by Megan Hart
This means that we have to line up again, the way we did before walking down the aisle. This means I have to stand in front of Jenna again, but although I’m in my place, she’s not there. I scan the hotel hallway, looking for her. I can hear the DJ from inside the ballroom, making his announcements. In another minute, less than that, it’s going to be time. Everything else has gone without a hitch today, and I don’t want it to get messed up, now.
But then, there she is, breathless and beautiful, practically running down the hall to slide into line behind me. “Hey.”
I don’t have time to say anything to her, because the DJ is now announcing the bridal party, and it’s my turn to push through the doors and shake my groove thang on the dance floor, something I manage to do with enthusiasm for the sake of my sister and brand-new brother-in-law, if not much skill.
Jenna is behind me, and despite everything that we’ve gone through lately, I can’t stop myself from turning toward her as she does her dance. She’s laughing, her face all lit up, and when she reaches for my hand, I let her take it without a second thought.
We dance together. Our fingers linked. I twirl her in and out. Then dip. She comes back up, her body against mine for a moment that lasts too long for this fast song. I let her go.
As much as I want to, I can’t stay angry at Jenna. I can’t hate her. I fell in love with her fast and hard and deep, and it would take a lot of effort to crawl out of that love. She deserves to know it.
The DJ announces Abby and Tony, who enter the room holding hands and dancing. I’ve never seen my sister look so happy. Tony looks at her like she’s made of gold and diamonds. No. Something more precious than that.
“They’re so happy,” Jenna says into my ear as the two of us dance away with the rest of the bridal party, toward the head table where we’ll be sitting.
She stops, but her hand’s still linked to mine, so I stop, too. The DJ is talking. Abby and Tony are easing into their first dance. The entire room is focused on the bride and groom, but I only have eyes for Jenna.
“I want to be that happy,” she says. “I mean…Sam…I am that happy. When I’m with you.”
My heart lifts, up, up, up, an untethered balloon. I pull her a little closer. My throat is dry and so is my mouth. It’s still so hard to find the words. As it turns out, you don’t need to speak aloud when you can kiss your feelings, instead.
It’s soft, gentle, brief. Just a bare brushing of my lips on hers. Jenna closes her eyes, and I press our foreheads together for a second or so. When she opens them, her gaze glitters with tears, but she’s grinning fiercely.
“I love you,” I tell her in a low voice that ought to be drowned out by the music, but is perfectly audible to both of us.
“I love you, too,” Jenna agrees, and a small furrow digs its way between her brows. “Please forgive me for —”
I stop her with another kiss, this one a little longer and pull away with a shake of my head. “Not now. Later. Okay?”
She nods. We let go of each other’s hands as we make our way to the head table to find our seats. I’m focused on looking for my name card, so I don’t immediately notice my mother stepping in front of me. I pull up short just in time to keep from running into her.
“How. Dare. You.” She’s shaking, her face a slowly rising shade of crimson that looks unhealthy.
I freeze at once. She kept her voice low, but anyone looking at her can see she’s about to blow. I can’t let that happen. Not today, not in front of all these people. I can’t let her ruin my sister’s day, and my mother looks like she’s well on the way to doing her best to do just that.
“Mom,” I begin, but she cuts me off with a quick jab of her fingers against my chest. The poke hurts, but what’s worse is the way her face twists when she looks at me. I’ve seen that look before. Disgust.
“You shut up,” she hisses. “How dare you? You and your little bitch of a girlfriend think you’re so smart?”
Honestly, I know we both are, but I know better than to say so out loud. Instead, I draw myself up to my full height, shoulders squared. I look her in the eye, keeping my own voice pitched low and a neutral, pleasant expression on my face so that nobody watching us could begin to think I’m baiting her.
“Whatever you think you have to say to me, it can wait,” I tell her.
She’s not going to wait. Her mouth is working. There are little curdles of foam in the corners of her lips. My mother is about to lose her shit, spectacularly, and while it won’t be the first time I’ve ever seen it, I’m trying desperately to keep everyone else in the ballroom from having to witness it.
From the corner of my eye, I catch sight of blond hair and a bright pink dress. Jenna’s gesticulating at the DJ. His assistant swings the spotlight toward me and my about-to-blow mother, just as the music fades and the DJ says into the mic, “and now, a few words of love and support from the mother of the bride, Margo!”
Brilliant. My girl is a genius. My mother is put on the spot, literally, and can only take the cordless mic the DJ’s assistant is now pressing into her shaking hand.
Margo will never, never, act like the total bitch that she is in front of all these people. Jenna has done the one thing guaranteed to fend off my mother’s meltdown. I back out of the light as my mother manages to get herself together enough to start speaking — it’s a bunch of bullshit, obviously, since she’s spent the last year doing nothing but complain nonstop about every single decision my sister and Tony have made about this wedding, but damn if she’s not going to put on a good show for the audience.
“I didn’t think I could love you more than I do,” I whisper to Jenna as we both find our places at the table. “But holy shit. You are a goddess.”
Jenna gives me that grin, and I fall a little deeper. “I know.”
