Chapter 5
The string quartet continues playing acoustic renditions of pop love songs in the corner as my world feels like it’s collapsing around me. As if this quick international wedding wouldn’t be stressful enough, now I have to spend the next four months seeing Reid Matthews regularly.
I lift my glass to my lips and down the rest of the champagne.
Kate drones on about pairings and who is walking with whom—thankfully as maid of honor, Lydia has the task of dragging Reid down the aisle—when a brief memory has me pausing for a moment.
I’d been doing my best to block out much of the conversation, but hearing his name on her tongue flashed me right back to her telling me about a guy back in college.
“Wait.” I turn to Kate with wide eyes. The expression on my face must somehow tip her off that I’m realizing who he might be. Kate narrows hers back at me, silently telling me to shut up, which is all the evidence I need to know I am correct.
“Care for another drink?” Jason asks Reid, either completely oblivious to the look on my face or pretending he didn’t notice it.
“Love one,” Reid mumbles, locking eyes with me before he turns on his heel and walks toward the bar.
I fully spin on Kate now, who is combing her fingers through her perfectly waved blonde hair as she watches the two of them walk away.
“That’s Reid?” I ask as all the pieces click into place.
Kate sighs like I just asked the dumbest question in the world. “Yes, Jane, I just introduced you.”
“No, Kate, you know exactly what I mean. That’s the guy all the girls in your sorority tried to date freshman year?”
“Not all the girls,” Kate says quietly, waving to Jason across the room.
He waves back eagerly, blowing a kiss in her direction.
Reid catches the movement, rolls his eyes, and turns back to the bar.
I, usually very sympathetic to people who are in love and their sickening cuteness, am also fighting the urge to roll my eyes.
“Reid doesn’t date,” a voice says behind me. I tip my head back, staring at the ceiling and trying not to let out an irritated groan. Instead, I right myself, paste on my best welcoming expression, and smile at my sister’s college roommate.
“Hi, Jessica.”
“Jane. You look . . .” Her brown eyes trail slowly down my body pointedly. The silence hangs heavy as she skims me again, then says, “Nice.”
“Doesn’t she have the best shoes?” Kate says. I’m not sure if she’s trying to diffuse the tension or if she genuinely loves my pink stilettos, but I kick out my foot anyways to show them off.
“The best,” Jessica says without an ounce of sincerity.
I roll my eyes. The battle is done. I don’t care if she likes me or not. I’m here for my sister. But her words still ring in my ears, curiosity piquing. My gaze travels to where Reid and Jason are posted up at the elegant bar. “What do you mean he doesn’t date?”
“Jason says he hasn’t dated since he met him, like, ten years ago,” Kate says, following where I’m looking. Jason must feel her attention on him because he looks her way, blushes a bit, and waves. Kate blows him a kiss. He pretends to catch it and shove it in his pocket. She giggles. I gag.
“Lofty, ridiculously unrealistic standards for women,” Jessica adds. “So honestly we all dodged a bullet.”
I turn back to Jessica. “You dodged a bullet?”
“Jessica tried to date him in college too.”
“Really?”
Jessica tosses her glossy black hair over a shoulder. “Why do you sound so surprised by that? We would’ve been a gorgeous couple.”
“I just expected you to be with someone more . . .” My eyes travel back to the bar again, studying the groom and his best man.
Reid’s smiling softly at something Jason says.
He claps a hand on Reid’s back and lets out a laugh.
And the word “submissive” dies on my tongue, instead getting swapped with, “More like Jason.”
Who is, in fact, massively submissive to Kate. He’d do absolutely anything for her. He follows her around like a lost puppy dog constantly.
Jessica makes a scoffing sound. “He’s much more Kate’s type.” She turns to my sister now. “So it’s a good thing Reid rejected you. Now you get to marry a man who sees my worth and values your worth.”
Kate doesn’t hear it for the backhanded compliment it really is. Kate sighs dreamily, extending her left hand and studying her diamond ring. I narrow my eyes at Jessica, who is too busy also admiring my sister’s ring, though she’s staring at it with a look of envy instead of awe.
“Right,” Kate says.
After another thirteen seconds of silently studying her sparkling stone, she drops her hand and sighs again.
“Well, I’m going to make my rounds. Get me a fresh glass of champagne?
” she asks me—though I know the only answer is yes—and she holds out her empty glass.
I take it without question, then realize my mistake.
“Sure,” I murmur, glaring at the bar I need to visit where my nemesis stands.
Jason and Reid are both leaning elbows against the shiny, dark marble top and talking animatedly. Reid laughs at something Jason says and I’m momentarily caught off guard by how brilliant his smile is. Warm and inviting and contagious.
That’s when it hits me that he hasn’t offered me more than a glare or an irritated sigh the entire time I’ve known him. Which has been a handful of days, but still.
I march up to the bar, not willing to let Reid throw off my confidence, and set the empty flute on the counter. The bartender approaches me, raising an eyebrow in lieu of asking for my order.
“Another champagne for the bride,” I say, pushing the glass toward him.
“And for you?”
I eye the bottles lining the shelves behind him, suddenly needing something that’s not champagne or white wine or something expected of Kate and a venue like this. I want my comfort drink.
