21. Two Grooms in Icing
21
TWO GROOMS IN ICING
Hunter
There’s no time in the back of the car to explain to a scowling Nate why I don’t want to talk about my father—like how a one-night marriage would make me look just like him, but a thirty-day one at least is more palatable. There’s no time because my phone brays with a call from my boss.
Is Bernard going to cross-examine me too? Just what I need. A double dose of judgment. I answer the call. “Good morning, Bernard,” I say brightly, as if I’m not freaking out over how my wedding looks to my colleagues.
“Cheers, Hunter. I can’t remember if you like the yogurt with the granola or the oats with chia seeds.” Bernard seems oblivious to my suddenly very public relationship. Wouldn’t that be nice if he had no clue. “I can set one aside for you before everyone arrives.”
Oh, that’s right. I have my breakfast meeting in thirty minutes. “I’ll take anything,” I say, trying to sound amiable.
It’s a pretense I’ll have to keep up all day. Why did I think going to Vegas and flying back in the nick of time for a meeting was a good idea?
Oh, because I thought with my dick, that’s why.
But I need to use my head so I cover the phone and whisper to Machiavelli, “I have a meeting at Webflix in thirty. Can the car take me there?” I ask, giving him the address of my office.
Vance raps on the window and tells the driver where to take me, while on the phone, Bernard prattles on. “Great. I’ll get you the granola. Those chia seeds are dastardly. They get stuck in your teeth. Then all day long you’re running around trying to pluck them out with your tongue. It’s awful.”
“Yeah, chia seeds are the worst,” I say, stealing a glimpse at Nate. His expression could make a BuzzFeed list of Top Ten Scowls.
Finally, Bernard drops the chitchat. “Can you talk about the interstitials before the meeting with Ilene? We have a good chance to show her what we can do here in the London offices. I was thinking something fabulous with players’ stats. All sorts of eye-popping numbers and graphics for the tossing yards, and the end-zone penetration.”
I bite back a laugh I don’t feel. “Penetration in the backfield,” I correct. “Not end-zone penetration.”
“That’s something else entirely, I bet,” Bernard says, then laughs, a little embarrassed, before he recovers. “And I think we’ll also want some coverage of the most explosive players. Those who have the biggest sacks and such.”
Stop, Bernard. Please just stop.
It’s a good thing the man has creative vision for our coverage, but it’s a better thing that Ilene is spearheading the sports details. “Sacks aren’t measured by size,” I explain, and when I hazard a glance, I spot both Nate and Vance rolling their eyes.
“Good to know,” Bernard says, then drones on again about the interstitials—the brief promo spots we’ll run across our home page menu to entice our audience to tune into the big game this coming weekend. As he is wrapping up his plan, the car pulls up to the office. “Well, I’m here,” I say to my boss, relieved to get away from Nate’s glower and Vance’s fangs.
“Perfect. We’ll carry on in a few over the granola. Ilene is here, and she’s ready to go.”
Ugh. Ilene! I still want to impress her so badly. But I want to impress her with my skills, not with my romantic life. If I’m married and divorced in one weekend, that’d be the talk at the water cooler. If I’m married, and then eventually divorced down the road when we’ve all moved on, that’ll be a whole lot less interesting to others.
I hang up, and with the car idling, I turn to Nate and Vance. Only, I’m at a loss as to where to start—the details of my checkered family history or the rules of my new and necessary fake marriage?
But the most pressing matter is my job. “I should go,” I mutter, reaching for the handle.
When Vance clears his throat, I freeze. “Tonight you should meet your husband at his hotel room,” he says.
Oh, right. We have to keep up appearances.
“I can’t stay at my flat?” I ask, but then kick myself since I meant to ask if we couldn’t stay at my flat— we not I.
But before I can correct myself, Vance says drily, “Yeah, that sounds like a bright idea.”
Wow. His sarcasm is so endearing.
“Don’t talk to Hunter like that,” Nate snaps.
Vance holds up his hands in a half-assed apology. “Look, I don’t give a fuck where you two stay,” he tells us. “Your flat or his room. But I do give a million fucks about Nate keeping his deals and his reputation.” His tone shifts from irritated to imploring. “That means you have to stay together this week. And on Friday night, you’ll go together to the reception that Webflix is throwing for the teams, take some pics with execs, and don’t get drunk and blow our cover. Capisce ?”
