It Had to Be You Georgia Clark (bookstand for reading txt) 📖

about her attraction to him. A departure from what girls like her were supposed to seek out. Yes, she’d thought about kissing girls, who hadn’t? That was just ordinary sexual curiosity. Maybe she wasn’t 100 percent straight: no one in Brooklyn seemed to be, so being 90 percent straight—85 percent straight—made her pretty much normal. Maybe she could kiss a girl: big deal. She was young; it was the twenty-first century; she was living in New York City for crying out loud!

But she couldn’t imagine having sex with a girl. It was hard enough accepting her own vagina. The idea of doing the things one did during sex with another vagina seemed a bit… icky. So she couldn’t imagine having a girlfriend. Or a wife. Definitely not a wife; it just sounded weird thinking about it. She was going to be a wife: she would not have a wife. That’d be like living upside down or eating breakfast for dinner.

There was nothing wrong with being gay… for other people. Try as she might, Savannah couldn’t shake the idea that being a little bit gay was like being a little bit terminally ill. Her parents were sympathetic for gayness in the way people were sympathetic for cancer. Brooklyn Savannah was open to the idea that, hey, maybe her sexuality wasn’t so black-and-white. Southern Savannah was terrified of the shades of gray she was starting to sense in herself.

She had so many questions. How did two women even be in a relationship together? She knew it wasn’t about “one being the man”—or maybe it was?—but didn’t men and women sort of balance each other out?

Or did the right partner balance you out? Maybe gender had nothing to do with it at all.

She needed more intel. As she heard Liv opening the front door, Savannah tapped open her to-do list and made a note. Look into L stuff: books/bars etc?

“Morning!” Liv sailed in, offering her a cherry from a paper bag.

“Yum.” Savannah plucked a couple. “Love cherries.”

“Me too.”

“You’re in a good mood.”

“Am I?” Liv said, curiously coquettish.

They fell into their Monday routine, catching up on each other’s weekends and that day’s meetings and bigger items in the week ahead, while sifting through the mail and munching more cherries. Liv opened a card that had arrived hand-delivered. “It’s from Vanessa.” She read aloud. “ ‘Dear Liv and Savannah, Thank you so much for planning our dream wedding: it truly was the best day of our lives. A special thank-you for all your help with my father. I’m thrilled to say Lenny, my dad, and I are planning to spend this Christmas together for the first time.’ ”

Savannah’s heart ballooned. Vanessa’s happiness reflected back on her, and she basked in it like sunlight.

“ ‘A wise woman once said,’ ” Liv continued, “ ‘The quality of our lives is defined by the quality of our relationships. You have helped make my life richer and more meaningful. I am forever grateful.’ ”

The two women Eliot Goldenhorn had posthumously brought together were both damp-eyed. Savannah squeezed Liv’s arm, holding it for a long moment. It didn’t feel weird. It felt warm. Entirely natural.

Nothing made Savannah Shipley feel as good as helping other people feel accepted and loved. It sounded cheesy, but love didn’t have a sexuality or gender. Or an agenda.

It was just love, wasn’t it?

PART THREE

IN LOVE IN THE HAMPTONS

53

Summer stayed long and slow in New York, the dog days of August giving way to a luxurious September. Leaves the color of pumpkin soup scattered across the sidewalks. Seasonal menus switched heirloom salads for hearty terrines. Plaid appeared in every shopfront window, and it began getting dark at a reasonable hour. Fall, that season of crisp air and apple crisp, was on its way.

Savannah Shipley no longer felt like a bumbling newbie. She’d become accustomed to calming bridal anxiety and anticipating month-out meltdowns. Panicky 2:00 a.m. emails such as Looks like rain and I am FREAKING OUT and Need to change the seating plan again (!!!) could be handled with increasing ease. She’d borne witness to couples in love and couples in a fight and couples who really just wanted the whole damn thing over with. Weddings were the first real test a couple would endure: a trial by fire. At one stage, one partner (and yes, usually a bride) would come to an emotional realization that this wedding “just wasn’t me.” It was too big or too small. A church should be a field. A Carolina Herrera gown should be a BHLDN dress. A jam-packed three-day weekend should be a simple evening affair. At first, Savannah tried to make the changes the bride requested. But after getting off the phone with a woman convinced that her Italian destination wedding should be in her parents’ backyard in Michigan, Liv explained it as such: everyone learns about planning their wedding while planning their wedding. If they could do it all again, of course they’d do it differently, but that wasn’t possible. Additionally, what most brides didn’t realize was, while their wedding was culturally sanctioned as their day—it wasn’t. It was the couple’s day. A wedding could never be one person’s vision. And that was more difficult than wives-to-be anticipated.

And Liv Goldenhorn had seen it all. The more worked up the bride got, the calmer Liv became. She could play therapist or bad cop or soothing maternal figure. Her approach oscillated between ritual and making it up as she went along, and the result made the process feel energized, even when things got messy. Planning a wedding was widely believed to be exciting, romantic, and fun, when in reality most couples found it complicated, tiring, and incredibly stressful. Overall, Savannah was astounded just how far planning was from the glossy perfection she’d grown up salivating over in bridal blogs and Martha Stewart Weddings. Those pictures were to planning a wedding what porn was to sex. At best, in the same ballpark; at worst, a highly unrealistic simulacrum