CHAPTER TWENTY
It was an undeniable fact that all wedding receptions could be enhanced by the attendance of one very special guest—table of one, Mr. Jack Daniels. Sometimes Mr. Daniels was accompanied by Mr. Jose Cuervo, but tonight he came alone. I was certainly enjoying his company. I took another glass from a passing waiter with a smile, and made my way through the crush, heading for the balcony.
I had no idea who most of the guests were—most likely friends and family of Irene. I made room for a couple doing a strange two-person version of the cha-cha slide, and had to grin at their antics. The groom’s family attendance was a little sparser, but that had more to do with my father’s lackadaisical way of inviting people than anything else. As far as I knew, he’d just told my aunt and uncle and let the rumor spread.
I took a deep breath of night air as soon as the balcony doors closed quietly behind me. The day hadn’t been nearly as bad as I’d thought it would be, but it was getting late and I was about ready to call it a night. When I wore evening wear, I had an expiration date—usually midnight. My friends liked to call me a party pooper; I preferred to think of it as my Cinderella complex.
Sure enough, my shoes were starting to pinch, and my dress was starting to cut into areas that usually only saw elastic. Even my perfect ballerina bun that had been so elegant at the start of the day was sagging, and had turned into late-night study session bun—the kind you stuck pencils in and lost.
The cool breeze wafted over my overheated skin gently, and I sighed. I sipped a little more Jack from my glass, gratified by the liquid fortification. There was truly no better place than weddings to get melancholy about your relationships…or lack thereof. It could have been watching my father and Irene, their eyes wet with tears as they solidified their union. Or Lane and Rick, each dancing with one of their girls, smiling at one another over their daughters’ heads. Whatever the reason, I was feeling every one of my years. I felt very…I didn’t know. I huffed out a frustrated breath. I didn’t know what exactly was ailing me.
God knew I wasn’t the traditional sort, and frankly, I couldn’t really see myself in a traditional marriage with the two-point-five kids and the picket fence. I enjoyed my life, and the freedom that came with it. I’d had a certain set of goals I wanted to achieve, and I’d achieved them…that list had been even more important after my mother’s death. I knew that if she’d had the opportunity to keep living, keep going, keep doing, she’d have been ecstatic. So how could I sit around moping, wasting what I had left?
So I’d gone out and achieved everything I’d set out to do. Granted, my goals weren’t crazy ones—I didn’t want an Oscar or millions of dollars. I’d just wanted to finish college like she’d never had the chance to do. Find a career that made me happy. Own my own home. And I’d done all that. But standing in that reception hall, watching my family interact with their families…it sent a frisson of something through me. If I had to dissect that feeling…well, it felt a little like loneliness.
I didn’t want what they had…I wanted something of my own.
I tried to shrug off whatever melancholy vibes were trying to ruin my mood, and finished off my glass. I set it on the railing and began swaying a little to the strains of music filtering through the balcony doors. I didn’t know the song, but it sounded like Adele, all slow and soulful and beautiful. I did a little spin, seriously overestimating my soberness. I nearly catapulted over the railing, but suddenly found myself enfolded in strong arms.
Jackson. Almost on autopilot, I tried to get out of his hold, but it was like pushing at granite—I clearly wasn’t going anywhere until he wanted me to. His eyes roved my face for a moment and I flushed. My strange mood made it very hard to look at him full on. Maybe because I was starting to be afraid that he was the something I wanted.
He finally let me go, his mouth tilted up in a half-smile. “Dance with me?”
I blinked. “Out here?”
“Why not?” He held out his hand with an upraised eyebrow, and I had to grin at his rakish air. He sighed. “Every fiber in my being is telling me not to ask what’s so funny.”
“You look very 007-ish in that suit.” I waved my hands to encapsulate his entire appearance—he wore finely tailored cream suit and pin-striped vest very well. I peered at his perfectly styled hair for a moment. “Did you use my mousse?”
“Clearly, I should’ve let you fall into the bushes.”
