How to Date the Guy You Hate by Julie Kriss Page 0,58
“She’d probably love to hear how you screwed a seventeen-year-old girl who had just lost her mother, then dumped her for her cousin. It’s a great story.” I clapped him on the shoulder, just like he’d clapped me, but harder. “You’re a champ.”
“Kyle?”
Stephanie was coming toward us, her expression polite, but her gaze searching. She was still wearing her simple white wedding dress, though she’d removed the veil.
“We were just reminiscing,” I said to her. I smiled. “Congratulations.”
That made her smile back at me, a genuine smile. This guy didn’t deserve her. “Thank you.” She took Kyle’s arm. “Let’s go get you a glass of water. It isn’t even two o’clock.”
They walked away. I watched them, sipping my beer. I felt Megan approach at my elbow before I saw her, like she gave off an electric force. I looked down to see her following my gaze. “The happy couple,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, looking at her and not them. She had fixed her makeup and her hair, and she was starkly beautiful, her white skin flawless next to the blue satin dress, her dark hair tied up with its unruly curls escaping. She had lip gloss on.
She knew I was looking at her, but she kept her gaze straight ahead. “Are you mad?” she asked me.
I’d break things, Dean had said. And then I’d settle in and wait.
Maybe she has to wait.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe a little. I don’t know. Feelings aren’t my strong suit. Are you?”
She shrugged, the motion tight, and for a second her expression wavered. “I don’t want you to be mad.”
She had that same brittle vulnerability on her face that she’d had when she confessed to me what had happened at that party. Like her walls were up, but just barely. I sighed. It was hard to be pissed at her when she looked like that. “Look, we’ll just talk about it some other time, all right?”
“I shouldn’t…” She cleared her throat as if the words were hard. “I shouldn’t have said those things.”
“I’ll deal.”
“That isn’t what I mean. I’m not saying it right.”
“Megan. I’ll just shut up and deal, all right? It’s what I do. I don’t want to talk about it right now. What’s got you so upset, anyway?”
Her expression shut off, went blank again. “My aunt knows about what happened between me and Kyle.”
I felt my eyebrows rise. “How?”
“She figured it out at the time. I guess I wasn’t as secretive as I thought I was.” She looked around the room. “It’s why I haven’t been part of this family since. Why they’ve shut me out.”
“Because you dated Kyle for a month when you were a teenager?”
“And because Stephanie doesn’t know.” She crossed her arms again and sighed. “I’m the scarlet woman. It was Stephanie who invited me to the wedding, because she’s oblivious. Otherwise I wouldn’t be on the list. Funny, huh?”
She finally looked up at me, and I caught her gaze with mine. We locked there for a minute. I could see everything—her pain, her uncertainty.
“Yeah,” I said. “Real funny.”
She looked at me for a moment longer, as if she was searching for something, and then she looked away. “The speeches are coming next,” she said, “and then dinner, and then the music and dancing. This thing is going to go on for hours.”
I shrugged. “Not necessarily.”
She frowned at me. “What does that mean?”
“Think about it, Megan.”
Her spine went straight, her shoulders back. “There’s nothing to think about,” she snapped. “I’m getting a drink, and then we have to go back to playing nice.”
“Right,” I said. “Have fun.”
She shot me a look that was part glare and part wariness, and then she stalked off toward the bar.
I watched her go, and I made a decision.
She wouldn’t decide for herself. Not right now, in the head space she was in. But I could. I could decide for both of us.
I turned and walked out the door.
Twenty-Five
Megan
An announcement was made that the speeches were starting, and everyone moved over to the tables, looking for their labeled places. I turned from the bar and looked around the room.
Jason was gone.
I looked again. Yes, definitely gone.
My first reaction wasn’t anger, but a flash of panic. I didn’t like that blank space where he’d just been. It made me feel unmoored and alone.
I did a circuit of the room, looking. I checked the hall with the bathrooms, loitered there for a minute. When I’d been there long enough for people to give me