“Ah,” Amy sighs. “It’s best to wait then.”

“How do you know?” Shelby asks. “When somebody’s ‘the one?’”

“I knew when Jack flew across the Atlantic from Paris to Philly while he was still studying abroad, just so that we could be together on Christmas,” Amy says, and unlike the other night at dinner, not a single one of her children playfully groan at this story.

Jack chimes in, taking hold of Amy’s hand. “And I knew when she spent her entire Christmas break trying to mend me back to health.”

This sweet, almost bashful smile pulls at Jessa’s lips. “I knew when Ryan was the first person I wanted to call whenever something good happened. Or when I just wanted to tell someone about my day.”

I look over at Ethan, and his eyes meet mine. There’s a sadness behind them, and I’m wondering if he’s thinking the same thing that I am. He was never—not once during the course of our relationship—that person for me. I always called Gabby with good news, or whenever I wanted to talk.

Gabby’s got this distant look in her eyes. “Ben and I went away for a long weekend in Austin,” she says, looking over at him. “We had tickets for this play that I’d been wanting to see forever.” What she doesn’t say is that she’d had an aversion to going to the theater ever since her parents died, and that weekend was a big step for her. But she doesn’t need to tell the people at this table that, everyone who she cares about knowing the story already knows it. “It was really important to me that I wear this bracelet that belonged to my mother. But I was so nervous that somehow I managed to leave it behind. It seems so trivial, this piece of jewelry, but there was a story behind it, and I just…I needed to wear it that night.” She smiles at Ben with unshed tears in her eyes, and he’s watching her like she’s the most precious thing in his world. “Ben drove all the way back to Dallas to get it, just so I could wear it. That’s when I knew.”

She touches Ben’s cheek and leans in for a kiss.

“Usually Ben’s the forgetful one,” Amy says.

“Like how he forgot the wedding rings.” Jessa’s eyes widen, and she slams her palm against her mouth when she realizes she let something slip that she shouldn’t have.

“Relax,” Ben says, stroking the back of Gabby’s hand. “Nate picked them up on his way out here.”

“And then he missed his flight because he stopped to get barbecue and got stuck in traffic,” Jessa says, and my stomach just…drops.

But there was a weather delay that night. He told me he couldn’t get a flight out until the next morning.

Nate looks over at me, his eyes wide and uncertain. The words his sister just said replay on a loop in my brain.

IT’S WELL past one in the morning when everyone finally begins to shuffle off to their rooms, tired from a long night of eating and laughter and fun between friends. Even though I haven’t known most of the Wright family for long, and I haven’t spent any quality time with my friends in the bridal party for a while, there was something very homey and familiar about this evening that makes the end of it bittersweet.

I’m not very tired, and it seems that Nate’s still wide awake, too. I have a feeling that he’s just waiting to get me alone so that he can explain the whole airport story that Jessa let slip. I can admit to wanting to know the reason for it probably as much as he wants to tell me, which is much more than I should.

We told Amy and Jack that we’d take over the clean-up duties so that they could take the rest of the night off. They’ve done so much for this wedding that it only seems right, and it gives Nate and me a nice neutral ground on which to talk things over. Neutral ground is good; with Nate it’s the least dangerous. Nate’s standing on one side of the long picnic table, and I’m on the other. We’re both holding huge black plastic bags: one for trash, the other for recycling.

Nate dumps paper plates with uneaten bits of food on them into his bag, and I toss remnants of wine into the grass before throwing the plastic cups into the bag to be recycled. The crickets are chirping, and there’s a soft breeze in the air. It’s light enough to cool our skin, but not strong enough to make a mess of what’s left on the picnic table.

The two of us are quiet, a silence that’s not altogether comfortable. I think he’s waiting for me to ask him why his sister thinks that he missed his flight from Dallas when he’d told me that it was delayed until the next morning. He seems kind of uneasy about it, and because I always think the worst, I assume that it’s because he had me pegged as an easy target for airport sex and he isn’t quite ready to own up to that yet. I mean, I was an easy target for airport sex; I was looking for it, for crying out loud. But knowing that would ruin the whimsy of the flirting, the magnetism that I felt when we were together. I want him to tell me the truth, but at the same time I don’t want to know it at all.

“Nate,” I begin. His eyes snap up to meet mine like he’s been waiting for just that one signal to confess. So, he does.

“I lied to you that night,” he says, his eyes searching mine. “My flight was canceled because of the storm, but I booked one for later that evening. I was just killing time in the bar; I wanted to catch the end of a game. And then you walked in.” He takes a deep breath and sighs, and there isn’t anything in the world that could make me look away. “I was glued to the seat, Callie. I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t leave. I had to keep talking to you, I can’t explain it. It was…as necessary to me as breathing.”

“Then why did you lie?” My voice cracks as the words come out.

“Strangely enough, because I didn’t want you to think I was using you. I can see now that wasn’t the best plan. My mom, she tracks my flights, and I didn’t want to have to explain why-”

“Why you skipped your flight to have sex with some woman you met in a bar?” I try to sound lighthearted about it all, but it falls flat.

“No,” he says, closing the distance between us. Without even realizing it, I’ve walked a few steps towards him. Nate drops the bag, then reaches out for my hand. He holds just my fingers, lightly skimming the pad of his thumb across my nails. “I didn’t ask you to leave the bar to have sex with you. I mean, I wanted to have sex with you. I want to have sex with you.” He lets out a breathy laugh as he shakes his head, and the frustrated smile makes a warmth blossom in my chest. It’s cute, the way he stumbles over the words, and he looks at our entwined fingers as he continues. “If you had just wanted to talk that night? I would’ve sat there and talked to until the sun came up. I would’ve missed ten flights if I had to.”

He squeezes my hand, looking down at me, and the soft light from the lanterns makes his perfect face seem almost ethereal. My breath catches, right in my throat. I want to ask him why, why he wanted to talk to me so badly. Me, the girl whose father left and whose boyfriend turned to another woman for comfort. The girl who’s never been quite good enough to make people want to stick around. But somehow, he wanted to.

He searches my eyes, and maybe he knows. Maybe he can see all the doubt inside of me.

“You flipped a switch in me that had been off for a long time,” he says. “That night, with you, everything just…lit up.”

My heart skips, and the air around me feels so heavy all of a sudden. I don’t care about cleaning up or about the trash we’re going to leave out here, I don’t care about anything other than Nate’s smile, and the warmth of his hand, the way his skin feels against mine. I want to feel his hands on me, everywhere.

I slide my fingers through his and we just go together, like my palm was made to fit against his. I lead him across the yard and into the house, through the living room and down the long hallway that leads to our rooms. We pass mine, and walk into his. I turn on the light and close the door.