When the guy was flat on the sidewalk where the crowd had drawn back, gaping stupidly, Blue Eyes in the suit reached down and hauled him off the ground by his shirt, shook him like a wet towel, and held him out toward me, snarling,“Apologize to my wife.”
Basketball Drunk’s shoes scraped the cement sidewalk as Blue Eyes shook him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
I braced one hand on my hip because the living statue illusion was shattered anyway. “You didn’tmean to?That’s the stupidest apology I’ve ever heard.”
The hot drunk guy, who was still inexplicably attractive even though his eyes burned blue-hot with drunk rage, growled near the guy’s face, “Again.Better.”
Basketball Drunk gibbered, “I’m sorry. I fucked up. I’m wasted. I didn’t think. I won’t do it again.”
“Marginally better,” I announced. “You can let him go.”
Blue Eyes released Basketball Drunk, who collapsed into a puddle of soggy humanity on the ground.
Blue Eyes stood over him and waved at the air. “Get the fuck out.”
Basketball Drunk scrambled away on the cement like a pudgy land crab.
The hot drunk in the suit watched him go, his jaw clenched.
Okay, that just happened. I—wow.
Blue Eyes turned back to me, flicking the hand that he’d held the guy with like it had slime on it. “Where was I?”
“You’re in Las Vegas,” I ventured, because he seemed very drunk. That question might have meant his actual location.
“Yes, I remember that. I was doing something. I was—” He rubbed the side of his head and then looked down at me, because even though I was perched on a slightly wobbly hard-sided suitcase, his eyes were still inches above mine. His hand clenched his dark (Black? Hard to tell in the yellow light from the streetlamp.) hair, and he perused me, scanning down my wedding dress to the tips of my shoes and the roller suitcase and back up to my eyes. “Oh,yeah.”
Oh no, he was going back to proposing. “Look, buddy, I appreciate the gallantry, saving me from that gross drunk dude?—”
Blue Eyes dropped to one knee again, bobbling to the side and catching himself with his fingertips on the sidewalk so that his posture was more like a superhero landing after flight than a guy proposing. “Damn, I’m drunk.”
“Yeah, that’s obvious. Look, sweetie?—”
He looked up at me from where he kneeled just past the hem of my wedding gown. “Nico. My name is Nicolai, but everyone calls me Nico.”
The crowd was reforming after they’d pulled back during the fight, tightening around where the drunk was proposing to a random woman on the street, and gawking.
I needed to stop this. “Nico, my brother in Christ, you arewasted.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing the wrong thing.”
“It sure as heck increases the probability of it, though. Come on, Nico. You don’t want to do this.”
“Yes, I do. I really do. I want to marry you.” His voice lowered, and his breath caught in his chest like pain. “I want to get marriedright now.”
Oh.
Oh,honey.
My heart cracked a little where the love used to be.
There were only a few reasons why Mr. Blue Eyes,Nicolai,might be dressed in a nice suit, distraught, and hammered out of his mind in Las Vegas.
Oh, the poor guy.“Did somebody leave you at the altar? Is that why you’re so, um, upset?”
I didn’t want to keep harping on the fact that he was wasted. It seemed impolite, especially if he’d deserved a few drinks to lighten the load of getting jilted at the altar.
“It doesn’t matter.” Emotion, maybe despair, caught in his deep voice, and my heart broke a little more for him. “Nothing matters. I just want to get married.”
