The bride was leaning forward, too, now, her arms crossed over her chest, but it wasn’t quite pity on her face.

I matched his expression. “I am super great,” I said, showing all my teeth. “How are you?”

Before Chip could respond, the Whiner jumped in, pulling his focus. “Chip!” she whined (there it was). “What the hell?”

Chip let go of his smile and got serious with me. “Why are you here, again?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

Chip pushed out a sigh. “Because I’m trying to start fresh here.”

“That’s great,” I said. “I cheer you on.”

“Is that sarcastic?”

“No!”

“I don’t need you to cheer me on, okay?”

I gave another shrug. “Too late.”

My read on the situation at this point: Chip was mostly puzzled, and pitying, and jumping to conclusions about my motivations. But his brand-new wife was only one thing: furious.

“Look,” I said to them both, “I wish you both well, okay? I am not pathetically stalking you. I’ve moved on.”

But neither of them believed me.

That’s when Statler called out from the next row of seats back, “Here to ruin the wedding, huh, Jacobsen?”

It was a joke, of course—meant, no doubt, to deflate the tension—but I suddenly realized that’s what they all must have been thinking: that I’d come here with tragic, ridiculous hopes of sabotaging the wedding.

“I’m just here to celebrate,” I said, lifting my hands in surrender.

But Statler just laughed. I was clearly a broken ex making one last desperate attempt to—what? Roll off with the groom? There could be no other explanation. Fair enough. Out of context, flying three thousand miles to your ex’s wedding might seem a little suspicious.

Before I knew it, I was trying to make them understand.

“It’s been a rough year,” I found myself announcing then, to Statler, and the happy couple, and the whole damned boat. “It’s not the life I would have chosen,” I went on, “and parts of it are absolutely brutal. But there are upsides, too. I’m wiser. I’m kinder. I’ve taken up knitting.”

They couldn’t possibly get it. Some kinds of wisdom can only be earned. I should have dropped the whole thing right then. But I just needed to stand up for myself.

“I am building a summer camp,” I said next, “and I’ve started my own nonprofit, and I’m as busy and happy and productive as I’ve ever been. I’ve found my calling. I’ve found work that’s so satisfying and thrilling, I wish I didn’t even have to sleep.”

I read their faces. They weren’t convinced.

But it was okay.

Needing to find reasons to live had forced me to build a life worth living. I would never say the accident was a good thing. I would never, ever claim that everything happens for a reason. Like all tragedies, it was senseless.

But I knew one thing for sure: The greater our capacity for sorrow becomes, the greater our capacity for joy.

So I went on, “That’s the thing you don’t know—that you can’t know until life has genuinely beaten the crap out of you: I am better for it all. I am better for being broken.”

The truth of it both steadied me and left me a little shaky.

It felt like a real triumph.

Until Chip’s bride gave me a look, like, Please.

Chip didn’t seem too convinced, either. “You’re saying you’ve moved on?”

Ugh. “Yes.”

His eyes were like dares. “Does that mean,” he asked, “that you’re seeing somebody?”

Seriously? Was this the only definition of moving on? Was there no way to get better or be happy or live a great life that did not involve dating? Was being in love the only kind of happiness out there? I took offense at the question on feminist principle. I felt tempted to lecture him all night on the ways that women’s lives did not need to be validated romantically by a man. Ridiculous! Narrow-minded! Conventional!

I almost said so. One more second, and I would have.

Twenty-nine

BUT THAT’S WHEN we all heard a person shout, “Wait! Hold the boat!”

At the sound, I noticed that the guys on the dock had already untied the ropes, and we were starting to motor away.

We turned in the direction of the voice, and one of the dockworkers shouted, in Flemish, what I presumed was “Hold up! One more!”

A lone man in a tuxedo was sprinting down the steps toward us.

A man who at first looked weirdly like Ian.

A man who in fact kept on looking like Ian, even as he got closer.

And then turned out to actually be Ian.

My Ian, of all people. Not in Edinburgh. Here. In Bruges. Running to catch the boat to Chip’s reception, in a shawl-collared tux.

