AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I looked across the room. Juliet and Petra were talking, and it didn’t seem overly painful. Petra leaned forward. Juliet smiled as she spoke. I wondered if she had taken my advice and asked the other woman about music.
“You went awfully quiet,” Alistair said. I had spent too long watching Juliet, the way her face relaxed when she smiled.
I dropped my gaze to my beer and thought about what to say. “I don’t think you understand Juliet very well.”
“No one understands Jules. I don’t think it’s possible to figure her out.” His tone was flippant, and I started to get angry. Before I could do anything—like, say, start an ill-advised argument—he looked at his phone again. “I have to go. The sitter has to leave by ten.” He put his soda down and stood up. “See you tomorrow at the fitting. Eleven o’clock sharp. You have the address, right?”
I nodded, and he left, too distracted by his family to notice the funk I was in. Maybe it was the conversation about estranged parents. Maybe it was the way everyone accepted as fact that Juliet was unknowable, impossible to figure out, when she was so clearly knowable to me.
I didn’t have the time to dwell on this, because a guy immediately sat in Alistair’s vacated chair. He was the husband of Melanie, the bridesmaid, and he wanted my autograph. For his cousin, he was careful to emphasize. Not for himself.
Because wanting Finn Wiley’s autograph for yourself wasn’t cool.
I smiled, put down my beer, and asked if he had a pen.
TEN
Juliet
Okay, there was one person I liked in the wedding party. One.
Petra had chosen to sit next to me in this hell-gathering, which was the first surprise. Maybe it was because she didn’t have a date. I was sitting alone, wondering what to do with myself since neither Mom nor Vicki had any time to talk to me, and Finn was busy with Alistair. Getting drunk was a bad idea, so I had stuck to one watered-down rum and Coke while sadly wishing for another one. Mom had started an awkward speech—she was probably on her third glass of wine, knowing Mom—and I had been focused on not looking at Finn, not fidgeting, and scoping out exits.
“It’s nice that you made it,” Petra said to me. She was short and curvy, and her dark hair was cut in a bob that curled behind her ears. “Vicki has been looking forward to seeing you.”
Since my sister had given me a quick—if hard—hug, said she was happy I was here, and then floated away to her other friends, I had my doubts about this statement. I curled in on the hurt that tried to seep into my chest. Of course Vicki was busy with her friends. What else had I expected? Why would I even let it bother me?
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out. There was a text from Finn.
Ask her what music she likes.
For fuck’s sake. I didn’t need a script here. I put my phone away and didn’t look at him. I didn’t need to look at him—I already had the sight of him memorized, the way his lean body sprawled in his chair with unconscious ease, the line of his jaw under his scruff of beard, his tousled brown hair. The easy way he smiled when people approached him. His polite body language when Hayley squeezed his bicep while her husband stood right there.
I had never seen Finn in a group of people, and I’d had no idea how often people touched him, as if they had the right. Women putting their hands in various places on his arm, men slapping his back or clapping his shoulder. Finn’s response to these strangers’ hands on him was a practiced stillness that neither invited nor offended. A posture he’d learned early and had mastered for years.
Of course Finn was giving me pointers on how to talk to people. Everyone wanted a piece of him, even now.
I cleared my throat as Hayley took over from Mom and started talking. A story about her and Vicki in middle school and a teacher they hated, told with so many asides that I couldn’t figure out what the point was and didn’t care. My middle school experience had been very different from my sister’s.
But fuck, I was thirty-two. Maybe it was time to leave some things behind.
I cleared my throat and looked at Petra. “So, um.” I regrouped, tried again. “What kind of music do you like?”
Oh, God, that sounded stupid.
Have you ever even attempted small talk? Like, even once in your life?
Petra looked at me with a smile touching the corners of her mouth. “Guess,” she said. “Guess what music you think I like.”
I blinked, thought it over. “Selena Gomez,” I said, because Petra resembled her a little bit. “Olivia Rodrigo. Doja Cat.”
Petra gave me an even, unreadable look that looked, in fact, a lot like Selena Gomez. “Are you guessing that so you can make fun of me?”
I scowled. “I don’t make fun of people, and I definitely don’t make fun of female musicians. It’s against my religion.”
Petra’s eyes narrowed. “So you think that Olivia Rodrigo is better than Justin Timberlake, just because she’s a woman?”
“I don’t give a fuck whether she’s better,” I replied without thinking. “That’s subjective. I know she has to work ten times harder than him to get ahead.”
