“Yeah,” you said. “I’m . . . I’m sorry I called.”
“No,” I told you, “don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
“Sorry,” you said again.
We hung up, but of course I was thinking about you for the rest of the morning.
xlvii
Without waterproof mascara, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get through my wedding day. As I was getting dressed, as my hair was twisted into a chignon, as a nice woman named Jackie was applying concealer to my face, I kept thinking about you saying Oh. Shit. I kept hearing your unfinished sentence: What if—? I was sure Darren was what I’d wanted. I’d thought I was sure. Up until that moment, I was certain. And then you got me thinking.
When Jackie decided she was going to give up on the undereye liner because my eyes kept overflowing with tears, my mom asked everyone to clear out of the room.
“Just give us a moment,” she said, touching the pearls around her neck, as if there were a reservoir of strength in that family heirloom.
Once the room was empty, she leaned against the counter in the bridal suite. “Lucy,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t want to admit the truth, that I was thinking about you on my wedding day, that I was questioning my decision.
“I guess I’m just emotional,” I said.
She looked at me hard, her icy eyes cutting through my lie, just the way they did when I was a kid. “Lucy,” she said, “I’m your mother. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
So I told her something. I told her something I’d been worrying about for months, something I hadn’t admitted to anyone. “I think Darren loves me more than I love him,” I said.
She hugged me, but carefully, so my damp makeup wouldn’t rub off onto her champagne silk dress. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Relationships aren’t always equal. The balance is forever shifting. Who loves whom more, who needs whom more. Your relationship with Darren today won’t be the same even a year from now.”
She held me by my shoulders and pulled away so she could look into my eyes. “And I don’t think it’s so terrible if he loves you just a little more than you love him right now. Then you know he’ll treat you like a princess.”
I laughed and wiped my eyes. But she was still looking at me with that lie-detector expression. “There’s something else,” she said.
I looked down at my fingers, at the elegantly painted French manicure on my nails. “Gabe called this morning.”
“Gabe Samson?” my mother asked.
I nodded, my eyes welling with tears again. “What if he’s the man I’m supposed to be with, not Darren?”
My mom leaned back against the counter again and rubbed her pearls. She was quiet for a while. Then she spoke: “I want you to think, truly think, about the relationship you have with Darren and about the relationship you had with Gabe,” she said. “And I want you to think about who would be a better partner—a better father to your children. If you think the answer’s not Darren, you don’t have to get married today. Even if it’s not Gabe. If you think there’s someone else out there who would make you happier than Darren does, you can walk away. It won’t be easy, but you can do it. Just say the word and I’ll tell your father, he’ll tell the guests. But you won’t get to change your mind again. If you say good-bye to Darren today, that’s forever. I’ve seen how much the two of you care about each other and how much fun you have together. But if this doesn’t feel right, no one is making you marry him.”
I nodded. My mother walked over to the window. And I thought about you, Gabe. I thought about how wonderful you made me feel, but also how awful. How you cared so much more about yourself than you did about us. How in the end, your life was The Gabe Show, and to keep you I would’ve had to play the supporting actress to the star. I know it might be hard for you to hear this, but I’m just telling you the truth. That’s what I thought that day.
I also thought about Darren. About the fact that he wasn’t perfect. That he still didn’t really take my job seriously. And sometimes I worried that he didn’t take me seriously. But I figured I could change that, I could work harder to show him what it meant to me. I could help him see that I wanted to be his partner, his equal. And I loved him. I loved his laugh, his sense of humor, his grin. He wasn’t dark and complicated—being with him was fun and easy. It felt solid and stable. He made me happy—most of the time. And we’d built the foundation of a beautiful future together. I could never leave him there at the Boathouse on our wedding day.
I wiped my eyes. “Thank you,” I said to my mother. “I’m fine now. I’m ready.”
My mom let out a huge breath and gave me a hug. “You know I would support you no matter what.”
“I know,” I said, smelling the Shalimar perfume on her neck.
“Just remember,” she added, “there’s a difference between infatuation and love.”
I nodded.
Was I infatuated with you? Were we infatuated with each other? Can infatuation last this long? Or has it always been love between us? I’d like to think it has.
xlviii
Even though I’d been working on It Takes a Galaxy for a while, researching real-life stories, trying to pull conflicts from as many countries and cultures as possible so the writers could use them as the basis of various episodes, I’d never traveled any farther than Europe. So Darren and I decided to go to Turkey on our honeymoon. I wanted to hear the call to prayer. I wanted to see a tiny piece of one of the countries I’d researched. And when we got there I couldn’t stop taking notes. I saw women with their heads covered walking down the street, talking to women with hair falling around their shoulders. I pulled out a ticket stub and scribbled a message to myself to suggest a scene like that in our next episode, but with aliens, of course.