“It looks older than the first one…and it’s gold…with a bird for a handle,” he says as he pulls it out of the box. I smile.
“Aunt Blanche was always kind of eccentric,” I say fondly.
“You think?” he asks, going back to work.
I do my best not to watch him as I mop up the kitchen, dining room, and part of the living room. Ash is in jeans and a long-sleeved gray henley. It’s interesting watching him do handiwork. I am used to seeing him in a restaurant, behind a bar, behind adesk, or under a rack of weights. I am not used to seeing him be a handyman. This is new. It’s hot. I like it.
“Shit,” I say as I accidentally bump into the dining room table while ogling him.
“What did you do?” he asks without looking at me, wrench in hand.
“I knocked all the mail on the floor,” I mutter.
I pick it up and air it out. Half of the envelopes got wet, and I sigh. I set them on the table when a particular envelope catches my eye. It’s handwritten.
“What the hell?” I say as I open it.
“What?” Ash asks, but I am too busy staring at the envelope.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.
“What is it?” he asks again, but I just stare at the paper in my hand.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
“Harper! What the hell is it?” Ash rounds the counter to stand next to me, looking over my shoulder at the card.
“Is that a wedding invitation?” he asks confusedly.
“Yep,” I say, biting back my anger as a plethora of other emotions rage through my brain.
“From Daniel?” he asks.
“Looks like it,” I say, jerking my eyes away from the photo of Daniel and the blonde.
“Daniel is marrying Angie?” he asks.
“She’s the bartender I was telling you about that can’t make cocktails worth sh–wait. You know her?”
Asher looks at me and swallows. “I mean, he’s mentioned her. Mentioned that he has a blonde bartender. It was a guess.”
“Yeah, well, you guessed right. And you know what else was right?” I ask, tossing the invite on the table and picking up the mop again. I need something to do with my hands before I kill something. “He was into her. I wondered. I always wondered,and this confirms it. He couldn’t have me so he went after the next closest thing. Jesus. You know, this is probably why he fired me. I bet he hooked up withAngieafter he got back and didn’t want to look at me anymore.”
“Fuck him,” Asher says, watching me mop furiously as if I am trying to clean the literal pattern off the tiles.
“Fuck them both,” I say. “Daniel and his slut.”
“Exactly,” Asher says.
“Exactly,” I say with less gusto. I stop, set the mop aside, and plop down into one of the dining room chairs. Suddenly, I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me.
“Hey,” Asher says as he walks over to me. “Are you okay?”
I just sit there, breathing heavily as the reality hits me. Tears sting my eyes as I stare off into space.
“Do you still care about him?” he asks, and I blink.
“No. No, I don’t care about him. I want to fucking murder him!” My voice is shaking, and Ash sits down in front of me. “I know her, you know? This whole time I thought he loved me, wanted to be married to me, when really…none of it was genuine. And now they invite me to their wedding? What the fuck?”
