Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Now
CJ
Wyatt slides back into the seat next to me, and I shift my chair closer so I can lean into him like we’ve been partners at corporate dinners for years.
Of course, none of those corporate dinners involved a performance that left an entire room shell-shocked.
“Why do you all look like survivors of war?” Wyatt asks.
Sebastian blinks and shakes his head like he’s trying to fling water out of ears. “We have all been forever changed by that performance.”
“Right?” Wyatt laughs. “I’ll share the entire YouTube playlist for the Little Beau Pipes. Every piece is more chilling than the last.”
Gabe’s eyes widen in horror. “Dude, if you do, I swear to god…”
“More importantly,” I say, “What the hell did you do to Howard?”
He nuzzles my cheek. Nuzzles it! Who knew Wyatt Jones was a nuzzler?
“It’s what you did, I think,” he says. “What are the odds that traces of hot peppers ended up on Howard’s napkin over the course of the night, and when he used it to wipe his eyes and nose just now, those traces went places no traces should go?”
I clap my hands over my mouth in delight. “Um yeah, Dr. Suess, the chances are really good. Gosh, that must hurt.” Of course, I relish it. “Hope he doesn’t rub his eyes trying to get it out. That’ll just spread the capsaicin around even more.”
“Oh, he was rubbing,” Wyatt assures me.
We’re laughing in victory when I hear the voice that’s dogged me like the lingering stench of durian fruit for years.
“Oh, come on,” I groan. “I’m having such a nice night.”
“Too late to crawl under the table,” he murmurs in my ear.
Reese’s lasers have in fact found their target, and she’s got us locked in her sights.
“You’re still broken up, right?” My whisper’s urgent as she bears down on us.
“Extremely,” he says.
“Then why does she have murder in her eyes?”
“That’s just her face when you’re around.”
He strokes a hand down my hair as Reese comes to a halt directly in front of us, having abandoned the people she was chatting with.
“Wow. Wow.” The condescending amusement from our conversation earlier tonight is gone, and her knuckles are white around her cocktail glass. “I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m really not.”
“It’s not your business anymore,” Wyatt replies calmly.
“I know that!” she snaps. “And you.”
When she turns to me, I straighten like it’s day one in boot camp and she’s about to make me do pushups. “What about me?”
“To think, I’ve been considering apologizing to you.” Her lips purse, as if taking responsibility for her actions gives her heartburn. “But something about seeing my ex with…” She waves her elegant, pink-tipped talons in my direction. “… with you makes me change my mind.”
Her point made, she lifts her nose in the air and takes a sip of her drink, then immediately chokes and spits it back into her glass, shattering the untouchable ice-queen vibe she just threw down.
“Ugh, why am I still drinking this?” she croaks out. “Honestly, I’m done. With both of you.”
She thrusts the glass at me, and on autopilot, I reach out to accept it. With a death stare at both of us, she yanks open her tasteful satin clutch and pulls out her phone.
“Siri,” she barks as she strides off. “Send a message to the group chat ‘Throw Away the Whole Man.’”
What do you want to say? Siri’s choppy computer voice asks, and the last we hear from Reese is her carefully enunciated, “Oh-emm-gee exclamation point. You will not fucking believe who I just saw together period.”
Wyatt and I stare after her in silence until a giggle bursts free, and I slump against his chest, still cradling Reese’s abandoned backwash drink. “Okay, that may be the greatest anti-apology in the history of anti-apologies.”
Only Wyatt Jones can frown while smiling. “But she does still owe you an apology.”
“Eh, I owe her one too,” I say. “For the whole cheating thing.”
“I knew it!” Jonesy slaps the table and turns to Liv. “Pay up!”
Wyatt looks around the table suspiciously. “How many bets do you all have going about us?”
“Not many.” Gabe’s lips move silently as he ticks a list off on his fingers. “Maybe four or five.”
“Four or five?” I ask.
“If one of you has a tattoo of the other’s name, I win a hundred bucks from everybody,” Birdy says. “So umm…” She squints at the visible sections of our skin from across the table.
Wyatt folds his arms over his chest and glares, while I just laugh. But when the rest of the table turns to their own conversations, Jonesy leans in and speaks quietly enough that only Wyatt and I can hear.
