I’m over here, and he’s over there, and I’m going to drink the remaining third of my beer very quickly and then leave and everything will be totally fine.
“So,” Lainey says brightly, her spine straightening. “You guys watching any good TV right now?”
Bless her.
I wait ten minutes, and then I force myself to wait one more, just to prove that I’m a mature, adult woman who doesn’t leave a room just because Seth is across it, pouring drinks behind the bar.
After eleven minutes, my beer is empty, so I yawn, make some excuses, pull on my coat, and leave.
When the door shuts behind me, I finally relax. I take a deep, cold breath, and I blow it out into the night air where it blurs the stars, already half-obscured by the orange light flooding the brewery’s parking lot.
It’s fine, I tell myself.
It’s getting better.
But God, I feel shitty. Between Vera and Ava and my cousins and the madness of the rehearsal dinner and the whirlwind of getting talked into the brewery, this is the first time I’ve been alone with my feelings all day.
And, honestly? They suck. Seeing Seth and talking about the damn weather feels unique awful, like opening a cookie jar to find out that it’s filled with sawdust.
“Delilah!”
Fuck.
Every single muscle in my body tenses. I hold my breath, grit my teeth, keep walking like I didn’t hear him.
Maybe I can pretend I’m wearing earbuds or something and get to my car before —
“Hey. Delilah.”
I turn, despite myself, like I’m on a string held by some invisible puppeteer.
“I didn’t think you’d be here,” I call out.
He’s one row of cars away from me, walking between a dark sedan and a medium-colored SUV, both shades of gray in the bleak color of the floodlights. His hands are stuffed into his pockets and he’s moving just quickly enough to fire up my defenses.
“I kn—”
“You don’t have to chase me down in the parking lot, I’m not coming back,” I cut him off, the words snapping across the pavement between us, whisked by a cold breeze. “It wasn’t my idea. Ava talked me into coming tonight and she pulled the whole I’m getting married tomorrow thing and she swore up and down that you wouldn’t be here, so —”
He’s stopped in the middle of the blacktop, hands still in his pockets, wearing nothing but a shirt and jeans in the cold night.
I keep talking like a ball of yarn unraveling.
“ — And I figured you’re the owner, not the bartender, so why would you be here on Friday night? But apparently Eli has some food thing going now with you guys —"
“Delilah,” he says, and it’s just one word but I feel it in my bones.
I stop talking, exhale, swallow. My hands are fists in my coat pocket, my body ready to fight for the sake of my stupid, defenseless heart.
“What?” I say, softer now, the word floating up to the parking lot lights, the stars above.
“I didn’t chase you out here to fight. I came to apologize.”
It takes me several seconds to compute that statement.
Then I’m stunned and I stare, open-mouthed, at Seth.
He rubs his hands together in front of himself, bigger and rougher than the hands of someone who mostly does payroll and invoices should be. I can see the hairs standing in goosebumps along his arms, because it’s gotta be in the low forties out here.
“I’m sorry I was kind of shitty earlier,” he says, still rubbing his hands. He looks away from me, over the shining cars parked outside the brewery. “I should have just…”
He closes his eyes, tilts his head back, hands still working in front of him and I do my best not to notice the cords in his neck, the muscles flexing in his forearms.
“Fuck,” he sighs.
It’s the best and only apology I’ve ever gotten from Seth, and to be honest, I sort of wonder if I’m hallucinating.
“You’re right,” I say, after a moment. “It was four weddings.”
He folds his arms in front of himself, looks at me, half-smiles. I take a step forward, away from the massive truck I’m standing next to, into the empty space of the parking lot aisle.
“I didn’t have to point it out,” he says, shrugging.
I uncross my arms and I take another tiny step forward, examine Seth’s face just in case it’s actually Eli or some other imposter.
It’s not. I knew it wasn’t. I think I’d know Seth blind-folded and underwater from fifty feet away.
“Sometimes I forget to count mine because I’ve spent the last week trapped in some sort of matrimony-worshipping cult, where the bride is king and the D-word is verboten,” I tell him. “Slowly but surely, they’re brainwashing me.”
He raises one eyebrow.
“Divorce,” I laugh. “Though I’d also die before saying dick in front of Vera, to be honest.”
“I can only imagine what her wedding night advice is like,” he says.
“No,” I say, and squeeze my eyes shut. “Please, no.”
“I imagine it’s to be one thing in the streets and something else entirely in the sheets,” Seth says, voice low and quiet and laughing.
“Okay, now I wish you’d come out here to start a fight,” I tell him, opening one eye to look at him.
He’s just grinning. It’s a real, true smile, like he’s just about to laugh, and it makes my stupid heart skip another beat.
“Well, if the cult needs a virgin sacrifice, at least you’re safe,” he says, and winks.
I ignore the wink, tilt my head at him.
“I’d be a terrible sacrifice anyway,” I say. “They’re supposed to go peacefully, but you know I’d be kicking and screaming all the way to the altar.”
“I see you as more of the priestess type anyway,” he teases.
“Oh, so I’m the one holding the knife over some innocent maiden?” I ask, but I’m laughing.
“Well, you’re not the innocent maiden,” he says. “And if you said you were a conduit to some ancient god, I’d buy it.”
“Thanks, I think,” I say. “But maidens have nothing to fear from me. At least where ritual sacrifice is concerned.”
“I think a vanishingly small number are worried about ritual sacrifice, truth be told,” he says.
The thought flits across my mind — does he know many virgins? Are they still? — but I push it away.
“It’s been a while since I knew what virgins worried about,” I admit, and Seth laughs again, his breath escaping in puffs.
“Right?” he agrees.
We’re both quiet a moment, alone, in the cold and the dark, and it’s nice. It feels a little like dancing on a blade, on the edge of a cliff, but for right now we’re twirling and upright and if I let myself, I might believe it could always be this way.
“You should go inside, it’s freezing out here,” I finally say.
“Back to the agreement?” he asks, and his voice is suddenly intimate, quiet, and I start nodding before I can even think about it.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s been working, hasn’t it?”