Bad Wedding: A Bad Boy Romance (9 page)

M
egan

B
y Thursday morning
, I could at least say one thing: I had a gorgeous dress for the wedding.

Holly had done her magic, and then some. She’d pulled a vintage dress that she’d bought at an estate sale and reworked it, tailoring it to my measurements, shortening the hem, adding buttons and a sleek belt. She’d accessorized it with earrings, a handbag, and a pair of vintage heels that looked brand new. When I wore all of this, I looked like myself in a pretty outfit; but I
felt
like Rita Hayworth in
Gilda.

It put paid to every hour I’d worked on her website and her pictures. I’d never had a friend like Holly. She was the real deal. I nearly choked up when we stood in front of my mirror on Wednesday night, me in my wedding outfit, Holly in one of her long skirts and a drapey top, her hair loose down her back.

“I’m getting all maudlin,” she said to me. “I feel like
you’re
getting married.”

“You’re freaking me out,” I said back. “Let’s drink.”

After I’d carefully removed the dress and we’d cracked open our bottle of wine, she gave me a look over her glass. “So, you went from detesting my brother to spending the weekend with him,” she said. “Care to explain?”

I sipped my wine and definitely didn’t glance toward the sofa. “We worked it out,” I said.

It was a little weird, sure. But Jason was twenty-four and I was twenty-three, and Holly was living with her boyfriend. We were all grownups here.

It still didn’t mean I wanted to tell her.

Not that there was anything to tell.
What happens right now is done when it’s done
. We’d both had had an itch, and now that was over with. No awkwardness at all. We could spend the weekend together, and it would be just fine.

Except for the fact that he kept texting me. And I kept texting him back.

“Well, your ex is going to die of envy, if that’s what you want,” Holly said. “Between you in that dress and Jason in a suit, it’s going to be killer. You should have seen the night he went to the prom.” She rolled her eyes. “I think half the girls there passed out when he walked in.”

I put down my wine. The prom was pre-Charlotte, so he would have gone with some other girl. I didn’t ask. “Don’t tell me Dean went to the prom,” I said to change the subject.

“No,” she replied. “He stayed home that night, I remember. I didn’t go to my own prom, either, because nobody asked me. Isn’t that pathetic?” She shook her head. “Did you go?”

“I went with Casey Banville. Remember him? He was the only other member of the chess club by the time they shut it down.” I wasn’t a chess champion, but I was good enough. Chess had gotten me through the tough times after my mother died—it had a defined set of rules, and you could plan and strategize, and it always made sense. For a few years, it had felt like the only thing in my life that gave me control. I had been chess club president until the club had had to shut down for lack of members.

Holly laughed. “You dated Casey Banville?”

“Briefly.” I grimaced. “It was bad. It’s bad when two chess club dorks come together.”

“You really know how to pick them,” Holly said.

I did. I had a pattern of picking terrible men. Not mean guys, or even guys who treated me particularly badly—no, I had a pattern of picking chess geeks, guys who were creepily attached to their mothers, guys who smoked pot like it was their vocation in life, and—most memorably—my last boyfriend, who might actually have been bi. I didn’t need a therapist to see that the guys I chose had the same long-term reliability as the jobs I took.

Kyle was the coolest guy I’d ever dated. He’d been good-looking, and he’d played bass, and at seventeen I basically thought he was God. Until he dumped me for my cousin and cracked my confidence in two. I hadn’t loved him, exactly—I knew that now—but the experience, coming so close after losing my mother, had felt like heartbreak.

Still, no guy I’d dated, Kyle included, could kiss like Jason Carsleigh. Or fuck like him, either.

I was going to be cool about it. In control. It was one simple wedding. We could be grownups.

All of that went out the window as soon as he pulled up outside my apartment to pick me up.

I was standing in the front doorway of my building, my bags at my feet and my dress on a hanger hooked over my shoulder. It was a nice morning, dry and clear and slightly cloudy, and I was wearing loose-fitting cargo pants and a snug black t-shirt, leather flip-flops on my feet, my hair tied at the back of my neck. When Jason’s car pulled up, I nearly jumped, I was so nervous. And then he got out of the car.

He had to unfold out of the seat, he was so big. Worn jeans. White t-shirt. Navy blue shirt unbuttoned over top. His hair was tousled, damp from the shower again, and he hadn’t shaved. My knees went a little weak. I hadn’t seen him since that day—the day of the call. The day we’d had sex. He turned his dark brown gaze on me, and I had to refrain from licking my lips.
Be a grownup, Megan
.

