Chapter 2 #2
I was proud of him. That was the thing I kept coming back to, standing beside him at the arch while the kiss happened and the yard came apart.
A year of watching him go quiet. And now he was crying in front of two hundred people, and the man at the arch was the version of Easton Ford I'd always known was in there.
The toast lasted fifteen minutes.
I'd been making notes for three months, which was three months longer than any toast needed, but I'd wanted to get it right. The pinball machine in my basement. The morning he'd confessed at the firehouse counter that there was somebody. The cat in the engine compartment. Opening day at the clinic.
I landed on the line I'd been saving for the end.
"I have never seen a man pretend not to be in love harder than Easton Ford, and I have never seen a man fail at pretending faster."
The backyard came apart. Easton shook his head. Astrid was laughing and crying at the same time. I raised my glass.
I looked at Audrey as I brought it down.
She was already looking at me. She had her glass up, her eyes were dry now, and the half-smile was back.
She held my look over the rim for a count of two before she drank.
It wasn't an invitation. It wasn't a challenge.
It was something I didn't have a word for yet, and by the time I thought to look again, she was already turning to say something to Sloane.
The reception settled into the rhythm of receptions after the toasts and the first dance, and the mother of the bride's crying jag had all been absorbed by the evening.
The bartender knew his business. The band had shifted into the low, warm gear that kept people on the patio without demanding anything of them.
Shane, Brian, and Garrett found me at the bar around eleven.
"Rhodes."
"Briggs."
"You're not on the dancefloor."
"Nobody's asked me."
"Mhm." Shane took a pull of his beer. "You've been watching somebody for twenty minutes."
"I've been watching the bartender. He's pouring light."
"That's not who I mean."
Brian coughed into his glass of water in a way that wasn’t a cough. Garrett smiled into his bourbon.
"Go talk to her," Shane said.
"I've been talking to her for three months. She thinks I'm rude."
"Are you rude?"
"Frequently."
"Go be rude to her, then."
I finished my drink and left the three of them at the bar.
The Queens wives were on the patio with Audrey, and the sound coming off that group was the sound of four women who had gotten past the polite stage and into the part of the evening where the real laughing started.
Audrey was laughing harder than I'd heard her laugh in three months.
She had her head tipped back, her hand on Sloane's arm, laughing with the full-body commitment she brought to everything.
I noticed.
I didn't go over.
It’d gotten late.
Most of the wedding guests had gone home.
The caterer had broken down the buffet. The band had packed up an hour ago.
The string lights were still on in the trees, the small warm yellow that made everything look better than it had any business looking, and the chairs in the grass were half-empty, folded ones leaning against the backs of the ones still standing.
Audrey was at the table by the rose bed.
I was at the same table.
We'd been at the same table for forty minutes, and neither of us had moved.
I didn't know how we'd gotten here. The last hour of the reception had been the drift of people toward their cars, the slow collapse of a good night into its last few minutes, and at some point, the table had emptied around us, and neither of us had stood up.
My jacket was over the back of the chair.
My sleeves were rolled. She'd kicked her heels off under the table twenty minutes ago and pulled one knee up to her chest in a way that was definitely going to wrinkle the sage dress, and that she clearly didn't care about.
We were both a little drunk. Not sloppy. Just past the line where careful starts to feel like too much effort.
"The officiant," she said.
"Pastor Holm."
"He kept doing the thing with his hands."
"The thing where he folds them and then unfolds them and then folds them again."
"Like he's praying but can't commit to it."
I laughed. She laughed. It was the same laugh, the same read of the same moment—an observation nobody else in the yard had made, because nobody else in the yard had been watching the officiant's hands during the vows.
"I thought it was just me," I said.
"It wasn't just you."
"Three months of fighting with you about everything, and it turns out we're the only two people here who noticed the pastor's commitment issues."
"We're not fighting right now."
I looked at her for a moment.
"No. We're not."
The string lights hummed above us. A breeze came off the river and moved through the roses on the arch.
