Kami

Muffy and Aunt Hilda both show up to help me get ready. Maren and Alina are still strongly objecting, but quietly with just dirty looks after Ares tells them to knock it off.

And soon, I’m in a sleek black dress with my hair swept back in a simple knot and my makeup a tad on the overdone side.

“It’s Josh’s boss getting married,” Muffy whispers to me as we stride through the lobby and toward the Lyft waiting outside. “I’d personally never do a Sunday night wedding, because people have to work on Mondays, but I guess that’s when the bride’s family could make it.”

“You look so beautiful,” Aunt Hilda gushes.

She said the same thing to Felicity, Maren, Alina, and Loki before she told Ares she used to be as big as he is, except without the height. He gave her a fist bump, and now she swears she’s never washing her knuckles again.

“I know this is going to work out,” Muffy tells me. “Josh is like the prime beef in my menu. With a side of golden potatoes roasted to perfection.”

“I miss potatoes,” Aunt Hilda sighs.

“And crème brûlée for dessert,” Muffy adds. “I can’t believe I lucked out in being there right when he needed a date. And I never thought he’d come to Muff Matchers, but he did. You’re going to have the best time. Do you think it’s too late to hook up a GoPro to your dress so I can live vicariously through you all night?”

I pin her with a look.

“Right, right. But at least record something with your phone. Even if it’s smushed between you while you dance at the reception. Please? Pretty please?”

I pause. “Muffy…did you want to go with Josh tonight?”

Her face goes cherry and she shakes her head so hard her braids whip at her cheeks. “What? No. He’s not into my type.”

“Energetic and entrepreneurial?”

“She’s too much woman for him to handle,” Aunt Hilda interjects, gesturing to her boobs.

“Mom.”

“What? It’s true. He goes for the smaller-chested women. And he’s not creative enough to truly appreciate your art.”

“You do art?” I ask Muffy.

“She means my matchmaking art. My client list is a little…different. It turns men off sometimes.”

“And women,” Aunt Hilda chimes in.

“If you like Josh—” I start.

“I like matching misfits better,” she declares in her this matter is closed tone.

I don’t ask if that means I’m a misfit, because the fact that I was hung up on Nick since high school and settled for a friends-with-benefits relationship with him instead of asking for more pretty much qualifies me for needing special help.

She shoves me into the Lyft, and she and Aunt Hilda wave as we pull away.

Ten minutes later, the driver drops me at the aquarium, and now I understand the Sunday night wedding. When you want to get married at the aquarium, you take what’s available.

Josh is at the base of the marble steps leading up to the fountain outside the glass building, checking his phone. He’s in a black tux, his sandy hair trimmed neatly, freshly shaven, and while he’s no Nick Murphy, he’s still a catch. I smile as I approach. “Josh? Hi.”

He glances up and does a double-take. His hazel eyes make a quick scan up and down before settling on my face. “Wow. You look—hi.”

He grins a lopsided smile, and my heart melts a little at the edges as he offers me his arm.

Maybe this is it.

Maybe this is finally exactly what I need.

“Shall we?” he says, his gaze still darting from my face to my dress.

“I’d love to.”

There’s something so different about being led up the steps of a public building with a man who’s not trying to keep me a secret.

I like it.

Inside the aquarium, the staff directs us to the Deep Blue gallery. We walk through the glass tunnel beneath ocean wildlife, and emerge into the theater with the floor-to-ceiling window into the giant tank where everything from grouper to stingrays to sharks live.

It’s a small wedding, no more than seventy-five people, and the groom immediately strolls over to greet us. “Josh, Caroline and I are so glad you could make it.”

He’s an older gentleman, maybe in his fifties, and as Josh shakes his boss’s hand, his arm goes tense beneath my fingers.

“Wouldn’t miss it, Bob,” he says, though his tone is tighter than I expected.

I guess maybe Josh doesn’t like his boss.

“This is Kami,” he adds, extracting my hand from his elbow and wrapping an arm tightly around me.

Bob’s graying brows lift as he surveys me. “Well. Hello there, Kami. I was…unaware that Josh was dating anyone.”

“Seemed prudent to keep her under wraps,” Josh replies with something heavy laced in his words and a smile that has more bite than I’ve ever seen on him.

Not that I’ve seen him often, but he’s always smiling when I see him washing his truck with his golden retriever watching on.

Bob laughs nervously, and the bride—a woman closer to my age than Bob’s age—rushes over in an ivory scoop-neck satin gown. There’s nary a jiggle in her slender thighs under the tight material, and I don’t think she’s wearing Spanx to keep her stomach that flat.

