“Yeah. Forty minutes of straightening and the whole mess curled up again as soon as I turned the iron off. Why do I even bother?”
“Because if you didn’t, you’d spend the evening wishing you had. It looks great, sweetie. You know I like it pulled up like that anyway. Grab your coat, we are so far behind.”
“You shouldn’t have played golf this morning then.”
“You should have agreed to stay at the damn hotel last night, too, and I wouldn’t have had to come home to shower.”
“Touché,” she grinned, and he smiled back. It felt good to smile. Good, normal.
Their bags were already packed in the car for the long weekend. Another wedding. They joked that they’d become like the characters in Four Weddings and a Funeral. But the spate of invitations that began rolling in three years earlier would finally end tomorrow, when the last of their tight group of friends pulled the trigger and joined the crowd of smug marrieds. And of course, there’d been no funeral, so maybe it wasn’t the most apropos analogy.
Josh was the best man for this one, Kevin Sulman the lucky bridegroom. The wedding weekend had commenced Thursday with an around-the-world bar crawl—girls in one representative hemisphere devouring margaritas, the boys in another downing Guinness—and resumed on Friday morning with a more sedate golf round for the gents and a high tea for the ladies, followed by tonight’s bachelor-bachelorette extravaganza.
Josh had tried to talk Kevin out of doing the bachelor party the night before the wedding. The last thing anyone wanted was to be hung over, standing in front of two hundred people in a stuffy church. But Kevin just shook his head and said, “Hell no, man. I ain’t waking up in Thailand and scrambling to get home. All I want is a few beers, a couple of strippers, and Janie to fall all over herself worrying about me looking at titties all night. No sense giving her more to fret about than that.”
Kevin always was the responsible one.
Aubrey turned in a circle, making sure she had everything, grabbed her bag and met Josh’s eyes. “Ready.”
Josh set the alarm and held open the door to the garage. Only five minutes behind schedule now. That was dealable.
They settled themselves in the car, the Audi Quattro Josh got for a steal at an auction house. The engine was still throaty, and the car handled beautifully. They’d fixed it up, vacuumed and Armor All’d and waxed it until it gleamed. He pulled out of the garage carefully, then shut the door and headed out of the driveway.
“You know I’m dreading this,” Aubrey said.
“Why? Men with tassels on their privates don’t turn you on?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He glanced over at her, then ran his hand up her thigh. She hadn’t worn hose, and her legs were smooth. He pinched her knee at the spot he knew tickled and said, “Me neither. But it will all be fine. I promise.”
“Josh, watch out!”
He turned his head forward, instinctively braking and throwing his arm in front of Aubrey well before he saw the black sedan that had stopped suddenly in front of them. He braced himself for the sickening crunch that followed: loosening his hold on the steering wheel, letting his muscles relax, taking his foot off the clutch. All this without batting an eyelash or thinking it through, just reacting. All those driving lessons from his father, all the near misses with his mother—both had swung their arm across to save him. And now he did it for his wife.
The car in front of them must have heard the squeal of the tires locking up because the driver hit the gas and lurched forward. That move saved them from serious injury. Instead of hitting the car from behind going forty miles an hour, the blow was cushioned so it seemed more like twenty. Still bad enough to crumple the fender and the hood and make the air bags pop free with a gigantic hiss. Still bad enough to knock the wind out of Josh. Still bad enough to hurt.
Once the shock of the collision passed, he knew he was okay. The pain across his chest was just the impact from the safety belt and the air bag. After a few tentative breaths he was able to bat the bag out of the way and reach for Aubrey. Surprise and fear and gratitude etched new lines on her face; her mouth was open in a round little O. Her hair had tumbled down from its clip, falling loose and curly around her shoulders, and her eyes were wide.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I think so. Are you?”
“Yeah. I better check on the driver of the other car.”
“Should I call the police?”
“Just hang tight for a second. Let me see how bad things are first.”
She nodded again. Her face was blank now, the panoply of emotions that she’d first shown gone as reality set in.