Do You Take This Man (13)

I nodded and took the card from her. “I’ll see you at the ceremony tomorrow. Good night.”

She smiled over her shoulder and sauntered away, and I tossed the card on the passenger seat, waiting a respectable amount of time before getting the hell out of that parking lot. The night had been weird and awkward at every turn. Not every turn. Just the ones involving women.

As if summoned by my innermost thoughts, my phone buzzed, and I tapped the Bluetooth icon on the screen to answer. “Stop checking up on me.”

“Then stop insisting you’re fine all the time,” Caitlin huffed into the phone, the background noise echoing around her.

“Are you in that parking garage?” It was connected to the hospital and there was security, but I’d never liked her walking there alone.

“Calm down. It’s not even dark here.” She called out something, holding the phone away, and I rolled my eyes. She was always in work mode. “How’d your first night as the new Penny go?”

“It was f—”

“If you say fine, I’ll make it look like an accident. You know I can.”

I laughed, merging onto the interstate, relief buoying my mood as I put more distance between me and Megan and RJ. “It was okay. Is that better?”

She let my joke hang, and I heard the ding of her car door opening and the shift from her phone to Bluetooth. “Oh, keep going. I’m just deciding where to inject the needle.”

“I hear between the toes is good.”

“True. So what happened?”

“Well, the groom’s daughter propositioned me and I got into it with the officiant.”

“Did you take the daughter up on it?”

“No.” I glanced at the business card sitting faceup on the seat. Megan was some kind of sales consultant. I picked up the card, glancing closer. The header across the top read Pleasure Crafts Unlimited. “Maybe I should have, though. It looks like she sells Jet Skis or something. Maybe she could hook me up.”

“Jet Skis?”

“Some place called Pleasure Crafts Unlimited.”

She cackled into the phone, her voice filling my car. “Brother, you should have taken her up on the offer, but not to get a ride on a Jet Ski. That’s a sex toy company.”

I shot my gaze to the card again, reconciling that extra information and coughing out the words. “Why do you know that?”

“They make fantastic vibrators,” she said, still laughing.

“Don’t say shit like that to me. I don’t want to know about your toys.”

“You asked. Anyway, why did you turn her down?”

“I don’t know. Wasn’t feeling it?” I slowed, traffic stopped ahead of me. “She looked a lot like Sarah. I don’t know.”

“Lear . . .”

“Don’t,” I muttered.

For once, she listened and shifted gears. “Add to that you got into a fistfight with a minister? You’re really not batting a thousand tonight.”

“I didn’t get into a fistfight with a minister. Just got told off by the officiant. She said I talked over her and undermined her or whatever.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you want to hear more about the vibrators? What do you think I meant? Did you talk over her?”

I thought back through the evening, replaying the events of the night. “Maybe a few times, but that’s no reason to get bent out of shape. I was just keeping things moving. That’s not a crime.”

“Did she kick your ass?”

“A little, yeah.”

“Good. Don’t talk over women. We don’t like it and it happens at work all the time.”

“How do you know? She’s not a doctor.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, and I knew she was rolling her eyes. “Have I taught you nothing? Women deal with that all the time, everywhere. I’m glad she told you off.”

“You would be.” The traffic jam finally opened up, and I could hit the gas again. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, weighing my sister’s words and looking at the rehearsal from that perspective. “Anyway, tonight aside, she’s unpleasant, like she always needs to be right.”

“That sounds familiar. Always needing to be right is one of your less charming flaws, of which there are many.”

The desire to say “I know you are but what am I?” was always my signal to end a conversation with my sister, and I let her comment hang in the air.

“You’re going to hang up on me, aren’t you?”

“No, let’s talk all night. I love this conversation.”

“Apologize and don’t do it again.” I missed earning her exasperated sighs in person. Not that I didn’t get them over the phone all the time. “Make it right and stop being a dick. You get along with everyone, like, compulsively. I know you must know how to apologize.”





Chapter 7


    RJ



“WHAT DO YOU think?” Britta asked. Her face took up the screen as she examined me closely, her voice from the speaker on my phone filling the dressing room like she was right in front of me.

“It’s . . . something.” The dress was Barbie pink with a halter neckline and a long, flowing skirt. I turned from side to side, but it didn’t get less pink with any new angle.