Not Quite Perfect (Oakland Hills Book 3) (22 page)

“Maybe it’s time to cut the cake,” April said, hooking her arm in Rose’s and drawing her away.

“Are there any alternatives to cake?” Bev’s mother’s voice piped out as they escaped. “I can’t possibly eat so much sugar.”

“Thanks,” Rose whispered in her ear.

“Just don’t throw the bouquet at me.”

Rose’s eyes twinkled. “I was the pitcher for my softball team in junior high.”

“Please,” April said. “Not tonight.”

“It’s not up to me. It’s up to fate.”

“Jesus.”

“You never know,” Rose said, pinching her cheek.

April withdrew her arm just as Mark collided with Rose in a full-body embrace.

“Where’d you go?” He smiled down at her, nose pressed against hers.

“I hope you’re not going to be the clingy type,” Rose said, leaning back but smiling. Her cheeks blazed pink.

“Like plastic wrap, babe,” Mark said.

April watched them, remembering a night years ago when she was sixteen and had just broken up with her boyfriend. Mark had been back from college for summer break, spending most of his days and nights alone in his room. When he’d found her crying, he’d fixed her a chocolate milkshake in the kitchen and told her she was lucky because she knew how to be with people. She may have broken up with this boy, but she’d already had more dates at sixteen than he’d ever had.

“Or ever will,” he’d said sadly.

Now April felt her eyes burn. Look at him. So happy. She pushed Rose aside and bear-hugged Mark with everything she had.

“Gnuh,” he said as his bones cracked.

April wiped her tears on the back of her hand and gave Rose a gentler embrace. “I’m so happy for you.”

Rose drew back and looked at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

“I’m just so happy.” Tears continued to flow down April’s cheeks.

Mark handed her a paper cocktail napkin that smelled like cheese. “I know what you mean.” He put an arm around Rose. “Somebody just told me we’re supposed to be somewhere, but I can’t remember why.”

They excused themselves to find out while April got a grip. The music had turned slow and soft, romantic. Bev had escaped her family and was dancing with Liam, who gazed into her eyes like she was the center of his world—when he wasn’t kissing Merry, in her carrier on his chest, on the top of her fuzzy little head.

Merry.
That
’s what she could do: she’d babysit. Adult life was aggravating, frustrating, and fraught with screwups, but she always knew what to do with a baby.

She glimpsed Zack and Sylly, still making entrepreneurial love to each other near the head table. Now they held drinks. Sylly was waving his hands as he talked. Zack nodded and laughed.

Get a room
, she thought.

No. That’s what
she
would do. She’d take Merry to the bedroom she had for the night and play peekaboo and eat through the minibar like a stoned caterpillar. The Hungry Hungry Bridesmaid.

But Liam and Bev wouldn’t give her the baby.

“She’s having such a great time,” Bev said, laughing. “Look at her. I’ve never seen her so happy.”

Liam nodded, stroking Merry’s cheek. “She must love the noise. All the people.”

April started to frown at the infant party girl but saw the wide-eyed contentment on her face and had to smile. “Watch out for her when she’s older.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Liam said, giving Merry a stern look. “I’ve already planted a cactus under her bedroom window. The giant kind, with five-inch needles.”

April kissed the top of Merry’s head, confident she’d have her dad wrapped around her finger for a long, long time, namely forever, and decided to go to her room and enjoy the minibar without a baby. She’d shared her love, given her congratulations, toasted her toast—she was done. She could be alone. Starting right now.

Her mother appeared out of nowhere and clasped her hand. “They’re going to cut the cake,” she said, dragging her through the crowd to the edible masterpiece—a tiered ivory cake sprinkled with violets—set up near the head table. “Oh, isn’t this just wonderful,” her mother said in her ear. She put both arms around April’s shoulders and held her tight, as if she’d known the youngest child was a flight risk.

Ah, well, April was happy to see this part. Then she’d slip away.

The music stopped, everyone gathered around, and Mark and Rose did their thing with the knife and the feeding each other and the kissing and the laughing. Mark looked too happy to be self-conscious in front of the attentive throng. Even the photographer with the zoom lens didn’t seem to faze him. Arm around Rose’s waist, he smiled at nothing in particular and didn’t seem to realize he had a glob of fondant on the tip of his nose, where Rose had put it.

