Beautiful

by Christina Lauren

  “Hey.” His hands slid around my hips, fingers clasping together at my navel, and he rested his chin on the top of my head. As delightful as this was, it wasn’t really helping.

  I met his eyes in the mirror. “Hey.”

  I watched him watching me, and we both bit back a laugh. What in the world were we doing? I hadn’t let myself give much thought to how this would go tonight but

  we

  would

  be

  sleeping

  together.

  I shoved my toothbrush in my mouth and began vigorously brushing.

  He straightened a little, giving me room. “I don’t remember the last time I watched a woman brush her teeth.”

  “Is it as good as you remembered?” I asked, mouth foamy. I bent down to spit and came back up, filling a glass with water to rinse.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but I beat him to it after spitting again. “I kissed you.”

  “You did.” He nodded, leaning back over me and resting his chin on my head again. “And then, if you remember, I kissed you.”

  “Was it rubbish?”

  He shook his head. “Pippa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  I laughed. “For what? Laying one on you? I can assure you, it was my pleasure.”

  He shook his head, his eyes holding mine in the mirror. “For making this easier.”

  I grinned up at him, leaning back into his embrace. “Easier on you.”

  His eyes narrowed, not understanding.

  “Jensen, we’re sharing a bed tonight; I can barely touch my toes, let alone do yoga; and I am completely tone-deaf. This is going to be a disaster.”

  “You said it earlier: we’ve got this. Hanna and Will have been looking forward to this part of the trip for weeks. Let’s tough it out.”

  I stared at his eyes in the mirror. “Why is she being so nice?”

  His expression straightened, and his eyes grew a bit unfocused. “Becky was always nice, but . . . yeah, I don’t know.”

  We met downstairs for dinner, walking—self-consciously—hand in hand toward Will and Niall, who were waiting near the front desk.

  Will turned, grinning down at our linked hands. “This,” he said, arms outstretched. “This is what I’m here to see.”

  “Making the best of a bad situation!” Jensen said cheerfully, pulling me into his side and planting a loud kiss on my temple.

  “Oh no, what bad situation?” Becky asked, coming out of complete, bloody nowhere, and we all jumped. We would definitely need to put a bell on her.

  Will barked out a laugh. “Holy shit, Jensen, I am living watching you do this over and over lately.”

  Jensen stuttered out a few things. “No, no, nothing . . .” He blinked down at me. “We just . . .”

  “Pippa’s just found out she’s pregnant,” Will blurted.

  Both Jensen and I turned to him in shock.

  “Will!” I yelled, smacking his chest. What on earth? “Are you crazy?”

  Will’s brows shot up. Still looking a bit tipsy from the rather extensive beer tasting earlier, he leaned in, whispering without subtlety, “What? Shit. No good?”

  “We’re on a winery tour, you twat!” I hissed, eyes wide. “I’m not preten—” I stopped when Jensen squeezed me roughly into his side. I smiled through clenched teeth to a bewildered Becky. “Will’s joking, that clown! I’m not pregnant.”

  “See?” Will said, rocking back on his heels. “I told you I could get them to see the bright side. So you didn’t get that house in Beacon Hill that you’d offered on. But at least your new wife didn’t get pregnant on your honeymoon, right?”

  Jensen narrowed his eyes at Will.

  Hanna came down the stairs and sidled up to her husband, correctly reading the situation. “Are you causing trouble?”

  “What? No.” He bent, kissing her as a distraction.

  “You’re looking to buy in Beacon Hill?” Becky asked Jensen quietly, giving me the impression that Beacon Hill must be a pretty fancy area. Cam came up beside her just as she added a hushed “Wow.”

  “Jensen’s about to make partner,” Niall said. “Hard work pays off.”

  Turning from Hanna, Will added, “Got the job and the girl.”

  Becky looked up at Jensen, her eyes glassy again. “I’m so glad. And this is so amazing because Cam is a real estate agent! He can definitely find you a house in Beacon Hill!”

