by Julie Kriss
“Good,” Jason said. “Okay, now, what do I do for a living? We can’t tell your rich family that I’m a bouncer, calling cabs for topless girls before they puke. That isn’t going to impress anyone.”
I turned my head and stared at him. “Are the girls really topless?”
“Constantly.” Jason rolled his eyes. “I guess girls who drink too much like to show them off. I don’t remember the girls doing that at Eden High.”
“Only after football games,” I joked, trying not to think about Jason looking at a parade of tits every night.
Jason shook his head. “You obviously never went to one of our games, chess club girl. Eden High’s football team sucked—that’s why I was their best player. Girls don’t take their shirts off for losing teams. Now think of something I do for a living that doesn’t sound like I’m a sleazebag.”
“Turn right here,” I said. “Can you be in med school?”
“Fuck no. If anyone asks me anything, I’ll be lost.” He thought about it. “I have another idea, though. I can be an EMT.”
“Like a paramedic?” I asked.
“Like that. I think it takes a couple of years to be a paramedic, so I can be in training. We learned a lot of emergency stuff in the Marines, so I know what I’m talking about. That sounds better, right?”
I nodded. Something about this was bothering me. Probably the fact that I didn’t really have a hot, gorgeous Marine-paramedic boyfriend who had spent his deployment dreaming about me. But this was what I’d asked for. “It sounds good.”
“Okay. What do we say you do for a living?”
“I work at Drug-Rite.”
He glanced at me, then gently poked my thigh. “Come on,” he said. “You’re supposed to impress these people. Let’s come up with something. We’ll tell them you make websites, which is true.”
“I just do it on the side.”
“They don’t know that. We’ll make it sound like you’re a big deal. You made Holly’s site, after all.”
We were pulling up a winding drive. I could see a complex of buildings at the end of it, a chapel and a few beautiful old houses in a row. “Fine,” I said. But I suddenly had the sinking feeling that no one would be impressed. With Jason, yes. But not with me.
There was no time to say anything after that. At long last, we’d arrived.
Twenty
Jason
Megan’s aunt, Janice, was wearing a suit. A full-on politician suit in sea blue, with a pencil skirt and a matching jacket and a silk blouse. Nylons and a pair of expensive dark heels. She was in her fifties, her hair drawn back in a complicated knot so it didn’t blow in the breeze coming off the ocean. A narrow watch on her wrist with tiny diamonds on it. The ring on one of her fingers was worth more than Megan made in a year.
She gave Megan a smile and a hug, then shook my hand and led us down the winding lane toward one of the houses, talking all the way. “Stephanie is going to be so happy to see you,” she said to Megan. “And Kyle too, of course.”
The buildings that surrounded us—the chapel, the row of houses—were dedicated to the wedding. It was some kind of wedding complex, with the chapel and the houses that were B and B’s for the couple and the guests to stay in. On the other side of the buildings was nothing but beach, lined with long grasses blowing in the wind, and rocks, and the ocean crashing into the shore. A gazebo on the beach was already decorated for the ceremony tomorrow morning.
As we followed Janice down the walk to one of the houses, listening to her talk and her heels click on the cobbles, Megan grabbed my hand and held it hard.
I started to get it in that moment. I’d never really questioned why, of all the favors I could do for her, Megan had asked me to come to this wedding. It was her ex’s wedding, she needed to save face and have a date. But I hadn’t questioned why she’d wanted so badly for me to drive her for two days to the wedding of people she barely knew. Why it was so important that she’d broken through her usual hatred of asking people for favors and made me do this with her.
This was the sort of place rich and famous people got married in. Janice was nice, but her reception was only polite, not warm, and her eyes were a little judging. These weren’t the kind of people who would understand a Drug-Rite clerk who was the daughter of the owner of a hippie incense shop. Megan felt out of her depth here. Like she wasn’t good enough. I could see it in the tension in her spine, the way her shoulders seemed to shrink. I felt it in the tight grip of her hand.
