"I'm kidding."
She rolled a hand. "So? Destination wedding, cheating scumbag ex, and a plot to make him jealous. Then what?"
"Then the Old Toby burned down. They'd rented out the whole thing for their friends. Their whole wedding plan went up in flames, literally."
"Ahhhh," Mom said, stirring the soup. "So you called your sister and got them the back room up in Anchorage, and got Brock to fly you guys there."
"Yep."
"And she wasn't appreciative?"
"No, it wasn't that."
Mom poured soup into a bowl, plated the sandwich, cut it with the spatula, and sent both in front of me, and then came around to sit beside me while I ate, occasionally stealing a bite of sandwich or soup. "So? You're living at work and not sleeping or eating. Something happened."
"We…" I sighed, finding it hard to put into words, especially to my mother. "She just left."
Mom barked a laugh. "You skipped a bunch of stuff in the middle, I think."
"We hooked up," I said, snapping it with more frustration than I'd intended. "Sorry, Mom. I just…yeah, things happened. She was clear from the get-go that she was leaving after the wedding, and that us getting together was only for the weekend."
"But you thought there was something more there?" She guessed.
I nodded. "I don't think there was, I know there was.” I shook my head. "It's weird talking about this with my mom."
"You know the story of how I met your father, don't you?"
Puzzled by the non sequitur, I shrugged. "I mean, sort of? I'm fuzzy on the details."
"You're an adult, now. You can hear the whole thing."
"Okay?"
"I was about to get married."
"When you met Dad?"
"No, silly. Before. I was engaged to someone else." When I looked surprised, she just laughed. "Newsflash, bubbie, your father wasn’t my first sexual or romantic partner."
"Oh god, can we not?"
She sighed. "Duncan, grow up. I'm your mother, but I'm also a person. A woman. And I have a point in bringing this up, so quit acting scandalized as if it's a shock to you that I had a life before meeting your father."
"Fine," I mumbled around a bite of grilled cheese. "Just no details I don't need to know."
“I’ll try to protect your delicate sensibilities," she drawled, teasing. "So, anyway. When I say I was about to get married, I mean I was at the church, in my wedding dress, with guests in the pews, about to walk down the damn aisle with my dad.”
"Oh dear. Seeing as you're married to Dad and not that guy, I take it something happened?"
"You could say that." She gathered the plate and bowl as I finished eating and leaned over to set them in the sink. "He was fucking my bridesmaid."
I choked, coughed, and spluttered. "Jesus. Like, you saw it? At the wedding?"
She bobbed her head from side to side. "Sort of. I was freaking out a bit and wanted to talk to him. I wanted him to reassure me, y'know? Like fiancés are supposed to. But instead, I found his friends—the groomsmen and bridesmaids—all watching a video."
"Oh boy," I muttered.
"They'd filmed my fiancé fucking my bridesmaid. Well, a bridesmaid, not my bridesmaid. I didn't even know her—I didn't have a big social circle down there, so our friends were really just his friends, not really mine."
