24 #2
My hand falls on his thigh, and I give him a light squeeze as I lean into him. He presses another kiss, this time under my ear.
“Ugh, get a room,” Valerie says.
“Why don’t you and John ever kiss?” Olive says.
John stiffens, and Valerie scoffs. “They’re barely kissing.”
In answer, Anders grips my chin and presses a quick kiss on my lips.
“Okay, show-off,” Valerie says, “some of us are less PDA and more behind closed doors.”
“Anyway,” Bethany interrupts, “thank you for taking care of my boy. It’s nice to see him smitten.”
My lips pull into a smile. Tonight, I can’t waver or think about what’s real. Right now, I have to believe it is, to play my part.
I pinch Anders’s cheek. “Is that it? Are you smitten by me?”
“Endlessly,” he answers.
Valerie gags before pointing at me. “I forgot to tell you, we moved up the Jack and Jill party to this week. I hear your sister is visiting. You should invite her.”
I smile like I’m thinking about the possibility, but it’s impossible. The wedding is fast approaching, and I’m not making the progress I need. I’ve decided to go forward with my most creative, and insane, wedding-wrecking plan.
Unfortunately, it involves my sister, so Valerie can’t see her outside of what I have planned in two days—Taina playing a psychic, guiding Valerie to the understanding that this wedding isn’t meant to be.
“I’ll bring it up to her,” I lie, shifting in my seat.
“What about you?” Valerie asks Anders. “Are you still going to make it? You’re cutting it close.”
When I give Anders a perplexed look, he tells me, “I forgot to mention, I have to travel to New York for just a couple days. I’ll be back early morning before the Jack and Jill.”
Anders presses another kiss to the side of my head.
And Bethany claps her hands. “You two are so damn cute; let me get a photo.” When she whips out her phone, Anders and I lean into each other, cheek to cheek.
We take a few shots, and then Anders asks, “Can you send me those?”
And my heart doubles its pulses.
Bethany asks about Anders’s newest book cover, and Olive busies herself with a game on her mom’s phone.
Valerie joins the conversation now and then, and I keep my eyes on John, who barely joins in but is paying attention.
Whenever Valerie fidgets with her hands, he covers them with his.
If she twirls her hair, he pulls her fingers away.
“This is a vineyard,” I interrupt them all, standing up. “Shall I grab us drinks?”
“Sure,” Bethany agrees. “Get us the house wine.”
“I’ll help with the cups.” Anders starts to get up.
I press my hands on his shoulders and shove him down. “John,” I say, “let’s let them continue their conversation. Come help me.”
There’s no weapon in my hand, but John looks as if I’m pointing a gun his way. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Valerie’s eyes widen, and I give her a slight head shake. Of course I’m not mentioning what happened with the scammer. For a plethora of reasons. Also, thinking of even having a million dollars makes my head spin, let alone losing it.
He follows me at a slower pace than necessary as we make our way inside to the curved bar overlooking the hefty guest list. I order the house wine and a Shirley Temple for Olive.
“So,” I say, “heard I’m a bridesmaid now?”
John shoves his hands in his jeans pockets. “I did.”
I frown. “You don’t sound excited.”
“No,” he says, then brings his hands back out in a frantic wave. “I mean, yes, I am.”
“You’re incredibly hard to read. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“No,” he says, but if that’s true, that doesn’t mean other people don’t agree; it’s just that they’re not saying it to his face.
“You and Valerie are vastly different,” I point out. “She can light up a room and talk up a storm.” I don’t say the rest, but let him hear the implication that he’s far from those things.
“I know.”
“Does it make you nervous?” I ask. “You seem so. Even Olive can see how awkward you two can be.” When he stammers, I add, “In a sweet way, of course. I mean no offense.”
“Yes, it does,” he answers, and even when he does, I still can’t get a read on him. I want to feel him out more. Gather more information. And, really, the more I care for Valerie, the more genuinely I want what’s best for her. Unfortunately, the little I’ve learned about John isn’t reassuring.
They come from different lifestyles, and they barely so much as glance at each other when in the same room; he got her scammed out of a million goddamn dollars. Her family is already hesitant about the pair.
I just don’t see this working.
“So why ask her to marry you?” I say. “I know that’s blunt—I know I’m a new addition to the family dynamic—but I really adore Valerie, and I want her to be happy.”
He avoids my gaze. “Maybe we don’t look perfect to you, but Valerie thinks we are.”
“And what about you?” I counter.
