Almost Lover Page 2

  Not at all.

  She’s just not…my mother. The woman my father should still be with.

  I’ve done such an amazing job of blocking every sound, I hardly notice when the cheers erupt from the crowd. From the corner of my eye, I see Dad lean in to kiss Jennifer, to finalize everything, and call me a brat, but something deep in me fractures and crumbles.

  I elbow past the catcalling bridesmaids, swatting my bouquet back and forth to clear a path. A few people notice when I run down one side of the aisle, my dress hiked up around my knees. My cousin Eddie calls my name and waves his arms over his head, but I can’t.

  I can’t risk glancing at him and his dorkishly sweet face.

  I can’t stop and see my dad’s look of total confusion and upset.

  I can’t face the pout Jennifer will try to hide behind what she imagines is a look of motherly concern.

  I thought I was strong enough to watch the last remnants of my family dissolve, but I’m not.

  What I am is overworked, broken-hearted, uncomfortable, and tired.

  So. Damn. Tired.

  I don’t stop running until I come to a small clump of rogue pines with a low bench under them. The branches sway down and provide the perfect amount of cool, fragrant coverage. For the first time all morning, the sickeningly sweet scent of roses isn’t cloying at the back of my throat, and I breathe the clean piney scent deep into my lungs.

  I lean back and let my head drop, squinting through the spikey-needled branches and into the sun that’s dipping rapidly behind the hills. I tear my gloves off and gulp back sobs as I yank the five-hundred bobby pins out of my French twist, dropping the small metal loops onto the grass. I’ve ruined any chance for pictures, but I don’t give a shit. For once.

  For once I’ve rebelled. And it feels lame and mean. I can’t even focus on my own badassery, because I’m so zeroed in on worry about Jennifer. Who won’t give a damn if I’m in her stupid pictures. So why do I care so badly?

  I hunch my shoulders and the shuddery sobs overflow from my throat. And hear footsteps.

  I’m trying to dry my eyes quickly so whoever it is doesn’t witness me making a complete fool of myself. I expect to be told to get up, shake it off, come back and play nice like I’m supposed to. So the next words are a big shock.

  “Thought you might need this. I had you pegged as a Gamay girl. Am I right?”

  I squint through my tears, and there stands Enzo Rodriguez, a bottle of pinkish wine in his outstretched hands, that killer smile curling on his lips. He leans over and picks up one of my snowy gloves, puts the wine bottle at my feet, cups his hand along my chin, and sops up my tears.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, my voice barely a rasp. I startle when he drags his hand away, his fingers lingering along my jaw.

  “Weddings can be hard.” He folds the glove, takes a seat on the bench next to me, bumping my ass so I’ll move over, and slides a silver foldable corkscrew out of his pocket. He flips it open and slices the foil from the top of the bottle, then turns the screw into the cork with precise movements. “It made me think of my little sister, Genevieve. Not so little anymore.” He smiles and shakes his head. “The girl was a wreck when she went to our brother’s best friend’s wedding. He’d been her crush. Like hardcore, head-over-heels crush since she was maybe six?”

  “That must have been heartbreaking. For her to watch.”

  I take the bottle from his hand and frown, because I don’t really like Gamays. Maybe it’s because my mother has so little patience for younger wines. And this isn’t even from our vineyard, so I feel like a two-timing traitor.

  But I’m too polite to decline an offered drink, so I tilt the bottle back. And I’m floored by how much I like the first sip. I pass it back to Enzo in a haze of thoughtful contentment.

  There’s a pinch of sour cherries and a fresh-cut stone dryness.

  “Not so heartbreaking in the end.” He raises the bottle and his eyebrow at me. “She was sad, sure. But they weren’t meant to be together. And now she’s with this guy who’s pretty damn perfect for her.”

  “That’s very romantic,” I tease, loving the way the muscles in his neck work as he drinks.

  He passes the bottle back and shakes his head. “Maybe. I did threaten to beat the shit out of the guy on multiple occasions. But I respect that he’s good to my sister, and he’s been growing on me lately. When I saw you run? I thought of her. And I came to find you.”