Her mother let her go and rushed forward to hug them both. April stood alone in the crush, overwhelmed with emotion. She may have had more dates at sixteen than Mark would ever have in a lifetime, but she’d never had what Mark and Rose had now, or Bev and Liam—never even came close. She felt like an anthropologist in an exotic land, watching people talk with sounds her tongue couldn’t make, eating the organs of animals she didn’t recognize, dancing to music she could feel but not understand.

“They look happy,” Zack said. He stood at her elbow, holding up two plates of cake. The rest of the crowd was moving to the tables.

“We’re supposed to sit,” she said.

He pushed a plate at her. “We can sit.” He frowned, studying her face. “Are you all right?”

“Actually, I was going to go.” She looked at the distant doorway at the other end of the hall.

“Why?”

When you had emotion that had nowhere to go and nothing to do, it tended to pour out of your eyeballs. Feeling the tears prick at her lids, April turned away and grabbed a drink off a tray. Not a new drink on a fresh tray—an abandoned one.

“Big day,” she said with a shrug, not meeting his eyes. She rubbed her finger along the lipstick-smudged glass but couldn’t bring herself to drink it.

He held out both plates. “Would you hold these? I’ll get us coffee.”

With a sigh, she put the glass back on the tray and took the cake. He gave her a sympathetic smile before moving away.

If she went to the room, she’d just end up watching TV and moping. Maybe it was better if she wasn’t alone just yet.

“Champagne,” she called after him.

He looked at her over his shoulder and his smile fell away. Maybe he was afraid she was going to kiss him again. Maybe she would.

“Please?” she asked.

He nodded and walked over to the bar.

She looked at the plates in her hands. Under the white chocolate fondant, the cake was dark chocolate sponge with layers of chocolate mousse. She inhaled a mouthful of cake off-gases, wishing he’d only handed her one plate—and a shovel—so she could start eating. She lifted one plate to her mouth and bit off a chunk of fondant and one of the candy flowers.

Oh, not candy: a real flower. Interesting. She swirled it around in her mouth, not sure what to do with it. Petals stuck to her tongue. She didn’t want to eat it but didn’t have a free hand to extract it. Bending over and spitting on the floor was probably against the Bridesmaid Rules.

Zack returned with two flutes filled to the top. “Let’s sit over there.” He nodded to an empty corner and walked ahead, his square shoulders flexing in the tux with the minor effort of carrying two glasses at chest height.
 

Her gaze dropped to his hips swaying under the tails of the tux jacket. Dangerous territory, hard to look away. She shifted up to the tips of his glasses poking behind his ears. Dark hair curled slightly at his nape, just over the white collar of his shirt.

Desire spread through her body like warm butter. Stifling another sigh, she lifted the plate and bit off another flower. At least she didn’t feel like crying anymore.

He chose an empty table that had never been set for dinner, behind an easel displaying pictures of Mark and Rose as children. One sweet picture had a young Rose dressed as a penguin for Halloween. Another had Mark in front of a chess set. Painfully cute, both of them.

Zack put down the glasses, took the plates out of her hands, and pulled out a chair for her. She lifted the glass and gulped down half of it before her butt hit the seat. The flower petals got washed away in the deluge.

“Got forks?” she asked.

He took one out of his chest pocket, set it down next to her plate, and sat next to her.

The alcohol drifted through her body, lifting her spirits with thousands of sweet fermented bubbles. As she ate the cake, she chided herself for getting melancholy. It was probably just jealousy—of Mark and Rose, Liam and Bev—and that wasn’t cool at all. Just because she’d been feeling a little lonely lately was no reason to withdraw and wallow in self-pity.
 

“The cake’s good,” Zack said.

She lifted her champagne and nodded. “No expense spared.” She tapped her glass against his and caught his gaze. “Thanks, by the way. I was starting to lose it.”

“Weddings do that to people.”

“Well, it’s never happened to me before. I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “I hope you’re having a nice time. How was it talking to Sylly? Snare him for your next gig?”

He looked down and pushed the cake around his plate. “We didn’t get that far.”

“He seemed to like you, though,” she said.

