Page 11 of Parallel

“I wasn’t, necessarily. I just didn’t…I wasn’t sure he made you happy.”

“Of course he does,” I reply, shocked she’d even think it. Jeff might not be the most exciting guy, but that’s fine with me. What matters far more is that he is cute and kind, reliable and steadfast. While Caroline and Trevor sit around bemoaning men who forget to call, who change plans without warning or hook up with the blond at the gym, I’ve found someone who remembers every anniversary and doesn’t even seem to realize other women exist. “Where is this coming from? The other day you guys are telling me it’s not too late to change my mind and now this?”

She gives me an apologetic smile before she looks back at the road. “I know you love him, and I know he’s a good guy, but when was the last time you were happy with him?”

My head jerks back. “I’m happy now! And if I don’t seem happy that’s not his fault. It’s just who I am.”

Her eyes flicker to me once more and she frowns. But it’s not who you were, her look says.

I turn up the radio and change the subject, because I cannot think about this right now. There are times in your life when you just have to focus, get through something and leave all the considering and mulling over behind. And despite the dreams about Nick, this is that time. I’m getting married in a matter of weeks. It’d be too late to change my mind if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.

I really don’t.

We sit in the inn’s small restaurant with my mother, going over the guest list. The din of their lunchtime service grates, though it probably has more to do with how on edge I’ve felt ever since we got to town, just like I was the last time. It’s driving me crazy, this feeling. As if I’m supposed to know something I don’t.

“Jeff’s friends from college,” my mother says, “do we keep them all together or split them up? And do you know yet if his friend Tim is bringing the baby?” She clicks her pen, poised for an answer I can’t provide. It’s easily the tenth question she’s asked about Jeff and his friends about which I have no clue.

I groan. “I should have made Jeff come for this.”

“Well,” my mother says with a fond smile, “he had to work.”

“So did I,” I reply.

She pats my arm. “When push comes to shove, you need someone who puts work first.”

Of course, she would say this. She’s spent her entire life on a farm, where work has to come first, where it begins early and ends late and doesn’t offer four weeks of paid vacation. And perhaps that’s why the transition to D.C. has been so hard on Jeff—because he was raised to believe that putting your nose to the grindstone is the path to success, and it hasn’t panned out for him here. No matter how hard he works, there is always someone craftier or cannier taking his clients, stealing his thunder.

My mother puts the guest list aside, apparently tired of asking me questions I can’t answer. “Let’s walk outside and look at the space again,” she says. “I think we need a feel for how it will all be laid out, and you barely saw it the last time.”

I feel a twitch, a tremor, in my chest, even as I agree. I realize the little white house in the distance didn’t cause what happened the other day, much like stepping on a crack will not actually break your mother’s back, but…it happened. And I don’t want it to happen again.

Outdoors it is stifling, and painfully bright, the very air tinged a harsh gold, making things seem ominous in some way I can’t name. But my mother and Caroline are oblivious to it, so I push myself forward, alongside them. They’re talking about valets and overflow parking, but I can’t seem to follow the conversation.

We pass the edge of the inn. The lake is spread before us, so deep blue it appears bottomless. I inhale and then force my gaze up to the right, to the white house I wish wasn’t there.

I cannot look away.

My mom and Caroline politely disagree about table placement and if we need one bar or two, and my eyes are locked, unmoving, on that house, seeing it in my head, though it’s at least a quarter mile away—a wide deck, a dock with a tiny boat bobbing alongside it. I see Nick there too, younger than he was in London. That dream I had last night…it took place there. I’m certain of it. Images sharpen in my mind, and I begin to shiver, hugging myself for warmth.

“Goodness, Quinn, what’s wrong with you? It’s almost ninety degrees,” my mother says, but her voice is distant, tinny, and then there are no sounds at all.

I land on the floor, hard, my legs tangled in sheets and butt naked aside from them.

I have a single moment in which I am utterly blank. Unsure of the month or the year, or why I’m in this room with high, arched windows, winter sunlight illuminating dust motes in the air. And then a face appears over the side of the bed. Blue eyes flecked with gold, broad shoulders, the flash of a smile.

“I’m trying not to laugh,” Nick says.

I grin. “This is very sexy, isn’t it, the way I’m all splayed out on the floor?”

There’s a gleam in his eye that wasn’t there moments before. “Honestly? Yeah. A little.”

He reaches one long, perfectly formed arm out to hoist me into bed. I land on top of him, smiling as I take in his face. God, I love him so much it hurts.

“Good morning, Mrs. Reilly,” he says, nuzzling my neck.

I breathe him in. “Good morning, Dr. Reilly.”

Outside, Paris waits, but neither of us care. We are drunk on the novelty of this, waking up married. I’ve been a bit drunk, truthfully, on the novelty of having found him at all. Two Americans who chose London at the same time. If I hadn’t gone to the hospital for a migraine days after arriving, if Nick’s rotation hadn’t gotten messed up, so that he was in neurology rather than peds that week—I can’t even imagine. There is obviously something greater at play with us, something more than mere fate. But whatever it is, even if we can never explain it, it’s something good.