Just Watch the Fireworks Read online

  Just Watch the Fireworks

  By Monica Alexander

  Copyright 2011 by Monica Alexander

  ISBN: 978-1-4657-7068-4

  Smashwords Edition

  Cover image: Copyright 2011 by Monica Alexander

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or personals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  The information in this book is distributed as an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Playlist

  For my husband, Nick.

  One

  I’m not a huge fan of weddings. I have never thought in great detail about my own wedding. I’ve never dreamed of what I would be wearing the day I would walk down the aisle toward the man of my dreams or what color the bridesmaids would be wearing or which flowers would adorn the ends of the pews. Or even if there would be pews at my wedding.

  Call me a cynic if you must, but I don’t think I’m alone in this mindset. I do have it on good authority, though, that I am definitely in the minority. Aside from having two close friends who practically have scrapbooks and swatches in preparation for the day Mr. Right pops the question, I have worked with close to 300 brides whose faces have lit up at the idea of choosing a venue, picking out the perfect bouquet or slipping into the gown that is exactly what they’ve always envisioned.

  I know there are many women out there who probably think I’m crazy. Hell, I’ve made a living working with these women for the past six years, but I know that after that many years of planning lavish, grand, and sometimes way over-the-top weddings, if I ever decide to get married, I only want two things for the day I tie the knot – the groom, and the people we love the most. Nothing else matters.

  I guess I just like things simple. I’ve seen way too many brides in tears because the fondant on the cake didn’t exactly match the bridesmaids’ dresses or the groom wants to dance their first dance to ‘Shook Me All Night Long’ by AC/DC – yes, that happened once. I’ve comforted and consoled these women and talked them down from the proverbial ledge. I’ve stopped them from calling off their weddings or telling their future mother-in-law where she can shove her ideas. I am cool, calm, and collected under pressure. I can deal with any wedding-related crisis, and I am a wiz with double-sided tape. But even though I can plan a close to flawless wedding, I have no desire to be one of these women.

  For a long time I was in the camp that I might never even get married. My parents are divorced, and I lived with them fighting constantly for about three years before they finally got smart and called it quits when I was in the tenth grade. My father had cheated on my mother with a woman much younger than him, and my mother was quite open with me after the divorce about what a mistake it was to ever marry him. Unfortunately, so was my Aunt Karen who spent a lot of time at our house after the divorce empathizing with my mother and telling me that all men are scum. Aunt Karen had been divorced three times and at that point had sworn off men for good. I was a classic victim of negative influence at an early age, so I made the very adult decision at age fifteen that getting married must not be a good idea. In solidarity with my aunt and my mother, I decided I just wasn’t going to get married.

  Then I met a guy who made me think my mother and aunt didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. He was sweet and caring, and he loved me more than anything. He was loyal and devoted, and he made me laugh. He was my best friend. He also had a much healthier outlook on relationships, as his parents had been together for nearly thirty years. I allowed myself to get close to him and eventually fell in love with him. Unfortunately, this man’s healthy outlook on love had him proposing to me after we dated for four years, which succeeded in completely freaking me out. Yes, I am aware that four years is a long time in the eyes of most people, but when you’re twenty-one, still in college and haven’t ever dated anyone else, the thought of settling down is beyond scary.

  He meant the world to me, and made me happier than I’d ever been, but the panic attack that came with the idea of marriage suddenly superseded those feelings. It was like my mother and my aunt were sitting on my shoulders chanting, ‘Don’t do it! You’ll regret it!’ which was strange because they’d both met him and adored him as much as I did. My mother even told me that she thought he was one of the good ones, but on that day, when presented with the idea of forever, I panicked, and I did the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I told him no.

  It broke my heart to do it, especially when I saw the look on his face. It is a look that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It told me that his heart was breaking much more than mine was in that moment. I told him simply that I wasn’t ready to get married. I rationalized that I was starting grad school in the fall and so was he. We had all the time in the world, so why did we have to get married when we were so young. Why couldn’t we just date? We were already committed to each other. Why couldn’t we just keep things the way they were?

  I couldn’t to tell him that I was terrified of settling down with him without ever knowing for sure if he was the guy I was supposed to be with, but it was there in the back of my mind. I’d never dated anyone else; not that I wanted to, but suddenly the idea that I never would get that option had me envisioning us years down the road fighting all the time and eventually divorcing, just like my parents because we never should have married in the first place. I wanted the assurance that we would still be as good together as adults as we’d been in college when things were easy and safe, and in that moment, I didn’t have it. We were facing two years of long distance as he was going to Boston C
ollege for grad school, and I was staying at UMass. That, combined with the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, and he had his whole future planned out had me fearing that we might end up in different places – geographically and emotionally – when it was all said and done.

