Chapter 13 #2
His lips firm, and then the flat look fades.
He sighs. “It’s okay. We figured you wouldn’t be able to say no to your boss and leave in time.
You’re too weirdly scared about getting fired.
Just thought you’d break away earlier than this.
Margie bet me twenty bucks you wouldn’t be here until after dessert.
I wrote you out of the speech when you weren’t here after the salads were served. ”
My heart gives a little kick, but I have no one to blame but myself. “Change it back! I’m here now!”
“Maybe. Let me walk you to your table before your food gets cold.” He pushes back from his seat and presses a hand against the small of my back to lead me away. I say my goodbyes-for-now and turn to my table.
Where the devil is staring back at me.
“You sat him with me?” I hiss at Avery. Jack’s cleaned up nicely in a sleek navy suit, and he looks fucking sexy with his hair styled into his mildly mussed look.
It makes me want to run my fingers through those locks, though I’m not sure if I want to smooth it or mess it up some more.
A roguish smile plays about his mouth, bringing out a hint of dimples.
He knows I’m distressed to see him. He’s thrilled I’m distressed.
Or maybe this is where he plans to stage his next attack?
Avery levels a patient look at me. “You don’t get to complain.”
“You like his engaged sister. The Avery I know would never pursue someone who was taken.”
“The Avery you know is boring and sexless. And he isn’t going to find that,” he gestures behind him at his parents, “by being that way.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“And I’m not pursuing, I told you. I’m being a friend.
Her fiancé is a loser. He’s like an emotionally immature Punxsutawney Phil, showing up every year to play with her emotions and destroy her before disappearing back into his hole.
But yes, I like her, I’m not going to deny it.
I’d swoop in if the fiancé wasn’t there. ”
“You’re walking me to my table just to have an excuse to be near her, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
I point a finger close to his face. “You are honest, but also terrible. Honest and terrible.”
I march ahead of him and take the seat next to Margie.
I’m surprised to see that Lucas is sitting next to her, chatting pleasantly with Anna and graciously ignoring all the surrounding gawkers.
I take my seat and greet La on my right with a hug, then nod politely at the others at our table before steeling myself for Jack.
“You look hot. Doesn’t she look hot?” Anna says by way of greeting.
“She’s all right,” Jack says, his voice a low rumble. I feel my cheeks flame, like it’s the most elaborate compliment I’ve ever received. I refuse to make eye contact.
“Breathtaking,” Lucas says with a grin. He adjusts a French cuff on his tailored shirt and winks at me.
Avery, who after over a decade of platonic friendship probably thinks seltzer water has more sex appeal than I do, nods his head vigorously, staring at Anna’s profile. “Totally.”
“Lucas, you have a thing for redheads, don’t you?” Margie says. “Especially this redhead.”
Shit stirrer. By her own account, Webb found me pretty. That’s it. But I see her eyes dart toward Jack. She’s trying to press a button that doesn’t exist. And even if it did, I wouldn’t want it pressed. I kick her under the table, and she jerks.
“Why are you kicking me?” she demands, as I slink down in my chair.
Lucas laughs. “Yes and yes. Though I need you all to excuse me for a moment. Gotta take this call.” He stands and saunters away, holding his phone to his ear.
“Lucas Webb? Oh. My. God. I would die. Die,” Anna moans.
Jack tosses his napkin onto the table. “How sweet. Are we going to be talking about 5A’s love life all night?”
To my mind, Lucas was being sweet and polite since Margie put him on the spot, but Jack’s annoyance is delightful.
“No, actually. I’m about to go give my speech. If you all will excuse me.” Avery straightens his slate-checked jacket and matching vest. It’s a three-piece suit that fits him like baby oil, and Anna notices.
“Pound this.” Margie hands me a glass of red wine.
“I’m not going to pound at the Vaughns’ party!”
Margie shrugs. “I tried.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, but before she can answer, Avery’s speech begins.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I can have your attention for just a sec. Thanks,” Avery says into the microphone the band leader hands him. “I’ll be brief, I promise. I just wanted to thank you all for coming here tonight to celebrate two really incredible people: my mom and dad.”
The room bursts into applause, and Avery tucks his mic under his arm to join in, clapping as Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn wave.
Mr. Vaughn kisses his wife’s hand.
“You know, I’m lucky. I grew up knowing true love existed.
I saw it every single day at home. But it’s one thing to see it with your own eyes, and it’s another to find it for yourself.
I figured if I could articulate what love was, I’d be able to find it.
So I asked around. My friend Penny once told me that love, romantic love anyway, was like three-day-old sushi. ”
There are chuckles, and I blush to my roots as Avery winds his way to my side. Now I know why Margie wanted me to chug the wine. Jack is watching me with interest from across the table.
“Hey, Pen, why was that again?” Avery holds the mic to my mouth, and I want to yank him by his tie so he hits his face on the table.
I clear my throat. “Because it looks pretty good. But you don’t go for it because you know you’ll end up sick in the end.”
The chuckles intensify into laughter, reverberating through the ship’s ballroom. I will Avery to feel my wrath as he rests his hand on my shoulder. Jack’s expression is inscrutable.
“You told me to put the joke back in, and I did,” Avery murmurs. “Thanks, Penny,” he says louder. “And then my friend Margie once said—”
“Nope. Don’t rope me into this,” Margie says loudly, and the laughter seems to shake the rafters.
La reaches across me to clink glasses with Margie. Lucas rejoins the table just in time to catch the exchange.
“Okay, okay. So, like I said, I asked around, searching for the words, but my friends weren’t any help.
And I made my own observations, but I kept falling short of what I had seen with my folks.
Then, one day, I went back home to visit and saw my parents through the window.
They were laughing with each other, and my definition of love finally found me: Love is…
laughing together. Love is talking, communicating.
