“Yes, but I doubt they’ll be here. They don’t like to leave their little corner of the world. My grandparents lived there and died there. It’s really too bad they can’t be here today—they would have loved knowing that one of us married an Englishman. Even though they hated London. You would have liked my grandmother, she was a grumpy old lady like you.”
I punch his shoulder with my free hand, though I can’t make much of a fist because I’m holding onto my tiny clutch handbag.
When we enter the zoo area of the park, suddenly everyone has perfect hair and is in tuxedos and cocktail dresses with pashmina shawls. There is a string quartet playing a Sinatra song and servers offering trays of champagne. It couldn’t be more New York-y.
“We’ll need these,” Scott says, grabbing a couple of flutes of champagne. He hands me a glass and raises his to me. “Thank you again for being here.”
“Cheers.” I clink glasses with him. The champagne is cold and tangy and just what I needed.
A small male human, about seven years old, suddenly runs towards Scott yelling “Brad! Hi Brad!” and wrapping his arms around Scott’s legs. “Hi Brad Brad Brad!”
Scott makes a big show of looking around, and says “I wonder if my young cousin Christopher is coming today.”
“I’m here!”
“I hope not, because he’s really annoying.”
“You’re annoying!”
“You’re really lucky you don’t have to meet him, Erin, he thinks he’s so cool and funny but he’s really not cool and funny.”
“You’re not cool! You’re not funny! Brad Brad Brad!”
Scott is having trouble keeping a straight face, and I’m having trouble keeping myself from pushing this kid out of the way and kissing Scott’s face all over.
A lovely middle-aged woman in a red dress tiptoes over in heels. “Christopher, let go of his legs! Hi Scott, sorry. Somebody’s had a little too much sugar today.”
Scott finally looks down at the boy. “Oh hi Christopher.” Christopher finally lets go of his legs and sticks his tongue out at him. “Anna,” he says to the mother. “This is my good friend and writing partner Erin Duffy. My aunt Anna—married to my father’s brother.”
“Oh how nice to meet you,” she says to me. “I didn’t know Scott had a writing partner.”
“It’s a new thing,” he says.
“I didn’t know you had any friends!” Christopher says, punching Scott in the thigh.
“Hello,” I say, as soon as I can get a word in edgewise. “I love your dress, it’s beautiful.”
“Oh thank you, I was just thinking I love your dress, it fits you perfectly. This is my son Christopher. He’s a big fan of Scott’s, as you can see.”
“I met Daniel Radcliffe at a party once and got him to record a little video on my phone, of him saying ‘hi’ to Christopher. Even though he’s not old enough to watch the movies yet.”
“I have now! I got to see the first two!”
“Oh that’s not all that Scott did, though,” she tells me. “He also read all of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books to him when he was recovering from pneumonia last year.”
“I was just avoiding work,” Scott shrugs.
“He stayed with him for two days.”
I try to ignore the fact that my ovaries feel like they’re exploding. So far, I’m wondering if Scott’s family is really as uptight and snobby as he has led me to believe. Maybe he just wanted to lower my expectations. These relatives seem great.
“Ohhhh, you look sooo handsome!” I hear the excited gasp that can only come from a mother.
“Hey Mom.” Scott smiles and hugs her. He’s about a foot and a half taller than her, and the hug lasts an eternity. I take a sip of champagne and look around, trying to spy a sea lion. His mom makes a sad little sound and runs a fingertip beneath her right eye. “Oh come on,” he says, in a tender hushed voice. “It hasn’t been that long.”
His mom punches him in the arm. “It has been forever!”
“Ow.”
She punches him again. This guy really does take a lot of punches.
“Too busy to visit your poor old mother. As if you can’t write from anywhere. Did you get those law school applications I sent you?”
“Please stop sending them to me.”
“There’s a lot of writing involved in law, you know.”
“Mom, this is Erin Duffy.” He says my name to her like he’s mentioned me before.
She gives me a quick once-over before smiling warmly and reaching to shake my free hand with both of hers.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Braddock.”