  My hesitation to get married became the general source of two weeks worth of arguments before he ended things with me for good, telling me that he knew we were right together, but if I couldn’t see it, then he just couldn’t be with me. He walked away from me and out of my life, and I have never felt worse than I did in that moment and in the months after as I tried to rationalize that breaking up was for the best and that we obviously weren’t meant to be together.

  I thought a lot about relationships during that time, moving through slowly the stages of grief as I said goodbye to my first love. In the end, I decided that marriage had two strikes against it in my book. Not only was I afraid of the idea of divorce, but marriage had also cost me the one man I ever truly loved. I was done. I decided then that it would take an awful lot of persuasion for someone to convince me that marriage was a good idea.

  A few months later, I met Ryan. He was funny and smart, and he made me laugh, which was just what I needed at that point in my life. The first day we met we sat talking for hours, neither of us realizing how much time had passed when we finally looked at a clock. He asked me out on a real date, but I turned him down, citing that I was just getting out of a relationship. Granted, it had been five months, but I still wasn’t ready to date. Everything still felt too raw. I needed more time.

  But Ryan was patient. He said he just wanted to take me to dinner and get to know me better. Maybe we could be friends. We would even split the check if it made me feel better. So I agreed. He was sweet, and since most of my friends had graduated already, I figured having a new friend might be nice. We went out a week later. He didn’t try to kiss me or hold my hand. He just hugged me at the end of the date, but he called me the next day. Before I knew it, we were talking on the phone almost every day, studying together and when I got a good grade on a paper or wanted to share a funny story about a wedding I’d worked, Ryan was the person I would call.

  After two months of being just friends, I kissed him one night after he walked me home from a party. I hadn’t planned it. I’d just acted on instinct. I realized then that I had successfully moved on from my ex-boyfriend, and it had been Ryan who had pulled me out of the darkest place I’d ever been in just by being him. From that point forward we were together.

  After a year of dating, I started to think I might have a future with him. I again opened myself up to the possibility that one day, after many years of dating, when I was closer to thirty that I might be okay with marriage. Unfortunately for me, that day came much sooner.

  Ryan proposed just two years after we started dating, and I said yes.

  When I thought about thirty being my scary age for marriage, I failed to remember that my boyfriend was four years older than me, had worked for six years, had an MBA, a 401K and a condo that he owned in Boston. In a nutshell, he was ready to settle down.

  I had a shiny new master’s degree in English and American Literature, had just moved to Boston and started a new job. I had a pug named Gryffin, a roommate named Summer and $100,000 dollars in student loans due to the University of Massachusetts. I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, but wife and mother hadn’t even crossed my mind as potential occupations.

  We were on totally different pages.

  But he asked, and I didn’t say no. Then, once I had some time to process what I’d done, I had a feeling I said yes for all the wrong reasons. You see, my ex-boyfriend just might have scared me for life. So when Ryan popped the question, and the look on his face was so similar to the one my ex had on his face right before I crushed him, I panicked. I was definitely not ready to get married, but I was so afraid that if I said no, history would repeat itself, and I’d end up losing Ryan. I knew I didn’t want that, so I did the only thing I could do. I faked my engagement.

  I didn’t mean to. It just happened, but once I saw how happy Ryan looked when I said yes, I knew I’d made the right decision. I told myself that in time I would be okay with marriage. Everything would be fine, and when it was all said and done, I probably wouldn’t even remember that I hadn’t been overjoyed when he proposed. Faking elation in the moment was the right thing to do. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

  ***

  It was our two year anniversary, and I was running late. Really, really late. Not just five minutes late like I usually was, but late as in ‘my boyfriend who works ninety hours a week, left work early to celebrate our anniversary and was already at the restaurant and I hadn’t even left my apartment yet’ late. I knew Ryan was going to kill me.

  I had one foot out the front door when I realized I had left my lip gloss on the counter in the bathroom, so I raced back in to get it, leaving the door open behind me.

  “Courtney?” I heard from the front hall.

  “Hey Sum,” I yelled.

