by Kris Ripper
“Do you want me to tell you what I’m doing?”
I blinked.
“You’re staring at me. I thought you might be curious.”
“Oh. No. I just...like looking at you. Is why I’m staring. Sorry, I can stop.” I performed an elaborate stretch and managed to knock over my water bottle, which was thankfully still capped. But good idea, accidental clumsiness. I drank some water. Stretched again. Drank again.
“Oh my god, go back to staring at me if you want, your fidgeting is making it hard to concentrate.”
I moved my chair a little closer. “Okay.”
They opened their mouth, then shut it. Then tried again. “Feeling awkward. I should have gotten us food or something. I did eat some salads this week, but now I’m down to shredded carrots and sunflower seeds. Which I think even you can’t make into a meal. And I ate the rest of the whipped cream yesterday. Mrs. MacLeod will probably bring over leftovers later, but I can’t guarantee it.”
“We could order in. Or go out. Or go back to my place. The Jenkinses—my landlords—aren’t home so we could use the main house.” I checked my watch. Still early. More than enough time to go somewhere if they wanted to.
“I have bread. We could make peanut butter and jelly?”
“Sold! PB&J it is. Can I bust out your toaster? PB&J is more fancy when you lightly toast the bread first.”
They laughed. “Of course it is. That sounds nice.”
“Sweet.”
We feasted on lightly toasted PB&J and then huddled around their computer, laughing at the commenters on Your Spinster Uncle, who were apparently in ecstasy over our “couple quotient.”
“They’re feral,” Sidney said.
I pointed to YourSpinsterOwl, who’d commented, You two are the physical manifestation of the heart-eyes emoji with a heart. “Aww, your brother is seriously adorable.”
“He’s the best.”
“I always wanted a sibling, but it’s only me in my family.”
They nodded. “It was just me and my mom for years when I was a kid. We moved all the time, had very little money, and I changed schools a ton, which is supposed to make you adaptable and good at friend-making, but I guess I never figured that out, so I was alone a lot. Then she hooked up with Arman’s dad when I was fourteen and Arman was born a little while after that, which was a huge shock, but probably the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Wow, really?” Oh my god, how much did I love listening to them talk about themself? So, so much. “That’s amazing.”
“It was. Until then I don’t think I understood how to like...be with people. I guess that sounds weird.” They paused, fingers lightly tapping the edge of the keyboard. “I’d always thought of myself as alone, but Arman made me...real, in a way. He needed me, loved me, made me want to be around for him. I’d always assumed I’d go back east for college, or England, Ireland. Somewhere far away. But I stayed a lot closer because I didn’t want him to forget about me.”
There’s only so sad you can be on someone else’s behalf, and I didn’t think Sidney would appreciate me getting all weepy over their, like, teenage self. But that sounded so damn lonely. “It seems like it worked out? I mean for Arman. He got this totally extraordinary older sibling he can watch twice a week on YouTube.”
They kind of laughed. “Yeah. I don’t know about extraordinary, but I feel confident we aren’t going to lose touch.”
“Not with him commenting on every video.” I risked touching their arm, just lightly, the way I liked it when they touched mine. If Mara was right, they didn’t share much, which made this...even more special than it already felt. “Thank you for telling me. About your brother.”
“Thank you for listening. I don’t want to bore anyone, but I think my little owlet is pretty awesome.”
“I think so too. And you’re a really good role model. Like, you’re doing a great service and illustrating your relationship principles in real time, for your brother, for your fans, for whoever stumbles upon these videos. Though I totally wish we had a cooler ship name.”
“Now we know: date only based on the coolness of your ship name with that person.” Sidney’s voice regained some solidity. “I think this puts Your Spinster Uncle out of a job, actually. The number one priority of all relationships is ship name.”
I shouldered into their shoulder. “You should write a self-help book. That’s how you’ll make your millions, solving all dating problems once and for all.”
“There could be an app too. ‘Forget all those dating sites with their complex algorithms based on how much you might like another human being! Try our app, which uses an arbitrary algorithm taking into consideration only your first names!’”
“Honestly?” I thought about my friends and their adventures in online dating. “I think people would install that just for fun. It might work. Like, you’d have a self-selected dating pool based on people thinking that was entertaining.”
“And we wouldn’t let them even choose genders or race or height or whatever. It’d be the purest form of dating: based only on your names fitting in a catchy way.”
“Alas, we would never have gotten together.” I rested my head against their arm and sighed.
After a brief hesitation, they put their arm around my shoulders. “There, there. We’ve already gotten together. No app can keep us apart now.”
I readied my best Braveheart voice. “No app can keep us apart now!”
Both of us giggled.
“We are ridiculous,” they said.
“Yeah. It’s rad, right?”
“Pretty much.”
We sat close in our chairs and enjoyed the show in the comments until I went home.