Ian. Here, apparently, to crash the reception, too.

I saw him, but he didn’t see me. Too busy running and looking deadly handsome.

I would have told you my reaction to seeing Chip and Tara was visceral—but I did not know the meaning of that word until I watched Ian sprinting down those steps.

My lungs stopped working.

If I could have turned my eyes away, I would have looked for a place to hide.

But I couldn’t turn my eyes away. I took in Ian’s new haircut—a little shorter, a little spikier—and the fit of his tux, noting how European men seemed to wear their pants a smidge tighter than Americans, like they’d shrunk them in the wash.

In a really good way.

Then Ian was vaulting over the wooden turnstile, and then he was on the dock, running—no: sprinting, charging, pumping—along it, after us.

The boat had already edged away. It was three feet from the dock by now, but Ian didn’t even falter.

He just leapt right off the corner of the dock and landed in a crouch on the one open spot of deck—about three inches from my knees.

It was a cool, badass, James Bond move like I’d never seen in real life.

Ian stood up then and faced the crowd. “This is the boat to the reception, I hope,” he said to them all.

The voice. That accent—again, after all this time. I felt my insides melting like warm butter.

The driver shouted something angry at Ian in Flemish—I assume something like Not cool, man! You’re going to get yourself killed!—just as the guests all broke into cheers. Ian brushed off his suit, apologized to the driver, and waved an aw-shucks thank-you at the cheering guests before looking around to notice there were no seats left.

That’s when the boat driver pointed straight at him, like, Sit down, pal! Then pointed straight at the seat next to me.

Ian turned toward the seat, and that’s when he saw me.

Our eyes locked.

If there was a moment for me to die of intensity, this was it. But I couldn’t even do that. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. And from the looks of things, Ian wasn’t doing any of those things, either.

“Please take your seat, sir,” the boat driver said, in English, at last.

But Ian did not take his seat. Instead, he dropped to his knees on the deck. In front of me. Kneeling at my feet.

“You’re here,” he said, a bit breathless.

All I could think of was nonsense. “I’m not here. You’re here.”

Every single person on the boat was watching us now, but as the driver revved the engine to pick up speed, the white noise of it gave us a little sound barrier.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said.

Can you be late to a party you weren’t invited to? “You’re not late,” I said.

Next, his eyes dipped down and caught sight of my necklace. “You’re wearing my present,” he said.

I nodded.

“I thought you might have thrown it away.”

“I did,” I said. “My mom fished it out of the trash.”

“Good woman,” he said. “Do you like it?”

Slowly, I nodded.

If it was good to hear the voice after all this time, seeing the face was just short of ecstasy. It made me woozy to be so close. I didn’t have even one photo of him, and so I truly hadn’t seen that face in almost a year. I drank in the sight—those dark blue eyes that always looked a little sad, the Adam’s apple just above his tux tie, the jaw squarer than I’d remembered.

“What are you doing here?” I asked then.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here,” I said, gesturing at the rest of the guests on the boat, “for a wedding.”

“Your prick ex-fiancé’s wedding.”

“It hasn’t been that bad,” I said. Then I gave him a little grin. “It hasn’t been that good, either.”

He leaned forward and took my hands. “What could you possibly have been thinking?”

I shrugged. “My parents broke up, and Kit and I were trying to Parent Trap them back together.”

Ian frowned. “At your ex-fiancé’s wedding?”

“It was kind of a make-it-work moment.” I met his eyes. “Plus, I’d never been to Europe.”

“You should have come to Scotland.”

I couldn’t read his face. Did he know? “I was thinking about it,” I said.

He seemed surprised. “Were you?”

“I thought I might pop over there when I was done here.”

He studied my face. “Is that true?”

“Yes. Did you know that already? Did Kit tell you?”

“No. She didn’t.”

“’Cause I know you’ve kept in touch.”

He looked down. “I had to keep an eye on you.”

“I’m pretty sure the last time I saw you, you told me you never cared about me at all, so I’m not sure you had to.”

“I was lying.”