“Yeah. I was supposed to join him on the trip. Long story short, I didn’t.”
Which meant he probably lived with some kind of guilt. “Was he a skilled kayaker?”
“I thought so. I’ve never been creeking before, but Will had a handful of times. It was supposed to be like any of his other crazy trips, but this time, he didn’t come home. Not the way we expected, at least. He’s always been the crazy, spontaneous one of us. He’s the friend who talks us into stunts that no one in their right mind would get tangled with. He was invincible.”
I didn’t even know what to say. I squeezed his hand tightly in mine, as if the pressure could give him some kind of comfort.
“It’s why I’m here,” he said, gesturing around the hotel room. “His funeral is in a couple days. We—my friends and I—are going to his parents’ house tomorrow to spend some time with them and we’ve got a handful of things going on this week to honor him, I guess. Fishing, golfing, four-wheeling. All stuff Will did when he wasn’t jumping out of planes or swimming with sharks.”
“Vince?” I asked, remembering the friend who we’d helped into bed. It felt like a lifetime ago, even though it’d only been about seven hours.
“Yeah. He and I are the only single ones here.” As if he was suddenly reminded, he glanced at the ring on his hand. He hadn’t removed it when he’d gotten changed. “Well, you know what I mean. Kind of fucked up that I got married to someone while I was in town for my best friend’s funeral, huh?”
“I don’t think it’s fucked up. First of all, we are fake married. Secondly, you’ve described Will as a fun, adventurous, spontaneous person. And you’re spending this week doing things Will loved, to honor him.” I placed my palm flat on his chest. “On a whim, you agreed to get married to me. What would he have said to that?”
He thought for a moment. “He would’ve been proud, probably. He was always getting on my case for not being more carefree.”
“You’re a risk assessor.” I leaned forward and popped a kiss on his nose. “Not necessarily a risk taker.”
“Right. He would have been surprised, for sure. But not in a bad way.” He looked me over for a moment and stifled a yawn. “He’d have liked you. A lot. Probably would have tried to steal you in the bar if he’d been there with me.” The thought seemed to weigh heavily on him.
“I had my sights set on you the moment I saw you,” I told him in a moment of absolute honesty. “You’re going to his parents’ tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at the clock. “We should probably get some sleep at some point.”
There were two beds in the room, but neither of us moved to separate. Instead, we moved so our heads were actually on the pillows and our bodies under the sheets. It felt perfectly comfortable to snuggle with him like this. There were no expectations from either of us, except to sleep.
And so we did.
I awoke to an angry buzzing. Blinking, I squinted to where the offending noise was coming from and watched my clutch as it slid off the table I’d set it on the night before. My phone.
My head was pounding from dehydration and lack of sleep, so shifting from beneath the covers felt like it took every single muscle in my body.
At some point during the night, I’d turned to Liam and curled up on him. He was still knocked out, his breaths even, as I crawled across the bed and fell to the floor.
“Fuck,” I whispered to no one in particular. I’d have a good bruise from that. Rubbing my knee, I reached for my clutch with the other hand and dumped its contents until my phone clattered to the carpet beneath me.
There were over a dozen texts, from half a dozen people. Without reading the messages, I went down the list of names: Mom, Dad, James, Hollis, Bekka, and Lauren.
Shit.
I rubbed my palm against my eyes, dislodging a few sleepy seeds as I struggled to get my vision to stop blurring. We hadn’t closed the curtains the night before, so light flooded the room in what I might’ve likened to a warm glow if it didn’t feel like an icepick to my forehead. I needed acetaminophen and caffeine ASAP.
I read Hollis’s message first.
Hollis: You got MARRIED?! VICTORIA RENEE MCLAUGHLIN. ANSWER YOUR PHONE.
And really, that one message was all it took for my body to come completely alive—my memory finally catching up to what had happened the night before. What the fuck? How did Hollis know?
A quick glance at the other messages from my parents and brother assured me that they, too, knew I’d gotten married. But how?
I opened Bekka’s message next.
Bekka: I’m so sorry. Katy is such a bitch. She’s already left for the airport, or I’d make her apologize in person. :(
I didn’t like the sound of that. Spying the large number of notifications on my Facebook app, I clicked it open and before I could even go to my notifications, I saw exactly what everyone else had seen. A photo of Liam and I, facing one another in front of the minister, grinning broadly at one another.
I was not lucid enough for this. I dropped the phone and then my forehead hit the carpet with a dull, unsatisfying thud. “No, no, no,” I chanted over and over as I tried to knock some working brain cells together in order to figure out how to fix this situation.
The phone rang, but I silenced it with a vicious tap to the home button. Not now, hell no.
“Tori?”
I turned my head, squinting against the bright sunlight.
“What are you doing on the floor?”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “Trying to connect a few brain cells together.”
“You must have more than a few since you’re still forming coherent sentences.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “I’m going to be in so much shit.”
“Why?” He climbed out of bed and it was then that I noticed he’d removed his shirt at some point during the night. I certainly had enough brain cells to ogle, which I did unabashedly.
