Mom smiles brightly at him. “We can talk after the wedding, sweetheart.”
I swear he turns purple. “No, really—now.”
“Well, of course, anything for the groom.”
I glare at my mother as my stomach rolls over. She glares back, like she’s saying, you’re the one who insisted he was your best friend for all those years. And yeah, you can feel the glare through the dark lenses, because it’s that kind of glare.
“This way.” He tugs on my arm, and Mom and I hustle after him as he leads us around the corner of the country club, inside the chilly entrance, and then shoves us into the coat closet.
Mom lifts her glasses. “Well, this is lovely.”
Since it’s the peak of summer and there aren’t any coats hanging in here, save for a lone fur number that’s dangling like it’s about to fall off the hanger, there’s almost enough room for all three of us.
But there’s not enough room for the body odor. Especially as Jerry leans closer. “Remember when you left Emily?”
My stomach bottoms out and my skin breaks out in goosebumps while a surge of heat floods my veins and makes my face go hotter than the sun. Voices from somewhere outside the closet drift in, and I wish I was with that group, whoever they are, instead of in here.
Mom shoves me out of the way. “Jerry, sweetheart, that’s not what you want to think about on your wedding day.”
He peers around her, and is he—is he sniffing my mother? “But it made me think—you remember that Thanksgiving after, when we hit the course for eighteen, and you said—you said love is something people say they’re in so they can manipulate each other.”
Mom turns raised brows on me, and my toes start to go numb as the voices get louder. Is that door made of paper?
“Jerry. Shh. I was talking about—” About people richer, more famous, and in better shape than you.
Hell.
I can’t say that to a guy on his wedding day, no matter how much I hate these damn rituals.
Not that it matters what I say. He’s rambling, and getting louder, and he’s raking his hands through his hair and making it stand on end, and why didn’t his photographer tell him he still has a piece of toilet paper stuck to his chin where he clearly nicked himself while shaving?
“It’s like, every time my mother says she loves me, I know. I just know she’s only saying it because she has to. And then I think about Henri, and her cat, and the way she loves Buffy the Vampire Slayer even though it’s like, old, and her weird glittery tea mugs, and about how some days she forgets to shower, and—”
“C’mon, man, you know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have real love with her.”
“Do I? I don’t know if I love her that way. But you’d know, wouldn’t you? How do you know?”
Christ on a manicotti, he’s going to make me spew lies.
I hate lies.
I hate lies almost as much as I hate weddings, but I stay neutral. I don’t encourage or discourage people from getting married.
Bad press if you do, plus, who the hell am I to punch a hole in someone’s fairy tale? Live and let live. I speak quietly, in the hopes that he’ll follow my lead. “You just…know.”
Even my mother winces.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know, though. I don’t. Love’s this…this thing that people want to have so badly that they lie to themselves and say they’re in it when what they really want is to know there’s someone who has to have sex with them every day for the rest of their lives, or someone who’ll make sure the bills get paid, or someone to harp on because they want to be in control. Love’s not real.”
“This is cold feet, man.”
“I can’t marry Henri,” he shrieks. “I can’t do it. She’ll drive me fucking insane within six months. I thought I loved her because she’s like this siren who preaches that love’s so real and it’s awesome and I do like having sex regularly, and I thought I felt it, but it was all what I wanted to feel, and not what I feel at all.”
“Jerry. Shh. Quiet, man, they can—”
“Do you regret it? That’s what I need to know. If you had to do it over again, would you have gone through with the wedding?”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
This is not the time and place to answer that question.
“That’s what I thought. Ever since I put a ring on it, I’ve been wearing a noose too. And not a noose around my neck. It’s like a noose around my balls. It doesn’t feel good. I realized I can’t marry Henri, and for the first time in weeks, I can breathe without my nuts choking.”
There’s a gasp outside the door, and Jerry goes as white as the damn monument outside.
Minus the black googly eyes, of course.
“That’s her,” he whispers. “Oh, god, that’s her. Hide me. Save me. Protect me.”
The door wrenches open, and gaping at us in the doorway is a fresh-faced woman wearing a button-down flannel shirt that would make her look like she’s planning to go cut down a few trees if it weren’t for the hoop skirt covered by a plastic trash bag hanging off her hips and the rollers standing tall in her brown hair.
Jerry tries to hide behind me, which doesn’t work. I’m not a wall, and there’s not enough space in here.
“Jerry?” The bride’s eyebrows crease. “This isn’t…you’re not…oh, god. You are. I heard you and I thought you were talking in metaphors about seeing your cousins, but you were talking about…leaving me.”
“I’m sorry, Henri.” His voice is muffled. “It’s not you. It’s me. I—I—I have a crush on Luca’s mom!”
“What?” Yeah, that was me and Mom, together.
“It’s true,” he says. “I’ve had a crush on Morgan for years. I’m sorry, Luca, but I don’t call you because I like you. I call you because I like your mom. I just—she’s so out of my league—and so much older—but god, I love older women. They’re so experienced. And they don’t have hang-ups about their bodies because once they hit forty, they don’t give a damn and that’s so effing sexy.”
I’m gaping.
Mom’s gaping.
The bride’s stuttering.
Pretty sure we’re not all just shocked he used the word effing in a sentence, either.
Jerry shoves me at the bride, then thrusts his fingers into my mom’s short hair, goes up on his tiptoes since she has him by two inches even without the heels, and slams his mouth against hers.
I choke.
The bride—Henri—gasps.
Mom goes completely rigid, but only for a second before her hands drift to his waist, and—
And I cannot watch this.
I turn, and the bride and I accidentally lock eyes.
Her cheek is twitching like she’s trying to hold in the tears, and there’s a broken desolation haunting every speck of her face. Her chest heaves, and dammit.
If people want to be idiots and buy into all of this love crap, that’s their problem.
But this scene?
It’s all too familiar.
And I still have regrets about the day I was in Jerry’s shoes.
I sincerely doubt any part of his story is identical to mine, but the end result is the same.