Jason is at the table, too, because Luce’s decided he deserved to be here for officiating, even though I told him rather pointedly that we’d hate to take more of his time.
Obtuse bastard.
I nurse my whiskey. She laughs at every godawful story pouring out of my dad’s mouth. Maybe he should start a new career as a standup comic. Meanwhile, Jason is ultra-attentive, pulling the bread basket closer to her, pouring her more wine. She thanks him and smiles at him too.
Fucking former prom king and queen.
Let’s grade her smiles like a diamond’s clarity. The ones she gives Jason are Flawless, while the ones she directs at Dad are Internally Flawless, mainly because he says things that are outright embarrassing. But the one she shoots me every time our gazes happen to meet?
Her face freezes for a fraction of a second before she pulls the corners of her mouth up. I can’t even rate that kind of rictus an I3, which is given to the shittiest gems. Actually, what she gives me isn’t even a diamond. It’s a pebble. Some worthless, random bit of stone you can find anywhere.
I knock back my sixth whiskey. Just look at her giggling at whatever it was that Jason said, her cheeks flushed. Her eyes skitter past me, and suddenly I’ve had enough of this bullshit. I’m her husband.
“We need to get going,” I say.
“No, we don’t,” Dad says.
“‘We’ doesn’t includeyou. Luce and me. Us.Wehave a flight to catch.” I turn to Luce. “Don’t we,wife?”
Jason’s smile dims, and Luce gives me an uncertain look. “Right now?”
“Uh-huh. Did you forget?”
“Nonsense,” Dad says, oblivious to anyone’s needs except his own. “I brought my own jet. We can fly together.”
I’d rather cut off my arms and swim across a shark-infested ocean. “So did I. And unlike you, I have work tomorrow and a routine that I stick to.”
“My God, live a little.” Dad picks up his wine glass. “You talk like you’re in your sixties.”
Being around him is what’s aging me, but I keep that to myself. I don’t want to have a pointless argument he’s going to refuse to admit he lost.
Since Dad is the one who insisted on this dinner, I let him handle the bill while I take Luce’s hand. “Good night, everyone,” I say.Hope to never see any of you ever again.
Luce and I climb into the limo waiting outside. The partition between us and the chauffeur is up for privacy.
She lets out a satisfied sigh and looks out at the sky. “It was a great ceremony, don’t you think?” she says, finally turning her focus on me.
“Fantastic.”
“It was really good to see Jason again.”
There she goes. Confirming what I already know. Did she fuck him? Well, obviously she did in high school. Bet he sucked. She didn’t askhimto marry her, did she? Couldn’t have, because there’s no way he would’ve turned her down.
Don’t be so smug. You aren’t that much better. She wanted to marry Preston, remember?
The thought makes me want to kick Preston’s ass.
“And to meet your father,” she adds. “He seems sonice. I like him.”
This is starting to feel like something out of Kafka. None of my brothers’ wives like Dad. Aspen actually left a restaurant before her meal was served because she couldn’t stand him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Luce says.
“Like what?”
“Like I just told you I have syphilis.”
“Do you?”Should’ve checked before I married her.Given her wild history, who knows what she’s carrying?