Then she kisses me, right there in front of everyone, and if anyone’s staring neither of us give a damn. I kiss her after that. We hug and laugh and I look into her eyes.
“I love you,” I tell her again.
Jenna grins. “Good. Because I love the hell out of you, and we’re both going to figure out exactly what that means and what we’re going to do about it. But first…let’s dance.”
Then she takes my hand and leads me to the dance floor, so there’s no more time for talking. But that’s fine. We’ll have all the time in the world to get ourselves figured out.
And it’s going to be perfect.
LAYOVER
Chapter 1
DELAYED.
DELAYED.
DELAYED.
“Come on,” Julia Radman murmured under her breath as she scanned the hard-to-read rows of flights. “Don’t be –”
CANCELLED.
Of course.
With a sigh, Julia shrugged the strap of her leather bag higher on her shoulder and looked at the line of people queuing in front of the customer service desk. None of them looked any happier than she did. Julia looked at her watch, then at the line, and finally outside the terminal windows to the late afternoon sun shining as golden as honey. The weather in Texas might be hot and dry, but apparently the entire East Coast was being slammed by an ice storm. Newark, JFK, Philadelphia – nobody was getting in or out.
She might as well sit down. She wasn’t going anywhere, not for a while, and standing in line wasn’t going to make the time pass any faster. She settled into one of the curved plastic chairs close enough to the desk so she could see what was going on and pulled out her iPhone to let her fingers dance over the keys. She pulled up Hobby Airport’s website, but there wasn’t anything there she didn’t already know. They had a nice picture slideshow of planes landing and taking off, but after those three minutes of her life had gone by, she had nothing to do but check the weather. Fifteen minutes later the line hadn’t moved much at all, and the rest of the plastic seats had filled with disgruntled and grumbling passengers.
“You too, huh?”
The seat next to her had been empty for a few minutes, b
ut now a heavyset man in a long overcoat had taken it. She’d already moved over as far as she could, and he huffed a little as he squirmed into the space between Julia and the woman on his other side.
“Where you headed?” the man continued as though she’d answered.
“Philadelphia.”
“Newark,” he told her. “Got my wife waiting for me. Grandkids, too, prolly.”
“That’s nice,” Julia said. The only thing waiting for her would be a pile of mail, a cold apartment and a goldfish named Larry.
The man sighed heavily. “I only got a coupla more years before I can retire. Let someone else take over, ya know? I’m tired of all this traveling.”
“Especially when it’s like this.” Julia nodded sympathetically.
She loved traveling, actually. Business or pleasure, she spent hours planning her trips to take advantage of local sights. She wasn’t going to end up like her parents, who always talked about the vacations they wanted to take but who’d never gone farther than Niagara Falls – the American side! The weather was making this trip inconvenient, but she wasn’t going to swear off traveling because of it.
The line had inched forward, people peeling away from it with angry faces. The ticket clerks looked harried, tight-lipped smiles giving the minimum of polite, forced cheer. Julia didn’t envy them their jobs at the moment.
“You been up there yet?” The man jerked his double chin toward the desk.
“No. You?”
“Yeah. Don’t look good, ya know? They told me I could sit and wait or I could take a flight out tomorrow. They’ll put me up in the airport hotel. Hilton, they said. But I tole ‘em, I wanna get home, ya know?”
Julia shifted, in her seat to look at him. “You’re going to wait?”
He nodded. “See if Newark opens up. They say I got a coupla hours to wait. Might as well, ya know?” His hearty chuckle sounded forced and his red-rimmed eyes held no hint of humor.
Julia looked at the line and decided it was still too long to wait. “If they offer me a free night at the Hilton, I’ll take it.”
“You don’t got nobody waiting for you at home?” The man frowned. “Pretty girl like you? That’s a shame.”
Julia looked down at her hands, folded loosely in her lap. “Thanks.”
There didn’t seem to be much else to say to that. He was only trying to be nice, and she didn’t really want to get into her personal life with a stranger. How she was single by choice, not for lack of offers; how she’d decided it was better to be alone that settle for something that didn’t make her happy.
“My Maggie, now, if I’m away from her for more than a few days, I miss her something awful. And I been away for a week, this time. We got the grandkids coming to stay with us over Christmas break on account our daughter and her husband are going to Mexico. You ever been to Mexico?”
“Yes. It’s nice.”
“Nice, huh?” Her new-found friend looked dubious. “I can’t even eat Mexican food. Messes with my stomach. But I can’t wait to see the kids, ya know? They been there two days awready.”
“I’m sure they’ll get you home as soon as they can,” Julia assured him.
He didn’t look convinced. “Yeah. I hope so. Well, I’m going to head over to get something to eat, I guess. You need anything?”
“No, thanks. I’m going to wait here for the line to get smaller and see what I can do about getting out of here.”
He nodded and heaved his bulk off the chair. “You have a safe flight, then. Hope you get home okay.”
Even if I don’t have someone waiting for me, Julia thought as she smiled and waved goodbye. At least he hadn’t gone on and on about it, or offered her dating advice, the way the elderly woman sitting beside her on the flight out had. Or tried to fix her up with a nephew, cousin, grandson or brother-in-law. She’d had all that, too.
