“We’re … she’s—” I begin, my words fumbling in my mouth, tripping over my tongue.
“David’s told me.” George holds up a hand, an apology.
“You deal,” I say. It’s what I always say.
He nods. “Don’t we all?”
Then a silence descends, the sort that comes from half-spoken confessions, where the path is obscured. Should you say more? Or have you already said too much?
“Going for a run?” he says after a moment.
“Well, yeah.” I’m still bundled up, hat, scarf, mittens clutched in one hand, trail shoes on my feet. “After the caterers come back with the real food.” I can’t end the vigil until then.
“Mind the company?”
Only now do I realize that he, too, is dressed for running. My throat tightens. I shake my head, wordless once again. I ease onto the stainless steel counter and he slides in next to me. He is setting me on fire. I could blame the mittens, and scarf, and hat. It’s him. I know it. I will burn and disintegrate before the wedding even begins.
By the time I’ve soaked through my T-shirt, the food arrives. The head caterer throws me a grin filled with relief. George pushes off the counter and meets him halfway across the kitchen. That big handshake again and something else, something green and folded slips from one hand to the other.
Oh, I think. He does know how to deal and make them as well. That was no measly twenty-dollar bill George slipped the caterer. I pretend not to see the whole exchange—for now, at least. Instead, I scan the trays and the menu list, but I can tell already. This is it, the perfect meal for Athena’s perfect day.
“Did you give him some money?” I ask George as we push through the swinging doors.
He shrugs.
“A lot of money?”
“Wedding gift,” he says.
I sigh.
“Hey.” He stops me, a hand on my arm. I am grateful for the layers of fleece and polypropylene between my skin and his. “It’s okay to accept a gift now and then.”
I wonder: how does he know I hate that?
Athena’s sorority sisters are still gathered in the lounge, sipping mimosas and lattes. Their chattering dies the second they see me with George. Individually, I admire and adore many of them, like Sienna, the concert violinist, or Jada, the fledgling law partner. Even together, they are lively and warm and the family Athena always needed. But toss a man in their midst, especially one like George?
A hand grenade would cause less carnage.
“Ready for our run?” he asks.
A look passes between Sienna and Jada. Miriam, who has always been my least favorite of Athena’s other “sisters,” purses her lips and a frown mars her brow. I know what Athena would say to that and I’m tempted to repeat her advice.
I tug my mittens up and over the cuffs of my fleece and give George a nod.
We’re at the door when someone cries out, “Hey, you two!”
We turn to find David, frantically waving his arms over his head.
“Photos, in two and a half hours. Be ready or just keep running.”
George laughs.
“He’s not kidding,” I inform him. “If we miss the photos, we might as well run all the way to the airport and hop a plane to somewhere far, far away.”
“She’s that wound up?”
“You have no idea.”
“Then let’s go.”
And there it is, a hand in the small of my back. A zing shoots through me with a force that would make my hair stand on end were I not wearing a hat. Behind us, I hear someone sigh.
“You like to run fast?” George asks.
Somewhere deep inside me, I unearth a bit of courage. Maybe not wild and reckless. But with a hand on my hip, my head cocked just so, I am the sassy younger sister. “You have no idea,” I say.
He grins at me. “Hope I can keep up.”
Chapter Three
HE CAN; he does. We match strides. We easily zoom past the dock where tonight, at midnight, people will plunge into the icy cocktail in celebration of the New Year. It sounds insane to me, but I suspect that before the night is over, most of David’s groomsmen will have taken a dip. George is the only one I have doubts about. He seems too steady for that sort of thing, but I can’t find words to ask him.
Instead, we talk of his startup business—a fascinating mix of internet security and white hat hacking. He tells me how he walked out of a sure-thing corporate gig one day and never looked back.
“No fallback plan?” I ask.
“When you have one of those, you tend to fall back.”
I tell him about translation work, about studying languages.
“And you like languages because?” he asks.
“I like understanding people,” I say. This is my standard answer. While not a lie, it is only part of the whole.
“Ah, understanding without all the risk.”
He has completed the whole. My feet lose their grip and I stumble. George catches me at the waist.
“Steady, steady,” he says. “You okay?”
“That’s the second time you’ve caught me.” I crane my neck to look at him. “The first time was on the airplane.”
“Yes, it was.”
His face is inches from mine. The stubble is still there. I suppose he’ll shave it off before the wedding and this makes me wistful. His eyes search mine. Against the snow and sun, they look dark and endless. If I don’t try very hard, my eyelids will flutter. I will flirt. I will be no better than Athena’s latte-sipping sorority sisters when it comes to men.
But I can’t move either.
The crunching of snow has us upright, separated, and panting. I pull at my scarf, body heat rising from my chest. Again, he has set me on fire.
An older couple with a dog strolls by. They nod. George pretends to tip a nonexistent cap. I stifle giggles. I feel like we’ve been spotted skipping school. When they pass by but are still in sight, I scoop up a handful of snow, shape it into a ball, and throw it.
And hit George full in the face.
“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean—” But it’s no use. He’s after me. We run—with me, screeching and laughing—until he tackles me outside the lodge. He rolls me once, twice, a third time, until we settle, him on top of me, in a cushion of snow that does nothing to cool us.
I like him like this. I like him very, very much like this, one of his thighs between mine. I hold my breath as not to spoil the moment. He clutches a snowball in his hand, poised to wash my face with it. But I know he won’t. It’s a threat without any teeth. I see that in his eyes and in how tender the line of his mouth is.