  I take another long sip, the dry velvet sweet on my tongue. “Thank you. I needed to break down like an ass for a minute. I appreciate the wine. And the company. But you are not losing your job because I’m a drama queen.” I stand on shaky legs, not really ready, but ready enough to pretend. “We can go back.”

  His eyes have this deep, starry sparkle. “I was paid to set that tent up and get everything put out. They’ve got a more experienced wine tender on bar. I’ll need to check back in a while to make sure stock is sound. But you don’t need to lie to me. You aren’t ready to go back, and I’d be happy to sit here and drink some wine while you tell me what’s really up.”

  I start to laugh Enzo’s offer off. To protest that he needs to get back and so do I. To do what’s expected of me, the way I’m supposed to. The way I always do.

  But he called my bluff. He saw through my best fake smile.

  No one sees through that.

  I take another long gulp and surprise myself. “That would be amazing.”

  Damn she’s cute.

  Not my type at all. Redheads don’t do it for me. And she’s got this tall, willowy thing going on. She’s also got freckles all over her nose and around her cheeks. I like my girls curvy, petite, and sun-kissed. But my last run in with a gorgeous girl ended in a fistfight with her husband outside a bar. Surprise.

  Since I left LA, I’ve been trying hard to widen my horizons. I was even thinking about swearing off girls completely for a while. Not too long, but just a little break to clear my head.

  Then this one had to stumble over in her too high heels and that dress…how can that ridiculous dress look so damn good? Every other bridesmaid is spilling out of it. Funny how that would have been exactly what I was looking for a few months ago. Now those women reek of desperation and phony lies.

  Maybe that’s why I like Jordan off the bat. There’s something refreshing about her, from the way she looks to the engineering skills she clearly possesses. I’d still be rigging that tent if she hadn’t jumped in to help me. And there’s something that makes me think of one of my sisters when I look at her. Like I want to protect her. Like I was willing to pinch a bottle of decent Gamay to try and make things right after she bolted.

  Now she’s lying back on the grass, her hair spilling out like a tipped bottle of Nebbiolo, sipping at the dredges and wiping her mouth with that long white glove. It’s smeared with lipstick, the color of raspberries. Strange that her lips look a deeper, fuller pink with the lipstick scrubbed away.

  “I should get back. I’m sure there’s a father/daughter dance I’m obligated to do.”

  She rolls onto her stomach and her hair shifts over her back, full of leaves and grass clippings. She looks like some kind of woodland nymph. In a shiny, sexy bridesmaid’s dress.

  “I think the obligatory one is at your wedding, not his,” I point out.

  I want to pick some of the leaves from her hair, and I bet she’d let me. From the first minute we met, I had this feeling like we’d been friends since way back, buddying around in the high school cafeteria and trading jokes during endless group dates.

  Odd how a total stranger can feel so right so quickly. I’ve only had that feeling once before, with one other person, and it ended in complete disaster.

  I also know full well how quickly I can let friendly feelings turn to something completely different with a girl, so I leave all that silky hair alone.

  “That’s true, right?” She tips the bottle up extra high to get the last few drops of wine. “I mean, for a
kid to have to go their parent’s wedding? That’s, like, super bizarre, right?”

  I nod. My parents will be married thirty-five years this summer, and they’ve always been rock solid. I can’t even imagine them apart for a few days, let alone wrap my brain around the idea of either one of them up and marrying someone else.

  “This day has been so fucked up,” she says into the bottle. Her voice is followed by the low, deep whistle of her breath flowing over the opening. “I think my parents are still in love.”

  She looks over at me, her hair falling into her big brown eyes.

  “That’s not something you should mess with,” I advise, shaking my head.

  She sits up, tugging at the top of her dress. I look away before I see a little bit more of her than she meant for me to.

  What the hell is up with me? I love flirting, and she obviously knows how to take it without reading more into it than there is. But she’s hurting and drunk and confused as hell. Now is not the time for me to be undressing her with my eyes.

