The Wedding Veil by Kristy Woodson Harvey

Author:Kristy Woodson Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

JULIA Permission

After a day of sunning on the deck, swimming in the sea, and laughing together, I told Conner that I needed to get back to the bunk room. He rolled over on top of me. “There is absolutely no way I’m letting you go, Julia. No way.”

I sighed and lay back, the sand feeling warm against my neck and upper back, the water cool on my feet. We were lying in the shallows of a nearby, unnamed island, and truthfully, I couldn’t imagine going back to my dank, spartan bunk room when the luxury of the yacht was a possibility. “Tomorrow is technically my day off,” I said sleepily.

“Your last day is your day off?” He laughed. “Then you must stay with me,” Conner said, kissing my neck, burying his face in my hair.

I nodded. I would have said yes to anything he wanted from me at that moment.

He propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at me. “I want to picture what you’ll be doing you when you get back home. What are your plans? Will you really go back to school?”

I smiled. He was so sweet. “Well, my grandmother has this charming stone mountain cabin that looks like it came out of ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ I’m going to go there to get my ducks in a row.” I paused and bit my lip. Saying this next part was going to make it real. “And after that, I’ve decided: if they’ll let me, I’m going to go back and finish.”

Conner smiled. “That’s fantastic news!”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?”

I sighed. “What if they won’t let me back in?”

He peered down at me intently. “I’m not sure I can help you unpack that problem unless you tell me why you quit in the first place.”

I had never told the whole story to anyone but Sarah because, in my heart, it felt so heavy, so big. But here, on the sand with the sun streaming down, I realized that maybe it wasn’t. There were trillions of grains of sand on this little stretch of beach. My little problem suddenly seemed small, insignificant.

“I feel really dumb because it isn’t going to sound like a big deal,” I began. “But when it happened, it felt like it was the end of the world.” I paused. Conner was quiet, waiting. I knew I wasn’t getting out of telling him this time.

He rolled back over, lying next to me on the sand. “I won’t look at you while you say it. That will help.”

“I guess,” I said, looking up at the sky. “I was working on my final project for my second semester of my professional degree. I had already had my site plan approved, so I wasn’t even really that worried about it.”

“Okay. I’m tracking.”

“Do you know who Alex Winchester is?”

Conner laughed. “Um, yeah. Obviously. Basically the master of small-space living as we know it.”

“It is really something to find someone who is the same kind of super nerd as you.”

He laughed and turned on his side, rubbing his thumb down my cheek.

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