At six on the dot, the music was supposed to begin. Instead, my phone vibrated again. I read the text twice and still didn’t understand it.
SOB AWOL 4 AISLE WALK.
Up front, William was also getting this message. He looked at me, raising his eyebrows.
WHAT?I typed, as the man two seats down from me checked his watch.
GET HERE NOW, was the reply, and I didn’t even finish it before I was on my feet and moving.
Don’t run, don’t run, I reminded myself, trying to hustle in an efficient but not panicked-looking way across the patio. When I got to the club lobby, the wedding party was lined up, the now teary-looking ring bearer in the front. Past him, and the pairs of bridesmaids and groomsmen, was a confab of Eve Little—looking radiant in a light yellow gown with petal sleeves; I loved third weddings!—her daughter Bee, and my mother. Everyone was talking at once.
“...have to be confident of the precise order to do our job properly,” my mom was saying as I came up. “Last-minute additions make that difficult if not impossible.”
“I understand that,” Eve said, as Bee, her own phone to her ear, scanned the room. “But he was just here!”
“He’s stealthy that way,” Bee told me, as if I knew what this was all about. “Maybe check outside?”
I looked at my mom, who said, “You heard her. Go check outside!”
“For who?” I asked. “Everyone’s here.”
I knew this, because the Cheat Sheet was one of my assigned jobs. The night before every event, I put together a single piece of paper containing a list of the wedding party and pertinent family, contact info for the vendors we’d hired (caterer, DJ, florist) as well the final, approved wedding schedule from arrival of guests to our departure. Now, only moments in, that was out the window.
“Ambrose,” Eve said. Hearing this, my mother tried (or actually, didn’t) to mask her frustration.
“Who?”
“My brother,” Bee told me, shifting her bouquet of white roses and lilies to her other hand. She was a gorgeous girl, blonde with creamy skin and blue eyes, the kind of good-looking that would be annoying if she wasn’t so nice. “He wasn’t going to be here, but now he is. Tall, blond like me, most likely talking to a girl. Smack him if you have to.”
SOB was Son of Bride, then. And the more colloquial meaning, if he really was singlehandedly holding all this up. “On it,” I said to my mom, starting to the lobby exit. Before pushing the door open, I took one last look behind me, just in time to see William moving quickly down the aisle, his phone clamped to his ear. If he and my mom had moved to actual talking on the phone, this was even worse than I thought.
Outside, I took a quick scan of the parking lot. Two golfers were standing by an Audi with clubs poking out of the trunk, talking, while a guy in chef whites stacked vegetable crates by the kitchen entrance. Otherwise, nothing to see. Or so I thought until I heard the melodic tinkle of what could only be, in any world, a pretty girl’s laugh.
It was coming from behind a florist’s van a few spaces down from me, and was followed by another chuckle, this one distinctly male. I started toward the van, wondering again why I hadn’t just chosen to work in a coffee shop, bookstore, or some other place that didn’t involve corralling strangers against their will. I rounded the van’s back bumper, clearing my throat.
When I first saw Ambrose Little, I had two distinct thoughts, cementing how I would feel about him from that point on. I didn’t know this at the time, though. All I registered was this: First, he was incredibly good-looking. Second, just the sight of him—a mere glimpse, in profile, from a distance—annoyed me in a way I couldn’t quite explain.
First, his looks. Bee was right: they did share the same coloring and features. But Ambrose, who was in a tux and white shirt, was tall, almost gangly, with long arms and legs, distinct cheekbones, and a swoop of blond hair just tousled enough that you knew he had to spend time on it. He was like that upside-down exclamation point at the beginning of a sentence in Spanish, the mere appearance of which warned of something complicated ahead.
As far as the annoyance factor, it was harder to quantify. Maybe it was that hewasso good-looking, like the chiseled,flat-chested surfer boy doll of my childhood morphed into human form. Never before, though, had I viscerally disliked someone purely on sight. It made me feel shallow in a way I didn’t like.
At that moment, however, he hadn’t even noticed me, too busy leaning into a curvy Indian girl wearing khaki shorts and a golf shirt with the country club insignia. She, in turn, was resting against a Toyota, a set of car keys dangling from one hand. They were about as close to entwined as you could be without touching, and despite my vocal warning, neither of them noticed me.
“Ambrose,” I said, in my stern voice. This time, he looked over, that curly swoop moving to the other side of his forehead. Straight on, I saw it was a perfect curl, so intact you couldn’t help but want to reach out and pull on it. Just thinking this annoyed me again. “The wedding is starting. We need you in place.”
He smiled at me then, a lazy, rich boy smile, all teeth and confidence. “Well, hey there. Who are you?”
The girl made a face, clearly unhappy with this development. I said, “I work for Natalie Barrett, the wedding planner. I need you to come with me. Now.”
He laughed, then saluted me, his hand brushing the curl. “Yes, ma’am! Just give me two shakes.” And with that, he turned back to his friend, who tilted her head up once she had his attention again.
Some people asked themselves in difficult situations What Would Jesus Do? For me, when it came to work at least, there was only one true example to follow, and I knewthat in my shoes she’d take whatever measures were necessary to get things back on schedule. Next summer, a bookstore or coffee shop, I promised myself. Then I marched over, clamped a hand around Ambrose Little’s wrist, and started dragging him toward the club entrance.
“What the hell?” the girl said, her eyes narrowing. “You can’t just—”
But I could, and I was. I’d expected resistance, which was why I’d grabbed him with such gusto. Instead, he immediately lost his balance, stumbling forward into me while flailing for something to grab on to, which turned out to be my left breast. Now I was dragging someone while being groped, while the golfers looked on. Nice.
“Normally I like an assertive girl,” Ambrose said, regaining his footing as I shoved his hand off me. “But you’re coming on abitstrong.”