  I felt Jensen’s arm tighten around me. Without him even needing to say it, I could tell this was the last place he wanted to be right this second.

  “That . . . is . . . fortunate,” he said through a pained smile.

  She took a step closer. “I think I worried that when we—” Becky began, her eyes suspiciously shiny, and I cut her off.

  “Mates, I’m famished!” I exclaimed. “All the hot newlywed sex and whatnot. Where are we headed for dinner?”

  Of course Jensen blushed when I said sex.

  “I feel like I missed something really interesting back there,” Ruby said, leading the way on our walk to dinner.

  “Will dropped the Hiroshima of awkward,” Niall explained, “and Pippa followed up with Nagasaki.”

  “It was pretty bad,” Jensen agreed.

  I smacked his shoulder. “This is incredibly hard on me, pretending to be your wife.”

  “Too much hot newlywed sex?” he deadpanned. Niall choked on a cough. “Oh, and apparently Cam is going to sell us our dream home in Beacon Hill. Thanks for that, Will.”

  Will grinned back at us. “Welcome!”

  I bit back a laugh. “What am I supposed to do in the face of your ex-wife who keeps tearing up every time she’s near you guys?” I said. “It’s been five hours and I already feel like we’re dysfunctional.”

  “What is with Becky’s crying?” Hanna asked.

  Will looked back at us again, wide-eyed. “Maybe she’s pregnant?”

  “She was drinking beer,” Ruby reminded him.

  “Maybe she realized she lost the best thing that ever happened to her?” Hanna asked in a protective growl.

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” Jensen said, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  Hanna pointed across the street and we followed her toward the small farm-to-table restaurant where we had reservations for dinner—alone, without Becky and Cam or Ellen and Tom.

  “God,” I groaned. “What am I going to do at karaoke tonight? Do we have to go?”

  “Well, we wouldn’t if you hadn’t accepted,” Jensen said, laughing.

  “This is amazing,” Will said, and giggled, still tipsy. “ ‘Come on this trip with us, Jens! You’ll be paired up with your crazy flight mate and then we’ll run into your beast of an ex-wife for the first time in a decade, and we’ll all pretend you’re hot and heavy, married to a stranger.’ ”

  “Hey,” I protested, feigning insult.

  Jensen looked over at me. “You’re not a stranger.”

  “Right, because I gave you my entire life story.”

  He grinned. “Starting with the turkey baster.”

  The rest of the group went quiet in confusion.

  Jensen ignored them. “You know what this night needs?” He asked us all rhetorically, but looked directly at me.

  “The way this trip is going, I can’t imagine where you’re headed with this,” Hanna said.

  He shook his head and in a quiet little growl said, “A lot of wine.”

  Maybe it was the run-in with Becky that had everyone a little slap-happy, but having a lot of wine wasn’t an issue. The moment we sat down, Will ordered two bottles—a red and a white—and some appetizers and told the waiter it was Jensen’s birthday.

  Jensen got a straw hat and a plastic bib for the two-pound crab they brought out, and after we polished off the two bottles, it seemed appropriate to order two more. Hanna reasoned—quite rationally, I felt—that there were only six four-ounce servings in a bottle of wine, which me
ant we’d each only had two glasses.

  “A pretty rubbish showing if we’re lighting it up tonight,” Niall said as he waved down the waiter.

  Two more bottles in and Will’s cheeks were rosy, Hanna was snort-laughing indelicately, and Jensen had his arm around the back of my chair in a familiar, casual lean.

  We ordered dessert wine when they brought out the crème brûlée and lava cake.

  We ordered after-dinner cocktails when we finished dessert.

  And then we remembered we still had karaoke with Becky and Cam at a dive bar in town.

  Ruby waved a finger in the air. “We don’t have to go,” she said, blinking tipsily over at me and Jensen. “If this is awkward for you guys.”

  I laughed. “It’s not awkward for me. We’re not actually married.”

  “I think she means the tone-deaf thing,” Jensen said, his voice suddenly very warm and very soft in my ear.