“Hello Erin, I’m Claire, it’s so nice to meet you. Scotty’s so happy you could join him here.”
“Oh well, it’s an honor to be here, it’s such a beautiful setting.”
Claire Braddock doesn’t have as much of a European accent as I was expecting, and she honestly reminds me a bit of my own mother—if my mom had a makeover at Neiman Marcus, a Bachelors Degree from Vassar College, a French mother, an Italian father, and a wealthy husband with a stick up his butt.
I hear him before I see him. Scott’s father has the same deep voice, but it’s louder and more commanding and a lot less sexy (in my opinion). He’s telling someone that he’ll talk to him about something later, but he doesn’t sound happy about it. A business deal, surely. Or maybe he’s unhappy because it’s not business-related.
I watch Scott’s posture straighten, his jaw stiffen. He clears his throat before stepping forward to shake hands with his dad.
His dad doesn’t come all the way to him. “Well well, look who finally decided to take a day off from making the world a better place with his movie writing. Your mother’s been worried sick.”
“Not sick—he’s exaggerating,” Claire Braddock says.
“I’m just out there writing,” Scott says, trying to sound lighthearted.
“That’s what worries her.”
Zing! Ten points for Daddy Braddock.
“That’s what worries all of us,” he mumbles.
Wow. An investment banker who doesn’t respect the career of a writer. Didn’t see that one coming!
“Hello,” he says, looking at me, without looking at me.
“Dad, this is my —” Scott starts to say “writing partner,” but his father has already walked away to greet a fancy elderly couple who are probably half as fun and ten million times richer than my entire family combined.
He puts his hand on my back and his mother is about to apologize for her husband, but he calls out to her to join him. “We’ll talk more later, dears,” she says.
“Sorry,” Scott says, rubbing my back.
“You don’t have to apologize. I wouldn’t be that interested in meeting me either.”
“Hey. You are the most interesting person here, trust me.”
I guffaw, and am about to make a face at him when I feel his hand drop and see his entire body tense up, even more than it did when he saw his father.
“And here comes Mr. Charm,” he says under his breath. He polishes off his champagne. “This will be fun.”
I follow his gaze to a man who looks remarkably like Scott—same height, build, coloring, features, but without the soul. I hadn’t realized how much warmth and charisma Scott exudes until I see him opposite his brother. I must say, though, this guy looks good in a tux too, only his probably cost five times as much as Scott’s. Or perhaps what makes it look so expensive is the stunning blank-eyed perfectly put-together socialite on his arm. I recognize her face from magazine and internet photos of herself and other socialites standing around looking bored and hungry.
“Oh hey there, buddy.” He shakes hands with Scott like they’re in a hand-shaking competition. Whoever grips the hardest and blinks last wins. “How’s the screenwriting business? You haven’t met my girlfriend—Ainsley Radford. Hey, didn’t your dad buy a movie studio last year? Can he help my little brother out?”
The socialite roll
s her eyes, then tells Scott: “He invested in a social media site, it hasn’t launched yet.”
“Even better—you can write for that. People don’t go to movies anymore because they’re too busy connecting on social media, isn’t that right? Should we be seated now?”
He doesn’t even give Scott a chance to respond to anything. As much as I used to want to punch Scott in the face (and still sometimes do), Scott’s cockiness has an underlying humor to it. This guy makes me want to walk away and punch a wall. I don’t even want to interact with him. He may be the first true dickhead I’ve ever met.
Scott turns to me, with a pained smile. “This is my beloved older brother, Carter.”
Carter doesn’t even offer his hand to me, he just snorts at Scott and nods at me.
“Are you his girlfriend?” Ainsley says to me.
“I’m Erin. We just wrote a script together and occasionally fuck each other’s brains out. Nice to meet you.”