He opens his mouth, then shuts it, then opens it again.
The bartender returns with our glasses, and John gathers all he can and scurries away. Running away from me, from the question, and now I can’t help but wonder if this pairing is more one sided than I thought.
I grab the remaining drink—the Shirley Temple—and head out. Anders is walking toward me, and nobody is at the table anymore. A quick scan shows John and Valerie walking toward the small fountain, and Bethany laughing incredibly hard at something a handsome man is saying.
“Party’s already over?” I say as Anders approaches.
“They want me to mingle more,” he answers. “They say the birthday boy needs to get a lot of kisses and touches and—”
I press a hand to his chest before he wraps his arms around me. “Somehow, I don’t think anyone at the table mentioned that.”
“In my head, they did.” He moves back, and because, behind him, I see his ex-girlfriend watching, I lean into him, sipping the drink.
“While we’re alone,” I say, “let me update you on some things.”
A screech pierces through the air. I jerk back, scanning for the culprit and find a man with a microphone beside a guitarist and a keyboard player, just beside the fountain. “Sorry about that,” the singer says into the mic.
Then they start playing a cover of a song I can’t remember exactly but heard recently on the radio.
“Can you talk and dance?” Anders says, already pulling me by my waist to the center of the patio.
“Growing up in a Puerto Rican household,” I say, letting him sway us to the pop melody, “I can dance and cook and clean all at the same time.”
He smiles in his easy way, and I shake my head when my lips try to mirror it.
“Anyway,” I go on, “there are a lot of eyes on us, so I need you to put on your best acting facade because what I have to tell you is going to piss you off an unbelievable amount.”
His hand stills for just a second before he recovers.
I update him on exactly what went down and how I became a bridesmaid. On how I’ve been speaking with Valerie, texting her, chatting with her, trying to plant subtle seeds of doubt. I tell him what he’s missed and, finally, tell him about the million dollars as the band goes through their set.
My stomach knots the moment I say it. My voice lowers, my breath shortens, and guilt settles somewhere heavy in my chest. I pinkie-swore I wouldn’t say anything.
Valerie trusted me. But I also watched her dig herself deeper into a hole, and I couldn’t let Anders stay in the dark—not when he’s technically my employer.
And not when I genuinely believe this isn’t something that Valerie should keep a secret.
His face furrows together, anger pulling at every muscle.
I finish explaining. The moment stretches as a new, slower song drifts through the air. Anders goes still.
His jaw tightens. His hand—still resting on my waist from when we were dancing—clenches slightly. His eyes drop to the ground like he’s trying to process the weight of everything I just dropped on him. His sister. A million dollars. Gone.
“She didn’t tell me,” he finally says. His voice is low, like he’s afraid of how loud his anger might be if he gives it any more breath. “She lost a million dollars, and she didn’t tell me.”
I shift closer. “She was scared, Anders.”
“She should be,” he snaps, then instantly shakes his head. “No. No, that’s not fair. It’s not even about the money. It’s him. John. I knew he was reckless. I told her he was reckless. And now it’ll be her problem, forever.”
“It won’t, we’ll stop them.”
“She listens to everyone but me,” he says, on a tangent. “And I don’t even care about being right. I just . . . I care. And she makes it impossible to protect her.”
“You’re doing all you can.”
“It hasn’t been enough.”
He sounds defeated. And I hate that.
“I know,” I say gently. “I know you feel like she’s slipping away from you. But she still listens to you, Anders. She still loves you. She just doesn’t want to disappoint you.”
“I’m not even mad at her. I’m mad at him. And I’m mad that I can’t trust him. Not with her, not with her future, and definitely not with her money.”
He takes another step away from me, then turns back, his face unreadable now. “Anders—”
His mouth presses on mine. If not for his fingers gripping the sides of my waist, pulling me closer to him, I’d fall over. All the wires in my head short-circuit, and I feel the bolts ricocheting throughout my body in hot, sudden flares.
My hands grab his neck, to pull him away, to bring him closer, to feel his skin under the pads of my fingers. Only when my head starts to spin—faster than it already does—do I press my hands on his chest.
Right before I lose my very last breath, he pulls away.
I’m trying to compose myself, and Anders, the bastard, simply wipes my lip stain from the side of his mouth, the most out-of-place thing about him, including the stray hairs falling at the side of his face.
“Sorry,” he says, his thumb caressing my lips, presumably to remove the smudged lip stain. “You wanted me to act, and that was the only way to hide.”
“It’s okay.” I step back.