“I don’t suppose you have tequila back there.” Out of the corner of my eye I catch Reid’s head swiveling in my direction and I briefly take pride in the fact that I, Jane Sinclair, have surprised him.
“Patron or Cuervo?” the bartender asks.
“Doing shots already?” Reid says beside me. I slide a glance his way, not realizing he had turned his entire body from Jason to me. He was still leaning an elbow on the counter, but now he had his hip against the bar too, one ankle crossed over his standing foot.
“If you’re going to continue being in my periphery, then yes. Several.”
He scoffs. Can I count that as sort of a smile? His lips did quirk up? Albeit sarcastically, but still.
“Shots then?” the bartender asks, trying to regain my attention.
“Any chance you have margarita mix back there?” I try. The tequila was a great sign, but a spicy margarita requires, at minimum, margarita mix. The bartender tragically shakes his head. I let out a sigh. “Fine, then one shot of Patron.”
“Don’t let Kate see you,” Jason says beside Reid.
“She’s not the boss of me.”
“Don’t let her hear you then either,” he adds.
The bartender pours champagne into her glass and I hand it off to Jason. “Then go distract her with this for me.”
He takes the glass with a nod and wanders off in search of his bride-to-be.
Reid, however, stays put beside me. I don’t want to admit that I get fidgety under his gaze, but I do.
After our rough introduction, I’m sure he’s watching me, waiting for me to mess something up colossally, which is incredibly irritating since the shattered plates were a one-time accident and, truthfully, totally his fault.
I’ve seen cooking shows. I know you’re supposed to shout “door” as you open it.
Making sure my posture is as straight as possible, I tap my fingers on the bar top, feigning boredom, and slide another glance toward him as the bartender sets a shot glass on the bar top. “Can I help you with something?” I ask Reid.
He shakes his head, then turns to the bartender and holds up two fingers. “Make that two shots.”
I rear back slightly in surprise. “Who invited you to drink with me?”
Reid arches a dark brow at me. “Who said I was drinking it with you?”
“You’re just taking a shot by yourself?”
“Is that not exactly what you were about to do?”
He had me there.
I pull the shot glass closer to myself and he does the same. After a beat, he extends his in my periphery and I turn my head only slightly to look down at the glass, then up to him with a furrowed brow and pursed lips.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to cheers you.”
“Pass.”
“We’re going to be spending a lot of time together over the next few months.”
“Unfortunately,” I mutter.
“I think we should put the past behind us and start fresh.”
“Also pass.”
“Why not?”
“After the way you treated me last week? I don’t want to talk to you ever again.
” I press the glass to my lips and tip my head back, letting the tequila burn its way down my throat.
Reid is still watching me as I slam the glass on the counter, turn on my favorite pink heels, and stomp off, the clicking of my shoes on the tile fueling me with confidence.
He falls into stride beside me almost immediately and I’m met with the annoyingly wonderful scent of him again. I hold my breath so I don’t breathe it in.
“Well, the bad news is that you will certainly have to talk to me again. Many times.”
“Yeah, well, once the wedding is over, that never has to be my reality ever again.”
“So until then—”
I step in front of him and spin around, effectively stopping him. He’s only an inch from me, his eyes momentarily flaring in surprise before returning to their neutral glare.
“So until then we make pleasantries in public and continue hating each other in private.”
“Who says I hate you?”
“The way you made me feel about this big,” I say, holding up my pointer finger and thumb to show him the minuscule amount of space between them, “when I accidentally bumped into you.”
“You dropped hundreds of dollars worth of food, which wasted money on ingredients as well as my time as I had to go back and remake all of it.”
“No.” I press a finger to his chest so hard he stumbles back a step. “You dropped hundreds of dollars worth of food.”
“Because you knocked into me.”
“On accident.”
He lets out a deep breath, raising an arm to run his hands through his dark hair. I watch as he pushes it back, one single strand falling loosely in his face like he’s Clark freaking Kent. How dare he be in the same handsomeness category as Superman?
“Fine,” he says, dropping his hands back to his sides. I tilt my head to the side. “Agree to disagree then.”
“Perfect.”
The same waiter who handed me my first glass of champagne strolls past and Reid lifts the last two full glasses of champagne off of it, extending one to me.
I eye it briefly, debating if I really want to accept anything from him, before I finally realize I will need the alcohol to finish out this evening.
With him, with Kate, with all the smiling and fake pleasantries I’ll have to continue for hours.
So I reach a hand out and grab the flute from him.
He holds his glass toward me in another attempt at a cheers.
I narrow my eyes at it, then up at him. His lips hitch slightly at the corner, there and gone in the blink of an eye.
He lifts the glass an inch higher. “To surviving this wedding,” he says.
I’ll bite on that one. This wedding will be dramatic.
I can already feel it. I may not be the maid of honor, but I already know I’m going to be doing the heavy lifting on planning and helping and paying for things while Lydia gets all the credit.
For whatever reason, Kate is the only person I haven’t been able to hold firm boundaries with.
And with all the responsibilities of being a bridesmaid, I know in my heart she’s going to press them even further.
I sigh and clink my glass to his. “To surviving.”