It had thrown me for a serious loop, the first time he’d texted me.
If you want a repeat, I’ll consider it. Let me know.

Then:
I can go all night.

Then:
I still have nail marks on my ass.

I had spent an embarrassing amount of mental energy on those texts. Was he fooling me? Teasing me? Sure, he was a guy who had just gotten laid—he was trying to get laid again. But did that mean he’d actually liked it? Or was I just the closest, easiest possibility?

“Hey,” he said, coming toward me. “You ready?”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go.”

“Hand me your bags.”

I did, keeping my purse and the dress on its covered hanger. He swung my bags easily into the car, next to his own, and I saw that he already had his suit, on a covered hanger like mine, hanging from a hook in the back seat. I hooked my dress there, too. His stuff and my stuff, tossed in together. Just like that.

“I need coffee,” he said as I did up my seat belt and he pulled out of my building’s driveway. “This is too early. Do you have GPS on your phone to navigate?”

“We don’t need GPS,” I said, rummaging through my handbag. “I have a map.”

Jason blinked in surprise. “A
map?
”

“Yes.” I waved the folded map I’d pulled out of my bag. “You know, a map.”

“Why would we need a map? Are you Christopher Columbus?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “Maps worked for hundreds of years. They work now.”

“People got
lost
for hundreds of years,” he said.

“A GPS gives a false sense of security,” I argued. “I hate it. The signal can drop out, or your phone can die, or a million things can go wrong. A map always works, 24/7, in thunderstorms and power outages. It works in snow and heat and underground and on back roads. It works everywhere.”

He glanced at me, then back at the road. “You make it sound like we’re driving to the Apocalypse, not Cape Cod.”

“You wear a watch, Mr. Modern Technology,” I said, pointing, deciding not to add that the sight of his watch on his gorgeous wrist practically made me ovulate. “Why don’t you just use your phone?”

“Because I like to know the time without digging in my pocket.”

“Same difference,” I said, smoothing the map over my thighs. “Besides, it isn’t hard. Get on the interstate and head east. If the sign says east, you’re going in the right direction.”

“And then?” he asked.

“When you get to the ocean, you stop.”

He tapped his long, strong fingers on the wheel, thinking, while I tried not to stare in fascination at his hands. Then he made a decision and signaled, pulling out of traffic and into a gravel parking lot in front of a dry cleaner’s that was still closed. He turned off the car.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He turned toward me. “First things first,” he said. Then he put his hand behind my head, leaned down, and kissed me.

He tasted like mint and Jason. He smelled like sun-warmed, freshly washed male. My treacherous body went nuts and I kissed him back, putting my hands on his chest beneath the navy blue shirt. When he felt me give in he leaned in and kissed me even deeper, long and slow and thorough, his shadow of stubble scraping my skin, his tongue exploring me until I could feel a sharp pulse between my legs. Then he broke off, breathing hard, his hand still behind my head.

“What was that for?” My voice was a croak.

He paused, and I could tell he was as worked up as I was. “I feel like there was some tension,” he said. “We should break it up.”

I didn’t say anything. My hands were still on his broad, warm chest through his shirt. I didn’t want him to move.

“We should be straightforward,” Jason said, still not letting me go, his voice still rumbling, barely under control. “I’m going to fuck you later.”

Lust jolted through my veins, and every part of me woke up. My nipples went hard beneath my shirt. “Okay,” I said.

“We’re clear?”

I leaned closer to him, slid my hands up over his pecs toward his collarbones. “Yes.” I ran the tip of my tongue lightly over his lip.

“Fuck,” he said. Then he turned away and started the car again.

J
ason

I
t should have been awkward
. Really awkward. We should have sat there in the car together while this heavy silence sat between us, like the air before a thunderstorm. After all, she’d hated me for years, and except for one wicked makeout and one on-call sex session on her couch, I still seemed to drive her nuts.

But it wasn’t like that at all. I’d just kissed her until I was hard in my jeans and told her I was going to fuck her, and she’d agreed—before we’d barely left her driveway—but my tactic seemed to work. Now that we’d cleared the air, we stopped for coffee, and then I got on the interstate, heading for Detroit. And we talked.

It was surprisingly easy with Megan. I didn’t know her very well—except in the physical sense—but we had a lot in common. We talked about Holly, and Dean, and how weird it was that they’d gotten together, and how happy they seemed to be. We talked about high school. We talked about Eden Hills, the places we both knew, the people we both knew. Then the conversation turned to movies, and I discovered she’d never seen an X-Men movie. Not one. So of course I had to explain.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said, when we had swung past Detroit and were now in the outskirts of Cleveland. “He has claws that come out of his knuckles?”