"The buttercream," I said.
She looked at me.
"You were right about the buttercream. The cake was better with buttercream."
"I know I was right."
"I'm telling you I know you were right."
"You fought me on it for two weeks."
"I fought you on everything for three months. I'm telling you the buttercream was the right call." I leaned back in the chair. "You were right. I should’ve let it go."
She looked at me for a beat longer than the sentence required. She had the look of a woman hearing a concession she hadn't expected, deciding what to do with it.
"Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome."
The concession sat between us. It was a small thing. It was also the first time in three months I'd told her she was right about anything without a fight attached to it.
She picked up her glass, took a sip, set it down, and looked at me over the rim.
"Can I tell you something?" I said.
"Is it going to make me mad?"
"Probably."
"Go ahead."
"You're the most beautiful woman I've seen all day, and I would’ve asked you out three months ago if you weren't the most wound-up person I've ever met."
She didn't flinch. She didn't blush. She set the glass down on the table and looked at me dead-on.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Is it going to make me mad?"
"Definitely."
"Go ahead."
"You're the most attractive man in this backyard, and I'd have said yes three months ago if you weren't the most arrogant person I've ever planned a wedding with."
I held her look. She held mine. Neither of us moved. The honesty sat in the air between us like something physical, like a door that had opened a quarter inch, and we were both standing on either side of it, deciding whether to push it the rest of the way.
We didn't push it.
We sat with it.
"So," I said.
"So," she said.
"What do we do with that?"
"I don't know."
"Me neither."
She picked up her glass. I picked up mine. We drank without looking at each other, and the string lights hummed above us.
She stood up to leave ten minutes later.
She wobbled.
My hand was at her elbow before I'd thought about it.
Same place I'd caught her on the porch steps last night, when her heel went between the boards and she'd almost gone down the stairs face-first. She looked down at my hand on her arm and then up at me, and for a second, neither of us said anything.
"I'm fine," she said.
I let go.
She bent to pick up the heels from under the chair, straightened with them in one hand, dangling from two fingers, and dug into the small clutch she'd been carrying all night. She came out with her keys.
"You're too drunk to drive."
"I didn't wobble. I adjusted."
"Callahan, you wobbled. You're not driving." I held my hand out. "I'm driving you home."
"You're just as drunk as I am, Rhodes."
She had me there. I was exactly as drunk as she was.
She dropped the keys back into the clutch and pulled out her phone. "I'll Uber. Get my car tomorrow."
"I'm riding with you."
"I don't need a chaperone, Rhodes."
"You're too drunk to Uber alone."
"I'm not that drunk."
"You wobbled."
"I adjusted."
"You wobbled, and I'm riding with you."
"I don't need you to ride with me."
"I know you don't. I'm riding with you anyway."
"Why?"
"Because you're too drunk to Uber alone, and I'm not going to stop saying it until you let me get in the car."
She stared at me. She was running the math on how long I was going to keep this up versus how long she was willing to stand in the grass barefoot, arguing about it.
"Fine," she said. "Fine. Get in the car. But only because you're annoying and you won’t stop being annoying unless I agree."
I smiled. The dimple, probably. I couldn't help it.
"You're right," I said.
She ordered the car.
I pulled my tie off over my head. The silk slid free, and I held it in one hand, grabbing my jacket off the chair with the other. The tie ended up in her hand, somehow. I didn't remember handing it to her. She didn't give it back.
We walked across the grass toward the side gate. The string lights above us were still on. The chairs we passed were empty. Somewhere in the bungalow behind us, Easton and Astrid were at the end of their wedding day, and the last of the night was folding in around the yard.
Audrey laughed at something. I didn't know what.
I'd said something a few steps back that had landed, and she'd tipped her head and laughed.
The laugh was the real one, the full-body one I'd heard on the patio earlier.
I laughed, too, and neither of us was going to remember what the joke was in the morning, but we were going to remember the laughing.
We cleared the gate.
It clicked shut behind us.