  “But I’m not sure I can help myself,” she says, her voice tight like it’s been trapped under her ribs and is pressing to get out. “What if you see two people—two people you know belong together, no matter how screwed up and complicated they make things—and they keep getting in each other’s way over and over? Do you just…do you do nothing?” she asks, her voice so pure it makes me think of daisies for some reason.

  “What your parents do or don’t do is probably something that’s best left between them, Jordan,” I warn. “I get that you’re their kid and you want to see them together. But—” I gesture to the pavilion where some really crappy 70s power ballad wails across the grass. “You’re at your dad’s wedding. To his new wife. I think whatever second chance reconciliation they had a shot at was gone when he said ‘I do’ to his new wife.”

  “Did they actually say it? Say the words ‘I do’?” she asks, those berry-pink lips set in a perfect circle of surprise. “Did you hear the vows?”

  “No.” She looks like a fucking baby deer, and there’s only so much adorable I can take. I start to pull all kinds of twigs and leaves from her hair, gently, so I don’t yank it. “It’s just an expression. Weren’t you right there?”

  She scoots closer so I can reach her head, like she’s used to having random guys paw through her hair.

  “I was. But I didn’t want to be caught on camera cracking up or snorting, so I zoned out. It was Wiccan. Maybe it wasn’t legal?”

  There’s a hopeful tilt to her words that sounds dangerously like she’ll remember all this craziness when she isn’t so drunk anymore.

  “You can get married in a drive-thru by Elvis as long as you file your paperwork with the state.” I finish pulling the last little petal out of her hair, sorry that I’m done touching her. “Don’t get any Parent Trap insanity going.”

  She opens those chocolate eyes wide and blinks like she wasn’t just contemplating shredding the wedding certificate.

  “It wouldn’t work anyway, would it?” she asks.

  Like I know.

  This girl wouldn’t look at me like I had all the answers to her life if she had any clue how royally I fucked up with mine.

  “Nah. And it puts you in the middle.” I stand up and reach a hand out for her to grab onto. “I don’t think you need any more to drink, but I’m gonna feel guilty as hell if I don’t get you some food. You definitely downed the lion’s share of that bottle, and you’re gonna feel it in the morning if you don’t carb up.”

  She groans and looks a little gray around the gills when I mention food. All the more reason to march her to that buffet table now.

  “Carbs?” she holds her flat stomach, and I put my arm around her waist to steady her. She even walks like a damn baby deer, all over long legs, like she hasn’t grown into them yet.

  “Don’t tell me you’re on some stupid diet.”

  We walk back to the party, and it definitely occurs to me that it’s probably not the best thing for my brand new job to show up with my arm around the groom’s very drunk daughter. Especially if anyone bothered to inventory the wine and finds the bottle I swiped is missing.

  Sadly for my future as a wine tender, I’m not all that concerned with anything other than getting Jordan fed and comfortable. I’ve been fired before, and I’ll get fired again. Might as well be for a good cause this time.

  “I’m not on a diet,” she says, flapping her hand in front of her body like that’s the best joke she’s heard in a while. “I love food. Carbs just feel…heavy! What about, like fruit or something?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “My brother-in-law is a scientist, and he told me to eat carbs and high fat food to keep me from getting hung over. Truthfully, it should be before you down three-quarters of a bottle of wine, but it’s gotta be better than an empty stomach.”

  “There’s a science to hangovers?” she groans. Then she burps, blushes, apologizes, and hiccups.

  Shit. Encouraging her to drink that entire bottle of wine was definitely not one of my most clear-headed decisions.

  “There’s a science for everything if you ask Adam.” I catch her before she stumbles on the big ass heels that make her even taller than she already is. “And I get to hear all about it at family dinners. Which is a good thing when I accidentally get a nice girl like you drunk.”

  “You didn’t get me drunk,” she says, stopping short so she can look at me because what she has to tell me is important. Shit. She’s trashed, no doubt. “You didn’t get me drunk, Enzo. And I am a nice girl. But I’m so, so sick of people talking about me like that.”