“Man, do you live in a cave?” I said. “Yes, he does. And it’s awesome.”

“I don’t live in a cave,” she said. “I just never had a boyfriend who takes me to these kinds of movies.”

“That’s BS,” I said. “The last I heard, it was legal for girls to go to these movies alone. I thought chicks liked his muscles.”

“Are they nicer than yours?” she asked, looking me up and down.

I ignored the burn of pleasure I got from that and shook my head. “It’s not the same thing. He’s
Wolverine.
”

“If you say so,” Megan said, looking back down at her map. “Doesn’t it rip his skin?”

“He has healing powers.”

“Oh, well, that’s convenient.”

“It isn’t convenient. It’s the way he’s made.”

Megan looked up at me again. “Jason, you know he’s not real, right?”

“That’s it,” I said. “You are watching these movies if it’s the last thing I do.”

“All of them?”

“All of them. They’re still making new ones, and you have to watch those too. I’ll be chasing you down the hall of your nursing home if I have to, making you watch X-Men movies.”

She was laughing now. “Okay, okay. I just… never got the appeal.”

“It’s better than reality,” I said. “That’s the appeal. When your life is shitty and stressful, you can just imagine what it would be like to have mutant powers. You could do something big like save the world or defeat your enemies. Or you could just kick some ass. Dean and I used to watch them while we were deployed. We’ve seen them all dozens of times. I think those movies saved my sanity.”

She went quiet then, looking out the window, the map in her lap. I could see the perfect line of her neck, her skin where it disappeared into the vee of her snug t-shirt, the slopes of her breasts. I had to fight to keep my eyes on the road.

“So it was hard, then?” she asked, still looking out the window. “Those years in the Marines?”

“It was…” I searched for the words. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I mean, it was
brutal.
There was the physical part, which was tough and relentless—you just had to push through, endure. And once we were deployed, there was the stress and the boredom and the homesickness and the rest of it.” I shrugged. “If I’d known going in even a fraction of what it would be like, I would have chickened out. But I didn’t. And neither did Dean.”

I owed my best friend for that. He’d joined because I had, because he was worried I’d get myself hurt. We’d both been young and stupid, with no idea what was ahead of us. We’d been through thick and thin together, and Dean had paid for it with a bout of depression and anxiety that had nearly paralyzed him and sent him back into civilian life. I’d followed him out of the Marines, because I was done with it. I’d felt like it was more important to be with my friend than to stay where I wasn’t doing any good anymore.

“It was harder on you than you let on, wasn’t it?” Megan asked. She was looking at me now. “You give off this vibe since you came home that it was no big deal, but it had an effect on you.”

“No one wants to hear that shit,” I said. “I mean, my mother is already worried that I’m a depressed alcoholic.”

Megan’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“Because I smell like alcohol all the time, and I sleep late every day.”

“But that’s because of your job.” She paused. “You did tell her about your job, right?”

“I have now. But there’s no way I’m talking to her about how the Marines messed with me. I’ll just shut up and deal, thanks.”

Her jaw went hard, and she looked out the window again. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “You’re right. Superhero powers sound really good. Healing, kicking ass. I’m in.”

“He’s not a superhero,” I corrected her. “Wolverine is a mutant.”

“What?”

“He’s a mutant,” I said. “He’s mutated. His genetics are all fucked up.”

“Now
I
wish he was real,” she said. “He sounds like my kind of guy.”

* * *

W
e stopped
at a roadside place for lunch, and after we ate Megan sat at one of the picnic tables outside while I stood by the trees at the edge of the parking lot, stretching before I had to get back in the car. She was quiet, looking away toward the highway where the cars whizzed by, her expression serious. I watched her for a minute and then I stepped in front of her, so she turned and looked at me.

“Okay,” I said. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“The thing,” I said. “The thing you have going on in your life that has nothing to do with me, that you haven’t told anyone.”

“I’m not telling you,” she said.

“Since you’re trying to forget it by having sex with me, you may as well tell me,” I said. She went red, and I rolled my hands in a
bring it
motion. “Shoot.”

“I never—I never said that,” she said.

“Actually, you did.”

She looked pained. “Jason, I—”

“Megan, it’s fine. Just tell me. You’ll feel better.” She still looked uncertain, so I said, “I never tell anyone anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I promise I’ll never repeat it. What do you have to lose?”

She looked at me for another long minute, thinking. And then she said, “Fine, Carsleigh. I’ll tell you. Sit down.”