  “Is everything okay?” my roommate Summer asked, as she walked into the apartment, her four inch heels clicking on the hardwood floor. “The door was open.”

  “Yeah, everything’s great, but I’m so late,” I called out to her, as I grabbed my lip gloss from the bathroom counter and stuffed it in my bag. “Ryan’s waiting, and I should already be at the restaurant.”

  “Right, the big anniversary dinner,” she sang, and I caught the sparkle in her bright blue eyes as I ran past her.

  “It’s not going to happen,” I sang back, rehashing the debate we’d been having for past few weeks about whether or not Ryan was going to make the grand gesture and propose on our anniversary.

  I was in the camp that it was way too soon and was hoping and praying I was right, but she was convinced otherwise. Summer is a romantic at heart, though, so I didn’t put much stock in her argument. She was also desperate for her boyfriend, Patrick, who she’d dated for six years, to propose, so she had marriage on the brain big time. Besides, I knew I was right. Ryan and I had been doing the long distance thing for the past year after he’d graduated from UMass with his MBA and moved back to Boston to work in banking. I’d still had a year to go with my own master’s degree, so we decided we’d try long distance. My plan was always to end up in Boston after college, so we figured a year apart wouldn’t be that difficult.

  Unfortunately, it was harder than we’d thought. In addition to taking classes and working on my thesis, I also worked thirty hours a week for Marion Bliss at Bliss Weddings. Ryan’s job had him working six days a week, so we were lucky to squeeze in more than a few nights together a month. Things had been a little strained with us over the previous few months as we’d both been busy and stressed which of course led to us being slightly on edge with each other.

  The fact that I was now finally living in Boston, fifteen minutes from him made me think we could probably work out our recent problems. I just wanted to get back to how we’d been as a couple when we’d both lived in Amherst, and I was pretty sure he felt the same way. There was no way he was going to propose.

  “Good luck,” Summer called after me.

  “You’re ridiculous. He’s not proposing tonight,” I called back over my shoulder, as I closed the door behind me and jogged to the elevator.

  I bounced up and down on my heels, waiting for the elevator to arrive on the twelfth floor. When I heard ‘Tessie’ by the Dropkick Murphys, the ringtone I’d picked for my die-hard Red Sox fan of a boyfriend, emanate from my phone, I knew was in trouble.

  “Hi, hon,” I said, breathlessly, as I stepped into the elevator. I prayed my cell service would hold out during the ride down. It seemed to be hit or miss in our building.

  “Where are you? I’ve been here for ten minutes already,” came his strong voice on the other end of the line. He didn’t exactly sound irritated. He sounded more anxious.

  I pictured him sitting th
ere in his suit and tie wondering where I was and a new wave of guilt came over me. My perpetual tardiness had become somewhat of an argument topic as of late, and the last thing I wanted was a fight on our anniversary.

  “I know, I know. I’m so sorry. I was with Kate and we lost track of time. I’ll be there in five minutes,” I promised, as I hopped into the cab that was waiting outside my building.

  Thankfully he didn’t push the issue, and thankfully the restaurant was just around the corner from my apartment, so I’d be there soon. We were meeting at a little Italian place in the North End where we’d been a few times when I’d visited him in the city.

  “Okay, I’ll order us a bottle of wine. Do you want the red we had last time?” he asked.

  I had absolutely no clue which red he was talking about, but if we had it before, it was probably good. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t really in the mood for wine. Work had been crazy that day, and I was actually craving a really cold beer, but I assented to what I knew would make Ryan happy. He wasn’t a huge fan of beer.

  Ryan had come from much less humble upbringings than me and had learned to enjoy the finer things in life at an early age. Where as I could have nachos and beer and be perfectly happy, he favored culinary masterpieces prepared by world-renowned chefs. He also had a strong distaste for fried foods which I found to be completely bizarre. Since we’d started dating, he’d taken me to almost every four star restaurant in New England. Most of the time I enjoyed the food, but sometimes I just wanted a burger and fries – the food of my people.

  Whenever I was around his people – namely his family – I felt incredibly out of place, like the poor kid that the rich family takes in and provides for, like in The Blind Side. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that extreme. It wasn’t like I grew up destitute or anything. Quite the opposite actually, but while I went to public school, worked at a surf shop throughout high school and drove a Jeep Wrangler, Ryan went to Andover Prep with the sons of Senators, lived off a trust fund and got a Corvette for his sixteenth birthday.