“They say opposites attract,” Stassi told me when I first shared the news with my girlfriends. We were having dinner and I showed them a handful of photos I screenshotted from some Miami magazine that did a lifestyle photo shoot with Slade. I didn’t have a single candid shot of him in my phone, nor did I have anything of us together.
As she passed my phone to Elise, Elise squinted before saying, “He looks expensive.”
Internally I rolled my eyes because Slade would take that as a massive compliment, but then Elise clarified by saying she meant “expensive” as in “being with someone like him might require a lot of therapy if it ever blows up in your face because holy-effing-shit he’s gorgeous.”
“Okay, ladies, I’m back.” My mother takes the chair between us. “Where did we leave off?”
As she and the florist talk amongst themselves, I zone out, thinking about all the things I’d rather do than marry Slade Delacorte—if only fate would allow.
But the thing about fate is that it has never been on my side.
I don’t expect it to start now.
.
Campbell—
My mom said I had to write you a nicer letter this time.
But I don’t have anything nice to say to you.
Slade (age 8)
Slade—
Do you have friends? Because you sound like a jerk. I would never be friends with someone like you.
Campbell (age 7)
Campbell—
Good. I don’t want to be friends with you either.
Slade
(age 8)
3
Slade
We’re wheels down at the Sapphire Shores municipal airport at exactly 6:02 PM. While I’d love to fly into, say, Portland, or anything with more than a few thousand inhabitants, my trusted flight crew insists this is the most efficient path. And they’re not wrong—it’d just be nice to see some semblance of city lights now and then as opposed to a place that could be wiped off the map in a heartbeat and no one would even know it’s gone.
Why anyone would choose to live in this godforsaken one-stoplight town is beyond me.
It looks like a 1980s postcard and it smells like the ocean—in a rotting seaweed and trash island kind of way.
Palm Beach at least smells good.
Like money.
Ambition.
Confidence.
Freshly waxed sports cars.
Italian cologne.
Exotic flowers.
Top shelf liquor.
The electric energy in the air is palpable the moment you step outside.
Sapphire Shores is the kind of place people go when they want to pretend we’re not living in a world two seconds from some nuclear war every second of every day. The kind of place where people have vegetable gardens in their back yards and potato sack races at Fourth of July picnics. The kind of place where people eat at the same mediocre restaurants for decades because even though the food sucks, it’s all about tradition and history. The kind of place where it doesn’t matter who the president is because they’re all in their own little world anyway.
Maybe it’s for some people—but it isn’t for me.
I’m not entirely unconvinced that this place doesn’t exist in real life.
Maybe I’m stuck in some lucid dream and one day I’ll wake up and I won’t be flying here once a month in preparation to marry Campbell Wakemont?
A man can dream.
Then again, if I’m dreaming now, I’d love to wake the hell up sometime between now and August twelfth—specifically.
By the time I step off the plane, a shiny black Lincoln Town Car is waiting on the tarmac. If this were Palm Beach, there’d be swaying palm trees waiting to greet me and not this cold, salty excuse for a breeze.
“Mr. Delacorte,” my driver, a different man than last time, greets me while another man loads my suitcase in the trunk of the car. “Welcome to Sapphire Shores. I’ll be your driver for the next four days.”
Four days with the Wakemonts …
It would’ve been five, but one of my colleagues scheduled a last-minute emergency teleconference with our Berlin office yesterday, which allowed me to postpone my trip one more day.
Thank God for small favors.
“First time here?” The driver glances at me in the rearview as I check my email on my phone for the millionth time today, a task that feels like playing whack-a-mole lately since Blythe Wakemont copies me on each and every wedding-related piece of correspondence.
“Unfortunately not.” I return my attention to my phone, quietly wishing I could snap my fingers and make a privacy partition appear out of thin air.
“Business or pleasure?” he asks.
He must be new here. Most of the time these drivers are quiet as mice—exactly the way I like it.
Small talk is a nuisance even on the best of days.
“Neither,” I answer without looking up.
“Huh.” The man sniffs a laugh and flicks on the turn signal. “That’s a first for me. Any plans while you’re in town?”
“Yes,” I answer, though I’m not talking to him. Lifting my phone to my ear, I pretend to take a call. Talking on the phone to absolutely no one isn’t my finest moment, but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.
The drive to the Wakemont estate takes a leisurely eight minutes thanks to the severe lack of stoplights in this town.
By the time we pull up outside the hundred-year-old brick colonial mansion with its six marble columns, Mrs. Wakemont is already trotting towards the circle drive in her heels, her arms outstretched as if she’s greeting her favorite person in the entire world.
“Slade, so wonderful to see you.” She wraps me in a Dior perfume-scented hug, and when she pulls away, I notice the soft fur of her jacket has left a few remnants on my cashmere Armani coat. I resist the urge to pluck them off out of respect for my future mother-in-law.
While Blythe has been nothing but gracious to me for as long as I can remember, there have been times I’m not unconvinced she wouldn’t swap lives with Campbell if given the chance. As excited as she is for this wedding, it’s almost as if she’s the bride-to-be in this equation. Then again, she’s been planning this affair for decades now and Campbell is her only child. I suppose she reserves the right to be excited about it.
“How was your flight?” Blythe asks, her eyes glimmering as she wears a grin so wide it might get stuck like that. “No delays or turbulence?”
Even if there were, I’m not here to complain.
I’m only here to fulfill an obligation.
“Flight was good,” I say. “Where’s my best girl?”
Mrs. Wakemont rolls her eyes and laughs. She loves it when I refer to Campbell with any kind of term of endearment. Lately I’ve been making a game out of seeing how many cheesy monikers I can say with a straight face. So far I’ve used “my Juliet,” “my beloved dove,” “my gorgeous doll,” and my personal favorite, “my heart’s dearest.”
“She’s inside,” she says, swatting her hand. “Said it was too cold to wait out here.”
Judging by the flush in Blythe’s pale cheeks, I don’t want to know how long she’s been standing outside waiting for my car to pull up.