“Relax, I’m just going to braid it.”
“What’s that for,” Logan asks through gritted teeth, when she plucks up the pre-heated hair iron from the nearby table.
“A straightener. You’ve got those weird ponytail crimps in here,” she says, as she starts to drag it through his hair. “I keep telling you not to do that when it’s wet. Like, have you ever used a blow dryer? A diffuser?”
“Every day, obviously,” he sighs, slumping defeatedly in the chair.
Something about the cadence and efficiency they bicker with makes me wonder if they’ve been having this conversation ever since they were kids.
“Ava, can you bring me some ribbon too? And grab my concealer. Jeez, what’s wrong with your face, dude?”
I hear the sound of Ava rummaging around through Laura’s makeup case, while Logan grumbles something back to Laura, but he falls silent as soon as she slips out of the guest bathroom.
“Which concealer?” she asks, her brow furrowing. She glances over her shoulder where Laura points. “You have like three different kinds, and they all look ancient.”
“Oh, never mind. I’ll grab it.” Laura tosses the straightener aside on the vanity, and heads toward the bathroom. “Logan, stay there. I’m not letting you go out there with bags under your eyes.”
Several moments pass, a small quiet falling over the messy guest room. I wonder if Laura can’t find the specific concealer she’s looking for either. I watch Ava drift back to the box full of flowers, glancing between Logan and anything else in the room. Every so often I glance back out the window with half-hearted hope that I’ll spot Shawn. He’s gotta get here sooner or later.
“Are you in the wedding party?” she asks, and goes for one of the smaller boxes, full of little pre-made miniature bouquets of purple and white flowers, tied with a lace bow. They all have pins on their backs. I realize as she selects one, that Laura has one pinned on her dress as well.
I’m surprised that Logan full-on glares at her, withering her friendliness on the spot. I’m almost ready to chide him for that, the way all the cheeriness she brought with her vanishes. I know he’s having a hard time with the whole wedding thing, but he still needs to be nice to people.
“Yeah,” Logan mutters after a long moment, his mouth a hard line, his stare set dead ahead, unseeing. He has such a talent for making a single syllable sound barbed.
“I’m supposed to pin these on everyone who is,” she tells him, offering a friendly, if shy, smile. I almost feel the need to warn her that he’s been about as cuddly as a porcupine all of last week. She holds out the little bouquet for him to see.
He doesn’t answer, eyeing the flowers like he expects them to bite him. He doesn’t nod, but he tilts his head to the side a little, allowing her to step closer.
An awkward few seconds filter through, and Ava decides to just go ahead and do her job. She takes half a step toward him and slips a hand delicately under the collar of his shirt, tugging a pinch of fabric taught to guide the pin through.
I watch a muscle tense in his jaw, his nostrils flare with his breath.
I don’t see it happen, but maybe she accidentally pricks him with the sharp end because he grabs her wrist suddenly, snatching it away from him, pin and all. They lock eyes for a moment, and time seems to stop. It’s hard not to stare, though the two of them are so agitated by whatever just passed between them that they don’t notice my rudeness.
Ava’s the first of us to break away from it.
“I guess you can re-do it later if you want, um,” she mumbles, glancing from his hand on her wrist to him.
He lets go of her and stands, brushes out of the room in a couple long strides.
Ava glances at me and mouths,what the fuck, and I give her a sympathetic shrug and equally wide-eyed expression. She looks a little upset but tries to shrug it off, pinning it to her sleeve instead.
“Whatever, I worked hard on these, and I don’t want him to have one anyway,” she mutters, waving her hand a little to admire her work. “Fuck that guy.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what’s eating him.” I nod, when I hear Shawn’s voice downstairs that moment and honestly take that as my cue to leave. I say apologetically to her, “I’m going to be right back.”
I step out into the hall, but it’s empty.
Ok, now I’m getting a bit pissed off at Shawn, I can feel it heating up my skin. I know he’s upset, but he can’t just avoid me forever, can he? Like, that’s got to be the only reason I’m feeling warm under the collar every time I look at him.
When I get to the top of the stairs, I can see the front door wide open and a few guests in their formal clothes stepping through, being greeted by Deanna. Some of them receive warmer greetings than others. I watch as one woman, tall and skinny with gray hair and fun looking earrings stops short of embracing Deanna and gives her a semi-pleasant smile.
“This is Elise,” Deanna introduces me as I’m halfway down the stairs, and I put on my customer service smile to conceal my disappointment at getting swept up into something else. She raises her eyebrows at me. “Darling, I have some fires to put out, would you show Laura’s mom to the patio?”
I’m not going to be right back, and I’m not going to find Shawn, it seems.
“Jenny Brandford,” the woman tells me when I reach the bottom of the stairs, offering a hand and a much bigger smile to me.
