Never underestimate a woman. I’d spent my formative years living down the hall from one who had an otherworldly power to locate the least available man in a room and take him down, without a single thought for the other woman involved.
“How’d you escape?” I asked.
“We ran out of Champagne. So obviously, somebody had to go in search of more. I volunteered.” She was a tiny little thing, no more than five feet tall, and was wearing a very tight dress, so she had a tough time getting up onto the barstool next to me.
“Order what you need and put it on my room.”
She swatted my hand down when I tried to signal to the bartender. “I’m not in a hurry. And thanks for the offer, but it’s my fault we need more, so I want to pay for it myself.” She paused. “Can you keep a secret?”
I nodded. “Unless it involves a felony.”
“It’s barely an infraction.” After a quick glance around, she motioned for me to come closer. “I’ve been slowly emptying the bottles into the ice bucket when no one’s looking. They think I’m drinking it all.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked, confused.
“Because the Champagne makes the ice melt faster.” She shrugged. “Empty bottle or melted ice means someone has to go in search of more.”
“And being incredibly thoughtful,” I said, laughing when I got it, “you always volunteer to go.”
“Ta-da. I don’t understand why they said you weren’t smart.” Before my ego had time to bruise, she giggled. “Kidding. It was something about you not being patient, I think.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s true.”
So they were talking about me. I knew I was right—women did talk about the men who weren’t around when they weren’t around. Although in this case, I wasn’t sure if I should be celebrating. Shit, if Lane was telling them the truth about my patience, what else was she telling them? Were they sitting around bitching about men in general? Or me in general? And why was I turning into someone who reacted to things they couldn’t possibly know?
“I guess I’m not that smart either,” I grumbled.
18
Carson
“I don’t do it to feel appreciated or whatever, by the way.” Sara reached across the bar and grabbed a thin cardboard coaster, then laid it over a ring of condensation my beer left. “You know, dumping the Champagne so I can volunteer to go get more. And it’s not that I don’t like being with them. I just need frequent breaks from all the loving relationship talk.”
We both watched the water wink into cardboard.
“Huh. Too much happiness?”
“Way too much. I love them, but I knew eventually they were going to notice that I hadn’t said a word about my relationship status in, like, forever and would ask me about it.”
“I’m guessing your status isn’t happy?”
“Actually, it’s very happy. Because it doesn’t exist. I don’t begrudge them at all, but it’s impossible to explain to a bunch of hens who are all madly in love that I’m glad I’m not.”
“Well, there are a lot of cocks in the world who’d understand.”
She laughed. “But you and Laney are really serious, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but we don’t like to spread it around.” I started wondering how much of the happy-relationship-talk Lane had been involved with again.
“That’s what she said. You guys are perfect for each other.”
Okay, this was slowly killing me. I wanted to ask if Lane had meant it as a joke too and what else she’d said about me. Or about marriage, weddings, proposals… anything would help at this point.
“It seems like everyone around me is either engaged or already married.” Then she looked at me. “Are you guys getting engaged soon?”
“Are you phishing for intel to share with my enemies, or are you just curious?”
She smiled. “I won’t share anything you don’t want me to.”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Felony or misdemeanor?” Her smile faded when I took too long to answer. “Oops. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s not that.” I shook my head. “The truth is I want to ask her, but I don’t know how.” Despite Hayden’s “help” earlier. “It’s gotta be something great, right? Women want something memorable and romantic so they can brag to all their friends and grandkids about it. You have no idea how much pressure that puts on those of us non-romantic types.”
“I’m sure you’re romantic. From what I can tell, Laney is a traditionalist, right? Grew up wanting the whole fairytale romance thing? She would’ve given up on you a long time ago if you weren’t at all romantic.”
“I try to keep her so busy she doesn’t notice. But I can’t do that this time. It’s a lot of pressure to come up with something she can brag to all of her friends about, you know?”
“Can I give you some advice?”
“Hell, yes! I was wondering when you’d pick up on all my hints.” I needed a woman’s help with this, and I wasn’t about to ask my stepsister. If for no other reason than Anna might deliberately suggest something horrible, and I wouldn’t know any better until I’d left permanent scars on my girl.
Sara didn’t know Lane all that well, but she had all the right hormones and parts. From what I could tell.
“Okay. You’ll need her favorite flower—lots of them, buckets and buckets of them—your couple song if you have one…” She looked up and to the left as she switched into the language men can’t understand. “Candles, maybe snacks, chocolate snacks… Oh! Glitter! Don’t forget the glitter.”
“Glitter?” Shit. Hayden didn’t mention glitter. I knew I should’ve asked a girl first. “I should be taking notes on this, shouldn’t I?”
She looked at me as if I were stupid, which, as I’d recently become aware of, was correct.
I grabbed a napkin and motioned for the bartender to come over so I could ask to borrow a pen.
“How about this? As soon as I get back to my room I’ll make you a list of stuff. And then, once you have all of that and as long as what you say is true, sincere, real, and from your heart, there’s no way to screw it up.” She turned her head away for a second. When she turned back, her lips were pressed together tightly.
