Love is a sham.A ploy of the desperate to find meaningful connection in life. A way to add weight to what is ultimately admiration or attraction or lust.
Gosh, my life would be so much easier if I actually believed that. Instead, I’m in the hopeless romantic camp. I cry during rom-com movies and at pharmaceutical commercials featuring elderly couples frolicking through a meadow with the help of their arthritis medication. I’ve unironically attended poetry readings. I’ve signed up for every dating app imaginable. And on one rather unfortunate drunken evening, I even paid a poorly rated Etsy fortune teller to predict when I would meet my soulmate.
Frankly, I have no self-respect.
Which is how I ended up single at my brother’s wedding, six days after being dumped by the guy I thought wasthe one. I’d looked up baby names that would sound nice with his last name. I’d picked out the engagement ring I would start making increasingly less subtle hints about. I’d even switched to amonth-to-month lease instead of signing on for another year at my apartment.
All I ended up with was a mortifyingly quick breakup at my favorite coffee shop. My iced caramel macchiato with two pumps of white mocha and extra whipped cream was sweeter than my boyfriend’s dispassionate breakup speech. Sorry, ex-boyfriend.
I really needed to start thinking of Gus as my ex and not as the future father of our two-point-five children and the builder of my dream white picket fence around our adorably dated cottage.
There would be no garden in our yard from which I could stock my flower shop with my own cut florals. There would be no children with his eyes and my hair. There would be no lazy Saturday mornings in bed arguing about which of us would have to get up to let our golden retriever into the yard. There would be no tan line on my finger from his ring. There would be no us, and likely no one else.
I would grow old and gray alone in my house with no less than six cats that would inevitably feast on my corpse after I pass.
Man, I get morose when I’m tipsy. In fact, I’ve probably passed that threshold and dived straight into drunken territory. But to be fair, I’m at a wedding, and there’s an open bar. My brother’s wedding, with his new wife, who has become one of my best friends in the year and a half they’ve been together. They’re so thoroughly in love that it makes my heart ache just to look at them. Case in point,my brotherhad an actual wedding, with a ceremonyanda reception. I always assumed his second wedding would be like his first, a casual affair in the courthouse with a selfie of him and his bride sent in the family group chat after the fact. But Wren, his now wife, loves our little mountain town even more than I do. She wanted to invite every resident, and although Holden half-heartedly grumbled about it, he didn’t put up much of a fuss.
So they hosted a January wedding for four hundred of Wren’s closest friends and family, along with people Holden considers acquaintances at best even though he’s known all of them since birth. And I’m standing on the outskirts of the dance floor in a wrinkled bridesmaid dress, watching the two of them and Holden’s daughter, June, spin in off-beat circles, wrapped up in their own world. I’m so mesmerized by the way my niece’s dress twirls around her calves that I don’t notice someone sidle up next to me. I recognize his scent immediately. Fresh linen and the same cheap bar soap he’s used since high school.
Grey Sutton, my brother’s longtime best friend.
“You’re drunk,” he says, not looking at me.
I shoot a glare up, up, up at him. I swear he always grows when I drink. Maybe I just slump. “You’re observant.”
Pale blue eyes finally meet mine, partially obscured by a lock of caramel brown hair falling into his face. “You’re testy.” He says this with one side of his mouth hitching up into the faintest of smirks.
“I’d say you would be too if your significant other of two years dumped you six days ago, but that would require you to make it past a first date, and I know you haven’t done that since getting chest hair.”
I swear a cloud passes over his eyes for the briefest of seconds, but when it’s gone before I can decipher it, I gather it must be the alcohol in my system. I doubt I could spot Bigfoot if he were to stand directly in front of me right now. Everything is so pleasantly fuzzy around the edges, including the sharp pain in my sternum that’s been hounding me since the breakup.
His lips twitch again, his grin growing wider as he watches me. “Yes, well, if I finally settled down with someone, whatever would you have to criticize me about anymore?”
“I’m sure I could find something.”
His broad shoulder bumps into mine, only the thin, starchy fabric of his dress shirt separating our skin, since he discarded his suit jacket hours ago. “I’m sure you could, Fin. Maybe I should finally get hitched just so you can get more creative with your insults. The playboy ones are starting to get tired.”
“I’m sure your dick is too.”
His laugh is loud and booming, and to my surprise, it’s the first thing to bring a genuine smile, rather one tinged with sadness, to my face for the first time in a week. Sure, I smiled watching Holden and Wren and June today, but I’m just drunk enough to admit that it was a happiness overlaid with an aching jealousy, a desperate longing to find what they had.
But this smile holds none of that. It’s the kind of floating merriment that feels incandescent and bubbly, like champagne in your soul.
When his laughter dies down, Grey says, “Fin, I’m honestly surprised you think I’m out here sleeping with all these women I go out with.”
I stare up at his messy hair and the five-o’clock shadow dusting his chin. “And I’m honestly surprised you don’t have dozens of children running around the county.”
He raises a thick brow, and it disappears behind his hair. “Would you be jealous if I did?”
I nod, honestly. “Yeah, I probably would.”
His gaze sharpens, and I swear I feel his body tense beside mine. “What?”
I let my gaze drift back out to the dance floor, taking in Holden, now holding a giggly, sleepy June, his free arm wrapped around Wren’s waist, the three of them swaying to the music, fairy lights casting their skin in a magical golden glow.
“I’d be jealous you got to have children with no effort when I’ve been trying so hard to get to that place my entire life.” My words slur a bit at the edges, the alcohol making me more honest thanusual. “I just want it, you know? I want it all. The husband, the kids, the house with the white picket fence and the wraparound porch. Saturday morning pancakes and movies on the couch.” I snort and look up at Grey, finding him watching me closely, expression soft and unreadable. “I know that sounds like hell to you.”
A muscle flickers in his jaw, and his arms cross over his chest before he looks away. “I don’t—”
