But I know I don’t hate it. I know that there’s a mean, ugly part of me gloating over the fact that he’s got a date somewhere, but he’s here, asking me to dance. I don’t like that I feel that way, but I do.
“I’d hate it,” I finally say, still watching the bartender. “If you were here with me and dancing with another me? I’d hate it.”
There’s a long, long pause. The line moves forward again, we’re almost next, and I have no idea why I didn’t just lie.
It would be fine. Why the hell didn’t I just say that?
“Would you light me on fire for it, or…”
“You’ll never find out, will you?” I tease, even though the champagne glass has gone slippery in my hand and my heart is beating too loudly. “I’m not your date, and I don’t have an evil twin. I think.”
“It might explain a lot if you did,” Seth muses, and the couple in front of us takes a beer and a glass of champagne and finally, finally, we’re at the front. Seth gets more whiskey. I get more champagne. The married-people dance finally ends, the strains of music fading gently away to a smattering of applause, probably because Ava and Thad are doing something cute and romantic.
My stomach squirms for reasons that have nothing to do with them.
“Which table are you at?” I ask Seth. We’re strolling slowly, aimlessly, and I’m not even sure that we’re walking together but it also feels like I should say something.
“Good question,” he says, and digs in his pocket, pulls out the tented piece of paper, turns it over.
Then he pauses.
“I think it says two,” he says, frowning at the hand-calligraphed script on the back.
“You’re not at table two,” I tell him, glancing over at the card. “That’s the bridal party…”
I trail off. It’s right there, in black ink. Table two.
I stare up at him, the pieces suddenly falling into place as he smiles, a little sheepish, and shrugs.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” I say. “What — did she —”
“There you two are!” Vera says, suddenly emerging from the crowd, resplendent in royal blue and done up to the nines. “Good, you found each other.”
I swallow hard and try to breathe. That’s not enough, so I do it again, but I can already feel the heat rising into my face and my throat closing with embarrassment and surprise and bright, sharp anger.
“You set us up?” I ask, my voice brittle enough to snap in two. “And you played along?”
Vera reaches out and cups my face in one hand. To my credit, I take a step back instead of smacking it away.
“Delilah, you know how you are,” she says. “I should have told you, but I just knew you’d be so happy to see him again, and I knew you didn’t want to be the only one alone at the wedding just for the sake of your detox. You deserve a little happiness, sweetheart.”
I can’t speak. I can’t even move. All the blood in my body has rushed to my skin and I’m boiling over, a droplet of sweat already trickling down the back of my neck, my throat constricting.
“Have a wonderful time,” she says, then kisses me on the cheek. “Now, I’ve got to go see about a cake! Try the mini quiche!”
Just like that, she’s gone, swirling away into the crowd. No big deal, she just casually mentions that she went against my explicit wishes, decided she knew best, and set me up with the one person in the entire world I shouldn’t be at a wedding with.
“You okay?” Seth asks.
I swallow, breathe, breathe again.
“I’m going to kill her, and then I’m going to kill you,” I whisper.
Chapter Thirteen
Seth
Delilah doesn’t move. She’s just staring at the spot where Vera blended back into the crowd, her jaw flexing, her face bright red.
“I’m that bad?” I tease.
It’s the wrong thing to say, because her head snaps around and now the full force of her fury is concentrated on me, as if I’ve opened a blast furnace.
“You didn’t think to tell me?” she hisses. “I saw you twice yesterday and you still opted to let me look like an idiot at Ava’s wedding?”
I push a hand through my hair, forgetting that it’s supposed to be neat today.
“She asked me not to tell you,” I say. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“I can’t fucking believe her,” Delilah whispers, tears wobbling in her eyes. “And I can’t fucking believe you, because you are complicit and you are not my date. Excuse me.”
Delilah strides off without another word, then disappears through a door in a swirl of dusky pink and fury.
Fuck. Fuck. That’s not how I thought this would go. I didn’t think she’d like it, but I didn’t think that she’d react with this kind of pure, iridescent rage. I thought maybe she wouldn’t hate the idea of spending a few hours with me.
I thought maybe we were ready for something new, after two years of pretending we don’t know one another. Friendship, maybe.
But clearly not. Clearly she hates the sight of me, hates the thought of me so much that she stormed out of the reception at the mere suggestion that I might be sitting next to her at dinner.
I down the rest of my whiskey in two gulps, which is a shameful way to drink whiskey this expensive, but the Radcliffes can bear the expense. I put the glass on a table with other empty glasses, and I wipe my thumb along my lip to collect the stray whiskey drops.
Then, something strange happens: I feel bad. Maybe she has a point. Maybe I should have told her.
Maybe this was a total dick move after all.
I shake my head, straighten my tie, and go find the guy with the crabcakes.
I finally find her upstairs, in the rooms where the cocktail hour was held. The overhead lights are all 0ff, the only illumination from the fake candles in fancy brackets on the wall, and it’s very, very quiet.
She’s sitting in a deep windowsill, turned sideways, back against one side of the nook, feet flat against the wall on the other, and she’s looking out.
I clear my throat as I enter the room, because I think I’ve surprised her enough today. Delilah doesn’t move.
“I wasn’t kidding,” she says, still looking at the window. “Dates require consent. You have to ask someone to be their date, and if they say no, even if you still attend the same event, you’re not doing it as dates. You’re just doing it as people who happen to be in the same room.”
Her voice sounds funny, and she still doesn’t look at me. I swallow hard, grit my teeth, then relax my jaw. Delilah has always felt like a lit match near gasoline, and it’s hard not to catch on fire.
“I brought a peace offering,” I say, holding up a plate of crabcakes and brie puffs and a glass of water.
“Did she make you?” Delilah asks, bitter and sarcastic. “Can’t have Delilah getting mad and ruining the wedding. People might talk.”
“I thought of it by myself, thanks,” I tell her, then pause. “Well, sort of. Daniel once told me that when Rusty’s in a bad mood, he always gives her a snack and a drink before trying to reason with her.”