“You obviously don’t know me well. I can screw anything up. It’s my superpower.” I was so out of my league with this.
Her brow furrowed and she pressed her lips together even tighter like she was… like she was trying to hold in—
Oh shit.
Laughter burst out of her as if it were the first time it had ever happened. “I’m sorry, but you should have seen your face!”
“Oh,” I said flatly, “I can imagine.”
“I’m sorry.” But not sorry enough to stop laughing. “I couldn’t help it.” She concentrated on not laughing, taking deep breaths and calming down… at my expense.
“Are you okay now? You sure you don’t want to laugh at my pain for a little longer?”
She wiped her hand over her mouth, keeping it there until her giggles stopped. “Okay, I’m sorry. But I was trying to make a point. You don’t need buckets of flowers or candles or any of that crap. I could be wrong, but she doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who’d want a huge, blockbuster event. I bet what she’d really want is something special for just the two of you.”
“I could’ve done without the laughter, but I see your point.” I was thinking we were like normal couples. That definitely wasn’t us.
“One more warning though: you don’t want to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum. Like, for instance, when my stepdad proposed to my mom. We were at a hotel for some event I don’t remember, having breakfast in our pajamas, still half asleep. He set down his cell phone for thirty seconds and said, ‘Theresa, we should get married.’”
Wow. Maybe there was hope for me yet. “At least he put his phone down.”
Sara grimaced. “Yeah, that was a pretty big deal for him, I guess. But don’t be like Timothy—yep,
grown man, worth millions, and he still goes by Timothy. My mom still married him, but whenever she tells anyone how it happened, she ‘forgets’ everything but the bizarre timing, which she thinks of as spontaneity. And then she embellishes it, like how he couldn’t hold back anymore.”
She pretended to swoon and then did what I assumed were highly exaggerated face and hand gestures as she pretended to be her mom. Either that, or her mom was a mime.
“He had to ask at that exact moment because he was overwhelmed with love.” She made a gagging noise. “There’s even a chance she believes it. I doubt it ever occurred to her that Timothy probably asked at that exact moment because we were already in Vegas. So he wouldn’t have to take more time off work or cough up the dough for a real wedding.”
“So spontaneity is good as long as it’s not in Vegas. Got it.” Great tip, actually. Stay away from Vegas. Make sure to put my phone down. Wait until I was overwhelmed by love—but not immediately after sex—and then segue into a proposal. It took a lot of the pressure off.
“Just be yourself,” she said, “try not to use your superpower, and you’ll be fine.”
“If I’m not, I’m blaming you.”
She snorted. “That’s why I’m here.” Something in the way she said it made me think I’d accidentally hit on something personal.
“So… what’s your problem?”
“You can’t figure it out just by looking at me?” She leaned a little backwards and held out her arms. “I’m so disappointed in you, Carson.”
“Oh, man. Yeah.” I grimaced. “No idea how I missed it until now. Attractive blonde wearing two-hundred-dollar shoes. Damn, you poor thing. How do you make it through the day?”
She laughed. “First of all, these shoes were only one-fifty when I bought them a few years ago, and I’d never be able to afford them now. And second, I now feel like a total shit, so thank you for reminding me of my privileged American arrogance.”
“Being a privileged American myself, I felt it was my duty. After all, who else would we bother listening to?”
Her smile was shallow, not quite making it to her eyes.
“Come on, privileged girl, what’s your issue?” I felt obligated to at least try repaying her for easing some of my panic.
“Well, let’s see.” She glanced at me and then started picking at the water-saturated edge of the cardboard coaster. “I’m all dressed up for my friend’s wedding, yet instead of being there for her on her big day, I’m sitting in an empty bar with some guy I barely know, who somehow figured out how to make me feel even worse about myself.”
Her wink let me know she’d meant it as a joke, at least the part about me. But it didn’t cover up how much this chick could use some lessons in trust.
“What can I say? I owed you one. Speaking of…” I waved the bartender over, so she could order a drink.
We didn’t speak while we watched him make the espresso she’d asked for. After he’d set the cup in front of her and wandered off again, I figured I could ask. “You said I made you feel worse. Worse than what?”
“I said that?” She dumped four silver baby-spoon-sized scoops of sugar into her coffee. “Damn. That reeks of someone hinting they want you to ask about it, doesn’t it?”
This tiny woman took the world’s tiniest sip of her tiny coffee, and I didn’t comment. If that wasn’t a sign of maturity, I wasn’t capable of it.
“I’m focusing on being happy for Andi. She deserves this. I mean, there are, like, two men in the entire world as amazing as your brother.”
“I’m the other, right?”
“Sure, we can go with that for now.” She laughed. “I’m just going through some stuff right now, and I escaped from my friends because they all want me to talk about it. So, no offense, but even if it wouldn’t bring the whole weekend down, I’m not ready to talk to anyone about it, okay?”
“Completely. Once the wedding stuff is over, will you be ready? Not to tell me, obviously, but someone?”
“I don’t know.” She took another tiny sip of espresso. “I told someone. It was so hard to tell her, but she… um… she didn’t believe me. Or she didn’t want to believe me. Because it would’ve changed everything, you know?”
