Authors: Lauren Gilley
“Sorry,” Ryan said with a chuckle, “hope you don’t mind hanging out with us boys for the night.”
Jordan and Tam coughed to cover their laughter at the same moment. When Ryan gave them an annoyed look, Jordan explained, “Jo’s never had anything against ‘hanging with the boys.’”
Ryan frowned. “What are you trying to say?”
Oh, God, here came the mock indignation on her behalf.
Jordan must have figured it out, because his eyes cut over to Jo, twinkling, before he pegged Ryan with a very serious expression. “I don’t know, what do you think I’m trying to say?”
Ryan’s meaty face reddened. “That’s kinda bold, don’t you think? Sitting here and calling your sister a slut.”
Everyone else at the table went goggle-eyed, save Jordan, who remained impassive, and Tam, who raked a hand through his hair to cover a grin. “I didn’t say that,” Jordan said, “but
you
just did. Way to go, Romeo.”
Ryan’s chest puffed up. “You - ”
“She was a tomboy,” Tam said, cutting him off and diffusing the situation Jordan had created. Ryan’s head snapped in Tam’s direction. “Ripped jeans, dirty fingernails, the whole bit,” he continued, and his eyes came across the table and touched hers. So many guys would have said that like a curse, but Tam didn’t.
“Oh.” Ryan deflated a little. He reached up and smoothed his tie as a waitress arrived with a tray full of wine offering them a choice of red or white. “Oh,” he repeated, plucking a glass of merlot off the tray. “So…” He glanced between Tam and Jo. “You guys know each other already?”
“He’s been friends with Mike since middle school,” Jordan said, rolling his eyes.
“Back then, if you were friends with one of us, you were friends with all of us,” Jo explained, still staring across the table at Tam. He had dark circles of fatigue under his blue eyes, his hair needed so much gel, and he looked completely out of place in this dining room, but everything about him reminded her of home. He was familiar, comfortable, and loved.
“Oh,” Ryan said. Someone touched her arm and it was a moment before she remembered that Tam was all the way across the table and that it was Ryan who had his hand around her wrist. “That’s why Mike thought to put us together then. ‘Cause he and I get along so well.”
“Yeah,” she murmured.
Tam had lifted one corner of his mouth in the smallest of smiles and Jo knew she shouldn’t be maintaining eye contact like this, shouldn’t be letting her feelings shine like neon billboards in her eyes.
“Did you guys ever go out?”
She jerked her gaze away from Tam’s, trying to focus on Ryan. “What?”
“You and Tam. Did you guys ever date?” He looked suspicious, she thought.
“No.” Her heart gave a big, sad squeeze. “We never went out.” And that was the truth.
“I think Delta’s trying to say something,” Mitch’s wife said and Jo had never been so glad to redirect her attention to a pompous princess.
The princess in question wore a pinched expression, her brown eyes scanning back and forth across the room, one toe tapping with impatience as the stragglers found their seats. She turned and whispered something to Mike, the corners of her mouth turning down in a rather nasty frown. He shrugged and her brows snapped together. Jo thought it was fitting; her brother was an asshole, it was only fair his fiancée was a bitch to him.
“Stacy, Sydney,” Delta snapped, eyes zooming out to a table of bridesmaids that seemed overcome by a case of the whispers. “This is not the time for talking.” The smile that stretched across her face was white, straight, and didn’t come close to touching her eyes. “Okay?” The girls fell silent. “Good.” Delta turned to Mike. “Baby, why don’t you start us off?” It wasn’t a question.
Mike swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, looking like the last thing he wanted to do was address a room full of people. But because he was a ham, and because trepidation was a dirty word in his book, he busted out his best sleazy car salesman smile, slid an arm around Delta’s shoulders – she brushed his arm away with a hissed warning about her hair, and the limb dropped to her waist – and began his spiel.
“I won’t take up too much of anybody’s time tonight. I know you’re all hungry, just like me,” he chuckled, “but Delta and I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you for making the trip. We know it was a long one and…”
Jo tuned him out. Maybe that was rude, but she didn’t much care at this point. She was exhausted, jet lag threatening to slump her over at the table, the backs of her eyes felt like they’d been scrubbed with sandpaper. As her gaze roved across the ballroom, sleep tugging at her, Ryan’s unfamiliar arm propped behind her on the back of her chair, she was overcome with the knowledge that she was miles and miles from home. In another country. Surrounded by family, yes, but lots of people who were neither relation nor friend.
She sought Tam again, unwillingly. He was watching Mike, a bored expression on his face, but it afforded her a chance to really study him.
His face was leaner and harder than it had been. Under his jacket, his t-shirt clung to muscle. His lashes were still dark and long, his nose still just a touch roman. The fingers that drummed restlessly on the table were long. His nails looked chewed.
He was tired. Maybe someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t see it – what had he told her on the plane?
Only because I know you
. She could read the tension in his body, like he carried some external, physical weight with him.