“I’d like to note that you clearly aren’t denying it.”
He rolled his eyes and held out his hand again. From the look on his face and the gimlet look in his eye, I thought it prudent to accept.
I leaned into Jackson as we moved. Damn that Adele. Her smoky, knowing voice worked its way around us both as she sang about being someone’s one and only. I felt like I was floating in his capable arms. I didn’t know when I’d buried my face in his shoulder, or when he’d pulled me in so close that his hands rested lightly on the small of my back. There on the balcony, only lit by the light filtering through the glass doors, it seemed like we were in our own hyacinth-scented world.
“You’re not a half-bad dancer,” I said, my fingers playing with the hair flopping over his collar. I raised my eyebrows meaningfully. “All things considered.”
He snorted. “You’re the one pressing every inch of your body against me. I’d have to be half-dead not to respond.” Of course Jackson had to add one last tidbit guaranteed to drive me crazy. “Besides, it’s you. This is pretty much my normal state when I’m within five feet of you.”
I inhaled softly, trying to seem like I wasn’t sniffing him when I really was. It was just that he always smelled so good, like something citrusy and woodsy. I tried not to think about the fact that our time together was coming to an end—two more nights before we had to go back. Two more nights before it was back to the real world. I knew it would be smarter, easier, to take a few steps back. So of course, I did nothing of the sort. My hands began traversing a journey down his body that was clearly more than dancing.
“What’re you doing?” he asked with that sexy little half-smile.
“You said the next time we had sex, I had to ask you nicely,” I said, referring to the way he’d teased me after our breakfast romp. I kissed him on the jaw. It was starting to grow rough with stubble already, even though I’d seen him shave earlier that day. The thought of that stubble abrading my skin sent a shiver done my spine. “I’m asking nicely.”
His head went side to side slowly in a “no” motion. “I believe I said beg. The word was beg, AJ. And I think my price has changed.”
“To what?” I demanded.
“You have to tell me something I mean to you. One thing.”
I blinked in surprise, my hands falling slowly. I took an involuntary step back. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. “What?”
“We only have a couple nights left here, AJ. Back to real life. And as much as I’m going to miss this…you…us, I’m kind of glad. I’m through with the fake.” His voice was raw and quiet. “You want me in your bed? In your life? You tell me something real.”
“I…” The words stuck in my throat.
Could I really tell him what he meant to me? That I loved talking to him and making him laugh, and I wanted to be with him all the time? That I could see our future together with very little trouble at all? No. No. That was a little too real. Too vulnerable. And when you gave someone that kind of information, there was no going back. When someone knew you, really knew you, that person could hurt you. Destroy you. Take you apart in ways you’d never thought of, and you’d spend the rest of your life searching for the pieces.
I already felt more for him than I’d ever felt for Adam. I already lov—liked him more. Liked, I repeated to myself. Like. Not that other thing. When Adam and I didn’t work, I’d been upset. If this didn’t work out, I’d be devastated.
“You’re the best I’ve ever been with,” I said honestly. In the silence that followed my statement, I winced. Maybe he would take that in the very best way, which was how I meant it. His eyes narrowed. Fat chance of that. I tried to fix it. “The best fling that I’ve ever had. Not that I’m in the habit of having…”
Abort! Abort! While my brain scrambled around for the verbal version of an emergency parachute, I took a deep breath and tried again. “What I mean is—”
“I know what you meant.” He gave me a tight smile. He headed for the balcony doors. “I think I’m going to get a drink.”
My mind whirled as I watched him walking away. I hated watching him walk away, and it seemed to serve as both a physical and metaphysical statement this time. “Jackson, I—”
He paused, waiting at the door without turning. When I didn’t continue, he shook his head and went in. I sighed. Good going, AJ. You have a real gift for words. A real way with people.
I trudged back inside and headed back to our table where Lane was sitting by herself. I dropped down in one of the chairs across from her and snagged one of the glasses of champagne in the middle of the table. She toasted me mockingly, inclining her head toward the balcony. “I see you’re working your usual relationship magic.”