“It’s all a little vague to form an opinion about,” I said honestly. “But I understand enough about people to know some truths are a lot harder to tell than lies. If she knows you at all…”
“I thought she did.”
“Then she should’ve believed you. Unless you’re a pathological liar or crazy.”
“I’m not a liar. Crazy is subjective.”
“Can’t disagree there. Look, Sara, I’m the last person whose advice you should follow, but if I were you, I’d focus on finding someone you can trust. Maybe that’s one of the people who are nagging you to talk about it, maybe it’s not. But at least they’ve already proven they know you well enough to sense something’s going on. Beyond the whole Champagne dumping thing, that is.”
When she smiled and muttered, “You’re probably right,” I figured I’d done about all I could.
“One thing I’ve learned from years of keeping my mouth shut about the crap stuff is the only way to get past it is to let it out. It’s not as if things just magically fix themselves, but keeping it all bottled up takes a shitload of energy and can really make you cranky. Think about it?”
She nodded silently.
“But don’t think too long. The best part of life is that every day is a do-over. If we screw up today, we get another chance to make it right tomorrow.”
I waved the bartender over again, pulled out some cash, and set down a healthy-sized tip onto the bar. “Put whatever else she wants on my tab.”
I stopped her when she started to argue. “Back home, you can’t even make an appointment with a good therapist for less than three hundred bucks. You’re saving me money.”
I thanked her for her advice, said goodbye, and walked back to my brother’s room, trying to decide if being myself was ever the best course of action.
19
Carson
As soon as I opened the door, Rob asked, “Where are the drinks you promised us?”
Shit, I’d been so distracted, I’d forgotten to get the only thing that was going to get me through all this. “Sorry. They fell into my mouth on the way back.”
Thankfully, Hayden hadn’t emptied the minibar yet, so I grabbed two handfuls of tiny bottles and sat down next to him on the couch.
“No, thanks,” Hayden said, waving away liquor I hadn’t intended to offer him.
“Come on. You need it.” I shoved the Macallan Single Malt at him, tossed Rob a Pyrat Rum, lined up the other bottles onto the table in front of me, and cracked them all open. I did the eenie-meenie thing to see which I’d enjoy first, and boy, did I. First, a little Hennessy—always a nice way to begin the day.
I grabbed the next one—a goose of the grey variety—and took a small sip. You know, moderation and all that. “I’ll be the one who gets blamed if you pass out from dehydration during the ceremony.” I don’t think I’d had a single sip of water since we landed. Thank the god of beer for making it mostly water, so I wasn’t worried.
Hayden said a quick thanks, opened the bottle, and tipped it back, draining it in one swallow. “You’re right—I did need that.” Then he set the empty bottle onto the coffee table.
All three of us watched as it tipped over and fell onto the floor. Not one of us moved to get it right away. We just stared at it in silence, too preoccupied with our own issues maybe. I wasn’t complaining—it was a lot better than staring at each other and feeling like we should communicate.
“What’s wrong with me?” Hayden said suddenly, snapping out of the daze and picking the bottle off the floor. “I’m getting married to the woman of my dreams today. I’ve been looking forward to this day since the first time we spent the ni—” He cleared his throat. “Spent time together.”
I popped a brow and looked at him. How much would
I bet “spending the ni-time together” wasn’t exactly truthful. But I appreciated his attempt to keep the conversation PG-13.
“Remember, the wedding is the hardest part, Hayden,” Rob said gently. I was pretty sure Emilia said he was a lawyer, not a kindergarten teacher, but from the tone of his voice, he’d have made a great one. “Once you get past today, you’ll be fine.”
“I’m not nervous—I’m anxious. The last time I was in this position, I was nervous. Terrified, actually. But with Andi?” He shook his head. “I don’t have any doubts or fears at all. Because I know, this time, it’s right.”
“I felt the same way with Emilia. I knew from our third date.” Rob nodded his agreement, and I watched the men bond over their mutual conviction that the next forty years of their relationships would be just as good as today.
So there we were—one happily married guy, one formerly-unhappily-married/soon-to-be-happily-married guy, and… me. The guy who had everything he needed to be happy but who was terrified he’d blow it if he took the next step. If the woman he loved would take it with him.
“Did you talk to Laney last night?” Hayden asked me.
“A little. She’s not a big talker during, you know. She tends to revert to religion—‘Oh God, yes, God, yes’—and greed—‘More, don’t stop, give it to—‘”
“Enough!” He rolled his eyes. “More than enough, actually. You promised you weren’t going to talk about that to me again.”
Yeah, but I didn’t want to talk about Lane and me. What was there to say? We’d crashed early last night. Our first night in a tropical paradise, and I couldn’t touch her. That fucking jellyfish had ruined everything. But I couldn’t complain about not getting laid enough. Especially not to a man about to go through a ceremony that, from the horror stories I’d heard, was the first stop on the never-having-sex-again train.
“I don’t remember promising anything,” I said. “Besides, why do you want to talk about me and Lane now? We should be talking about happy things.”