I pull Scott away from them, toward the seating area where people have been gathering for the ceremony. We don’t look back, but I do hear his brother say the words “Los Angeles” and “brains” and I don’t think the full sentence was “Everyone who moves to Los Angeles to write screenplays has brains.” I do check to confirm that his parents weren’t within earshot. I finally look up at Scott, and he is silently laughing so hard he is trembling and tearing up. Phew.
Once he’s found his voice again, he high-fives me and apologizes for his family’s attitude about screenwriting.
“Please. First of all, as you know, I went to a college of arts and communication in a town crawling with Ivy League assholes. Secondly, it’s no different from being in LA and telling people you write movies not television. Third—you look so handsome in your tuxedo I barely even notice anything anyone else is saying.”
He looks as surprised as I am that I just said something so blatantly sweet to him out loud. He takes my hand and squeezes it. He kisses me on the top of my head.
I need to watch myself. All these weddings and tuxedos and champagne and New York are getting to me.
Chapter 17
*Erin*
I've never been to the wedding of people I didn't know before, but after watching Natalie and William during the ceremony, I want to be their friend. I love them. They are so beautiful and cute and they managed to loosen up a hundred and fifty uptight Brits and New Yorkers with their sweet joy. Even though they're around my age, I feel protective of them, in the way that I feel protective of Harry and Sally, The Princess Bride and Westley, and Diane Court and Lloyd Dobler.
To my great horror, during the ceremony, when I started to imagine myself up there with John Cusack/Lloyd Dobler, my brain played a terrible trick on me. John Cusack suddenly morphed into Scott Braddock, and my imagined self, in her slip dress, looked happier than she usually does. I physically jerked back in my seat. Scott, who had his arm around me, furrowed his brow. “You okay?” he mouthed. I nodded. He squeezed my shoulder. I realized I was crying.
I’ve never imagined myself marrying anyone other than Lloyd Dobler before. I’m not sure which is more of a fantasy—the movie character or the amazing version of Scott that I would actually marry.
We are now seated at a round dining table, in what looks and feels like an enormous greenhouse.
As well as chandeliers and greenery, there are about a hundred glowing floating flameless candles in the air above the dining tables—at least it looks like they’re floating—and sometimes I pretend that I’m at Hogwarts instead of surrounded by stuffy New York finance people. Thankfully, the guests at our table are lovely. Next to me are a gorgeous couple named Avery and Luke. Avery used to be Natalie’s boss and William was Luke’s assistant. They’re engaged, and Luke’s English accent is insanely sexy. I make a mental note to write a part for Tom Hiddleston in my next rom com script.
Avery asks what kind of screenplays I write. Scott tells them I write “amazing hilarious romantic comedies.” She says, “Oh I love that, good for you!” and I can tell that she’s not a fan of the genre.
“Avery is big fan of romantic comedy films,” Luke says, patting her hand.
She gives him a look. There’s some kind of inside joke there. “Luke is a massive Hugh Grant fan,” Avery says. “They’re practically the same person.”
Ahhh, happy couples with their inside jokes and their looks and their hand-patting. Scott is caught up in a lively conversation with the man next to him, who is a close friend of the Braddock family. He keeps managing to side step any talk of politics by encouraging the man to tell stories about hanging out with New York novelist Jay McInerney in the Eighties and Nineties. He reaches over and puts his hand on my thigh every so often. It’s nice.
Dickhead—I mean—Carter Braddock makes his way over to our table to introduce himself and chat with everyone except me and Scott. He is a smooth talker, but surely everyone can see through him. Like literally-he is so superficial he is practically transparent.
I wait for a break in Scott’s conversation with the family friend and lean over towards him. “Are we staying to dance, or can we leave soon?”
“Trust me,” he says. “The dancing at these New York weddings is about as festive as jury duty.”
“Roger that.”
He leans in closer to whisper in my ear. “Plus, if we don’t get back to the room soon I’ll have to fuck you under the table.”
“Oooh. Does it have to be either/or?”
He laughs. Until Carter slaps his hand down on his shoulder.
“Bro.”
What kind of brother calls his actual brother “bro?” Gross.