She’d known it would be like this. The question was, why had she decided to put herself through it?
I was supposed to be Megan’s armor, so I did my thing. I chatted with Aunt Janice and charmed her, taking the pressure off.
At the front desk, we were told that there had been a mistake and it wasn’t on the list that Megan had a plus-one—which meant they’d booked her a room with a twin bed. The only room they could find me was a pull-out bed in a spare room. I thanked the front desk woman, grabbed our bags, and led Megan to her room.
She was quietly panicking by then. “This is terrible,” she whispered to me when I closed her door behind us. The entire house was done in frilly Victorian style, with eyelet curtains and fancy lamps. She sat on the edge of her pristine white bedstead and squeezed her knees together. “I’m choking,” she admitted. “I can’t do this.”
“Sure you can,” I said, dropping her bags and sliding a hand onto the back of her neck, beneath her loose ponytail. “You’ll be fine.”
She pressed her hands to her eyes when she felt my touch. “Oh, my God, they’re making you sleep on a sofa. I’m so sorry.”
“Relax,” I said. “It’s a pull-out bed, not a sofa. And I did four years in the Marines. I’ve literally slept on rocks. This is easy as fuck.”
She made a choked sound, then took a breath. “I’m wearing jeans and flip-flops. Flip-flops. Did you see her suit?”
“You look better,” I said, keeping my hand on the back of her neck. She took another breath. I felt like I was coaching an athlete. I waited a minute, until I felt some of the tension drain out of her, and then I asked quietly, “Megan, why are you doing this to yourself?”
She inhaled deeply again. “They’re my mother’s family,” she said. She dropped her hands from her eyes, but she still didn’t look at me. “I stayed with Janice for that summer after my mother died, when I was seventeen. She was kind to me then. She hasn’t shown an interest in me since, but I keep thinking maybe that’s partly my fault. Maybe I cut myself off. Maybe I should try harder.” She sighed. “I’d like to have a relationship with them, if I can.”
I thought that over. I didn’t know my father anymore, and I didn’t want anything to do with his family, but that was my choice. I could see a different choice being tempting. “Okay, I get it,” I said, lifting my hand from her neck. “So you give it a try. Maybe it’ll work out.”
She looked up at me. “Maybe. If I don’t have a panic attack first.”
“Do you need an EMT?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Because apparently I am one.”
She punched my thigh. “I hate you.”
“I know. Now get changed for dinner.” There was some dinner thing we were supposed to go to. “Unless you’d rather skip it and I can fuck you mindless in this ridiculous room.”
She looked around at the expensive handmade rug and the lace doily on the nightstand, as if seeing the room for the first time. “This room is… not sexy,” she admitted. “Neither is this tiny bed. Do you think anyone’s ever done it in here?”
“Give me twenty minutes and I’ll answer that question.”
She didn’t laugh, but she bit her lip, holding it in, and I knew she’d be okay, at least for now. “Get out of here, you pig,” she said. “Go get changed. I’m hungry.”
So, this was Kyle, the ex: Tall, thick dark hair, goatee, one earring, expensive silk shirt, and a job in app development for a startup tech company. The kind of guy who gets girls all the time, to the complete
bafflement of other guys—we just can’t fucking figure it out. What do women see in a guy like that? It is one of the mysteries of the male universe.
He gave Megan a friendly hug in greeting at dinner, but he discreetly checked her out. I gave him the narrow-eyed stare I’d seen Shark use on the losers at Zoot Bar, and he nearly jumped like he’d had an electrical shock. Then they sat him on the other side of Stephanie, two seats away from Megan, and I didn’t have to worry about him anymore.
Stephanie was pretty, with dark blonde hair and long legs, and she was genuinely happy to see Megan. Instead of shaking my hand, she gave me a hug that smelled like lavender. “Megan’s boyfriend!” she said. “So exciting!” She chatted happily with Megan all through dinner, which was held in the reception hall overlooking the beach and the ocean. Since Megan was occupied, I spent my time chatting with the middle-aged lady on the other side of me—an aunt of Kyle’s—and checking out the other guests.