I scowled. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I saw your boyfriend stalk in a few minutes ago and head straight to the bar. Then you come in looking like something the cat wanted to drag in but rejected.” She lifted one slender shoulder. “Doesn’t take a genius to push those puzzle pieces together.”
“Your emergency exits are here, here, and here.” I used my hands in a quick airline demonstration. “You are now cleared to fuck off.”
“Don’t get smart with me. I’m the one who owes Art twenty bucks, thanks to you and your relationship train wreck.” When I had no rejoinder like I usually would, her voice softened. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I was briefly tongue-tied as I sipped my champagne. The bubbles fizzed inside my stomach pleasantly as I tried to think of the right words to explain what I was feeling. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about it…I didn’t know how. How do you explain what you don’t even fully understand? More specifically, why I was ruining what might be the best thing that ever happened to me?
I didn’t have a clue, but I knew where to start. “Jackson and I aren’t really dating,” I blurted.
Lane didn’t flicker an eyelash. “I know.”
My mouth nearly flopped open. “I thought we did a fairly credible job of fooling everyone. How did you know?”
“It’s hard to pinpoint, exactly. Maybe it’s just because I know you.” She shrugged. “You guys are really affectionate with one another. He’s always touching you…looking at you. You’re ten times more affectionate with him than you ever were with Adam.”
I scowled. “I am not.”
“You are. You’re not normally like that. The few guys you’ve brought around, you keep at arm’s length. This was…it was like you were trying to prove you two were together.”
“You make me sound so…” I floundered, trying to think of a word that would perfectly encapsulate the reigning Ice Princess of the South, and came up wanting. I finished with a lame, “Cold. You make me sound so cold.”
“Not cold,” she corrected. “Standoffish.” My expression made her shrug. “Sorry. That’s probably not much better. I just mean that…well, we all kind of processed Dad moving on in different ways, you know? Art just separated himself from us completely. And you started looking at relationships differently…like love was just a word.”
Isn’t it? I looked down at the table, tracing the almost invisible pattern on the snowy white linen. “And you?”
She paused, looking down at her glass. “Rick and I went through a rough period. There was a time when I accused him of…well, a lot of things I know he’s not capable of. I don’t know, maybe I was trying to push him away.”
“Rick? Cheating?” I almost had to scoop up my eyeballs and pop them back in my head. I don’t think I’d ever heard of any real trouble in their marriage. I knew that no relationship was ever perfect but some came damn close. “Laney, that’s not possible.”
“I know. It’s absolutely absurd. He finally told me that he’s not going anywhere, so I might as well stop.” She rubbed a finger on the edge of her glass, back and forth, clearly lost in thought. “Relationships are hard work, you know? When you want something to work bad enough, you fight for it. We know that Adam certainly wasn’t the one. Maybe Jackson is.” Her eyes were dark and intense. “Don’t push him away.”
“The one,” I muttered. “What is with you people? There is no ‘the one.’ That’s a romantic notion for fools.”
“Wow.” She smiled at my disgruntlement. “I’m really not far off track, huh?”
“You’re so far off track, your race car just flipped into the stands.”
“Fine, AJ. You don’t have to tell me. I have eyes, and I know what I’ve seen over the past few weeks. And a lot of it wasn’t fake. Certainly what I heard when I passed by the bathroom early this morning wasn’t fake.” She raised her eyebrow. “And it wasn’t seven minutes either.”
I went fire red. Oh jeez. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said starchily.
“Uh huh.” She refreshed both of our glasses with an arch look of her own. “I sprayed down the shower with Lysol just in case.”
“We were saving water,” I mumbled, and I wasn’t surprised when she laughed. Despite myself, I had to ask. “So…you really think he likes me?”
She looked at me incredulously, like I’d barked like a seal and clapped my hands. With those wide eyes and thick, super long lashes blinking in surprise, she looked like Minnie Mouse. Actually, she looked like Minnie reacting to Mickey telling her that those giant yellow shoes don’t match her dress.
