“God, I love how much irritation you fit into just the syllables of my name.”
“Can you not act like you didn’t just waltz into my apartment without asking?”
“How should I act then? Like I spent the night?” He turned around, his blue eyes glinting behind the fresh coffee he brought to his lips. “You’d need more of a glow to make that look convincing. But the hair’s messy enough.”
“Yeah, let’s also not talk about made-up scenarios in which you and I have made any sort of physical contact,” I said, heading for my dresser.
“Sorry. I must have misread the way you stared at my dick before.”
“It was kind of just there, so don’t flatter yourself,” I retorted, cursing my bedroom-less apartment for the millionth time as I rifled through my drawer in clear view of Mason. “So, are you planning to tell me at all why you’re here? The only reason I haven’t called the cops is because I have a feeling that whatever you have to say has to do with your brother.”
“Don’t pin his existence all on me. He’s your ex, too.”
“I’m aware,” I scowled, yanking on a pair of yoga pants and crossing my arms over my chest. Standing across the studio from Mason, I cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “So, what is it? Did you finally track him down?”
“Something like that. I didn’t get in direct contact with him yet, but I received something in the mail that pointed me in his direction.”
“What does that mean?”
From his back pocket, Mason took out a folded card. He held it out and when it was clear that he wouldn’t be walking it to me, I sighed and dragged my feet over to him. I didn’t want it to show but I was deathly curious about whatever the hell it was he had in his hand. But the second I got close enough to touch what he was holding, my heart beat out of my chest.
“What is this?” I whispered despite having a hunch once I plucked the card into my own fingers and felt its weight in my hand. It can’t be. It was a six by eight-inch rectangle and not just any kind, but one I knew well having looked recently through a million samples from a dozen different calligraphers. But I told myself it couldn’t be, and I tried to ignore the heat of Mason’s stare as I turned the embossed vellum around, letting my horror and confusion settle on the sweeping cursive printing three names I knew well.
~
Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Tully
Request the Honor of Your Presence
At the Marriage Of Their Daughter
Eva Cecilia Tully
To
Aaron Easton Leo
Saturday, the Seventeenth of December
At The Sundara Resort in St. Lucia
~
My stomach turned.
No.
No, no.
It was a misprint. It had to be. Eva Tully was the daughter of tech mogul Glenn Tully and his third wife, Ana Livia. She was also the swimsuit model who’d barked at me for spilling Cristal on her Manolos at her twenty-sixth birthday last year. Though I hadn’t. She had. She was just too drunk to realize and Aaron urged to me take the blame, hissing, “Christ, Taylor, it’s her birthday,” though he might as well have said, “Don’t fight her, she’s hot.”
And she was. Eva was also dating Mason at the time. In fact, they were running on a nearly six-month relationship at that point, which was apparently his longest since junior high. I knew that because Aaron tracked Mason’s every move like some kind of secret paparazzo, and he anticipated Mason’s potential nuptials in the most oddly obsessive manner. “I’ll fucking kill myself if those two ever get married,” he always used to mutter. Whenever I asked why, he’d say, “I’ll never beat him.” It was vague, but clear enough to make me feel like crap.
Of course, it made me feel even worse now that I was holding the invitation to their fucking wedding.
This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. Nauseous, I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to either process the information or wake up from the dream. Aaron and Eva. Eva and Aaron. I repeated their names over and over, and while it didn’t make them feel any more real, tears started burning in my eyes. Nothing was sinking in and worse than that, Mason Leo was the only person I had to talk to. “I don’t understand. What is this?”
“It’s a fucking golf catalogue. What does it look like?”