There were only fifty or so wedding guests, and Kyle’s aunt gave me the gossip on most of them. It was fine until she got to Megan herself. “I heard about that side of the family,” the woman—her name was Sylvia—said, pouring herself more wine. She’d had a lot of wine. “The model and the hippie. Janice didn’t know what to do with her sister. She was impossible. Running around, thinking she was going to be a model, never in one place for long, always broke. People that irresponsible shouldn’t have kids. Janice took pity on the daughter after her sister died, but there was only so much she could do.”
I looked at her, thinking about how far Megan had come to see these people because her mother had mattered so much to her. This impossible woman dying of cancer in her early forties. “You know that’s my girlfriend you’re talking about, right?”
Sylvia wasn’t fazed. She sipped her wine. “I’m sure she’d a lovely girl. But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. What does she do with her life? Nothing, as far as I can tell. Now you, you’re an EMT. Maybe you’ll be a good influence on her.”
I’m not an EMT, I thought. I got fired from the bank and I live in my mother’s basement. Suddenly this all seemed like a bad idea. I didn’t want to impress people. I was starting to think I especially didn’t want to impress these people.
I turned and looked at Megan. She had finished talking to her cousin. As if she sensed me looking at her, she turned and her eyes met mine. I lifted an eyebrow. She gave me a pale smile that didn’t reach her eyes, just a twitch at the corners of her mouth, and looked away again.
Fuck this, I thought.
I wanted this morning’s sexy, confident Megan back.
I’d find a way.
Twenty-One
Megan
There were artsy plaster swirls on the ceiling of my room. Thirty-seven of them, to be exact. I lay in my frilly twin bed and stared up at them, unable to sleep.
I’d thought I could handle this wedding. I’d been so sure.
But I’d spent dinner talking to Stephanie, listening to her talk about law school, her six months in Europe, her job, the planned honeymoon, the house she was buying with Kyle. Their plans for kids. She was only twenty-five, for God’s sake. I was twenty-three, and I was completely fucking lost.
My cousin still had no idea that her groom had taken my virginity years ago. I didn’t think it mattered. Because today I’d looked at Kyle and felt… not much of anything. A vague bank of memories, drifting and disappearing again. He’d grown a goatee. He had that same earring. He hadn’t gotten fat or lost his teeth or gone bald. He was just Kyle.
Next to Jason, he looked like nothing. I was starting to realize that at seventeen, you don’t make the hottest choices about men.
I felt queasy. I hated this. I always knew where I was going, what I was doing, even if I was getting fired and dating a loser boyfriend. I was on my train, and anyone who didn’t like it could get off. My parents had taught me that. Life was too short.
But being here, with these people, made me feel like I wasn’t enough.
I rolled over, picked up my phone, and called my dad.
“Hello, honey,” he said when he answered. “How was the wedding?”
“It hasn’t happened yet,” I replied. “It’s in the morning. What are you doing?”
“I’m looking at a catalog of solar panels,” he said. “They aren’t as expensive as they used to be, you know. I bet I could get entirely off the grid. What’s the matter?”
I sighed. “I’m feeling a bit like a flake.”
“You’re not a flake,” Dad said instantly. “You’re a free soul.”
“I don’t feel like a free soul at the moment. I feel like someone who doesn’t own a house.”
“A house? What do you need that for?” He sounded outraged. “You need four walls to keep you out of the cold, that’s all. That and your freedom.”
“Okay, then, a job. I could use a job. A real one.”
“Jobs are modern slavery,” Dad said, like I knew he would. I’d heard him say it many times. “Also, I know what Janice does for a living. Lawyers are the devil.”
“Dad.” I gritted my teeth. “I get what you’re saying, but I’m twenty-three. I need to make a living for the next sixty or so years without starving. Drug-Rite isn’t going to do it.”
“You should do the photo styling,” he said. “You always liked that best.”