What had Jane Austen said about a man of a certain age and position needing a wife? Well, Julia was of a certain age, 32, and of a certain position, VP for Customer Relations at the biggest health insurance provider in Pennsylvania, and while she sometimes thought she wouldn’t mind having a wife if that meant there would be someone to cook and clean and do her laundry, she was pretty sure she wasn’t suffering from her lack of a husband.
Boyfriends, she’d decided, were like seashells. Every once in while you found a pretty one to put in your pocket, but most were broken, some were sharp, some had a bad smell. Her last boyfriend had been a nice guy, a sweet guy. A spineless, couldn’t-make-a-decision-to-save-his life sort of guy. The one before that had been the opposite, a big, brawny manly man who’d delighted in treating her like a helpless, fragile doll.
She wasn’t opposed to dating or marriage. She just wasn’t going to hold her breath or put her life on hold until she found the One. Nor was she willing to put aside her standards for a quick fling, or to settle for a relationship just to have one rather than be alone, the way some of her friends had done.
The line moved forward slowly, each person seemingly needing a long, long time to get their arrangements straightened out. With one eye on the line, Julia pulled out her iPhone, doubly grateful for the distraction of the ‘net as she browsed her favorite gossip site and checked her email, then surfed over to her account on Connex. There she played a few moves in her online version of a popular board game and checked out the updated photos on her friends list.
The line had moved, but not much.
Idly, she skimmed through her messages from Connex. She had the usual winks and hugs from random users who’d found her profile interesting and some friend requests she deleted. She liked Connex because the blog function allowed her to keep up with real-life friends she didn’t see often, but she wasn’t there to collect “friends” the way some people were. She never friended anyone she hadn’t met in real life. She was getting ready to disconnect when a new message arrived in her inbox. The username made her smile every time.
Onemanwreckingmachine
His real name was Graham, and the first time she’d met him, he’d been blindfolded and at her mercy.
Their companies had been merging, resulting in some new corporate policies. The week-long Occupational Health conference last year had been meant to strengthen relations between the corporations and bring the department heads into mutual compliance with new policies. The atmosphere had been more casual than the yearly conferences she’d attended in the past, and meeting all the new people had lent an air of excitement missing from the past years’ educational programming. Along with the traditional dry business meetings there had been a few more parties and fun events in the name of “team-building.”
Julia had arrived late to the conference and been ushered at once to the room they’d set aside for team-building exercises, where she took her place with the only unpartnered person. He’d been standing with one half of the group, their eyes covered with black cloths, waiting for their partners to lead them with words through a maze created by traffic cones on the ballroom floor. Julia would never forget the way he’d turned his head at her “hello,” or how he’d taken her every direction without hesitation. They’d won the contest because Graham had negotiated the maze at her command without knocking over even one cone. She still had the pen engraved with the company logo.
She wouldn’t forget her first sight of his eyes, a hazy gray-blue, when he took off the blindfold. Or the sound of his name when he’d introduced himself, or the press of his palm in hers when they shook hands.
“You’re good at taking direction,” she’d said.
“You’re good at giving it,” had been his reply, and his smile had sent heat trickling all through her.
The session had continued, but if anything important happened, Julia didn’t remember it. All she thought of when she looked back to that day was Graham. She’d thought about him a lot over the past year.
Later that first day, they met in the hotel lobby at the elevator. They’d struck up a conversation on the ride up. He’d impress
ed her at once by referring to their transport as the Great Glass Elevator. The elevator opened into a short hall, open at either end. The rooms themselves formed a square open to the lobby below. He’d gone one way, she the other, and found their rooms had been almost exactly opposite across the opening.
He’d waved. She’d waved back. Inside her room she’d leaned against the door and laughed to herself at how something so simple and small could feel so big so fast.
The attraction had been instant and undeniable, at least to her. Graham stood at least six-three, with long, long legs and long, long arms, and big, long-fingered hands. He alternated between well-cut suits with funky ties and casual, long-sleeved t-shirts and the type of jeans fondly known amongst Julia’s circle of girlfriends as “dirty denim.” Not that the jeans themselves weren’t clean – just that the cut and style and contents brought to mind dirty, dirty thoughts.
They’d been partnered in a trivia contest and wiped the floor with their competitors. They’d sat together at dinner. They’d talked long into the night about topics as diverse as comic-book superheroes and global warming and her love of snow, which he rarely saw in his native Texas. He had an easy sense of humor and laughed at all her jokes. They’d only known each other for five days.
A lot can happen in five days.
The after-hours events had been a bit more raucous than the daytime meetings. Casual flirtations that would never have gone further than the office seemed an entirely different animal going on away from home. Alcohol made people stupid, something Julia had determined never to be, particularly not in front of her boss’s bosses and around people with whom she had to work on a daily basis. Even with people she would never see again. Maybe especially with people she would never see again.
The conference had ended with an awards dinner on Friday night. Many of the attendees who weren’t heading out immediately for home had ended up in the hotel bar, where they drank and danced and generally let down their hair.
