Noah shifts uncomfortably. “Marnie, I’m afraid we really have to go. Traffic is building as we speak.”
“Of course you do,” I say. “I’d get out of this party, too, if I could think of a plausible excuse.”
His expression stays the same, but she turns and grins at me. “So . . . ,” he says to her. “I’ll go get your coat for you. Is it in the den?”
“I’ll get it,” she says, but I touch her arm and when she looks at me, I shake my head just slightly. Let him go. And as soon as he’s gone, I say, “Listen, I’ve got to tell you this. You’re amazing and powerful, and you’re in line for a big, big life. There are lots of surprises in store for you. The universe is going to take you to such heights.”
She laughs. “Uh-oh. I don’t think I really like surprises.”
“These will be good ones, I’m sure,” I say. “This is the important thing. Don’t settle for anything you don’t want. That’s the main thing.”
I close my eyes. I want to tell her that she is all golden and Noah is all beige, and that there’s an unfortunate muddiness in the air when he looks at her—and if I could, if I didn’t know that she’d decide I was crazy, I’d tell her that she and I are linked somehow, that I’ve been looking for her.
But now Noah’s back with the coat and the purse and the instruction that she needs to go inside and tell his family good-bye.
She turns to him. “Your Aunt Blix says she’ll come to the wedding, isn’t that great?”
He helps her on with her coat, saying, “Yeah, well, tell my mom to add her to the list,” and then he pecks me on the cheek. “Take care of yourself,” he says.
It’s time to go. He strides away in that manly, impatient way, motioning for her to follow.
“Here! Take this! Some color for you.” I pull off my scarf, my favorite one with the blue silk burnouts and the straggly fringe, and I put it around her neck, and she smiles and blows me a kiss.
As they go inside, I see her tilt her face up to his, pink and gold and scarlet with love, a shower of sparks.
Once they’re gone, the air slowly settles down around me. The sparks quiet themselves and burn away, like those Fourth of July sparklers once they’ve used up their fuel and are about to turn back into sharp metal sticks.
I close my eyes, feeling suddenly drained and tired. And then I know something I didn’t know before, a truth as insistent as anything I’ve ever felt: Marnie MacGraw and Noah are not going to marry.
In fact, it’s already over.
TWO
MARNIE
“Oh my God, that was an epic fail,” says Noah in the car. “Epic! And Whipple, you freak, could you possibly drive like you’re even slightly sober? Like you’re not trying to get a DUI? We’re hoping to stay alive back here.”
Whipple’s car—a brand-new BMW convertible—does seem to be taking the corners on two wheels, I swear, and he appears to have perfected the art of driving with two fingers of his left hand as he holds a cocktail glass in his right hand. A glass that keeps sloshing red alcohol onto the seats and into the center console.
I had automatically gotten into the backseat, and then, to my surprise, Noah had jumped in beside me, leaving Whipple alone in the front, which means he has to crane his neck around backward so he can keep up with the conversation. And every time he moves his head, the car swerves off course, and he mashes his foot even harder on the gas pedal.
Oh, so much of tonight has been a disappointment. I do not want to start off married life with mother-in-law problems. My boss, Sylvie, says that’s just the worst thing you can do. And now that I’m in the car, I can also hear my mother’s voice in my ear: “That was so rude of you, to sit there all night talking to one old lady! You should have gone and mingled with all the other guests! That’s what that party was for, for you to meet your fiancé’s family and friends.”
And now this, the biggest disappointment of all—the great Simon Whipple, whom I have heard such fantastic things about, turns out to be nothing more than your standard-issue, red-faced, laughing, overgrown frat boy. And in his presence, Noah seems to be regressing more by the minute.
Apparently we’re heading to the home of one of their other friends that Noah says I’ve got to meet. It’s the Hometown Tour, Noah told me. Meet the freaks. He pulls me over to him, roughly, and starts sucking on my neck like he’s going to give me a hickey. Like he thinks we’re in high school just because we’re in the backseat. “Holy shit, I am so, so sorry for what I did to you back there,” he says in my ear, way too loudly. “Leaving you in the clutches of my Aunt Blix.”
“You owe her big-time,” says Whipple.
“Right? She’s like the old woman in the forest who eats children.”
“That’s because she’s a witch,” says Whipple. “Marnie, you’re lucky there’s anything left of you. I told him, ‘Dude, you gotta go get your girlfriend, man. Between your mom and your great-aunt, she’s gonna run for the hills.’”
“Not this one,” says Noah. “I’ve got this one in the bag.”
I pull away from him. His beard is scratching me, and his breath smells like a brewery. I finger the scarf she gave me. It’s amazing, with lots of shades of blue, and holes that look like they were burned out on purpose. “For real she’s a witch?” I say, and that makes them both laugh. “No, no, tell me. Does she, like, practice witchcraft? Is she in a coven or something?”
“I don’t know about a coven,” says Whipple, “but she totally does spells, doesn’t she, dude?”
“Spells and potions and all that shit,” says Noah. “She’s got the whole thing down. It’s all over-the-top drama, if you ask me.”
“She seems really nice,” I say. “I liked her.”
Noah leans forward between the seats and takes the drink out of Whipple’s right hand and gulps down the rest of it.
Whipple laughs. “Hey! That was mine. I earned that, dude.”
“I need it more, man, and besides, you’re driving.”
“Tell me,” I say. “What has she done? I can’t believe you really think she’s a witch.”
But they have moved on by this time, talking about whether or not some girls they knew in high school are going to be at the party we’re all going to. Somebody named Layla is going to shit when she finds out that Noah is engaged without checking with her.
I look out the window at all the passing houses—big mansion-type things with huge lawns decorated with white twinkly lights wrapped around the tree trunks, and Christmas trees illuminating the windows. Boughs of holly, fa la la la la. So genteel, so rich.
I wonder if I’ll ever really fit in here.
Funny, I think later, how you can meet a random handsome guy in California at a party, and he tells you he once wrote movie scripts and one almost got accepted but then didn’t, and he tells you that he’s now teaching school, and he loves kids and he loves to go snowboarding in the mountains in the winter and later, in bed, after he’s managed to do amazing things to you, he tells you just how much he wants to help people in the world, and you can’t believe how moved you are at the way his eyes change when he tells you that, how much depth he has, and you find yourself falling in love with these pieces of him that he shows you—and then later, much later, after he’s moved in with you and bought you a deluxe garlic press and a pair of amazing turquoise boots and has written a song for you that he plays on his guitar, you go back to his hometown with him and find out that, oh my God, he’s the somewhat spoiled son of rich people who let him get away with murder and who don’t seem to automatically care about you, except for one ancient aunt no one else seems to like.