“Josh. You made it.” She kisses him on both cheeks, then turns to me and takes both of my hands in hers. There’s something vaguely familiar about her high cheek bones, the thick blond hair, and the upturned nose. “Oh, my, aren’t you precious. I’m so glad you could be here for Josh today. I know this has been hard on him, but when it’s love, it’s love.”

She kisses both my cheeks too, then waves to someone behind us. “Oh, Aunt Marge! Excuse us. The seating chart is over by the door.”

Bob hustles to keep up with Caroline, and I shoot Josh a curious look. “You know your boss’s fiancée?”

“We dated once,” he says briefly, and I suddenly realize that’s why she’s familiar.

She was at his house more than once when I stopped by to say hi to Muffy and Aunt Hilda over the summer.

“Once?” I press.

“Let’s go figure out where we’re sitting.”

We’ve been relegated to one of the back tables, which is still an awesome view of the tank, because there’s no bad view when the whales and eels and schools of every kind of ocean fish imaginable swim past the huge wall of windows. I take a seat beside a bird-like woman in black who already has three empty drink glasses in front of her.

“Get you something before they start?” Josh asks, dipping low so he can whisper directly in my ear.

“Ah, a glass of red, please.”

He disappears after bestowing a heated smile on me, and the woman in black with the salt and pepper hair gives me a once-over before following Josh with her eyes. “Can’t believe she gave up that for an old cheating geezer.”

I snap my jaw shut when I realize I’m gaping. Because it sounded like—

The woman chuckles. “So you’re the ringer.” She slides glossy eyes over me. I’m starting to feel like a slab of steak in a meat counter. “The boy has taste, I’ll give him that. Wait until you see my—hiccup!—date.” She lowers her voice and leans in until I can smell the gin on her breath. “He’s twenty. And I paid him to give me a lap dance halfway through the ceremony. Those college boys will do anything for a couple grand. Don’t tell—hic!—Bob that that’s where his alimony’s going, mm-kay?”

So, it’s going to be one of those weddings. “Your secret’s safe with me,” I tell her.

She winks. “I like you.”

“I like you too.”

Josh returns with an easier smile and two glasses of wine. “Mrs. Smith,” he says to the woman.

She snorts. “Call me Sarah. Mrs. Smith is about to be that floozy. No offense.”

He darts an uneasy glance at me, but I just give him an amused I know what’s going on smile.

“None taken,” he tells her.

Another man, this one tall, olive-skinned, with short dark hair and a suit that seems to be custom-fit, approaches the table and pulls a chair away from the black linen tablecloth. “Water for you, Sarah.”

“Honey, say it in Spanish and use that accent,” she says.

He obliges, his youthful face lighting up as she slips him a hundred-dollar bill.

Bob’s watching, but I’m pretty sure he missed the money under the table.

“So, your ex is marrying your boss?” I murmur to Josh.

“Prefer to think of it as him saving me from making a big mistake.” He’s smiling, but his voice isn’t.

Yep.

Definitely that kind of wedding.

“Don’t suppose you want to make out?” he asks while Sarah’s date—whom she’s calling Enrique, but who is apparently actually named Sean—pulls her up for an impromptu slow-dance.

Without music.

Before the ceremony starts.

Actually— “Is this the whole wedding, or just the reception?” I ask.

“The whole fucking wedding,” he replies on a sigh.

I scope out the rest of the wedding guests and decide Bob and Caroline aren’t so much popular as they are generous, because nobody seems to be interested in much more than staring at the fish and whispering to each other.

“Just how broken-hearted are you?” I ask.

“Why?” Josh wants to know.

“If we have another date, will it be about us, or about them?”

His eyes dart to the side.

And weirdly, I’m not so disappointed.

Or maybe not weirdly.

“I just broke up with Nick Murphy,” I tell him, because why the hell not? Josh and I clearly aren’t going to be each other’s soul mates. We might as well be honest friends.

His eyes go round. “The hockey player?”

“Yep.”

“Holy shit. And now you get this? That’s a serious demotion in the dating world.”

“Nick Murphy who’s having a shit season?” Sean asks, suddenly stopping. “Is he having a shit season because you broke up with him? Dude. You gotta get back together. He’s my boy. And we gotta win that back-to-back championship. I already bet next year’s tuition on it.”

“When did you break up with him?” Sarah demands. “Was it before or after that horrible game in New York?”

“We weren’t actually dating,” I say quickly.

“It was before!” Sarah shrieks.

Sean shakes his head at me. “I don’t care what you want to call it, you need to give that man more love. We need him stopping pucks.”

“He really is having a shitty season,” Josh says.

“Dearly beloved, we’re about to begin,” a man calls at the front of the room. “If you could take your seats, please?”

“How long were you dating?” Sean whispers around Sarah, who’s also watching me with eyes way more alert than they were a minute ago.