“So, my investment banker brother, was it CJ that you did but didn’t but maybe cheated on Reese with?”
“As I’ve told you a million times,” Wyatt says with weary patience, “I am not now, nor have I ever been an investment banker.”
Jonesy dismisses his protests with a wave. “You have an MBA, and you covered the costs of Mom’s surgery. That’s investment banker shit, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”
“You did?” This revelation surprises me until I think it through for another half a second, and then it makes total sense. “Of course you did.”
Good thing our chairs are close enough together that we’ve basically created a two-person bench. I melt into him, and he responds by wrapping his arms around me.
“But seriously,” I tell Jonesy, “there was no cheating. It was just a shitty thing I said to Reese because I was hurt and jealous.”
“Eh.”
Wyatt’s noncommittal noise has both of us raising our brows, especially me.
“Are you saying I’ve forgotten about all the sex we had over the years? Because I think I’d remember.” My whole body reacts to the memory of what we just did in Sheila’s office, and I amend my statement. “I’d definitely remember.”
A laugh ripples through the broad chest at my back, and he kisses the top of my head before explaining. “Not physically.” He blows out a breath. “But there were… emotions… there.”
“Bad ones,” I scoff.
“Strong ones,” he corrects me. “And I think Reese always knew something wasn’t quite right about her boyfriend getting off on arguing with the temperamental bombshell he kept bumping into like clockwork.
She wasn’t wrong about me not being fully committed to her.
” He shifts uneasily, but his arms tighten around me. “Not something I’m proud of.”
“Wow,” Jonesy says. “Like you told me last year, complicated.”
“Complicated for sure,” I say with a laugh. “And I swear, he isn’t an investment banker.”
Liv pops into the conversation to say, “Sure. He’s not an investment banker, and you’re not a globe-trotting killer for hire.”
The younger Jones brother sprawls back in his chair with a satisfied wave of his hand. “Exactly.”
“Oh look,” Wyatt says loudly when Becks floats by with a tray of empty dessert dishes. “Our sister is here.”
She slams on the brakes and spins to our table. “Brothers! New sisters! Friends!”
My heart thrills at the plural of “sisters,” but this family isn’t done with me yet.
“C’mere, kiddo,” Wyatt says, reaching into his pants pocket without putting any space between my back and his front. “I need a favor.”
“Yes,” she says immediately.
“Can you sneak away to the Evil Villain HQ, pack up CJ’s stuff, put it all in my car, and get my key back to me before the twelfth day of Christmas?” He hands her a fob that she pockets as smoothly as a magician doing close-up magic.
“Double yes.”
I tip my head up to look at Wyatt from my spot against his chest. “Oh really? It’s your assumption that we’ll be going someplace together tonight and I’ll just abandon my car to follow you there?”
“You did accuse me of being a kidnapper once upon a time,” he reminds me.
“This is true,” I snuggle back in, happy to be his captive.
“Actually, did you come here with your brother?” I ask Becks.
She nods, so I grab my clutch and hand over another key fob.
“In that case, put my stuff in Wyatt’s car, then you can take mine for the night.
Your brother and I can pick it up tomorrow. Sound good?”
“Yes!” Becks dances a little jig with her overloaded tray as she moves to the next table. “Yay for adult sleepovers!”
“It’s the little red Mazda!” I call after her. “Um, is she going to go joyriding or anything like that?”
“Probably,” Wyatt says.
“But she’ll top off your tank afterward,” Jonesy adds.
“Okay then.”
I nestle even deeper into that solid, solid chest as Liv beams at us. “Can I just tell you how happy this makes me?”
“How happy?” I ask.
She opens her mouth, but tears fill her eyes and she just shakes her head helplessly at us. “So happy.”
Now both Jones brothers have emotional women in their arms, and I think we would’ve stayed in this bubble of love all night if not for Wyatt’s last act of revenge.
He sits up straight when Sheila pops her head out of the service entrance and catches his eye with a mouthed “It’s go time.”
“Let’s do it,” he says, and everyone at the table stands and disappears through a different exit.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
Wyatt lifts my chin for a kiss. “Grand finale. We’ll be right back once we’ve directed traffic.”