If we can steal another moment, I think he might kiss me.
“Peri! Persephone Jones! For fuck’s sake, get your ass up here and get dressed!”
No one bellows quite like my sister. Her voice comes from above. I glance up to see her leaning over the balcony, only she isn’t alone. On either side, her sisters flank her. David is there. And so is someone else. Someone familiar and unexpected, someone I last saw tangling sheets with another woman.
On the balcony is Caleb, only he’s not looking at me. He’s staring straight at George.
* * *
“I’m sorry, God, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how many times I can say it.” Athena, in a silk robe, paces her suite. She does look contrite, I’ll give her that.
“I don’t even know who added his name to the list,” she says. “It must have been the wedding planner I fired.”
The door that leads to the adjoining suite opens. David sticks his head in. “Which one?”
Athena casts him a death glare. He retreats.
“Hell,” I say, “just when I was—”
“Having fun?” She raises an eyebrow at me.
“Shut up. I was about to say, ‘over him.’ Just when I was over him.”
“Right. Maybe up here.” She taps her head. “But here?” She taps her chest, left side, but actually misses the heart. “Not so much.”
“I don’t love him, if that’s what you mean.”
“But you haven’t forgiven yourself for doing so.”
That lances me. I wonder how long this string of humiliation will continue, starting with that 747 and ending where? Nowhere good, that’s all I can tell.
Athena plops down on the bed next to me. “It’s okay to love lousy men. Remember Trevor?”
Athena’s first boyfriend? “I’d rather not.”
“If you don’t date an asshat, or a sociopath, or a narcissist, you’ll end up marrying one. How else will you learn to see all the warning signs? You can’t get that from a book.”
“You’d be surprised,” is all I say, even though I know she has a point. How else do you learn? And how is it some women never do? Will I be one of those? I think of Anna Karenina and Vronsky, her god with clay feet. Why can’t you detect the clay, even when you scratch the surface? How did I not see it with Caleb?
I won’t make that mistake with George.
“You’re lucky to have David,” I say.
“God, don’t I know it. If I have to give him head every day for the rest of our lives just so he’ll stick around, I swear, I’ll do it.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him that,” I say. “It will be my wedding gift to him.”
She gives my shoulder a shove. We sit in silence for a moment before she asks, “You okay?”
I nod.
“Because really? You could use a good cry. Have you had one lately?”
I lean back, grab a pillow, and throw it at her.
It isn’t a good cry, but the pillow fight helps.
Chapter Four
WHEN I STEP INTO the lounge, the first thing I see is Athena on the balcony. The photographer’s assistant is arranging the skirt of her wedding dress, but a crinkle or two hardly matters. She is glorious, and has, of course, picked the perfect setting for her wedding—the snow white dress against the backdrop of evergreens, the rustic wood beams of the lodge, the coffee and cream of her skin.
She steals my breath, my big sister. She is so beautiful, my heart aches.
I join the other bridesmaids who are hovering just inside the double doors that lead to the balcony, where an in-floor vent ruffles their skirts with warm air. Yes, Athena will make us stand in outside. The photos will be spectacular. We will be frozen.
We’re all clad in red velvet, my dress darker than the rest, a blood red to their candy apple. It suits me. Our gazes all focus on Athena, or do, at least, until George walks into the lounge, tuxedo-clad and equally glorious. Then, as if on cue, we exchange glances.
“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned,” Jada intones. “I have had impure thoughts, a dozen at least. Oh, hell, I’m going to lose count.”
We laugh and the wire of tension—that both binds and repels us—eases.
“That is one fine looking man,” Miriam says. “Honey.” Here, a manicured hand lands on my shoulder. “If you want to throw him back, just let me know. I’ll dip my line in the water.”
“She always does,” Sienna whispers.
I stifle a laugh. “We went running,” I say. “That’s all.”
Miriam huffs. “And he ended up on top of you. That’s my kind of workout routine.”
Yes, I think, the weekend’s worth of humiliation has only just begun. Then Caleb steps into the lounge, and I realize it may never end.
My sister, the angel of my life, swoops down then, overturning the umbrella contraption the photographer uses for lighting and ruining the work his assistant has done with her dress.
“Our two favorite people!” she calls out, stretching a hand toward me and one toward George.
We are both compelled. Athena possesses that kind of force, and we walk forward until she has us in her clutches and is pushing our hands together. “Do them first,” she says over her shoulder to the photographer. “I need to fix my makeup.”
Off she flutters—surrounded by a coterie of bridesmaids in candy apple red—to do absolutely nothing to her makeup.
“What was that?” George says into my ear as the photographer poses us near the balcony’s rail. His breath is unbelievably warm. I could stand here all day as long as he spoke a few words every minute or so.
“A rescue.”
“And who needs rescuing?”
“Apparently I do.”
“Step closer together,” the photographer says.
George and I each take a micro step. He looks as pained as I feel.
“Have you known each other long?” the photographer asks.
Neither of us have an answer for this.
“Right,” the man says. “Just met.”
He poses us as if we’re lifelong friends. I assume the role I always do: Athena’s little sister. When I glance up at George, the photographer snaps a picture.
“Sweet,” he says. “Hold it just like that.”
Discontent rumbles in George’s chest. “I hate this,” he says.
“I’m sorry.”