This Summer Will Be Different(90)
I’m putting out a tray of miniature fish cakes when Zach’s girlfriend, Lana, corners me to tell me she suspects Zach is going to ask her to marry him. Lana moved here from Montreal a few months ago, and I know for a fact that Zach has a ring. Their relationship is charmingly competitive, and she wants to propose first. She asks for my help brainstorming ideas. I don’t see it for the distraction that it is until I hear a clinking sound on the other side of the room. The crowd is so thick, I’m not sure where it’s coming from.
But then I see her on the staircase, a champagne glass and spoon in her hand. Our eyes meet. It’s been a year since Felix and I visited her in Sydney, a year since I’ve seen my best friend, and I’m already blinking away tears.
Bridget looks the same as she always has. Her cheeks are pink, and her hair is in a tizzy. She’s wearing a pair of old jean shorts and a sleeveless shirt. But there’s a floral crown around her head—the kind I wore the night we became friends. She made it herself—it’s wilted, lopsided, and in a discordant combination of orange and purples. It’s ugly as sin, and it’s spectacular.
I can’t pull my eyes away from Bridget.
“What the hell?” I mouth to her.
She blows me a kiss, then clinks her glass again. Between the chatter and Ken’s playlist, only a few people twist their necks toward her. Bridget sets down her glass, puts two fingers in her mouth, and whistles.
Her gaze travels to her right, where Miles is stepping out of the reading room, Rowan in his arms. They must have snuck in while Lana was showing me a video of a flash mob proposal. Rowan is trying to keep a hold of the Anne of Green Gables alphabet book Felix bought for her a few weeks ago. He claimed he was mailing it to Australia.
An arm falls across my shoulders. “Surprise,” Felix says.
I turn my head. Felix is clean-shaven and dimpled. His beard comes and goes with the seasons. Here for the winter, vanishing with the snow in the spring.
“You,” I say to Felix. “You tricked me.”
“Uh-huh.” He kisses my cheek, and then smiles at his niece.
“Now I know why I couldn’t find you earlier,” I say.
He kisses the side of my head. “I asked my dad to keep the music loud so you wouldn’t hear Rowan.”
Bridget waves her hand. The room waves back.
“Wow,” she says, surveying our faces. Her parents. My brother and his husband. Her grandparents and various Clark aunts and uncles and cousins. There’s a handful of Guinness World Record–holding oyster shuckers and half of Felix’s high school graduating class, Joy and Colin among them. Bridget’s eyes land on my parents, and her smile broadens. “It’s so good to see you all, and it’s so good to be home. Actually . . .” She looks at Felix and me. “It’s even better to be right here, in Wolf and Bee’s home. And what a lovely one it is.”
“I helped,” Zach pipes.
Bridget raises her glass in his direction. “Of course you did, Zach.” She pulls in a breath. “I’ll be honest: Seeing my best friend and my brother standing over there”—she nods toward us—“holding each other, seems both completely natural and totally weird.”
Felix is fast. A palm turns my face to his, and the other hand burrows into my hair. He kisses me the way he does when we’re alone. There are whoops and whistles, and I can feel my chest heating, but I loop my arms around his waist, and draw him closer. We don’t have to hide our love from anyone, including ourselves.
“I guess I was asking for that.” Bridget’s voice is dry, but her smile cuts dimples into her cheeks. She takes a sheet of paper from her pocket.
“I was desperately homesick when I met Bee. As you all know, I’m an islander at heart, and I liked Toronto well enough, especially at night. Back when I was in my early twenties, I’d ride my bike through Cabbagetown, catching glimpses of people inside their homes. I loved seeing the city lit up in the dark. But I missed my family. I missed the island—the wind and the water and Mom’s cooking. I was lonely. And then I met Bee.
“The night we became friends, she was wearing a floral crown, made with real flowers.” She points to her head. “Much nicer than this one. I used to be wary of women who looked like her—feminine and stylish, with cheekbones people pay for. At work, her makeup was always flawless. I thought she was probably all frills and gloss. I was wrong.
“She looks sweet, with those dresses and that smile, but Bee is tough. Tougher than she thinks. She hates fighting, but she won’t stand down when it matters. It’s one of the things I admire most about her. I used to wish that we had met earlier in life, when we were kids or teenagers, but now I think we found each other at the right time. We became adults together. Our friendship is how I learned to compromise. It’s how I learned that the families we make are as significant as the ones we’re born into. It’s how I learned that the greatest loves are not always romances.”
Bridget’s speech is far longer than the one I gave at her wedding, and by the time she’s almost finished, I’ve ruined one of my good napkins with my mascara. Felix stands behind me, arms banded around my middle, chin resting on my shoulder. Every so often I feel his laugh on my back or his smile against my cheek. I turn to look at him when Bridget speaks about what a wonderful brother he is, and I see that his eyes are shimmering.