Tonight we are all the same.
“Hey, Kyle.” A hand plants a little too firmly on my bad shoulder. I try not to wince as I turn to see Matt Paulson, the nicest guy on the whole planet, which makes me feel like a dick for hating him. “Oh, sorry,” he says when he registers the shoulder his hand landed on, and he quickly yanks it away. “Did you hear I’m heading to Boston College to play football in the fall?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say, trying to swallow the familiar wave of jealousy that comes bubbling up. It’s not his fault, I remind myself. “Congrats, man.”
“Listen, if you hadn’t led the team the way you did for the start of the season, I wouldn’t have even been a blip on their radar. You were one hell of a quarterback. I wouldn’t have gotten a football scholarship if it wasn’t for everything you taught me,” he says, unintentionally rubbing salt in a still-gaping wound. “But I’m sorry it happened—”
“It’s all good,” I interrupt him, then extend my hand so I don’t seem like an ass. “Good luck next year.” I release the handshake and turn on my heel to continue my search, my feet moving fast to put as much distance between us as possible. There’s only one person I want to see right now.
I pause by the bar and crane my neck to scan the crowd for Kim, my eyes jumping from person to person with no success.
“Hors d’oeuvre?” a voice asks from next to me.
I look over to see a man holding out a tray of appetizers to me, lumpy shapes on a crisp white plate. He gives me an artificial smile that screams, I can’t wait to get off in two hours.
I catch sight of the Owl Creek logo on his shirt, the only restaurant remotely near here to be featured on the Food Network for their “hip and modern cuisine.”
Apparently, even Gordon Ramsay had a meal there and couldn’t find anything to complain about.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I say, flashing him a quick grin. I grab one, then pop the whole thing into my mouth before he shuffles off to continue his rounds.
Instant regret.
Is this shrimp? Rubber? Why the hell is it so chewy? And why does it taste like old ham?
Clearly, Gordon didn’t get a taste of whatever lumpy meat this is.
I look both ways before quickly ducking to spit it out into the black cocktail napkin the server gave me, but a sudden flash from next to me makes me jump.
I toss up my nonshrimp hand, blinded, the black dots in my vision slowly fading and giving way to warm brown eyes and high cheekbones identical to mine. She’s in her favorite white floral dress, and I can see her big grin peeking out from behind her phone.
“Mom, don’t—” I start to say, but she taps the photo button again, and another ray of light mauls my eyeballs.
“You know, if you’re going to take embarrassing photos of me, you can at least turn the flash off. You don’t have to blind a guy.”
“Oh, the girls on the ’gram will love this,” she says, chuckling wickedly, her eyes narrowing as she taps away on her screen.
“Mom. Don’t post that,” I say as I lunge at her. I pull her into a half hug in an attempt to distract her while I try to wrestle the phone out of her grip. As I do, I see the shot, a look of horror on my face, eyes half-closed, rubber shrimp clinging to my tongue as it makes its way into the cocktail napkin.
There’s no way in hell I’m letting the “girls on the ’gram” see this. Or anyone, for that matter.
Kim would never let me live it down.
Her grip loosens slightly as she leans into the hug, and I pry the phone away to delete the picture. “You can forget it, lady.”
“Fine,” she says, faking a scowl, the soft pink of her lipstick emphasizing her turned-down lips. “Break your old mother’s heart. I can’t have anything.”
I laugh, planting a kiss on her cheek and sweeping her up into a real hug this time, careful to angle my body so she doesn’t feel the flask tucked into my waistband. “You’ve got me, don’t you?”
She lets out a dramatic sigh. “I guess you’ll do.” Her voice is muffled against the thick fabric of my suit jacket. “Hey,” she says, pulling away and grinning. “Why are you on your own? You give her the bracelet yet?”
My heart pounds, just like it used to before a football game. “I’m waiting for the right moment,” I say as I give the room a quick scan. “You seen her?”
“She was with Sam, by the terrace, a few minutes ago,” she says, nodding to the right, toward the floor-to-ceiling windows separating us from the oversize-stone terrace that overlooks the hotel courtyard.
She reaches out to gently adjust the knot of my tie, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. It’s a Windsor, not that I’m pretentious enough to know any other way to tie a tie, but she spent the morning of my seventh-grade formal learning the knot just so she could teach me how to do it. It was the first dance I went to with Kim.
Mom’s been there through everything.
“You really think she’ll like it?” I ask. I felt so sure when I ordered it, but now…
“Absolutely.” She gently pats my face. Reassured, I give her the phone back. Total mistake.
She grabs it and quickly snaps two more pictures, still with a flash that is now popping behind my eyes. I attempt a glare, but the crow’s-feet around her eyes wrinkle as she grins innocently at me, and my frown cracks right down the middle. Nothing will bother me tonight, not even my mom’s incessant documentation of my life.
So I cheese it up, posing for one last photo, and once she’s satisfied, I’m off to finally find Kim. I chuck the wadded-up cocktail napkin into a trash can as I make my way toward the terrace, where the sky is dark and ominous on the other side of the glass.
It usually doesn’t take me long to find her.