Chapter Fifteen
The day of The Big Fitting—i.e. Oscar, Mason, and I getting fitted for our wedding rental suits—dawned on a Wednesday in the first week of February. I got to work early so I could get out early and was a little shocked that Jack was already in the fish bowl. Since most of my event planning time was at odd hours, I didn’t usually get to the fish bowl right away, but I had a few things I could knock out with emails to vendors. And it’d give me an opportunity to get ahead on proofreading the “Fling bricks” (the packets we’d hand out to everyone in attendance).
“Oh. Hey, Jack. Um.” I was so taken aback I just stood in the doorway for a few seconds staring at him. He looked terrible. Like he hadn’t slept. His sleeves were rolled up, but where on Sidney it looked intentional and sexy, on Jack it just looked messy. His hair was half-combed, and a comb was sitting on the table next to him.
As if he noticed it at the same time, he grabbed it and shoved it into his gym bag. “Why are you here this early?”
“Trying to get some hours in so I can leave early for an appointment later.” Should I have checked with Jack before doing that? I was his supervisor. Did that mean I could do whatever I wanted or had a greater responsibility to make sure he knew where I was? I couldn’t decide. I didn’t want him to think I was skiving off work, so I added, “Deb lets me flex a little when I need to.”
He waved a hand. “That makes sense. I’ll be out of your hair soon. I like working here because it’s so quiet in the morning. No one gets to this floor until nine.”
“Yeah, same.” I put my stuff down at the other end of the table and went about my usual setting-up routine, booting up my laptop, glancing over my lists for the last few days to make sure I had a plan for everything I’d meant to get done and crossed off everything I’d gotten done. The shared spreadsheet made it clear that Jack had done...a lot. At this rate we might not need full-time hours for the next two weeks.
I also checked the voice mail box for the other job I was covering, took a few notes, made a new list for that job, and a new list for the Fling.
By then the coffee maker thing was heated up, so I went back to the coffee/tea
room to make a cup. (In what I considered to be one of the more genius inventions, the coffee/tea rooms were converted closets with sinks, pod coffee makers, and hot water dispensers for tea, which meant that you could stay caffeinated all day long without going too far away from your area, and it wasn’t a full-on kitchen which meant no one could corner you there with two hours of small talk.)
After a moment of thought I made another cup and pocketed some creamers and sugars. There was always the possibility Jack would throw it back in my face—literally or, more likely, figuratively—but the guy looked grim so it was worth a shot.
I set the cup down near him and the cream and sugar beside it. “Thought you might want some.”
He laughed harshly. “I look that bad, huh?”
“It’s seven a.m. Who doesn’t look bad at this time of day?”
He glanced up. “You don’t look bad, Declan.” He winced. “Shit, I don’t mean that in a harassment way, I’m not hitting on you. I just mean it looks like you took a shower this morning.”
Yikes. I mean, technically I was his supervisor? But he was definitely older than me. I would for sure have felt creeped out if I thought he was seriously trying to pick me up.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he said stiffly. “I didn’t mean to. I’m not humaning well today.”
“It’s early, you have time to regain your humaning abilities. And I totally did not think you were hitting on me, it’s fine. I brought you coffee, though, if that helps.” Only now it seemed kind of weird. “Um, I’m...also not hitting on you.”
He offered a wan smile as he pulled the coffee toward him and dumped two creamers and two sugars into it. “Understood. We are officially not sexually harassing each other.”
“Yep.” I hopped out of my chair. “Uh, sorry, forgot a stir stick, I’ll be right back.”
“I got it.” He picked up a ball point pen and used the non-writing side to stir.
It was a weirdly unrefined thing to watch him do. Jack always seemed so put together, ready for any new challenge. To see him stirring his coffee with a cheap blue pen was incongruent with my idea of him.
Then again, he still had only half of his hair combed. And his laptop screen was dark, as if he’d been staring at it for long enough to go to standby.
“Um. Everything...okay?”
“Not even a little bit. No. But you don’t need to hear about my problems. I hope your appointment today is a positive thing instead of a negative thing.”
“Sure, I mean, more a check-it-off-get-it-done thing. Two of my best friends are getting married, so the rest of us are going to get our suits fitted today.”
“Ah. Marriage.” He nodded, absently running a hand through the side of his hair that had, until then, been neat. “I wish them the best of luck.” He said it so darkly that I wasn’t sure how to respond.
After a too-long pause I went with, “Thank you?”
“Jesus. Sorry.” This time he went at his hair with both hands, took a gulp of coffee, and stood up. “I’ll be right back.” Out he went, down the hall toward the nearest bathroom.
My guess was confirmed when he came back seven minutes later (I wasn’t tracking the time for any reason other than I thought I might have to go make sure he was okay if he...never came back). His hair was damp and roughly styled, his cheeks were fresher like maybe he’d splashed water on them, and he’d unrolled his cuffs to his wrists. All around he looked more awake. And more Jack.
“I apologize for being a basket case,” he said as he snapped his laptop shut and shuffled his papers together. “I have a personal thing, but that’s no excuse.”