  “That’s really only a problem for everyone else in the bar,” I told the table, and then I turned to him, so close I could just lean in a little and kiss him. It was, in fact, hard to resist. He smelled like chocolate and had the smallest bit of stubble lining his jaw. “And I’ll have you know, I do very good Violent Femmes karaoke.”

  His mouth tilted in a half smile. “You could eat some glass and gargle some whiskey and then do Tom Waits.”

  “We could duet,” I suggested.

  “My vote is duet,” Will nearly shouted from across the table. Hanna gently shushed him as a few of our fellow diners glanced in our direction.

  “I tell you what,” Jensen said, reaching up to scratch his eyebrow. “You sing me a little song right here at the table, and I’ll do a duet with you.”

  I pulled back a little. He’d said it as a joke, as though this were something I would never do. “I’m not going to sing in a restaurant,” I told him.

  “If you do, I’ll sing with you in the bar.”

  I did the math in my head, trying to calculate how much he’d had to drink. He was being quite adorable. “You’re crazy.” I shook my head and felt Ruby’s eyes on me before she leaned to the side to whisper something to Niall.

  “Any song at the bar,” Jensen goaded me. “Your pick. You just have to sing something to me right now.”

  Bingo.

  I grinned widely at him. “My pick?”

  “Sure,” he said, waving a casual hand.

  “It’s a shame you don’t know me better.” I pushed back from my chair and then climbed onto it, standing high above everyone seated.

  “Pippa,” he said, laughing. “What are you doing? I just meant sing to the table.”

  “Too late,” Ruby told him. “You, sir, have released the kraken.”

  “Excuse me, everyone,” I called to the entire restaurant. It was small—maybe ten tables in all—but completely full. Forks scraped across plates and ice clinked in glasses as people came to a rustling quiet. At least thirty-five pairs of eyes were trained on me. “It’s my husband’s birthday today, and his best friend from college—who is now actually his brother-in-law—bought a really disturbing amount of alcohol tonight, and I would greatly appreciate it if you would join us all in singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jensen.”

  Without waiting for them to agree, I began the opening verse to the song—loudly, off-key, and probably too high for most men to be able to sing along. But as luck—or Connecticut—would have it, everyone in the restaurant was game, singing raucously and with their glasses raised in the air. At the end, they all cheered loudly as I climbed down from the chair and bent, planting a kiss on Jensen’s mouth.

  “My birthday is in March,” he whispered.

  “Don’t you know?” I said, running my fingers through his hair just because it seemed I could. “We’re playing pretend. You’re married. I’m the lucky gal. And today is your birthday.”

  Jensen looked over at me, eyes dark with some unnamable emotion. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even surprised. But I couldn’t interpret it because it looked mildly like adoration, and we all knew I was shit at reading men.

  EIGHT

  Jensen

  Everything in Windham was in walking distance, but it seemed to take us an hour to get three blocks. Ziggy and Will stopped at every window—whether it was an antiques shop or a realty storefront. By the time we made it to Duke’s Tavern, the two of them had planned to buy a sofa, two end tables, an antique lamp, and a house just down the road in Canterbury.

  Without realizing it, I held Pippa’s hand the entire time. Strictly speaking, I didn’t need to: there was no Becky, no Cam, no marriage show happening out on the street. But it felt good to touch her like this, and I remembered just a day ago when I was considering doing it anyway, and not for some impulsive lie but because she was beautiful and we were both single and why the fuck not?

  Faced with the reality of Becky in the flesh, our history felt a little like the childhood monster in the closet. I really had built up our past in my head; I would have expected this sort of coincidental run-in to be flat-out painful, but the truth was, it was more awkward than anything. Cam seemed nice, if bland. Becky seemed happy . . . if a little fragile over seeing me again. Completely unexpectedly, it seemed harder for her than for me.

  Duke’s reminded me of every small bar I’d ever visited. It smelled like spilled beer and also, faintly, of mold. There was a popcorn machine and a stack of paper trays for customers to help themselves. There was a single bartender working, and a lone karaoke machine in the corner. A scattering of patrons sat at the bar and at small tables throughout, but by no means could the establishment be considered busy.

