A quiet, “You can do this, Annie.”
I popped around the corner to find Annie dabbing a tissue carefully into her lash line.
“Everything okay over here?”
She scowled. “Yes.” Then her face crumpled. “No.” Silent sobs shook her shoulders.
“Oh, shoot. Oh, Annie. Oh, man. It can’t be that bad, right?”
I patted her arm, not really knowing what to do. This beautifulwoman was crying in a dark corner during her best friend’s wedding rehearsal. I just started guessing.
“Are you in love with Guy?”
She screwed up her face and looked up at me perplexed. Then she busted into a hearty laugh. “No. Definitely not that. He’s not my type.” She sniffed and then fell apart again.Quick, come up with a joke.
“Is it because this wallpaper is so loud?” We took in our surroundings: garish oversized flowers in audacious colors splashed every wall.
She laughed, quietly at first, then full-on old man wheezing. I laughed too, delighted that I had that kind of power. “It’s really loud, isn’t it? The flowers are huge. I mean, I know it’s their thing here, but yeah. It’s big.”
She chewed her lip, her eyes scanning the floor again.Okay, that only sort of helped.
“Um, do you need a hug?”
“Okay,” she said. I pulled us a little more out of sight in case someone else came along, then brought her into my arms. Annie’s tears returned, resting her chin against my collarbone.She must be reallytall. I’m 6’4” and the top of her headis just below mine. But she’s also wearing heelsso . . .
Right. Back to the crying. I gave her a tighter squeeze, and she hummed her thanks. She calmed down, fanning her face and dabbing the soggy tissue to her eyes.
I cringed at what I was about to do, but maybe it’d make her laugh.
“I have a handkerchief,” I said, offering her the edge of a red cloth.
“Thanks,” she said, pulling at it. Then out came another cloth in orange. Then yellow. Then green. Then blue. Her face went from confusion to horror, to recognition. “What are you, a magician? Is this one of those endless handkerchief gags?”
I blushed. “Kind of.”
“Kind of? Like you’re kind of a magician?!”
“Uh, yeah. I like to do little magic stuff. It’s silly, I know.”
“I don’t want to get makeup on your equipment here,” she said.
“Oh, it’ll be a fun story,” I assured her with a shrug.
She wiped under her eyes, coughing out a shocked laugh. “The goalie prodigy likes to do magic, huh?”
“It makes people laugh sometimes. I like to make people smile.”
She stuck out her bottom lip. “That is so stupid sweet, Nick.” She studied me more seriously, rubbing her lips together and furrowing her brow. Then her phone buzzed in her hand. She flicked a glance at the number, immediately silencing it while her shoulders deflated a little.
“Do you need to take that?” I asked.
“No. Just spam. I hoped I wouldn’t have signal this weekend,” she sighed, returning to her previous analysis of my face. She hesitated, a breath caught in her chest. “Nick, can you keep a secret?”
“A secret? Yeah, I’m pretty good with those.”
She peeked around the corner and pulled me farther down the other hallway by my wrist. “I just broke up with my boyfriend. He was supposed to come but bailed on me, so I dumped him. I don’t want to tell anyone because I don’t want Kitty to freak out and worry about me.”
The sad eyes. The crying. The hollow expressions. It all made sense. Being at your best friend’s wedding after breaking up. What a trainwreck.
