I force myself to take a bite. “Better?” I ask with my mouth full.
She smiles. “Very bridal.”
I stick my tongue out at the same time Nate’s mother peers at us through slitted eyes. She doesn’t like me, and I can’t blame her for being wary since Nate and I have known each other for only a year. But Iwillwin her over.
“You’re doing it again,” Aurora says as I move the food around my plate.
“Doing what?”
“Not eating.”
She glances around the room. “He’s not running late, is he?”
That’s what I’ve told everyone—that George hit traffic on his way from the airport. I asked Mimi, but she hasn’t heard from him today, either.
I shake my head, my gut churning.
“It wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it, if he didn’t come?” Aurora asks.
I try to laugh at the false optimism in her voice, but it gets lodged in my throat like an over-chewed wad of gum. For twenty-two years, George has always been there when it’s mattered most. Aurora squeezes my hand, and even though her fingers are glacial, I hold on tight.
“You’re about to start a whole new chapter of your life. If he decides he doesn’t want to be part of it, that’s his loss.”
The backs of my eyes sting, and I look at the chandeliers to stop the tears. George is my best friend. I want him in every chapter.
When my phone vibrates, I’m so sure it’ll be him that the sight of my brother’s name on the screen feels like an anvil on my chest.
Moby:You look like you’re about to puke. It’s not too late to call this thing off.
I hide my screen so Nate doesn’t catch the message and glare at Moby across the table. He and Darwin have already tried totalk me out of the wedding. They staged a bumbling intervention over breakfast the morning after my bachelorette party.
You haven’t even had a serious boyfriend before. What’s the emergency?
But Moby is right about one thing—I might throw up.
“I need the bathroom,” I tell Aurora.
And then I see him.
Chapter Two
George stands in the arched entryway. For a moment, I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me. But no.
My best friend has come, and everything is going to be okay.
He’s surprisingly unrumpled, dressed in a black jacket and white shirt, both pristine, but his chestnut hair is a whorling mess. As usual, he’s in desperate need of a cut—dark waves careen over his forehead and swerve around his ears.
Aurora once called George a real-life Clark Kent, which I thought was a little excessive, although he is tall and handsome. He’s also a bespectacled reporter with a do-gooder streak, no sense of self-preservation, and a jawline some people might describe as chiseled. The glasses are squarish and black, and he’s had them, or ones like them, since he went to journalism school. I swear he went out and bought the exact frames an actor playing a reporter on TV would wear. I made fun of him, naturally.
George looks around the room with an inscrutable expression. When his eyes meet mine, I stand so fast my chair topples.
For a moment we watch each other, but then a smile whispers across his face. It’s a gentle tug of his lips, something another person would miss. I charge across the room, bridal poise be damned, and throw my arms around his middle. We don’t usually embrace like this, and he stiffens before I feel him relax. His arms circle my back, his chest rising on a long inhalation. I shut my eyes for a beat. For the first time tonight, I can breathe.
“You’re here,” I say, pulling back so I can stare up at him. My grin might be permanent.
George studies me with night-blue eyes more familiar than my own. “I’m here.”
“I called. I left messages. I was worried.”
