“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy for them. But it feels pretty crappy knowing that my two favorite people hid their marriage from me, especially since they weren’t even supposed to be romantically involved.”
“Oh, wow,” she breathes. “That is shitty.”
I sigh. “I come from a large family, and even though there’s a pretty decent age gap between my youngest sister and me, we were particularly close. And my friend, well, he’s a great guy, but he’s notalways the easiest to get along with. He’s also been adamantly anti-marriage until this.”
“And since you’ve had to be responsible for each of them in a way, it felt like a betrayal when they went behind your back,” she says for me.
“Yeah, a little,” I reply, the weight of that guilt and resentment I’ve been carrying around for the past month or so dissipating. “I know they both still care about me and that they didn’t mean to hurt me, but …”
“They did,” she confirms.
I nod and reach up to scratch my neck again. “It doesn’t help that I’m officially the last of my nine siblings left unmarried.”
She blanches. “And it’s no fun riding solo over the holidays, especially when everyone else is paired up.”
“Right. I’d actually just gotten a text from him about the big church ceremony they’re planning when I sat down for that dinner tonight. He wants me to be his best man, of course.”
“So you were already in your feelings when that allergic reaction knocked you on your ass? Oh, Rowan,” she laments.
“There’s more,” I say on another long exhale.
“More?” she asks, her eyes wide.
I cringe. I’m probably not doing myself any favors by admitting the rest of this, but I’m too far in to stop now.
“A while back, that same friend tried setting me up withhissister, but it turned out she was only using me as a distraction. She didn’t want him to find out that she’d been seeing this douchey frat boy he’d hated since they were kids. But the guy had the nerve to show up at the restaurant and ruin our date. I mean, they’re happily married and everything now, but I found out later that he’d already gotten her pregnant by the time she went out with me.”
She gasps. “No.”
“Yep,” I affirm. “Wanna take a wild guesshowI found out?”
“No,” she whimpers. “Tell me you weren’t her doctor?”
I lift my hands in defeat, and she leans back in her chair to cackle so loudly that it echoes throughout the room.
“Oh, man. This is the bestandthe worst at the same time,” she says once she catches her breath. “Congratulations, you’ve managed to one up my divorcée debut at a sixtieth anniversary celebration.”
“Glad I could brighten up your night,” I say, smirking at her. And I mean it.
“You’ll be fine, though. I mean, look at you,” she reassures me with a playful eye roll.
I twist my lips to the side. “I don’t know. I haven’t had the best luck in the dating department. Need I remind you of my current situation?”
“Yeah, all that trouble for another catch-and-release.” She gestures over herself with a self-deprecating laugh.
That makes me frown, mostly because I was already thinking it. “I meant the part about you having to take care of me.”
Claire shrugs me off. “This has been fun, and you’re adorable,” she says, waving a hand in front of me this time, “But from what I can tell, I’m not what you’re looking for.”
“What makes you say that?”
Her expression hardens, and she swallows hard before she replies. “You want a wife and a family, but I’m not exactly in the right headspace for anything like that.”
“Because of your divorce?” I ask, unable to hide my disappointment.
“Yeah. But also because of me.” She looks away as she says it, prompting another rush of protective instincts.
“Do you want to talk about it? We’ve still got time.”