  Seeing Niall Stella—so tall, so eternally poised—in a place like this gave us each a measure of joy. He sat carefully on a vinyl-covered chair and ordered a Guinness.

  “You’ve . . .” Pippa started, gazing at me. “You’ve softened.”

  “Huh?”

  Tilting her head, she said, “Five days ago I would have expected you to look like a businessman in here. Now you just look . . .” She let her eyes drop to my new Willimantic Brewing Co. T-shirt and the single pair of jeans I’d packed. “You look good.”

  “I was on autopilot when I packed for this trip,” I admitted, deflecting the compliment. “It’s mostly sweaters and dress shirts.”

  “I’ve noticed.” She leaned in, her breath warm on my neck. “I like you regardless. But I like it a bit more when I can see these arms.” Pippa ran a soft hand up my forearm and curled it around my bicep. “They’re good arms.”

  I shivered, quickly diverting my attention to the server as he carefully placed a drink in front of each of us. Will lifted his glass, full of an amber-colored IPA. “To marriages: old, new, and pretend. May they give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  With his eyes on mine, Will reached forward, waiting to clink my glass. I lifted the pint of dark stout and tapped it to his.

  “Happy birthday, asshole,” he said, grinning.

  “Happy birthday?” Becky’s voice rang out from behind me, and I watched the smile fall from Will’s face. He straightened, leaning to the side to put an arm around his wife. “Whose birthday is it?” Becky asked.

  “Hey,” he said. “Yeah, we’re just fucking around.”

  “It’s Pippa’s,” I said, smiling over at her, and she gave me an amused shake of her head. “We were just about to sing to her.”

  Across the table, Niall bent, laughing into his hands. “This is too much,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t keep up.”

  Cam waved down the server while Becky pulled out a chair on the opposite side of me from Pippa. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

  I felt Pippa stiffen slightly to my left, and I stuttered out a quiet “Sure.”

  The truth was, I didn’t want Becky sitting there.

  I didn’t want Becky here.

  I didn’t want her anywhere near this trip.

  I wasn’t in love with her anymore, I didn’t want to go back and change anything. I didn
’t even need a better explanation for why our marriage had ended. I just wanted to move on. And while the rest of my life had become a success, Will was right: my relationship life had been an utter failure, by my own design. I simply hadn’t wanted to deal.

  Cam ordered a Bud Light and a glass of the crappy house merlot for Becky. I caught Will’s small laugh before Ziggs must have pinched him under the table because she leaned over, whispering, “Stop it.”

  But I knew this was a mistake—playing nice, pretending to be old friends. I couldn’t do it. Will couldn’t do it. And Ziggy especially couldn’t do it. Becky had fucked up. We’d been having a nice time before she came along, and three more days of playing chummy were going to wear on us.

  “Where did you guys go for dinner?” Becky asked, smiling amiably.

  “John’s Table,” Ruby told her, correctly sensing the slight strain at the table. “It was amazing.”

  “I think we have reservations there tomorrow,” she said, looking to Cam for confirmation. He nodded. “We ate at the Lonely Sail. It was pretty good.”

  We all gave mild ahhhs as if any of us found this interesting.

  “Do you guys remember,” Becky said, smiling, “when we broke the table at that sandwich place . . .” She trailed off, squinting up at me, uncertain of the name.

  “Attman’s,” Will said before taking a sip of his beer.

  I smiled, remembering. We’d been drunk, and Becky had jumped on my back, propelling us both into the table, where we’d fallen and snapped the top from the stem. The poor kid working there had squeaked out his panic and told us just to go, that he’d figure it out.

  “We should have paid for it,” she said, shaking her head.

  “The table? With what?” I asked, laughing a little. “If I recall correctly, we shared a sandwich that night because we had seven dollars between the three of us.”

  I remembered the rest of that night, too: Will and I tripping back to our room, falling on the floor, and plotting a way we could project the television onto the ceiling so we could play video games drunk, on our backs.