The Overlap (29 page)

You wouldn’t think there would have been any sort of “mourning period” or whatever you want to call it. But just like when I broke up with Andrew right after I graduated from ASU, a day or two after things were officially over with Dustin I suddenly felt absolutely horrible. It wasn’t because of a bad breakup scene or anything like that. Dustin mostly just sat there in a state of confusion as I told him why we needed to break up. No doubt his mind was having a lot of trouble piecing together the timeline of what had happened, even though I was brutally honest with him, only holding back things like the details of specifically where Zack and I might have gone to dinner on any given night, or exactly when we slept together for the first time; that sort of thing. Even though Dustin thankfully didn’t demand clarification or further explanation from me, he was obviously having difficulty comprehending how he and I could have been “together” that week and weekend in Chicago even though there had apparently been some other guy in the picture the whole time.

To Dustin’s credit, though, in the end he just accepted the verdict I had pronounced on our now-concluded relationship, and “Dustin and Lindsey” just slipped away into our respective pasts. He flew back to Chicago the next day and never made any attempts to get back together with me, or even to meet for coffee or a drink once the Chicago project ended for good a couple of months later and he came back to L.A. for his next assignment. Fortunately, though, along the way he must have decided that the firm’s L.A. office wasn’t big enough for both of us, so after a month and a half back in L.A. he transferred to New York. Two or three months after he moved to New York I heard through the rumor mill that he met a new girlfriend and that relationship lasted about six months, and even after that one ended he hooked up with yet another woman whom he supposedly was still with today. The consultants in our firm’s New York office rarely travel farther than New Jersey or Connecticut, so we’ve never actually run into each other... at least so far.

But this occasion was about Zachary Buchanan and me, not long-ago memories of Dustin and me. I think the only reason those thoughts about my final weeks with Dustin and the subsequent breakup popped into my head was because of Kensie’s and Courtney’s presence, which of course made me think at least a little bit about what had happened during those couple of weeks of overlap between Dustin and Zack. Both of my girlfriends were in my wedding along with my cousin Julie and Zack’s sister Brittany, and during my night-before bachelorette party the subject of how Zack and I got together of course came up during some drinking game. I felt a little uncomfortable with the gory details being shared in front of Zack’s sister. Zack, of course, knew the whole story, but I had no idea how much he had shared with Brittany or his two brothers who were also in the wedding. I was worried that Brittany might leave the bachelorette party thinking that I was some bitchy, two-timing slut not worthy of her brother, but she seemed pretty much okay with the story, and even gave me a big hug as we left as she slurred something like “I’m so glad you made the right choice.” (At least that’s what I thought she said, but I was as drunk as she was; so who knows.)

Kensie had stayed with Rick Worthington for just about one year; coincidentally the exact same number of days, we calculated one night after they broke up, that Dustin and I had been together. It probably was just was a coincidence but there was something cosmic about our discovery, which Kensie originally took to mean that the next guy she met would be The One for her. That’s not what happened, of course. She was with the next guy for about four months, and hadn’t been serious with anyone since then. We didn’t see each other as much these days as we once did because she left our firm about six months ago to take a better job at a different one down in Orange County, which was where she mostly worked. But there was no way she wasn’t going to be in my wedding. And since she was here without a plus-one, maybe she would meet somebody. After all, resort weddings and receptions are the perfect setting for meeting someone, right?

As I finished putting on my makeup in the bridal room at the resort, Lauren was out checking on some final detail for the wedding ceremony that my mother had insisted wasn’t correct and I was alone in the room with just Kensington.

“I’m so happy for you!” she blurted out as she watched me touch up my eyes for about the sixth time in the past twenty minutes. Obsessive-compulsive, anybody?

“I can’t believe you’re actually getting married!” Kensie continued. “I remember when you first met Zack we used to have those long talks about how much you liked him, but that you weren’t sure how and when you would break up with Dustin...”

The sharp look I shot her way cut off her meandering speech.

“Sorry,” she said. “We were talking about Dustin last night so I just thought...”

“But not today, okay?” I interrupted. “I know Dustin will always be a part of the whole story of Zack and me, but for today especially I don’t want to think about that part. I still feel ashamed about what I did with Dustin after I met Zack, and I think I’ll always feel that way.”

I paused from working on my makeup.

“I can tell you this, though; but probably not anybody else.”

Kensie looked at me, waiting for me to continue.

“Every so often I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m pretty sure I’ve had a dream where things turned out differently, even though I can’t remember any of the details of the dream. Sometimes it’s that I never went back to L.A. and wound up staying together with Dustin in Chicago, and that he asked me to marry him and I said ‘yes.’ Or that I did come back but Zack stayed up in San Francisco, and eventually Dustin came back and we stayed together. Dreams like that. I keep thinking how close I came to things having turned out differently, and it scares me. Just a twist of fate here or there, with both of them overlapping for those couple weeks, and who knows what might have happened?”

Kensington shrugged.

“I know,” she replied. “But
this
is how things turned out for you, and I’m sure that they did turn out this way for a reason. After you say ‘I do’ in...” – she glanced at her watch – “...about an hour, I’m pretty sure those dreams will fade away, probably forever.”

I nodded.

“You’re probably right,” I responded.

“Well then,” Kensie said, just as my sister Lauren walked back into the bridal room, “let’s finish getting you ready so you can become Mrs. Zachary Buchanan, and you can put any more ideas of what
might
have happened to rest forever.”

Lynn Costa lives in Arizona, and
The Overlap
is her debut novel. Watch for Lynn’s next novel in early 2014. Lynn can be reached at
[email protected]
.