Reprimanded, I look to Nate. But his face is stony once again. Is he pissed at me or the whole situation?
“Shall I meet you at your hotel tonight?” I ask.
Shall ?
When did I start saying shall ? I sound like a posh asshole.
“Sure. See you tonight,” Nate says tonelessly.
Great. Just great. I’m already fighting with my fake husband.
Sounds just like a real marriage.
I get out of the car and head into work.
I check my mobile in the lift to the Webflix offices on the ninth floor. My messages don’t stop coming. My mum wants to take Nate and me to dinner. My sister in New York wants all the sordid details. And my mates—like Sarah, who’s here for the streaming coverage, and Trevor and his boyfriend, Liam, who live here in London, want to grab a pint or a coffee one night with Nate and me. I don’t have time to answer before the lift doors whoosh open, and I’m just about to close my text app when the phone pings with a note from my dad.
Dad: Chip off the old block, eh? I knew you had it in you.
I want to spit on his message.
Instead, I set my mobile to do not disturb and put on my producer face. When I walk into the conference room, I wave hello to Sarah. She smiles back with wide, curious eyes. Later, I mouth, then say hello to the rest of the crew—a dozen or so colleagues. I gird myself for pats on the back, winks, and atta-boys, planning to smile and give a bashful thanks as Vance asked. But no one says a word about my nuptials. Maybe no one cares, which is fantastic. We can get out of this marriage even sooner than we planned. That’d probably make Nate happy. I’d like to make him smile again.
During the meeting, Bernard presents his promo plans to Ilene and she approves them enthusiastically, then rolls through the rest of the agenda.
When Bernard pushes back his chair after the last item, though, Ilene lifts a wait-a-moment finger. “One more thing. This has been so hard to keep in, but…” She pauses for drama then bursts out, “I got a cake. Congrat-u-stinking-lations to the groom.”
Oh, bloody hell. She beams at me as a caterer whisks in on cue carrying a huge white sheet cake with two poorly-drawn grooms decorating the top.
I. Die.
“I take matchmaking credit,” Ilene says. “Hunter and Nate met on Thursday night, fell in love immediately and got married on Friday.” She sets her hand over her heart. “I am so happy for you.”
Sarah, Bernard, Harry, and the rest of my colleagues round things out with the expected: Wow, married, so fast, OMG, and That only happens in the movies .
This is exactly the kind of attention I wanted to avoid.
I feel like I swallowed a stone as I correct them. “Actually, we’ve been dating quietly for a few months. We just made it official in Vegas this weekend,” I lie.
Like father, like son.
A few hours later, I’m in a quiet edit room, knocking back a cup of English Breakfast and reviewing the graphics our art department added to the player promos. The editor stepped out to take a call, so I’m alone when the door jerks open and Sarah stares down at me.
Eyes wide, lips quirked up in a question, she makes a show of shutting the door dramatically. “So. You’ve been dating him for months, yet on Thursday night, you were hoping he was still single. How long a bike ride do we need for you to tell me what the hell is going on?”
I drop my head in my hand, groaning. “I had to make it look like I wasn’t an impetuous, inebriated idiot in Las Vegas.”
When I look up, Sarah’s blue eyes are etched with concern. “Practicing your Scrabble words?”
“I’m pretty sure those are rubbish tiles. Too many one-point letters,” I say with a sigh.
“What happened, hun?”
Where to even start? “We were having a great time,” I say, and a smile has the audacity to form on my lips as I tell her more about Friday night with Nate, ending with “…and then we went to a chapel and?—”
A knock on the door interrupts, and Harry pokes his pale, freckled face in. “Ilene sent me to get you. She wants to see the promos.”
I stand, leave with Sarah, and whisper, “To be continued.”
I finally, mercifully, escape the office around eight-thirty, exhausted and ready to crash. But I don’t even know where Nate is staying. Also, I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I haven’t showered since Friday night.
I’m a right mess.
Wheeling my luggage along the street, I head to the tube station and then to my tiny flat in a creaky building in Bloomsbury. I dump my suitcase onto the floor of the flat I pay for with my meager producer salary. But even if I could access the trust fund my father set up, I’m not sure I would.
I strip out of the clothes I’ve worn for twenty-four hours and stand under the stream of water in the shower, trying to wash off my bad decisions.
But my wedding ring still shines back at me.