  Oh no. This is all heading in a direction I’m not ready for. I lead her to the nearest fold-out chair and move my way to the buffet, cutting in front of some scowling, balding guys in tuxes, complete with model-gorgeous girls too young and fine to want them for anything but their money hanging off their arms.

  “Sorry, it’s an emergency,” I explain, piling the plate high with mini-sliders and creamy mac and cheese.

  Funny that, though the bride appears to have tried so damn hard to nail ‘adult and sophisticated’ for this wedding, she went very ‘kiddie menu’ on the food. I pile a few chicken fingers and grab a glass bottle of Mexican Coca-Cola, impressed to see a vestige of my youth stuck in ice on the table.

  “Enzo,” Bonnie, my boss, hisses as I walk by the wine tent. “You aren’t supposed to be at the buffet. That’s for guests!”

  Fuck. Where is my damn head? I could have walked behind the tent instead of parading this in her face. My thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent self would laugh at how poorly I handled all this rule breaking.

  “It’s, uh, for a guest. She’s not feeling well,” I explain, watching her eyes narrow. I swear she’s counting wine bottles in her head.

  I’m so fucked.

  Bonnie shakes her head. “Enzo, this is a job, not an excuse for you to hook up, or booty call, or whatever you kids are doing with your free time. Get back here as soon as you drop that food off.”

  I feel my imminent firing. It’s not a huge deal. This job was cool enough, but I spent most of my time feeling like a fuck-up and dreaming of heading back to the waves I miss like a phantom limb. Not exactly career-worthy responses. If I had to go down, this was a really good way to fall.

  I kneel in front of Jordan, whose head is tilted back at a funny angle. “Uh, Jordan? You okay?”

  “I think…I think the moon is out already.” She points up with a hand that weaves back and forth.

  I follow the direction her finger is pointing and, sure enough, there’s the pale, silvery moon, full and fat as a promise.

  I know better than to trust that promise, though.

  The bottom line is, the whole world can feel like it’s opening up, like it’s your own private oyster, but you’re way more likely to get shellfish poisoning than to find a fucking pearl. I learned that from excruciating firsthand experience.

  “Sure is. And here’s a burger. Eat up, doll.” />
  Her head snaps up and looks at me. She smiles like she’s about to tell me a joke she shouldn’t. “Hey. You’re cute.”

  I chuckle and hold the burger out. “You are too. But that’s enough flirting. You’re making me blush.”

  She leans her head forward and takes a bite from the burger in my hand like I’ve been feeding her all her life. “You’re gorgeous. It’s too bad, because you’re going to wind up with one of these…” She chews slowly and rolls her hand in the air like she’s trying to think of the word. She smiles and nods. “One of these sluts.”

  I laugh so hard, I almost rock back off my heels. “Shit, Jordan!” I put a finger to my lips. “Keep it down. You’re gonna have some pissy bridesmaids to fight off otherwise.”

  She leans over and takes another huge bite, then wipes a little bit of ketchup off the side of her mouth with one of the gloves she’s still clutching in her hand. It’s way less white than it was when I first found her under the pines.

  “I’m not afraid of them. Even if I know they’ll win. Those girls always win, don’t they?” This time her smile tugs down on the corners of her mouth, and she pulls the hamburger out of my hand and eats on her own.

  “Win what? The ‘Most Injectable Silicone in One Body Award’?” I scoff. “You think they’re better looking than you?”

  She rears back and laughs out loud. “I know they are. And aren’t. I know I’m not ugly. Just fated to be overlooked. Chronically and tragically overlooked.”

  I shouldn’t, but I have nothing to lose. I reach a hand up and run it over her silky hair, half spooked by the way she presses her soft cheek against my palm and closes her eyes.

  “Whoever’s looking past you must be blind or stupid. Or both. I haven’t been able to look at anything else since I laid eyes on you.”

  It started as my usual bullshit, just a line to make a girl as good and funny and pretty as Jordan is realize that she’s undervaluing herself. But it ends up that I mean every goddamn word.

  I definitely mean it, and that shocks me to my core. And that’s my cue to get the fuck out of Dodge before I do the kind of serious, careless damage there’s no easy way to undo.