My One and Only(40)
CHAPTER NINE
“OKAY FOLKS, GATHER round for the latest killer martini—Crillas, in honor of the happy couple!” My voice was bright and chipper—damned if I was going to let Nick know just how much he’d gotten under my skin. “This little number has Kahlúa, to represent our dark and handsome groom…”
“So handsome!” Willa said, kissing her man.
“…and pineapple juice, for the sweet bride.” I smiled, getting an “aw” from the crowd. “Now maybe it doesn’t sound like those two ingredients go together…” I winked at my sister…“but when you try them, you’ll see. Crillas are fantastic! So go ahead, gang!”
This wedding reception was eternal. Faking good cheer was definitely not a specialty of mine, but Nick and I seemed engaged in a war as to who could ignore the other the most effectively. It seemed to be a draw. Here I was, behind the bar—I’d bartended through college, as well as during my brief stint in New York, and was now playing merry maid of honor. Nick, for his part, had claimed the role of available bachelor/uber best man, and had danced with every woman present from Emily to BeverLee to an elderly woman from Wisconsin who wasn’t a wedding guest but wasn’t complaining, either. Every woman but one, of course. He laughed and flirted and seemed as happy and good-natured as humanly possible, and I’d be damned if I was going to let on that my knees still buzzed from that kiss.
I’d been spared, that was it. In a moment of weakness, of useless, pointless sentimentality, I might’ve let things go further with Nick, and then I’d be swamped with regret and guilt. It was bad enough…Dennis hadn’t even crossed my mind during that kiss, and what the hell did that say, so thank the Lord nothing went any further. There was a reason Nick and I hadn’t worked, and it would serve me well to remember that.
As I went to the bar for my third Crilla, Jason Cruise approached, doing that side-to-side swagger so that the friction between his chubby thighs wouldn’t cause a fire. “Harper, wanna dance? Old time’s sake or whatever?” He adjusted his Wayfarers sunglasses. Wayfarers. Honestly. So 1980s.
“Bite me, Jason,” I said.
“Whoa. You don’t have to be such a bitch.”
“And you don’t have to breathe, Jason, yet you continue to do so. Frustrating.”
“Why do you hate me?” he asked. “What did I ever do to you?”
For a second, I wasn’t going to answer. Jason had, in point of fact, never done anything to me. But letting things go wasn’t exactly my forte. “I don’t hate you, Jason. You’re not important enough to hate. But I dislike you intensely.”
“Why?”
“Because I know about you, Jason,” I hissed. “How you treated Nick when you were kids, broke his toys, rubbed your life in his face and shot him in the chest with an arrow. Add to this the fact that you’re a shallow, irritating twit, and there you have it.”
“So? I thought you hated Nick.”
I opened my mouth to protest, reconsidered (I did rather hate Nick, at the moment, anyway). “Whatever.”
Jason lifted his Wayfarers to better ogle my br**sts. “So how about that dance, Harper?”
Men. A friend of mine from law school had just gone the sperm-bank route. She was first in our class, okay? Clearly a brilliant woman.
I was saved from further interaction with Jason in the form of Firefighter Costello, all six foot two of him. “This guy bothering you, Harp?” he asked, looking down at Jason.
“Yes, Dennis. Please beat him to a pulp.”
Dennis gave me a startled glance. “Seriously?”
“Dude, I just asked her to dance,” Jason babbled, backing up rapidly. “She used to be family or something. That’s all. I wasn’t trying to, uh…you know. Whatever.”
I shot the little toad a lethal glance. “Shoo, Jason. Go back to your swamp.” He slumped away, bumping into one of the posts that held up the ceiling, since he’d put the stupid sunglasses back on, and went off to bore more people with his recitation of Tom Cruise’s biggest box-office hits.
“Wanna dance, babe?” Dennis asked.
“Definitely,” I answered, and so we did, my guilt over kissing Nick causing me to snuggle up against Dennis’s broad shoulder. Den smiled and copped a feel, since he was not a man to resist a breast, especially two so obviously offered as were mine.
“What time do you have to leave tomorrow?” I asked.
He grimaced. “My flight’s at seven,” he said. “Which means I have to catch the five-thirty shuttle.”
“You know what? Take the rental car,” I offered. “I’ll grab the shuttle later on.”
Dennis’s face lit up. “That’d be great, dude. Thanks.”
When I first asked him if he’d wanted to come to this wedding, Dennis hadn’t committed right away. The result was that he’d had to book a much less civilized flight than my afternoon departure. Dad and BeverLee were driving to Salt Lake City—I guess BeverLee had some third cousins there she hadn’t seen in years—then flying home from there, and so I’d be all alone on my journey back East. That was more than fine with me.
“Gotta hit the head,” Dennis said. “Catch you later.”
“Roger,” I answered.