Natalie pushes open the bedroom door, still half-listening to Kelly talking behind her.
"Kel, if this is about the earrings, I already told you they're—"
She stops, you are standing inside. For one suspended second, Natalie simply stares. Her expression empties so completely that Kelly immediately winces behind her. Natalie slowly turns her head.
"No."
"Natalie—" Kelly starts.
"No." Natalie points into the room without taking her eyes off Kelly. "Absolutely fucking not."
Marcus is standing a few feet behind his fiancée, wearing the unmistakable expression of a man who knows he's an accomplice. Natalie's eyes narrow.
"You too?"
Marcus lifts both hands. "Before you kill either of us—"
"Oh, I'm not killing you. You're getting married. I'll wait until after."
Kelly steps forward. "We talked about this."
"No, apparently you two talked about this."
"Because you're walking down the aisle together tomorrow," Kelly says. "You're going to be six feet apart at dinner tonight. There are pictures, the rehearsal, the reception—"
"I am aware of how weddings work, Kelly."
"And I'm not spending mine wondering whether one of you is going to climb out a bathroom window to avoid the other."
Natalie gives her a look of pure betrayal.
"You did not."
"We're not asking you to fix anything," Kelly says, softer now. "We're not trying to get you back together. I swear. You two just need to talk. Get to where you can be in the same room and maybe smile at each other without looking homicidal."
Natalie stares at her best friend. Then at Marcus.
Marcus grimaces apologetically. “She's got a point."
"Of course you'd say that. You're sleeping with her."
"I'm marrying her tomorrow."
"Technicality."
For half a second, Kelly almost smiles.
Kelly exhales. “And considering my maid of honor and his best person are going to spend half the wedding standing next to each other, it’d be nice if you could at least look like you don’t hate each other.”
Then she reaches for the door. Natalie's eyes widen.
"Kelly."
"Talk."
"Kelly."
"I love you."
"Don't you fucking—"
The bedroom door clicks shut behind Kelly and Marcus. For several seconds, Natalie doesn't move. Three years.
Three fucking years, and apparently that's all it takes for the sunlit bedroom in Key West to disappear around her.
”I need out.”
Her fingers curl against her palm.
”I can't do this.”
She's twenty-eight again. Standing barefoot in their apartment, staring at the person she'd spent almost her entire adult life with while desperately trying to understand what conversation they were even having.
Then she'd noticed the closet. Their side was already half-empty. The bathroom drawer cleared out. Shoes missing from beside the door. The empty space beneath the television where their things had been. They hadn't been deciding whether to leave. They'd already decided.
”I just need space.”
Space. Miami to Seattle was apparently how much space they'd needed. Natalie's jaw tightens.
She'd imagined seeing them again more times than she would ever admit. In some versions she'd been devastatingly indifferent. In others she'd had the perfect speech prepared. Occasionally she'd slapped them. More often she'd simply walked past like she'd barely recognized them.
Apparently none of those rehearsals accounted for actually seeing them. Older. Different in little ways her eyes begin cataloguing before she angrily stops herself. And still so fucking familiar. That's the part she hadn't prepared for.
This is the same person who used to stand beside her in their kitchen while she cooked. The person she'd screamed at for watching an episode without her. Her gym partner. Her favorite person to argue with. The first person she wanted to tell when something wonderful happened and the person she wanted beside her when everything went to shit.
Her best friend. Her fiancé. And then, suddenly, neither.
She exhales slowly through her nose and folds her arms, trying to recover some fragment of the composure she walked into this room with.
Kelly only asked them to make it through the wedding. That's it. A ceasefire. A smile when photographs demand one. Walk down the aisle together without making everyone uncomfortable. Let Kelly and Marcus have their weekend without three years of unresolved bullshit hanging over it.
Natalie can do that. She has stood across conference tables from attorneys twice her age and dismantled arguments they spent weeks preparing. She can survive one conversation with an ex.
Except this was never just an ex. Her eyes finally meet yours. For one terrible second, everything Natalie has spent three years learning to live without is standing five feet away from her. Her voice is quieter than she'd intended.
"You left me."
God. It still hurts to say it. Natalie draws in a slow, unsteady breath, holding it for a second before letting it go. Her eyes stay on yours.
“I hated you for how you left me.”
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