“Seriously, does this look okay?” She asks, fidgeting. She doesn’t normally fidget and of course, because I am a man totally doomed, I find it adorable. “How formal is dinner withthe Clarks?”
“You’re perfect,” I answer quickly, meaning it in every sense of the word.
She rolls her eyes, obviously, but I’m smiling wide. I’m high as a kite, actually. Intoxicated after the best week of my life.
I’ve never felt a void in my life before. But, as Janelle astutely pointed out with my Uber Eats app usage, I have gotten used to being alone. Even when I was filling my days with adventures, I was always meeting a new instructor or tour guide. We’d be best mates for a few days and then I’d never see them again. When I filled my time with appearances, dinners, parties, and women,even threesomes and the like…eventually, I would come back to an empty hotel suite.
I flew from place to place sitting numb at a window seat, Nigel lurking elsewhere on the plane. I tend to dodge both my brothers now, since they’re happily married. I avoid all my friends who moved on to planning proposals and paying for weddings and then changing nappies and complaining about being tired.
Everyone moved on with someone, I now realize. I just…kept moving.
How is it that I was never alone, but still lonely?
And now…
“Ready?” She asks me. I nod and follow her into the penthouse elevator.
I link my fingers in hers and she accepts. I inhale her signature scent around me. Even riding in elevators is different these days.
How the hell am I going to go back?
She’s done with me in a few weeks. I know she feels something between us. I know she’s grown fond of me. But she doesn’t seem to be the least bit scared about what happens on January the first.
I am.
I’m completely petrified.
“Are you okay?” She asks as we fold ourselves into the back of a big town car my father hired for us.
“Of course,” I answer.
“I’m not,” she says.
My face snaps up, “What?”
“Whatwhat?We’re meeting your parents! Your twin and his wife and daughter! His twin spidey senses are going to be all tingly. Plus, I know Emerson will just sit there silently observing, but Samantha is about to ask us at least fifty deeply personal questions. Remember my mouth and the words and the lying? I’m going to screw this up!”
“Janelle,” I kiss her knuckles, “breathe.” She obeys, surprisingly. “I think you’ll find my family to be,” I think through how to describe it. “generally uninterested in me. Byron is so far up my father’s ass that he’ll talk shop all night long. Emerson is the genius. I’m…”
“What?” She presses.
“I don’t know, you’ll see,” I say, unsure how to explain it. “We won’t be the main event.”
“We just shocked the world with a knee-jerk Vegas wedding, if we’re not the main event, who is?”
I snort, “My father. Always.”
She grimaces, so I kiss her hand again. It’s a quick drive over to my parents’ penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side. We don’t chat for the duration, and it’s fine. Peaceful. Aside from the inch of skin on her thigh that keeps distracting me.
That’s how it was all week. Days working, then evenings with her spent walking, laughing, teasing. Companionable silence from time to time. Sexual frustration all the time. I thought I was onto something with the strutting naked bit. Until it backfired in my face, seeing her gorgeous curves stepping out of the shower, droplets clinging to her everywhere.
I was jealous of water.
That’s the bloody state I’m in lately.
I force myself to look away from her legs, lest I give my family a full salute here in a few moments.
“Ugh. Showtime,” she says, looking a bit green with nerves as she stares up at the imposing architecture we’re about to enter.