Scott clears his throat. “Bro.”
“You two kids having a nice night? You need any tips on what to talk about with people who can talk about things besides Hollywood?”
I can tell he’s trying to be funny. I know it’s expected of New Yorkers to make fun of people who willingly live in Los Angeles. I wait for Scott to say something awesome, like: “Sure. Why don’t you teach me how to blow smoke up rich people’s asses while simultaneously talking out of your own ass?” But he says nothing, and Carter just keeps going.
“I wasn’t kidding, bro, I want to help you out. I mean, I want to help Mom and Dad to not have to worry about you so much. The trust fund is supposed to be a launch pad, not a safety net.”
“I’ve made money, Carter.”
“What—two years ago?”
I reach out to hold Scott’s hand, under the table. I hate how his brother is talking to him, and my instinct is to tear him a new one, but I don’t want to embarrass Scott in front of his extended family, at a wedding. Again.
“That’s not a career,” Carter continues. “Look, you’ve made your point. You got your arty degree, you’ve had your fun on the other coast. Enough.”
I intertwine my fingers with his, because holding his hand doesn’t seem like it’s enough right now. If it gets any uglier, I’m going to give him a very classy, tasteful, secret handjob.
“I’m not done yet,” Scott finally pipes up. “Erin and I just finished writing a script together. She’s really talented.”
“Oh great. So if it actually sells you’ll only get half the money, after taxes and agent and lawyer commissions. Fantastic business model.”
Scott squeezes my fingers with his own and smiles, shaking his head. I can see that he decided many years ago that there’s no point trying to change his brother’s mind or explain the valuable contribution that writers make to society. That’s a shame.
“Oh hey wait!” Carter is about to say something to me, something that he thinks is brilliantly hilarious, I can tell. “Wait—are you Aaron Sorkin? Creator of The West Wing?”
“And I wrote the Facebook movie!” I say, meeting his obnoxious stare head-on. Wow. Hilarious. Guess I was wrong about which one of you is the funny Braddock. “I also wrote Moneyball, Steve Jobs, and A Few Good Men, wherein I coined the popular phrase: ‘You can’t handle the truth!’”
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“I didn’t realize what a big deal you are.”
“She is a big deal,” Scott says, firmly. He turns his head towards me. “We should say goodnight to the newlyweds and head out. It was wonderful to meet you,” he says to Avery and Luke. “Loved seeing you all again,” he says to everyone except Carter.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening,” Carter says, with a tone that would be more appropriate if he’d said “I hope you get hit by a truck.”
I don’t even remember saying goodbye to the adorable newlyweds or Scott’s parents or the walk back to the hotel.
When we get into the elevator, we don’t wait for the doors to begin closing before kissing. He holds me in his arms. My feet are off the ground. I can’t even tell if he’s lifting me up or if I’m floating. My lips are just so drawn to his mouth.
No one has ever been so tender while kissing me this deeply before.
When we enter the hotel room, he doesn’t turn on any lights.
Everything has slowed down, except my pulse.
All I hear is the sound of our breathing. I put my hand on his chest, to see if his heart is beating as fast as mine is. It is. He puts his hand over mine and then lifts it to his mouth, kissing the palm of my hand, the inside of my wrist, gifting kisses all the way up my arm and then breathing in my perfumed neck like he’s drawing his last breath.
“You always smell so good. What is it?”
“Me.”
He cups my face in his hands and kisses me gently on the mouth. He kisses my forehead. He turns me around and unzips my dress, letting it drop to the floor. He stays behind me, presses against me, holds my breasts, kisses my neck.
His voice is husky and low. “I think we should take things slow tonight.”
I laugh.
“I’m not kidding.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I want to make this last. I’m going to kiss you. I’m going to kiss you all over. Every inch of your beautiful naked body. I’m gonna move my hands over your skin.”
I clear my throat. “That sounds good. What about that thing you said earlier about how you couldn’t wait to fuck me? That sounded good too.”
The Wedding Season Page 11