I paused, surprised. I’d done a stint for a photographer as a stylist—the person behind the scenes who arranges products in the shot, preps the food for food shoots, or styles the clothes on the model for clothing shoots. I actually had enjoyed the work, but the photographer I worked for was demanding and overbearing, so I’d quit. I hadn’t even known Dad had noticed. “You think I should do that?”
“You were happy when you did that, and I seem to recall you were good at it.”
I had been. “Well, it’s too late,” I said. “The photographer wasn’t impressed when I quit, and that was months ago. I doubt she’ll want me back.”
“Find another photographer, then. You’re worth it. You can do anything, you know. As long as you’re yourself.”
Oddly, that made me feel better. My dad had his faults, but he’d always cared about me. I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling again. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Anytime.”
I put the phone down. It was quiet in the B and B, but the walls were thin. It was an old building. I heard the rush of the ocean outside, the radiators creak, someone coughing lightly in one of the rooms. A stranger, one of the guests I didn’t know.
None of these people knew me. I understood that now. Maybe it had taken a trip all the way to Cape Cod to see it, but there it was. I wasn’t going to get what I wanted from Aunt Janice or Stephanie or Kyle or anyone else. My dad knew me, in his own way, but even he didn’t know me the way I needed to be known. The way I wanted to be known.
I was starting to think that maybe only one person could know me completely if I let him. And he was in another room in this old house, sleeping.
As if he knew I was thinking about him, my phone buzzed with a text from Jason. You awake?
My heart did a slow, lazy pulse in my chest. He’d looked so good at dinner, in his dress pants and dress shirt, a narrow belt, that sexy watch. He’d been nice and charming and good. Just like I’d told him to be. My fake boyfriend.
Yes, I wrote. Can’t sleep.
Me neither, he wrote back. And then he texted me a picture. It was taken looking down at himself, lying on the pull-out couch. He was wearing dark drawstring pants, and even looking down the long length of his body, I could see that his bare feet were hanging off the end of the bed.
I snorted a laugh, then covered my mouth when I heard how loud it was. I looked at the picture again. He’d caught a strip of his bare stomach in the photo, his flat abs and the line of hair disappearing into his pants. And then those long, muscled legs under the thin fabric. It was funny and breathtakingly sexy at the same time.
I was wearing a t-shirt a
nd panties. Quickly I pulled the shirt off, then took a picture down my body. My breasts, my stomach, my legs on my narrow bed, with only the panties on. I texted it to him quickly, with my heart in my mouth, before I could chicken out.
There was a second of silence, and then he wrote: Holy shit
You like? I asked.
Take those off, he wrote back.
I bit my lip. My God, we were dirty-texting. From different rooms in the same building. I’d never done anything like this before in my life.
Maybe, I wrote. Are you begging?
Take them off, he wrote again. And then he added: Imagine I’m doing it.
My breathing hitched. I set the phone down and slid my hands down my body. I lifted my hips and slid my panties off—and I imagined it was Jason’s hands on me, sliding the thin fabric down my legs.
Okay, I wrote when I picked up the phone again. I did it.
Picture, he replied immediately.
No way was I texting a naked picture of myself. I have a better idea, I told him.
My phone buzzed. THERE IS NO BETTER IDEA.
I smiled. Are you turned on? I typed. Take your pants off. Picture me naked. Now picture me spreading my legs.
There was a moment’s pause, and I knew he was doing it. As if he could see me, I opened my legs, the sheets cool against my heated skin.
Very nice, he wrote. That’s very nice.
I was starting to throb. I pictured him looking at me, the way he’d looked at me last night. He’d put my ass in the air and rubbed me like I was the best thing he’d ever seen. I bit back a sigh.
Are you stroking yourself? I asked.
Yes, he wrote. Are you watching?
I tilted my head back against the pillow and closed my eyes for a second. Oh, God, I wanted to see that. His hand on his dick, stroking up and down. I could see every detail behind my closed eyelids. My nipples were hard in the cool air of my room.
