.
“You have a company, but not a life. You have a staff, not close friends. And you have this big, empty house with no one to fill it. You expected me to be impressed?”
I shook my head, barely able to get the words out—I was so livid.
“You said that you don’t know who you are without your company? Well in New York, I don’t either. But let me tell you what you are in Wessler.”
I threw back my hair and fired them out, one after another. Counting them on my fingers.
“You’re a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend, and a husband. And even if you weren’t any of those things—you are deeply loved. Everyone in this town loves and adores you.”
I fell back another step, shaking my head as I looked him up and down.
“Now—if all those things pale in comparison to what you have in New York, then maybe you should go back there after all. If they don’t...”
I turned on my heel and headed back down the path, disappearing into the darkness.
“...then I’ll meet you at the courthouse at nine.”