I Left Him at the Altar, So the Best Man Took Me Off the Island novel · Chapter 3 of 40

Chapter 3: Forty-One Buttons

He takes her to his cottage, undoes her dress without touching her skin and sets her one-night rule; Bryce texts her to come home and sign.

His cottage sat at the end of a gravel track two miles past the last streetlight, on a shelf of rock above a cove.

There was a concrete boat ramp below it, a leaning porch, and a single window glowing yellow.

Ansel tied up at the ramp, handed me over the gunwale, and went up the slope ahead of me with a flashlight.

I carried my skirt in both fists.

The satin was soaked to the knees, and my satin shoes had given up somewhere on the dock.

Inside, it was one room.

A woodstove stood in the middle with a kettle on top, and a cot and a table stood by the wall.

A framed chart of Port Gannet harbor hung over the sink.

There was one chair, one mug on a hook, and a stack of paperbacks on the floor with the spines cracked.

He lit the stove in four quick movements, and the fire took.

"There's a bathroom through that door," he said. "Hot water in about ten minutes. I'll find you something to wear."

He came back with gray sweatpants, a flannel shirt, and a pair of wool socks, and laid them on the cot without looking at me.

"They'll be big," he said.

"I'll live."

I took them into the bathroom and shut the door.

The dress had forty-one tiny buttons up the back, and I had never once done them up myself.

The seamstress in Portland had done it, and then my maid of honor, who was probably calling me right then.

I reached behind me, and my fingers could not find the end of the row.

I tried for five minutes.

Then I opened the door a crack.

"I can't get out of it," I said.

He was standing by the stove with his back to me.

He didn't turn around.

"I can cut it," he said.

"It cost four thousand dollars."

"Then I'll undo it. If you want."

I thought about that for a second longer than I should have.

"Turn around," I said.

I stood with my back to the room, and he came up behind me.

He began at the nape of my neck.

His fingers were slow and exact on the buttons, and each one made a small click.

He never touched my skin.

I felt him not touching it.

When he got halfway down, his knuckle grazed my spine, just once, and I heard him stop breathing for a moment.

Then he moved on, and I told myself that it was cold in there, and that was why I'd shivered.

"That's enough," I said at the last button, and I held the front against my chest and went into the bathroom fast.

I came out in his flannel with the sleeves rolled four times.

The dress hung over the bathroom door.

He had put a bowl of soup on the table, and a spoon, and a plate of crackers.

"It's from a can," he said.

"It's perfect."

I sat in the one chair, and he sat on the end of the cot, and we ate without talking.

The stove ticked.

Rain began against the window, light and then heavy.

"I want to be clear," I said, when the bowl was empty. "I'm not staying here."

"All right," he said.

"One night. In the morning you drive me to the bus in Bangor, and I go to my friend's in Portland."

He nodded.

"And I forget the last six hours," I said. "And you don't ask me why I took your boat."

"I wasn't going to."

"Good."

I waited for him to argue, since a Pettengill always argued.

He sat there with his big hands hanging between his knees.

It was almost insulting.

"You're a quiet man," I said.

"I've been told."

"Your brother talks the entire time."

"My half-brother," Ansel said. "And yes."

The way he said it made me look up.

He wasn't smiling, but something in his face had eased.

"That's the first joke I've heard from you," I said.

"It wasn't one."

I laughed, and then I put my hand over my mouth because it had come out cracked.

He looked at his hands.

"You can cry," he said. "I'll go out on the porch."

"I'm not going to cry."

"All right," he said.

"I'm not," I said again.

I was already crying, quietly, with the spoon in my fist.

He stood up and took his jacket off the hook, and he went out on the porch and shut the door softly.

Through the glass I watched him sit on the top step in the rain with his shoulders hunched.

He faced the cove with his back to the door.

My phone was in the pocket of the dress.

I fished it out when I was done.

The battery was at nine percent.

There were thirty-seven missed calls and a pile of texts.

Some were from my maid of honor, and nine were from Fernand Michaud, my father's old shipwright, who never called anyone.

One was from Bryce, sent four minutes ago.

I read it standing at the window with Ansel's flannel pulled around me.

Mom says come home and sign it. Nobody has to know. We can still make this work, babe.

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