“I think it is an excuse, though? I mean, for looking tired.” The thing was, we’d been mostly on-the-chilly-side-of-civil to each other, which made it hard for me to sound sincere in offering sympathy. But I found, somewhat to my surprise, that I was honestly sympathetic. “Sorry you have a personal thing.”
“Thanks. I’ve only got a few more calls to make later today and then I’ll be ready to start assembling the Fling bricks and goody bags. And thanks for the coffee.” He raised the mug, shouldered his gym bag, briefcase, and left.
I sat alone in the fish bowl and stared after him.
* * *
My evil plan (which was to say the one my boss knew about and thus wasn’t evil at all) worked and I got out of there with enough time to get to the fitting before the appointment. I parked and wiped imaginary sweat from my brow.
Mase was already inside waiting on his suit to be brought out. “Hey, Dec.” He kissed my cheek. “Please tell me you stayed after the show and had such amazing sex with Sidney that you completely forgot to tell me about it.”
“Oh my god.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Spill. You owe me all the vicarious details.”
“We did not—” I lowered my voice “—have sex after the show. But when we do, I’m pretty sure it’ll be amazing.”
“Details, cupcake. At least tell me about the making out. I know there was making out.”
I’d always been this guy, the guy who delighted in sharing all the details. Not in a gross way, in a celebratory way. Which made it weird that this thing I felt so celebratory about...also made me kind of want to keep them to myself.
This wasn’t the same as hooking up with a cute guitar player at a party in college and going back to my friends full of stories. This felt...more real. More soft, almost, like I didn’t want to risk leaving indentations from talking about it with other people. “Um. I think... I think it’s private?” I made a face. “That’s bizarre, right? Me feeling private?”
He smiled and brushed his lips over my cheek again. “Aww, baby, I’m super happy for you. That’s so sweet.” He might have said more, but we were interrupted.
“Mason?” A crisp young Latinx man gestured to a fitting room and hung Mase’s suit. “This is you.”
“Thanks.” He straightened his shoulders and headed in.
“And you are?” the guy said to me.
“Declan Swick-Smith.”
“Same party?”
“Yep.”
He nodded and disappeared to the back, leaving me scuffing my sneakers on the floor and wondering if I could find the shoe polish I knew I’d bought at some point. Maybe? I’d kept it on the floor of the closet in my last apartment, and then I’d moved. I didn’t remember packing it or unpacking it. Then again, I didn’t remember throwing it away.
“Declan.”
I followed the guy and thanked him. “Mase?” I called over the half-wall. “How’re you looking?”
“Irresistible. You?”
“Half naked, will update.”
He laughed. “I like you half naked, Dec, but I don’t think Mia’s parents would be thrilled with that as a ceremony look.”
“I’ll have to rethink.” I sighed loudly. “Weddings are so inconvenient.”
“Hopefully Mia and Ronnie go through with theirs. The Motherfuckers are oh-for-one right now.”
Ouch. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but thankfully Oscar’s voice giving his name—presumably to the fitting dude—provided a distraction. “Hey, Oscar!” I called.
“Must you speak to me through a dressing room door?”
“Um, yes?” I pictured the disgruntled expression on his face and grinned, alone, to myself, in my dressing room. “How was your day? How’s work? Anything exciting happen?”
“You’re a terrible person,” he muttered as Fitting Attendant Dude got him settled next to me.
“I know! Too bad you love me in all my terribleness!”
“Y’all,” Mason said from my other side. “Ronnie did right by us. I look fly.”
Fly, omg. “I’m gonna report you to the Department of Outdated Terminology for that. Also, I wanna see!”
“Get your ass out here, then.”
<
br /> “Yeah, yeah.” I turned sideways and surveyed my appearance. I had to agree. We were in cream colored suits with lush lavender ties to pick up the lavender the brides were wearing. My suit looked damn good on me and the fit was perfect.
I emerged from the dressing room about to say I looked fly except the words died on my lips.
Mason looked absolutely magnificent, and I suddenly remembered getting fitted for our own wedding—the excitement, and joy and abandon of it, of letting ourselves become wrapped up in the whole thing.
“You look great,” he said, holding a hand out to me. “C’mere.”
I let him pull me into a hug, shocked by how moved I was seeing him in a suit, wearing one myself. “Jesus, I just had the strongest memory.”
“Me too. I think we’ve aged well, don’t you?”
We turned to the mirror, still one-arm-hugging. We both looked freaking hot.
“I know everything went to hell, but it was...really nice thinking I was gonna marry you, Mase.”
His reflection smiled. “Yeah, it was wild, wasn’t it? It feels like two lifetimes ago.”
And it did. Usually. When we weren’t in wedding suits. Or when I wasn’t contemplating a relationship with someone. “Yeah, but also like maybe it was last week. God.”
“Don’t tell me you’re having regrets, Dec. No offense or anything, but I’ve sort of moved on.”
I elbowed him. “Shush. I’m not having regrets, I’m having a moment. If you don’t mind.” A moment of...doubt, maybe. A moment of reliving the worst thing I’d ever done and having no idea if I could promise I wouldn’t do it again.