“I wasn’t bullshitting him, by the way. I did read about him somewhere.”

“I believe you.”

“I’m not sure he did,” he said. “He wasn’t in any hurry to set up a time to talk again.”

“Maybe he’s playing hard to get,” she said.

His lips twitched. His blue eyes met hers. “Maybe.”

Her pulse gave a kick and went off racing through her body. She tried to sip from her glass, but it was empty.

He pressed hers into her hand. “Have mine. I’ve had plenty to drink already.” He reached up to his throat, loosened his tie. “Very generous at the bar. Stiff drinks. Unlimited champagne. My head is swimming.”

She took his glass and lifted it to her lips. His spit had already mingled with hers once. What was the harm?

“I’m lonely,” she blurted out.

His eyes widened. Then his dark brows met over the bridge of his glasses.

Oh, damn it. He thought she was going to assault him again. She went on quickly, “In the family, I mean. Now that both of my brothers are married, it won’t be the same. Especially Mark. I was close to Mark.”

“You can still be close.”

“It’s not the same. It won’t be the same.” She forced a bright smile. “But that’s good for him. I’m so happy for him. He’s been married to his computer for too long. He needs somebody who really loves him.”

There. Good save. Now he’d think she was just sad because she wouldn’t see Mark as much as she used to, not that she longed for hot sex with a meaningful, committed partner who understood and loved her at a profound level—a level her personal elevator had never reached. For all she knew, her building might have skipped that floor, like superstitious architects leaving out the thirteenth.

Looking over her shoulder, Zack put his hand over her wrist on the table. His touch sent shockwaves up her arm. “I think Mark and Rose might be leaving now,” he said. “There’s something going on by the door.”
 

She was tempted to stay where she was, using sexual frustration to distract her from existential despair, but she didn’t want to miss the goodbye. She stood up. “Let’s go see.”

She wiggled through the throng until she reached a giggling cluster of women gathered in a colorful ring in front of Rose, who had her back to all of them and was swinging her bouquet over her head.

Whack
. Like a pie in a clown show, the bouquet smacked April right in the face. She didn’t even have time to lift her hands.

She gasped, bending over in pain. Her left eyeball stung. Thank God she’d flinched in time. It wasn’t just flowers in those things—the pretty blossoms were tied together with braided ribbons, wire, and tape, and it was as big as her head.

“Fuck,” she whispered, picking it up.

Dozens of lenses from phones and cameras caught the moment. She gazed out at them, blinked away the pain, and held up the bouquet like the Statue of Liberty brandishing her blazing torch. She’d light it on fire as soon as she found a match.

Zack was there, touching her arm. “Are you all right?”

Catching Rose’s concerned look across the crowd of laughing faces, April glued a goofy smile on her face and waved the bouquet. The bride didn’t need to worry about her new sister-in-law’s skull fracture. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve got a head like a rock.”

The crowd surged forward to follow Rose and Mark to the car parked in the front driveway. April followed, rubbing her cheek, more distracted by the feel of Zack’s fingers sliding down her bare arm than she was by the throbbing pain under her eyeball.

“We need to get you some ice,” Zack said in her ear, his low voice sending tendrils of desire down her spine.

She let the crowd hurry ahead of her. Getting the best view wasn’t as important as she thought it would be that morning when she painted abstract white roses all over their getaway car.

Zack slowed, too, and his fingers slid down her forearm and then over her wrist and knuckles to clasp her hand.

Her heart thudded in her chest. “Maybe I should lie down,” she heard herself say.

Yeah. I need to lie down. Right now. Not alone, though.

“Are you staying here at the hotel?” he asked.

She nodded. Her head swam. “Are you?”

His thumb stroked hers. He didn’t answer.

She turned and looked up at him. The world around them fell away, going dim and fuzzy and dark, leaving only Zachary Fain. She saw the stubble on his jaw, the crease between his eyebrows, the slight parting of his lips, and the darkening pupils of his eyes.

She didn’t know if he wanted her, but if he didn’t, he’d better make a run for it. “I’m room sixteen. Upstairs.” She held his gaze.

His eyelids fell. She licked her lips and watched the tension flex in his jaw.

“Zack?” she asked.

He swallowed visibly. “Upstairs,” he said.