and Hawk’s says, “I am not the groom.”
“That’s Hawk’s thing.” Carrie stares longingly at her fiancé. It’s kind of nausea inducing, to be honest. If she really does eat him up like her face indicates she wants to, I’m outta here. “He buys these ugly shirts for charity or something, and since Matthew loves charity as much as the next guy, he always requests one whenever they see each other.”
She giggles. Carrie actually fucking giggles. People in love are so weird.
Suddenly she gasps and grabs my arm. “Did you see what Matthew got me for our honeymoon? Tickets to Australia! Can you believe it?”
“I actually can. I’d have to put a stop to this relationship if he didn’t realize it would be the perfect place to spend a couple weeks consummating your new marriage.”
Carrie’s face turns a bright pink and my eyes widen.
“Carrie Myers, you bad girl,” I chide playfully. “You gave up the goods already.”
She flips her dark hair over her shoulder and tries to play off her embarrassment. “We are engaged. It’s almost like being married.”
“Oh no, it is not,” I say with a laugh. “But I’m not judging you. The whole point of your celibacy was to make sure the next man you were with was completely and utterly serious about you, no matter what. I think waiting for over a year to get in your pants and publicly humiliating himself to propose means Matthew’s pretty solid.”
I shudder when I think of the dance I watched him perform for his proposal. He may be a decent dancer in pants, but in heels? Not so much.
“Yeah. Oh hey,” Carrie blurts out shifting gears, “did you get your tickets for the con sorted out?”
Taking a sip of my wine, I shake my head. “Nope. By the time I stopped getting glitches on their website so I could register for the events I wanted, they were at max capacity and gave me a refund instead.”
Carrie gasps. “Oh no! Did you email them? Fight with them about it?”
I shake my head, mostly in frustration from even thinking about the shitshow this convention has become to my life. “I didn’t even bother.”
“Why?” she whines. “You’ve been trying to get there for three years. You deserve to go.”
“Exactly. I’ve tried for three years and something always stops me at the last minute. Clearly the universe is trying to tell me something and I don’t have it in me to be disappointed again.”
“Disappointed about what?” a deep voice asks, interrupting our conversation. I guess I should give him grace. He is the groom-to-be.
Carrie wraps her arms around her man’s waist and proceeds to answer for me. “She’s been trying to go to the Prince of Darkness con for a few years and every time she buys tickets, she ends up having to cancel last minute.”
“Because the universe doesn’t want me to go,” I insert, not that I’m bitter or anything. I’m more like trying to keep a silver lining or something.
“Or it could be coincidence,” she argues back and turns to look up at Matthew. “She’s been a huge fan of Hunter Stone since she saw him in some off-off-Broadway show.”
“Hunter Stone?” Matthew sounds confused, but I’m not sure why. Hunter is practically a household name these days. “I just had that cover shoot with him a few weeks ago. We hit it off. I bet I can just ask him for some passes.”
He looks down at his phone, completely oblivious to the fact that my jaw has just hit the floor. Matthew knows Hunter? My blog partner’s fiancé is friends with my celebrity crush? How is this happening? More importantly, how did I not know this sooner?
“Oh, I forgot about that!” Carrie announces, and I throw my hands out.
“You forgot? How could you forget about something like that? That’s like me forgetting that, that… that you have that weird squirrel or something.”
“Luke is not weird,” she shoots back. “Just disabled. And I didn’t think about it because it was like a one-day job while we were in the middle of a busy season or something. Matthew didn’t even leave town for the shoot.”
I open my mouth to keep playing this tit-for-tat game with her, but Matthew speaks before I can argue.
“Done. You have tickets to… hang on…” He zooms in while I blink rapidly a few times, in serious disbelief that this is happening. “Looks like it’s an all access pass to the event, all the pictures, autograph signings, and one round-table of