“Katy posted a photo of our wedding on Facebook and tagged me. Looked like we were saying our vows.”
Liam paused as he slid his shirt on, covering all the lean muscles I’d had the fortune of memorizing. “How did she even get a photo of us?”
That was a thought. Against my better judgement, I opened my phone again and looked more closely at the photo. “Looks like it was taken from the seats. So, she snuck the photo. Bitch.” It held none of the heat I felt.
“Well, fuck.”
“Yeah.” I rolled to my back, not caring how filthy the hotel carpet likely was. I stared up at the ceiling. “How am I going to explain this to my parents and my brother?”
My phone rang again, and I flipped it over without looking at it.
“That’s a good question.” He ran his hand down his face. First thing in the morning Liam looked good. He looked haggard in a sexy way—if that was even possible. “What do you want to do?”
“Honestly? I want to turn off my phone and pretend that Katy didn’t post a photo of us—a contraband photo at that—and do anything except deal with this.”
Liam crouched in front of me. “It’s a good idea, in theory. But your family has seen a photo of you marrying a man they don’t know. They will need some reassurances from you, so they don’t have the police hunt you down for a wellness check.”
“Ugh, why do you have to be so sensible?” I groaned again. “What do I even say to them? ‘LOL, jk, didn’t get married. See ya in a few days’?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Why not? It’s straight to the point. Also, untag yourself from Katy’s photo, to limit the exposure.”
“I’m going to block her,” I said with energy I didn’t know I possessed, tapping over to Katy’s profile and untagging myself. I’d never been so happy to block someone on social media.
Then I clicked over to my texts. My mom’s took precedence, mostly because she’d sent me four texts alone.
Mom: Tori, are you okay?
Mom: Who is that man in that photo on Facebook?
Mom: Plea
se, answer your phone!
Mom: Don’t tell me you got married.
I rolled my head back and forth, as if limbering up would be needed to respond to the barrage of messages before me.
I settled on something brief.
It was a joke. I’m not married. Still single. I’ll be in Vegas a few more days. Talk soon. Love you.
Brief, and cowardly. It wasn’t that I was afraid to explain away the photo. I just didn’t want to get on the phone with my mom, to listen to her cry about my dad.
Speaking of him, I saw his messages and decided not to even bother. Mom would tell him, I was sure. I sent a similar message to Hollis and then James’s message was next.
James: Jesus Christ, Tori. You’re a trainwreck.
If the circumstances had been different, I might have replied to that with something witty and equally condescending. But I didn’t feel like cracking jokes at his expense.
Sometimes. See you in a few days.
It was even more brief than the message to my mom. The phone rang as I started to type out a reply to Bekka—and it was Bekka herself calling me.
“I’m so sorry,” she said the moment I said hi.
“It’s not your fault.” I pinched the skin between my eyebrows. “When are you and Lauren heading to the airport?”
“In about thirty minutes. Are you still in the hotel? Want us to bring your stuff to you?”
“No. I’ll come get my luggage.” I’d have to figure out what to do after that. “Sorry I missed breakfast.”
Bekka barked a laugh. “You didn’t miss it. Trust me. Katy kept us up all night moaning and vomiting. She was feeling pretty sorry for herself this morning.”
“Good.” It gave me little comfort, though. The damage was already done. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
After hanging up, Liam leaned over me and helped pull me to my feet. “You’re going back to your room?”
“I have to get my stuff and then figure out what I’m doing next.”
“Besides the broad plan of staying in Vegas?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my knuckles under my eyes. I didn’t have clothes, I realized. Just this oversized shirt I’d borrowed from Liam. I’d have to change back into the cocktail dress and do a pseudo-walk of shame back to the room.
“Want company?” Liam asked behind me as he put things away tidily into his suitcase. I decided my mom would very much approve of his packing prowess.
“Sure, why not. Wait—you have that thing with Will’s family, and your friends, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s an informal thing anyway.” His hands paused and he turned to me. “Want to come along?”
“Come again?”
“I know, going to my best friend’s family’s house sounds, well, not exactly like a fun time. But if you’re not doing anything…”
“My schedule is wide open.” He was right, the thought of going to visit his dead best friend’s family sounded depressing at best. But considering that I had no plans and little desire to say goodbye to Liam, it made sense for me to tag along. “It won’t be weird if I go?”
“My buddies, Seth and Chad, have their fiancée and wife, respectively, coming into town, so it’s not like you’ll be the only significant other there.”
“Oh, I’m a significant other now?” I teased, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, we did get married last night.”
“Two days after I told you I was in love with you.”
“Right. You moved kind of fast.”
“That’s my M.O. But you liked it.”
Liam gave me an easy smile. “You’re right. I absolutely did.”
14
After grabbing Tori’s suitcase from her room, we’d tossed everything into the back of my car and hit the road toward Will’s parents.
All things considered, things were incredibly … effortless with Tori. There were no expectations, no deep desires to impress each other. It was like we were in a limbo that we were both navigating hour by hour. Normally, I wouldn’t enjoy something so unstructured—but like I said, Tori made things easy. It was like she could sense how much apprehension I had going into this visit and wanted to ease that somehow. She switched the radio station a half a dozen times, let her arms catch wind out the window and the sunroof, pointed out a dozen license plates from a dozen different places.
