Save the Date(56)

“Okay, my turn.” J.J. was standing up a few seats down the table from me, clearing his throat and holding up his phone. “I hope you don’t mind—I wrote down my notes for my toast on this. I’m not, like, texting someone.” There was scattered laughter, and he smiled broadly at the assembled guests before taking a deep breath. “So. I’d like to start by sharing a story about my dear older sister, Linnea. I think she knows the one I’m going to say.” Linnie groaned and buried her head in her hands, and J.J. nodded. “Oh, she knows. So. When she was ten and I was seven, she had me convinced, I mean absolutely convinced—” The low, thumping beat of electronica music suddenly filled the room, and J.J. frowned at his phone. “Whoops, that’s me.” He squinted at the screen, and then his face brightened. “Oh, awesome,” he said as he answered the call and pressed the button to put it on speaker. “Hello?”

I glanced over to see both Linnie and Rodney exchange a glance and my mother staring daggers at J.J., clearly trying to get him back on track, apparently forgetting who she was dealing with.

“Um, hello?” the voice on the other end of the phone said. It was a guy, and he sounded unsure. “J.J.?”

“Yes, it’s me,” J.J. said. “Thanks so much for getting back to me.”

“Sure,” the voice said, not sounding all that enthusiastic to be speaking to my brother. “What’s up, man? Is everything okay?”

“Yep. I just had a question for you. Your name is what, again?”

“J.J., you know my name,” the guy said, now speaking more slowly. “You called me, remember?”

“I know, I just needed to check something. If you could just tell me your name. Your full name.”

I met Danny’s eye two seats down from me. He shook his head and then gave me a half shrug and eye roll combo, a series of tiny, quick gestures that I could nonetheless understand perfectly: No, I have no idea what he’s doing. But really, what did we expect?

“Uh,” the guy on the other end said. “It’s Billiam. Billiam Kirby.”

“Billiam!” J.J. said triumphantly, raising the phone above his head. “See? Did I tell you? Did I tell you?” Most of the guests just stared blankly back at him while my dad gave him the hand-across-the-throat gesture that in our family had always meant shut it down.

“No way,” Rodney muttered, reaching for his wallet.

“Dammit.” Danny sighed, tossing his napkin onto the table. “I owe him twenty-five bucks.”

“He got me for fifty,” Rodney said, shaking his head.

I turned around to look at Bill, still standing at the back of the room. He caught my eye and shook his head, but I saw he was smiling.

“A little louder, if you don’t mind,” J.J. said, raising the microphone to his phone again. “Nice and loud so that everyone can hear you. You’re on speaker.”

“I . . . am?” Billiam asked, sounding taken aback. “Uh—where?”

“My sister’s rehearsal dinner.”

“Wait, what?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” J.J. held his phone out toward the table, moving it back and forth. “Say hi, everyone.”

“Hi,” a few people murmured, distinctly unenthusiastically.

“Wait,” Billiam said on the other end of the phone. “I don’t understand any of this. What’s going on?”

“I just needed you to verify your name, that’s all. And it worked out great, because now there’s a ton of witnesses.”

“J.J.,” Billiam said, incredulity creeping into his voice, “was this seriously what you called me about? You said it was an emergency.”

“This was the emergency,” J.J. said. “I mean, come on, like you were doing something more pressing?”

“You know I work for the Pentagon now, right?” Billiam asked, his tone getting very cold.

“Hey, good for you!” J.J. said. “Well, it was nice to catch up. Let me know if you ever need Pirates tickets.”

“What—” Billiam started from the other end, just as J.J. hung up on him. He set down his phone and picked up his glass. “To the happy couple!”

*

An hour later, the rehearsal dinner had technically passed the end point specified on the invitation, but nobody seemed in a huge hurry to leave and the party had just moved into the lobby, much to the apparent dismay of the guy behind the checkin counter, who was sending unhappy looks our way. Rodney’s cousin Marcus had left, and his sister and brother-in-law—and Uncle Stu had disappeared around the time the server showed up with the bill—but aside from that, everyone was hanging out.

Right after the dinner, I’d noticed my mother and Mike standing together in the back of the lobby, talking, my mom’s face turning red, the way it did when she was upset, and Mike folding his arms tightly and looking at the floor. I’d gotten pulled into a conversation with Mrs. Daniels, and after that I hadn’t seen Mike again—or Jesse, for that matter. I wasn’t sure if Mike had left, but the thought that Jesse might have left without saying anything was making my stomach knot, and I was checking my phone far more than I knew I should be.

“Okay, where’s the bride?” This was Priya, flanked by the Jennys. “Are we ready to do this?”