She rolls her eyes like all we do is talk business. Iwishthat were the case.
“Come on, babe. We need to go over some stuff. I think. Don’t we?” Ed’s gaze flits between me and his soon-to-be wife.
Lucy barely meets my eye as we grunt hellos at each other. Ed and Katherine take the seats opposite the booth, and Lucy gets shunted in next to me.
Perfect. Just fucking perfect.
We order our drinks, and Katherine and Lucy talk about the menu and the cocktails, intermittently mentioning names I’ve never heard of, while I just stare at the menu. I’ve lost my appetite. I’d rather be back in the office than sitting here listening to Lucy and her sister talk about nothing.
“Everything okay?” Ed asks me.
I glance up at Ed and then at Katherine. I can’t have the conversations I need to have here in front of everyone.
“Sure,” I say, my head buried back in the menu. I wonder if I can have a work emergency and head back to the office. This is the very last thing I wanted to do this lunchtime. Literally, if you asked me to write a list of all the things I wanted to do today, lunch with Lucy would be right at the bottom afterburn in hell.
“Are you sure?” Ed asks.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?” I ask.
“You seem stressed.”
“Things are really busy,” I say. Even though I don’t mean it to come out, I hear the resentment in my voice.
“Look, I’m sorry I missed the meeting with FMCH.”
I nod, but I can’t even look at him.
“Katherine was sick and didn’t think she was going to make the tasting thing. I didn’t want to be a plane ride away while she wasn’t feeling well.”
My limbs feel heavy, like I’m disappearing into the floor. It’s only Katherine that he has to worry about at the moment. What about when they start having kids? Kids are basically germ machines. There won’t be a week that goes by without someone in that house being sick. I’ll probably never see Ed again after the wedding. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. I don’t mean it to sound as robotic as it does when it comes out.
“It sounds positive, though,” he says. “The meeting with FMCH, I mean.”
I nod, and the waitress comes over to take our order. Katherine and Lucy go first. They ask questions about every single dish on the menu,and I’m a second away from grabbing my salad fork and stabbing Lucy through the heart when she finally decides on the chicken Caesar—the same as Katherine. How could it be so difficult?
Ed and I order the Wagyu burger. Because of course we do. Like we knew we were going to the moment we opened the menu. Just like Lucy knew she was going to order the chicken Caesar when she opened the menu, but she had to go through some elaborate facade of considering other options.
“Oh, I meant to order the elderflower mocktail,” Katherine says.
“I’ll go and ask the waitress,” Ed offers. He stands and presses a kiss to Katherine’s head, like he’s going to struggle being away from her for all of a minute and a half. He heads off toward the server station.
“Or maybe I should go with the Bellini mocktail?” Katherine asks, like either Lucy or I have the answer to what she wants to drink. Katherine stands and goes after Ed, leaving Lucy and me side by side, on our own.
“You haven’t replied to my messages,” she snipes from the corner of her mouth.
“Which one of the three hundred and fifty messages would you like me to reply to first?” I snark back. Under my breath, I mutter, “Do you think Katherine really wanted the Bellini mocktail, or did she not want to be away from Ed for a single second?”
“Any single one would do,” she replies. “And they’re inlove. I think it’s cute that they want to be together all the time.” She sighs.
We both have our eyes on Ed and Katherine as they stand at the bar and peruse the drinks menu. Ed’s arm is around Katherine’s waist, and Katherine is resting her head on Ed’s arm. It’s like they have a need to be physically connected to each other at all times.
“What do you want from me?” I say on an exhausted sigh. “You’ve stalked me and harassed me in front of potential clients, and now you’re acting like you’re the injured party.”
“I saved you from embarrassing yourself at the engagement party by taking you back to your hotel. I made sure you didn’t vomit in the cab.And when I realized you were holding a serious business meeting in the bar the other night, I left. I don’t see you thanking me for any of that.”
“Thanking you?” I say through a grin I flash at Ed when he looks over. “For what? For behaving like a deranged psychopath whenever I see you?”
Lucy groans and slumps back in the booth. “You’re so dramatic. For God’s sake. All I want to do is give my sister the perfect bachelorette party, and you’re acting like I’m the one who’s got problems. You might not give a shit about your friend, but sue me for caring about my sister. And all your complaining hasn’t gotten us anywhere. We still have nowhere to stay and have no prospect of finding anywhere. The bachelor/bachelorette party is just over two weeks away.”
