How to Date the Guy You Hate by Julie Kriss Page 0,47

“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