“We weren’t—eight months,” I whisper, because I’m not interested in explaining the entire situation.

“You got him through the championship!” Sarah shrieks.

“I—”

“Wait. Wasn’t that when the whole team was sent to charm school?” Josh asks.

“You know about charm school?”

He nods, all the tension gone. “Yeah. I read that blog—you know, the This Chick Loves Hockey blog?”

I gasp. “That’s my friend Maren’s blog.”

“Whoa, you know Maren? She’s fucking hot,” Sean says.

The minister clears his throat, but it’s hard to see his glare with him backlit by the lights coming through the ocean water.

“Could you introduce us?” Josh whispers.

“You get your booty on your own time,” Sarah hisses. “We need to get Murphy back to the top of his game. Now, why did you break up with him?”

“The wedding’s about to start,” I whisper.

“Fuck them, cheating bastards,” Sean says. “What did he do? He didn’t cheat on you, did he? I’ll put him through the fucking wall if he did.”

“He forgot my birthday, okay?”

Both men stare at me like I’ve sprouted a unicorn horn, but Sarah nods. “Good for you, honey. Good for you. Bob forgot every one of my birthdays for thirty years, and now look where we’re at.”

“We’re talking about the Thrusters winning,” Josh reminds her.

“You can’t ask a woman to screw a guy just so a sports team will win,” Sarah shoots back. “What’s in it for her?”

“Uh, diamonds?” Sean says. “Unless he’s cheating. Is he cheating?”

“I don’t think so,” I sputter.

“Is he at least smart enough to realize you’re his good luck charm and he wants you back?”

I pause.

To the best of my knowledge, Nick has never apologized to anyone voluntarily.

And in addition to the teddy bears, roses, singing telegram, pizza, and dog biscuits, I’ve gotten thirty sets of tickets to Thrusters games—including a few at other arenas, and those came with hotel vouchers and plane tickets—and when I switched on the radio the other day on my drive into work, the DJ kept announcing that every song that morning was dedicated to Kami, from the dum-dum-head who forgot her birthday.

“Oh, he does want you back, doesn’t he?” Sarah says.

Someone at the next table shushes her. Caroline is walking down the aisle, which is really just Caroline walking through the door from the tunnel.

“Did he send flowers?” Sean asks.

“And…then some,” I reply.

“He knows he fucked up?” Sarah brightens. “Oh, honey, you have a chance. You really have a chance. Plus, you’d get way more in alimony than I am if it ever goes south.”

“Would you all be quiet?” someone in front of us hisses.

Sarah flips him off. “Father of the bride,” she murmurs to me. Louder, she replies, “If you didn’t want us here, you shouldn’t have invited us.”

“Mom,” a young woman in pink hisses three tables to our left.

Sarah shrugs. “Sorry, honey. You know your father’s a dickweed.”

“Getting what he deserves,” Josh adds.

And three minutes later, we’re all being shuffled out the door.

“You guys want to go get some drinks at Chester Green’s?” Josh asks.

“And we’ll steal Kami’s phone and call Murphy to see what it’ll take to get his game back on,” Sean agrees.

I shake my head. The last time I was at Chester Green’s didn’t end so well, and I don’t care that the team’s supposed to be boarding a flight to Canada this evening and Nick definitely won’t be there, because other people there still know me.

And everyone there will be interested if they hear this insane theory that me dumping Nick is why he’s having a bad season.

He’s a professional. He’s not thinking about me on the ice. He never did.

Whatever’s going on with him, it has nothing to do with me.

I fake a swoon and sway into Josh. “Oh, wow, I think there was something in that wine,” I say. “I’m suddenly not feeling so good.”

All three of them stare at me.

Crap.

I’m going to have to puke.

I’m going to have to make myself puke, right here, outside the aquarium, before they’ll believe I don’t feel good.

Or maybe I could just fake a faint.

It might hurt, but it’ll get me out of going to Chester Green’s.

“Or it might’ve been that dog I ate earlier,” I improvise.

“You mean hot dog?” Sarah asks.

“No, dog-dog.”

Suddenly all three of them are leaping back.

“You ate a dog?” Josh says.

“It might’ve been monkey.”

They all take one more step back.

“You brought a chick who likes to eat animals to the aquarium?” Sean hisses at Josh. “We’re lucky we got out of there without her diving in that tank and taking a bite out of the stingrays.”

“Stingrays are delicious,” I confirm.

I’m most definitely going to be sick, because I’m disgusting myself now.

But they’re far enough away that I feel comfortable pulling my phone out and ordering a Lyft, which is all the battery power I have left. “I’m going home,” I say. “Nice to meet you all.”

And before they can argue, I dash off.

Could this date have been worse?

Yep.

But it could’ve been better too.

A whole fuck-ton better.