The Hating Game

“I am an independent observer. I assure you, it went pretty well.”

“You’re right, I guess,” he says heavily.

“Pardon? Could you possibly repeat that in a moment, so I can record it? I want it as my text message alert noise. Lucy Hutton, you’re right.”

Teasing him will get him out of his little funk. He looks at me.

“I could do the voice mail message too if you want. You’ve reached the voice mail of Lucy Hutton. She’s too busy crying at a stranger’s wedding to take your call right now, but leave a message.”

“Oh, shut up. I must watch too many movies. It was so romantic.”

“You’re kinda cute.”

“Joshua Templeman thinks I’m kind of cute. Hell has officially frozen over.” We grin at each other.

“You must have cried for a reason. You’re dreaming of your own wedding?”

I look at him defensively. “No. Of course not. How lame. Plus, my fiancé is invisible, remember.”

“But why would a stranger’s wedding make you cry, then?”

“Marriage is one of the last ancient rites of civilization, I guess. Everyone wants someone who loves them so much they’d wear a gold ring. You know, to show everyone else their heart is taken.”

“I’m not sure it’s relevant these days.”

I try to think of how to explain it. “It’s so completely primal. He’s w

earing my ring. He’s mine. He’ll never be yours.”

The slow procession of traffic takes us all back to the hotel. I hand the keys to the hotel valet and Josh attempts to steer me to the side of the building.

“Josh. No. Come on.”

“Let’s go to the room.” He’s putting on the brakes. He weighs a ton.

“You’re being ridiculous. Explain what is going on with you.”

“It’s stupid,” he mutters. “It’s nothing.”

“Well, we’re going in.” I take his hand firmly and march him through the doors held open for us.

I take the deepest breath my lungs can manage, and walk through into an entire room half filled with Templemans.

Chapter 23

In a pretty room adjoining the ballroom, we spend nearly two hours mingling in various states of awkwardness in an endless champagne reception. When I say mingling, I mean me carrying Joshua through a succession of social encounters with distant relatives while he stands beside me, watching me glug champagne to dull my nerves, which burns my empty stomach like gasoline. Every introduction goes like this.

“Lucy, this is my aunt Yvonne, my mother’s sister. Yvonne, Lucy Hutton.”

When his duty is completed, he begins occupying himself with stroking my inner arm, spreading his hand across my back to find the bare skin under my hair, or linking and unlinking our fingers. Always staring. He barely takes his eyes off me. He’s probably amazed by my small-talk ability.

After a while, he is taken by his mother out into the side garden, and I watch through the window as he poses with various combinations of family. His smile is forced. When he catches me spying, I’m beckoned out, and he and I pose together in front of a charming rosebush. When the shutter clicks shut, the old version of me shakes her head, wondering how we ever got to this point. Me, and Joshua Templeman, captured side by side in the same photograph, smiling? Every new development between us feels like an impossibility.

He turns me and cups my chin in his palms, and I hear the photographer say, Lovely. Another shutter click, and I forget the world in the instant his lips touch mine. I wish I could shake off my old mistrusts, but this all feels too much like a summer afternoon daydream. The sort I might have had once, and then hated myself for it.

I watch Patrick and Mindy across the lawn, now clinched together romantically in front of another camera and I realize that I’m clinched in a fairly romantic pose myself. The man who’s hated me for so long is now showing me off, tugging me close to his side. When we go back inside, he kisses me on the temple. He drops his mouth down to my ear, and tells me I’m beautiful. I’m turned another ninety degrees, presented to another set of relatives. He’s showing me off.

What I haven’t worked out yet is, Why?