Chapter 56 - The Light We Lost

That summer, Darren and I got dressed up for the first time in a long time and went to Gavin’s wedding. We hadn’t seen him much since Violet was born, and I barely knew his fiancée at all.

Darren wolf-whistled when I walked into the living room in a navy dress with a plunging neckline. “Hot mama,” he said.

I smiled. “Let’s go, handsome.”

We had to get to the wedding early because Darren was a groomsman, and Gavin greeted us when we walked in. “I got my own paper doll now,” he said, laughing.

I hadn’t thought about that in years, how he’d called me Darren’s paper doll the first time we’d met. “So what does that actually mean?” I asked.

“It’s not important,” Darren said. Then he turned to Gavin. “What do you need me to do, man?”

The guys walked off, and I headed toward the wives and girlfriends of the other groomsmen who were standing by a tray of champagne glasses. Very thoughtful. Very Gavin.

•   •   •

LATER, AT THE WEDDING, I found myself next to Gavin at the bar. We’d both had a lot to drink. Everyone at that wedding had.

“So really,” I said. “What is a paper doll?”

He laughed. “Darren’s going to kill me for telling you this, but he had a girlfriend checklist that summer. You ticked every box. Brunette. Ivy League educated. Brooklynite. Between five-two and five-five. Grew up on the East Coast. Good body. I don’t remember the rest. But anyway, you worked on paper, so we called you—”

“The paper doll,” I finished.

“Exactly!” Gavin said, clinking his Johnnie Walker against my vodka martini before he took a sip.

Making a list like that was such a Darren thing to do, and I shouldn’t have been surprised. But it somehow made his love for me seem less real, more calculated. I didn’t like how it made me feel, reduced to a series of attributes.

Darren walked over. “I heard I worked on paper,” I said to him. “Good thing I’m not an inch taller, or I would’ve been disqualified.”

He laughed. “You’ll never find what you want unless you know what you’re looking for.” The Jäger shots he and the other groomsmen had done had made him less measured than he usually was. Louder. “I was looking for you that summer.”

“Or someone just like me,” I answered. I was less measured than I usually was too.

“Stop it, I wanted you,” he said, sliding an arm around my waist and pulling me close. “The checklist just helped me focus my attention on women who were worth it.”

“Women who were worth it?” I echoed.

“Come on,” he said, knocking back another shot Gavin had handed him. “Let’s go dance.”

I let him lead me to the dance floor, and once we started to Twist—which we were both terrible at—the two of us began laughing and thoughts of his girlfriend checklist vanished. But I’ve been thinking about that list a lot recently. If I’d made a list back then, I don’t think either you or Darren would have ticked all the boxes. And if Darren made a list now, I don’t think I’d still be his paper doll.