“I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think to ask if he could come,” I confess. “But he drove me all the way, and…”
Winona cuts me off.
“I don’t mind that. I’m more concerned about why you are here when you should be bundled up in bed right now, high off NyQuil and bingeingVampire Diaries.”
I make a point not to look at Julian, who I imagine is giving me a knowing look. If Winona knew that I’d spent last night in the emergency room, she’d probably drop-kick me back into my downtown apartment.
“I’m all better, actually,” I say. To prove it, I do a little jog in place that earns me a smirk from a passing attendee. “See? Fit as a fiddle. Even made it to SCAI last night. Besides, I promised Sophie.”
Winona glances down at the bouquet in my hands, then releases the world’s most dramatic sigh, complete with heaving shoulders and a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree eye roll.
“You spoil her,” she says. Then, with a small smile, she adds, “You’re glowing. I just assumed it was from fever. I see it must be from something else.”
Julian and I exchange a conspiratorial glance: his smug, mine guilty. Luckily, Winona doesn’t catch it. She’s too busy eyeing the doors of the auditorium.
“Well, no point in pretending not to be relieved. Leila’s here. I don’t exactly want to make small talk, so I’m pretending to need to use the bathroom—” She blanches, realizing too late that she’s speaking to the best man of the woman whom she’s currently avoiding. “Not that she isn’t lovely, of course…”
Julian waves her off.
“No worries,” he says. “Happy to be a buffer.”
It’s a testament to how out of sorts I still feel that it only occurs to me that someone else should be taking on that role when we’re walking down the aisle of the auditorium.
“Is Brandon not here?” I ask.
From behind, Winona’s body stiffens.
“Nope,” she says in a deceptively pleasant tone, and then we stop at a row of seats close to the stage and she holds her arms out in a politeAfter you.
We find Leila at the end of the aisle. When she sees Julian, she raises both eyebrows in an expression that could almost be mistaken for disdain before it turns quickly to delight.
“Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?”
She throws herself into his arms. It’s the familiar embrace of two people whose comfort in each other has built over years, who have seen each other in sweats and smelled each other’s stinky socks and know what toppings the other likes on their pizza. Objectively, I know that there’s nothing romantic about it.
And yet I want to tear her small, man-stealing arms from around his waist.
Which is wrong. I know it’s wrong. The feeling is alien; even as itrushes through me, I know that it doesn’t fit, like a too-small bra found at the bottom of my drawer. Hating a woman for a man’s disloyalty has never been my style; I’m much less likely to get jealous and far more likely to get lost. Still, a more vicious voice rings louder:Was Brandon not enough, you whore?
Winona places a hand on my thigh.
“You sure you’re okay?” she whispers. “You’re…staring.”
The moment she says it, I realize my eyes are so wide that the distant gust of air from the auditorium heaters scratches like sandpaper against my corneas.
“Fine,” I say, blinking away just as Leila leans forward in her seat to greet me.
“Hi, Sean!” she says brightly.
“Nice to see you, Leila,” I say. “Brandon feeling any better today?”
“Yup,” she says cryptically. She gestures toward Julian. “Oh, and thanks for going to check in on Julian. Even if it was a false alarm.”
Julian stiffens.
“You shouldn’t have sent her,” he says coolly to Leila. “Who knows what she could’ve walked into.”
“Sean can take care of herself,” Leila says.