“I’m genuinely terrified.”
“Nah,” he says. “This one’s pure fun. But Howard’s gonna hate it. We’ll be right back.”
I’m only alone at the table for a minute, and then Max and the gang fire up what I can only hope will be this party’s last round of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” The band’s still holding the final notes when every door to the ballroom bursts open, and a goddamn marching band comes pouring into the room to a crisp, percussive beat.
At least three dozen uniformed musicians quickly spread throughout the room, the trumpets and other brass joining the drums, chimes, and cymbals on an energetic version of “Carol of the Bells.”
Wyatt’s the first back to the table, and I squeal with glee. “Are you kidding me?” I have to shout to be heard above the happy racket.
“I am absolutely not kidding you,” he shouts back. “Keep watching!”
As if I could look away from the high school musicians from the Second City Drum and Bugle Corps, according to the lettering on their uniforms. Their rotations around the room are precise, exuberant, and showy as hell, and they’re grooving through what’s shaping up to be the musical highlight of the night.
Then the service door flies open and the men of the Crimson Lounge—led by Jonesy, who’s changed into his second G-string of the night—dance their way in.
They’re closely followed by the divas of tap, who’ve also undergone complete costume changes and are now in a variety of military-style bodysuits with epaulets as big as their hip pads.
The performers dart in and out of the lines of drums and brass players, stopping to dance for—and on, when given permission—individual guests seated at the tables.
When the band transitions to the appropriately meta “Little Drummer Boy,” Darby and Birdy poke their heads through the main entrance and usher out two nursing mothers and three swan ballerinas, securing a spot for them near the bar so the moms can sway with their babies and the swans can spin in circles without fear of getting trampled or being lit on fire by the jugglers, who’ve also joined the fun with their flaming golden rings.
Even the cult of pipers files back in and forms another semicircle in front of the room.
Despite the swirling chaos around them, they’re as intensely silent as before, engaging in a long staring contest with the audience before dramatically lifting their pipes to their lips and adding their reedy melody to the mix.
“Not the vibe, my guys,” Sebastian mutters as he and Birdy slide back into their seats.
The dancers and corps members clearly agree; they all keep a wide berth around the bowl cuts and tunics, like there’s an invisible force field of weird that’s too strong to break through.
“Where’d the rest of the swans and babies go?” I ask Wyatt.
“Bedtime,” he says with a shrug.
“Why can’t it be the pipers’ bedtime?” Seb moans, and knowing his brother-in-law, Gabe’s already making plans to book the Little Beau Peeps for his next birthday.
“If you notice,” Wyatt shouts to the group at large, “there are exactly twelve drummers!”
“It’s perfect!” I assure him, looking around the room to confirm that our table’s not the only one losing their minds at this festive explosion of sound, colors, and dance.
The partygoers who’ve stuck it out thus far are clearly up for anything because they’re losing their minds over the excess.
Several of them still have cash from Howard’s party budget and are spreading the love to the dancers they didn’t get to tip the first time.
Even the geese get in on the action, honking and snapping their beaks at the gold braids on the corps uniforms as they pass by.
Other than the old sourpuss couple, the VIPs seem overwhelmed in the best way by the happy commotion around them, having apparently resigned themselves to existing in a section of the ballroom that reeks of durian-fruit despair.
The girl with the ever-filming phone floats past, looking like she can’t believe her luck that she’s getting to capture such an unprecedented scene.
When she reaches the bar area, she takes a step back to avoid an aggressive juggling pass and bumps the cockatoo cage, setting off the birds, whose avian screams add an extra layer to the cacophony.
There is, however, one person who’s unhappy with the culmination of Wyatt’s specially curated “Twelve Days” entertainment.
Howard comes bursting out of the men’s room looking like a man who’s been run through a giant cheese grater.
His gaze takes in the room, and his confusion quickly morphs into horror.
He takes one step toward the AV booth, presumably to try to pull the plug on this extravaganza, but he’s immediately caught up in the ocean of performers.
He jumps and waves his arms, although it’s anyone’s guess who he’s trying to signal before he’s swept away in the tide of youth musicians, drag queens, and Diesel.