Page 41 of The Wedding Favor

“Everything okay?” Abe appeared in front of us.

“Never better. I am starving, though. Where is the food, people?” Ali yelled and hopped off to find it.

Abe and I stood shoulder to shoulder, watching Mae march toward the tree line. I side-eyed him. With his shorts and plain blue t-shirt, he dressed like any other guy on a Saturday afternoon. But I was struck how it clashed with his tattoos. Like he was two different people but somehow had managed to get both to co-exist. I wished I could figure out how to do that so effortlessly.

“Welcome to our family barbecue,” I said. “For our after-dinner entertainment, my sister and I will mud wrestle to see who’s more dominant.”

“Anyone taking bets on that?”

“I’m a sure thing. She might have an inch or two on me, but I’m scrappy.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he murmured, amusement lacing his words. Mae had now found Lulu and was currently crouched down in front of her saying something that was making the poor kid squirm. “Any chance you know what happened to that chocolate cake Mae is mad about?”

“Me? Of course not.”

As we watched, Lulu scraped her hand over her shirt, leaving a dark strip of chocolate frosting in its wake. “Well, it was either her or you.”

I turned toward him. “How did you come to that conclusion?”

“My awesome powers of observation. Also, this.” With a finger, he gently swiped at my cheek. There was a weird little hitch in my heartbeat, like the stutter of a boat motor before it fully kicked on, at the contact. “Might be this frosting on your face.”

“Oh.”

He smiled, his eyes full of humor and radiating a warmth that made it impossible not to smile back. Suddenly, and maybe for the first time, I was glad Abe was the one who was taking me to this wedding.

FIFTEEN

“Picnics are wonderful…

as long as they are held in restaurants and there is wine service.”

—excerpt from the unpublished memoir,

Darling, I Must Say by Gloria Hayes

“Did you know we’re sitting in the presence of a hero?” Ali asked. All of us were crowded around the patio table which was covered in enough food to feed a small island nation.

“Who would that be?” Chris asked. His plate needed another plate to hold the overflow. The man ate… a lot.

“Didn’t you hear? A car drove right through the front window of the new coffee shop a couple of weeks ago.” Ali pointed at me with her fork. “Our own little Iris saved a baby.”

“I didn’t save a baby,” I muttered as I picked out the tomatoes from my garden salad. Mae shot me a disapproving look. But she could just get over it. I wasn’t all that picky, but I couldn’t stand the texture of tomatoes.

“Yes, you did. Grabbed the baby just in time.”

The truth was I’d stopped by the place to get an iced latte and had seen Sylvie Myers sitting at a table staring blankly at the wall in front of her. Beside her, she’d rolled a stroller back and forth with one hand like she was on autopilot. Sylvie had been a couple years ahead of me in school and this baby, a girl, I think, was her first. Judging by the wrinkled shirt with suspicious stains on both shoulders and the dark circles under her eyes, I would say it wasn’t going well.

“Sylvie, how ya doing?” I’d slid into the seat across from her and peeked at the tiny sleeping baby wrapped in a pink blanket with little ladybugs on it. The two-month-old was out cold. Her pacifier had been slowly slipping from her mouth but the second it was about to fall, she’d jolted awake and began to suck furiously on it. She did this over and over like a game of pacifier chicken.

“Iris.” Sylvie had slid out of the chair. “I have to go to the bathroom. You can watch her, right? That would be okay?” I wasn’t sure if she was asking me or convincing herself.

“Sure.” I’d smiled reassuringly. “Just remember to come back.”

“Oh. Yeah, I will.” She’d shuffled back. “I think. Probably.”

“That was a joke,” I’d said to her back. “If you’re not back in five minutes, we’re coming after you.”

Approximately three point four seconds later, the kid had lost her war with the pacifier. She’d jolted awake and blinked at me with murky blue eyes like she was stunned to see someone other than her mother. She’d opened her mouth and started wailing. How that sound came out of such a tiny creature had to be magic. But, like, black magic.