Love is offering up your whole heart on a platter but getting a replacement from the person you’re offering it up to.
Love is wanting the best for the other person while still loving yourself.
Love is growing together. Love doesn’t mean you’ll never hurt each other, but it does mean apologizing if you do, because love is fighting, but never to win.
Love is moving through this world and this life in quiet caring, together. ”
Avery moves closer to where his parents are seated. “Mom, Dad…”
A waitress rushes over with a champagne flute.
Avery accepts it with a grin and lifts it up, his dark hair reflecting the blue stage lights overhead. “May we all be so blessed as to eat the three-day-old sushi you two did.” There are cheers and then tinkling glasses.
I wipe at my eyes roughly. This is a unicorn of a relationship. Most people get donkeys.
“You’re such a romantic,” Jack says.
I glare back. “Sushi.”
Mr. Vaughn sweeps Mrs. V. into his arms. The music kicks up, a slow dance, “Lady in Red.” The couple dances alone for a spell before pairs trickle onto the floor around them.
“Avery told me his parents almost broke up a few years into their marriage,” Anna says. “Seeing them right now, you’d hardly believe it.”
I freeze, my water glass suspended en route to my mouth. “No,” I say, more to deny it than to disagree.
“No, full-on, they were ready for dee-vorce. But Mr. Vaughn told Avery they started talking it through, made a commitment to work on it together, take it day by day. Said love is a trust fall you take, each and every day. And here they are, how many years later?”
She sighs, a contemplative look on her face. “But… It shouldn’t be too hard, right? Like, sometimes pulling the plug is the right thing to do. Even if it wasn’t for the Vaughns?”
La says something that makes Margie, Jack, and Anna laugh, but I don’t hear anything beyond the rushing in my ears.
The Vaughn relationship has been…almost tainted in some way, at least to me.
Like breaking a porcelain figurine and gluing it back together.
I’ll always know the cracks were there in their relationship.
It’s childish, I know. But if the two best and most loving people in the world had a hard time being in a relationship with one another—if the most stable and loving relationship I’ve ever seen is a daily trust fall—what does that leave for me?
I wolf down my food, though I ate at the dinner that made me late for this one.
But second dinner helps me concentrate on something other than the depressing understanding that I’ll always be alone.
This lady in red is feeling very blah. I feel eyes on me and pause to give Jack a dirty look for watching me eat like a starved kitten. He raises his eyebrows innocently.
Lucas stands suddenly and reaches out a hand to me. “Want to dance?”
My shock is enough to shake me out of my melancholy.
I allow him to pull me up, refusing to even glance in Jack’s direction as Lucas leads me out onto the dance floor.
It’s another slow dance. “Lover” by Taylor Swift.
With his hand on my waist, we sway, and then Lucas twirls me, surprising a laugh out of me before he pulls me close again.
“Everyone’s staring at us,” I say.
“You get used to it.”
“Like fish in an aquarium?”
He smiles. “Speaking of, while you were eating your salmon, all I could think about was this time I had to eat so many bites for this show we were filming. Take after take. And afterward I was unbelievably sick and my agent was terrified I had mercury poisoning.”
“So I reminded you of a time you got sick. That tracks.”
He tosses his head back and laughs out loud. I grin. And it becomes clear that Lucas isn’t only good looks, charisma, and acting ability. He’s also kind. The conversation shifts to his membership of the board of a charity that feeds hungry children.
I’m about to ask him something when a deep voice behind me asks, “Can I cut in?”
Oh for fuck’s sake. Lucas stops moving and releases his hold on me, stepping back with a slight nod at Jack. My heart hammers.
“Sure,” I say. “I don’t want to hog Lucas if you want a turn with him.” Jack ignores me, and I reluctantly accept his outstretched hand with a sigh. The slide of his palm against the thin material of my dress at my waist burns.
Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” starts to play. We move together, a slow sway, neither of us saying anything for a long while.
“What are you plotting?” I finally ask, staring up at him. His grip on my hand tightens, and the one at my waist pulls me in closer.
“You don’t want to know.”
My pulse leaps. “You have a speck of glitter near your left eye.”
He snorts. “Pretty sure I’ve got some on my taint, too. You’re diabolical.”
“Got the idea from some teenagers in a rideshare. They’re evil.”
“Teenagers? Surprised it was only glitter, then.”
“They came up with worse. I didn’t want to maim you. So why’d you cut in?”
“Hard to think of England with you way out here.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? Okay. I—”
A lively song comes on, and the cheer from the crowd cuts off whatever he was about to say. I fight my disappointment as more people crowd the dance floor and Jack leads me back to our table. The atmosphere is becoming more and more festive.
La, to my surprise, tries to pull Margie and myself onto the floor, is rebuffed, and proceeds to go it alone, busting out moves I’ve not seen since the one-month period, senior year of college, when Margie and I convinced ourselves we were into clubbing.
“Holy shit. Look at her go,” I say. “The confidence to dance like no one is watching in front of four hundred people.”
“She’s something,” Margie says. She’s watching her in wonder. La has drawn a crowd and generated a kind of small dance-off. But she’s taken the time to bring a wallflower of a little boy into the circle. We can hear his laughter from here.
“I want to be the kind of person that sparks spontaneous dance-offs. Why aren’t I that kind of person?” I say.
“Because you have no rhythm, and people would think you were choking if you tried. Come to the bar with me?” Margie demands. I wipe my lips with my napkin and shove back from my seat, eager to escape Jack.
“Oh, are you going to the bar? I’m coming, too,” Anna cries. “Come on, Jack!”
I swallow my groan. Lucas stands to join us as well. Avery sees us on the move and rushes over as if tethered to Anna’s ass.
“One big nerd herd, moving en masse to the bar,” I mutter.