“You see little more than Idaho, Montana, and Utah plates back home. Sometimes Wyoming. I remember once seeing a Maine plate and it was like aliens had landed—I was so excited.”
I laughed. “Do you enjoy living in Idaho?”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “It’s beautiful, especially once you get off the interstate and the highways. It’s like it hides the most incredible places. My mom always says that Idaho was like a woman playing hard to get—you had to get to know her before you could really learn her.”
“I really like that,” I said after a moment.
“I think you and my mom would get along really well. I could tell when I watched you refold your tighty whities.”
“What?” I asked, glancing at her incredulously.
“Yeah, my mom is meticulous like that. I’m sure she’d appreciate your fold game.”
“I… uh, guess that’s good.” I turned off the highway onto the access road that led to Will’s parents’ property.
“Don’t you live near here?”
“I live thirty minutes the other direction from Vegas—near the Nevada/California border. Easy to travel out of there if need be. I got the hotel more for convenience than anything, so I wasn’t traveling a couple hours every single day.”
“Hm.” She nodded and leaned out the window. Her hair like turbulent streamers caught the wind and rode it as her eyes closed.
I’d never wanted a convertible before—too many dangers in a rollover—but watching the way the wind whipped through Tori’s hair and the small, serene smile that curved her lips as she soaked in the sun made me briefly wish I’d been a little more reckless when I’d purchased this car.
“They live far from the city, don’t they?”
“Yeah, they moved out here after we graduated high school. Bought a ton of land and just built as they went.” It’d been a year since I’d last seen the property, but there used to be a main house, a guest house, and a shop that Will’s dad practically lived in. He had an affinity for classic cars and often bought junkers at auctions and hauled them hundreds of miles back to his shop. He spent months, even years, breathing life back into those cars.
In the distance, I could make out the sheen of solar panels on the roof—a plan they’d made years ago and had seemingly gone through with since I had last stepped foot out here. Their house was nestled far from any main roads, shielded by the rising sun by a squat mountain range. There wasn’t much out here apart from a couple small gas stations and a cafe that only travelers stopped at. But Will’s parents liked being away from the hustle and bustle. In contrast to Will, they were quiet, comfortable people. I sometimes joked, wondering how they’d made someone like Will, whose decision to buy his first house had been riddled with angst and multiple attempts to back out of the deal. He’d hardly lived at the place anyway, choosing to spend a year living in a converted school bus instead.
I pulled up to the great house as we called it, recognizing Vince’s car and Seth’s rental by the garage. The plan had been for us all to come over in the early morning, but after Seth’s text letting me know Vince was hungover as fuck, I hadn’t been in a rush myself to get out to the house. Knowing that, at the very least, Seth and Vince were already here put me at ease. They’d be a welcome buffer.
The thought sent guilt through me. I loved Will’s parents. They were always kind, good people. Which was what made this whole thing so hard. I had done a pretty good job avoiding my feelings, but not breaking down around Will’s parents would be a herculean effort.
After parking the car, I paused before removing my seatbelt. Blame it on the lack of sleep, the alcohol, or the dozens
of thoughts taking up all the valuable real estate in my brain—but I hadn’t thought about how to explain Tori to everyone. Vince had met her briefly the night before, but it was anyone’s guess if he’d remember her. Was she my girlfriend? My friend?
Tori exited the car and stretched. She’d changed into skinny jeans and a long black tee that fit her well. Her hair had curls from the day before in it and she shook them as she shoved her sunglasses atop her head. In the sunlight, she glowed.
When she caught me staring, she gave me an apprehensive smile. It was the first time since leaving the city that I’d sensed any discomfort from her. I couldn’t say that, if I’d been her shoes, I’d be nearly as calm as she appeared to be. I had to give her credit for not seeming concerned with the situation that lay before us.
“You ready?” she asked me as she came around the car and slipped her hand into mine. Like I said, things with Tori were easy. So easy that I didn’t question what we were. I didn’t think too hard about this. Tori had come along, as a friend, to support me. It didn’t matter that we’d only really gotten to know one another the night before. Around her, things felt comfortable. I only wished it was as comfortable as it was with my friends.
We walked up the steps and hadn’t even made it to the door before it swung open, revealing Seth.
“You made it,” he said, taking my hand and clapping me on the back. He looked at me and then Tori, raising an eyebrow in question.
“This is Tori,” I said, not letting go of her hand.
She gave him a wide, sunny smile and shook his hand.
“Tori,” Seth said, shaking her hand and staring intently at her. “Are you …” He couldn’t finish his question because Will’s mom, Deb, came through the threshold and wrapped her arms around me.
Whatever I’d expected, it hadn’t been for her to greet me so warmly. Which showed me how little credit I’d given them. Tori loosened her hand, giving me use of both arms to wrap around Deb. She smelled like apple pie and vanilla and home.
One Little Dare Page 11