Just before I tried to feel for a pulse, she exploded into laughter. Big “hee-hee, haw-haw” kind of laughter. I scowled and waited, arms crossed, letting her get it all out. “Oh my God,” she managed between splutters. “You’re actually serious!”
“Could you just answer the question?” My ears were red and hot.
“Well, I can’t speak for Jackson, but I can tell you what I see. He looks at you hung the moon and farted out the stars.”
“Why would someone fart out—”
“Christ, AJ.” She wiped tears of mirth from her eyes with a knuckle. “You haven’t noticed how he listens to every word that comes out of your crazy mouth? Or did you really think your stories about microprocessors are really that interesting?”
“Not everyone hates electronics, Lane,” I said without heat, too distracted by what she’d said to be annoyed. My stomach bloomed with warmth.
“Wow,” she said to herself, finally winding down from her completely inappropriate laughing fit. “I needed that.”
“What you need is Prozac.”
“There, there,” she soothed. “Let’s change the subject.”
Finally, an idea I could get behind. We sat talking as the reception wound down, going on about nothing in particular. Reminiscing about the old times and catching up on some of the new things. For the first time in a long while, we had new family stories to add to the repertoire—Lane pushing me in the drink when she wanted my paddle board, and all of us getting drunk off our asses on the back deck. Apparently, Rick had used her as an afterschool special type warning to their girls the next morning as she’d glared at them all from behind a pair of dark shades.
The newlyweds whirled past our table, doing a fairly credible ballroom waltz. My father looked right sharp in his dark suit—his only good one, and he insisted that he only needed the one—with his hair so neatly arrayed that I could see the precise comb tracks. Irene fairly glowed in a lilac suit, her hair gathered in a complicated knot on the top of her head
My father leaned in to say something in her ear, and they both began to laugh. They looked so…bloody happy. Part of me found it impossible not to be happy for them. But at the same time…my fingers tightened on the champagne flute so tightly I was afraid I might shatter the fragile crystal.
“They look good together, don’t they?”
I glanced over to find Lane looking at them, too. I smiled. “Yeah. They do.”
We watched Art cutting in on Irene and Dad’s dance. There was a lot of laughing and good-natured tussling, but eventually Dad bowed out as Art spun Irene around on the dance floor.
I shook my head with a small smile. “How is Art so okay with this?”
“He’s emotionally stunted, mostly.”
“Lucky bastard.” A flash of gold caught my eye, and I squinted at our father’s jacket sleeves. “Nice cuff links.”
“Mmhmm.” Suddenly Lane seemed very interested in the tablecloth. “I didn’t notice.”
“They look almost like the ones you got Rick last year.”
She finally growled. “All right, fine. You got me.” She squinted at his upraised arm. “So where’d he get that watch?”
I shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Looks like a Movado. Doesn’t Julian like Movado?”
“Is there any more cake?” I asked innocently.
“Mmhmm.”
I didn’t mind that I was busted. Hell, as long as this champagne was pleasantly sloshing around in my belly, I didn’t mind much of anything. I was pretty sure my liver was floating in the sea of liquor like an iceberg in the Atlantic.
Lane poured us both a fresh glass of champagne. Pink’s soft, husky voice filled the room as she sang something about glitter in the air. It almost felt like Mom had given me another gift right then. It wasn’t something provincial enough to be contained with gift wrap and ribbon. I could call it a life lesson of sorts. If she hadn’t died, I didn’t think I would truly know the importance of life. Or how fleeting it was. I’d never have appreciated my family quite so much. As was the case with the most important life lessons, it’d been expensive. But if the cost was that I had to miss her so badly it felt like an actual ache in my chest, then I would just have to deal with that.
“Laney,” I said, gently nudging her leg with mine to get her attention. “I propose a toast.”
We raised our glasses. “To mom,” she said faintly.
“No,” I said firmly, touching my glass to hers. “To us.”