2
The main dining room was loud, both in volume and decor. Gilded columns competed with carpeting in so many bold colors, nobody would notice if dinner didn’t sit right. The wedding party had been given a cluster of large tables near the windows. He aimed for the one farthest from the bride and groom, but Daniel spotted him and waved him over with the sort of enthusiasm tourists used to flag down a cab in New York City.
I guess we’re in the front row. Of course, this meant not only making small talk with Daniel and Alyssa but also his stepmother and Daniel’s brother and sister, Jackson and Naomi. He looked out the large window. Was it too late to swim back to shore?
One of Daniel’s fraternity brothers stepped into Leo’s path. He’d clearly been at the bon voyage party long enough to now be operating on a combination of masculine toxicity and gin.
“Dude. Dude. Wayne Flagg is here. Wayne fucking Flagg.”
“You may want to check your glass, dude, because someone must’ve slipped something into your drink. There’s zero chance Wayne Flagg is spending a week on a cruise ship with us wretched masses,” Leo said.
But frat boy was too far gone to think anything through. “That’s the spirit, dude. That is the spirit.”
Leo sidestepped him and sat down next to Daniel. He reached for the black napkin folded into the shape of a swan and looked up. Directly into Wayne Flagg’s undivided attention. Well, shit.
Wayne was unfairly tall and extremely unfairly proportioned, the kind of handsome that seemed to arrive with its own lighting crew. The blue of his eyes read as slightly too saturated, which was when Leo remembered a gossip site where a costar claimed Wayne wore blue contact lenses. Not that Leo read those sites in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep. Nope, not him.
“One of the wretched masses right here at my table,“
Wayne said with a grin. “I feel strangely unworthy.”
Kill me now. “Apologies.”
“None needed.“
A laugh. Deep and rich and not at all sexy. Not one bit. “You must be the stepbrother.”
“Leo.“
Daniel gestured between them. “Wayne, my brother Leo. Leo, my best friend and best man, Wayne.”
Kill me again, harder. Before Leo could do anything with that, Alyssa materialized at Daniel’s shoulder. Instead of taking her seat at Daniel’s other side, she leaned over, her blonde hair falling in a curtain of privacy as she murmured something urgent in her fiancé’s ear. Daniel rose and Alyssa towed him out of the dining room.
As a murmur erupted amongst the wedding guests speculating at the quick exit, a man materialized from out of nowhere.
Leo hadn’t noticed him before. He definitely noticed him now.
Slim. Too slim, Leo’s brain supplied helpfully. Dressed head-to-toe in black despite the heat, chestnut hair cropped close. With a tablet in one hand and his phone wedged between his ear and shoulder, he executed a quiet, confident piece of choreography with his free hand. Silverware, water glass, bread plate, place card—all moved to the now-empty chair to Leo’s right, putting Wayne beside Leo and giving Wayne a view of the sea. The bride and groom’s settings were shifted accordingly. Mid-shuffle, he glanced up and caught Leo watching. He mouthed sorry to no one and everyone. All without missing a beat of his phone call. Wayne stood and came around to Leo’s side of the table as if this was an everyday occurrence. For all Leo knew, it was. Perhaps the world really did orbit around the man who gave the world such films as View to an Empire and Magnetic.
Leo watched as his stepmother’s place card and accompanying bits and pieces were moved to Wayne’s former seat, completing the game of musical chairs. Leo couldn’t spare more than a passing thought that this meant he wouldn’t be able to so much as reach for his water glass without feeling obliged to speak with her. He couldn’t take his eyes off the man pulling off this feat.
He had a scar intersecting his right eyebrow, the faint silver of a wound long healed, but angled in such a way that it must’ve been concerning at one time. Soft brown eyes that did not at all match the severity of the rest of him.
Hello.
Leo gave him a small nod. The man gave a polite tilt of the head in return, then he seemed to disappear as silently as he’d appeared, sliding into a two-top close enough to be summoned yet far enough apart not to count as part of the group.
Leo forced himself to look away as his stepmother and siblings finally joined them. Catherine smiled warmly at him. Jackson and Naomi were a bit more reserved, as usual. They’d already been in college by the time Leo had moved in with his dad, Catherine, and Daniel, so he knew them only from holiday dinners. And his father’s funeral.
Leo remembered his manners enough to ask what classes Jackson was teaching next semester. He pointedly didn’t ask how Jackson was recovering from his recent cancer battle, even though he was relieved to see him walking on two feet. He avoided staring at the cane Jackson balanced on the arm of his chair. They didn’t have the kind of relationship where he had the right to ask for information not freely given. Instead, he congratulated Naomi on being named Chief Resident. That exhausted the family conversational well without getting into how Leo’s father had up and died on all of them while they were already in crisis wondering if Jackson was going to lose his leg. They fell into an awkward silence.
“So. Daniel says you’re a software engineer.“
Wayne leaned in, commanding the attention of the entire table with his presence. “I played a hacker in Magnetic. Fascinating work.”
“Sometimes,“
Leo said. His job was nothing like hacking government databases in order to stop a doomsday countdown. Still, he let Wayne take that as an invitation to fill the void, which he did enthusiastically, holding court for the next forty minutes.
Leo nodded and laughed at the appropriate moments. But his attention remained ensnared by the tired man who propped his tablet against the bread basket, picked up a fork, and began a joyless attack on a piece of grilled salmon. One handed. While the other kept typing.