A modest round of applause rippled through the dining room, pulling her attention back to the real reason for this dinner and this trip. She hastily clapped at the tail end of things, eyes going to the dais at the head of the room. Delta had taken center stage again, another of those plastic smiles affixed to her face.
“Thank you, baby,” she chirped at Mike, and then launched into her own thank-you-and-welcome diatribe.
Jo felt Ryan’s hand creep up over her shoulder and cringed inwardly. The thing she most wanted was on the other side of the table, and it was something she couldn’t be so foolish as to reach for twice in one lifetime.
**
Dinner was braised rack of lamb with whipped potatoes, asparagus, and a tomato salad. Jo ate the veggies, drank more wine than she should have, and was grateful when she could begin the journey back to the room she was sharing with Jordan. Though bunking with another bridesmaid had sounded like a bore in the light of day, as fatigue pulled her under, it sounded like torture on par with having her fingernails pulled off with pliers.
She had showered and pulled on her pajamas in a zombie-like stupor. Jordan was flipping through channels from his double bed over by the door. Jo was beneath the covers of her own bed next to the window, propped up on two pillows, staring blankly at the TV.
She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until the TV was muted and Jordan was staring at her, an unusual softness in his eyes.
I miss him
, she’d said, and if she hadn’t been past the point of exhaustion, she might have been embarrassed to have said it to her brother of all people.
“You guys should just talk,” Jordan said, facing forward again.
“I miss him,” she repeated stupidly.
He sighed. “I know you do.”
18
Now
It had been years since Jo had overslept her alarm and needed her mother to shake her awake, so she didn’t understand why that was happening now. Long, thin fingers gripped her shoulder and shook her so hard her head was rolling side to side on the pillow.
“Wake up, Jo.” It was not her mother’s voice that shattered the quiet of sleep and sent her eyelids fluttering open.
Groggy, head pounding, Jo registered a dark-haired vision of beauty floating above her in a cream satin dress, dark eyes peering into her own.
“Come on, Joanna, we’re going to be late,” Delta said.
Jo swatted her away, grateful when the bed stopped moving, and earned a disgruntled sigh for her efforts. “Late for what?” she croaked. She was not the kind of person who slept unreasonably late or who lingered in bed. Yes, there was sunlight filtering in through the sheer white drapes, but she’d been up before dawn yesterday, had traveled across the Atlantic. Wasn’t she entitled to a late morning? As awareness crashed over her like a salty wave, her headache became more acute, her whole body gripped in a cramp. Her nose was stuffy and her ears needed to pop. “What time is it?” She pushed back against the pillows, trying to make some sense of the situation.
“It’s just after eight,” Delta informed her, “and if you don’t get up now, you’ll be late for the photo shoot.”
Jo wiped the sleep out of her eyes with her fists and glared at her future sister-in-law. “Photo shoot?”
Delta’s dress was sleeveless and fit like a second skin. The hem fluttered around her knees as she rocked back on her heels and folded her arms in front of her chest, one perfectly groomed dark brow lifting in disbelief. No one, but no one, questioned her. “The
bridesmaid
photo shoot.”
“Am I supposed to know what that is? Because I don’t.”
Her eyes narrowed to cat-like slits. “It was explained fully in your itinerary.”
Jo rubbed at her eyes again; they felt full of salt. The room around them was done in gold and sepia tones, pops of royal blue added for contrast. Her brother was lying on the double bed beside hers, watching TV and pointedly ignoring the female altercation that was building. Jo felt startled, disoriented, lost, and not fully functional yet. “Itinerary?” she asked like an idiot. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Honestly, Jo.” Delta’s voice was becoming brittle, anger coursing through it. “The one Regina passed out to everyone at the airport yesterday.”
“I never got one.”
“Yes you did!” she snapped. “She passed them out to all the bridesmaids.”
Jo wasn’t sure if she wanted to burst into a hysterical laughing fit, or bury her face in her hands and cry. She needed about a gallon of coffee before she could make that decision. “No, I didn’t.”
Delta folded her palms together beneath her chin as if in prayer. Her eyes closed and her lips pressed together into a thin, white line. She took a deep, dramatic, steadying breath in through her aristocratic nose. “Just put on a dress, fix your face, and meet us in the gardens.” Her eyes opened and they were livid brown pools. “You’re in this wedding for your brother - ”
“My brother doesn’t give a shit.”
“ – so be glad you get to be in the pictures,” Delta snapped with all the charm of a viper. She whirled in a whipping cloud of satin skirts and tossing, silk hair. “You have half an hour,” she warned as she shut the room door behind her with a
bang
.
Jo sagged back against the headboard when she was gone. Her eyes cut over to Jordan, who still pretended like he was watching the tube. “Thanks a lot, jerk-off. Why’d you let her in here?”
“I can’t believe her knocking didn’t wake you up. I thought she was gonna Kung Fu her way through the goddamn door if I didn’t answer it.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “If she doesn’t want me in her wedding, why does she insist on keeping me in it?”
“Dunno. Chicks are screwed up.”
“Yes we are,” she agreed.