“That’s easy. Just step out with authority, like we had every legitimate reason to be in here.”
Hallie touched her lips and then remembered she’d been wearing red lipstick. “Crap, can you see my face?”
Jack’s face moved closer. “A little . . . ?”
“I might have makeup smeared all over my face. Shit.”
“Here.” Before she could stop him, he raised his phone and took a picture from point-blank range, and the flash was blinding in the tiny closet.
“Gah, what are you doing?!”
“Trying to help—”
He didn’t finish the sentence, because he looked at his phone and started laughing. The display illuminated his face, and when he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to explain, he turned it around and showed her.
The picture of her was positively garish.
Her eyes were half-open, her lipstick was smudged, her nostrils were flared, and the photo was so up close that you couldn’t see more than her eyes, nose, and upper lip. She looked like the ghost of a drunk clown.
“I’m not laughing at you—” he tried, but couldn’t finish.
“I know,” she said, looking at the picture and losing it. She started belly laughing with him, and neither one of them could stop. He rested his forehead on the door above her while he tried to calm down, and she could feel tears ruining what was left of her smoky eye as she cackled.
She almost couldn’t breathe.
Every time she tried to stop laughing, she pictured it again.
She screamed when the door flew open behind them, dropping them both out of the closet and onto the lobby floor.
A housekeeper stood there, blinking at them with her hand on the doorknob.
Hallie quickly scrambled out from under Jack and into a sitting position as the bright lights assaulted her eyes. She looked at him, lying on the hotel floor with red lipstick smudged all over the bottom of his face and hair sticking up everywhere. He looked as shell-shocked as she felt.
He sat up, and then he looked at her.
That grin crawled all the way up his face before he threw his head back and started laughing all over again, even as the hotel employee stared blankly at them.
That was the moment she knew.
Chapter
TWENTY-ONE
Jack
“So it’s cigars and scotch on the east patio for the gents and cosmos on the west patio for the ladies.”
Jack watched Hallie’s sister put the microphone back on the stand, and he thought it was interesting how different they were. Lillie seemed great, but Hallie was just so . . . Hal.
“Are you freaking kidding me?”
Speak of the devil.
He turned around as Hallie approached, looking put together again. No more eye makeup smears, no more red lipstick all over. He missed the mess. He played innocent on her remark and said, “Pardon?”
“Where are we—Victorian England? The gentlemen will retire for scotch and cigars while the ladies rest their delicate constitutions?” She watched as the rehearsal guests started heading for their respective patios. “What if I want a cigar?”
He looked at her lips. Couldn’t keep his eyes off them, all of a sudden. He asked, “What exactly is a constitution?”
Hallie shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m positive mine is just as strong as yours.”
“You wish.” He patted down a piece of her hair that was sticking up. “Do you even want a cigar?”
“Not really,” she said, smoothing down the same piece of hair while finally meeting his eyes. “But I don’t want a damn cosmo, either.”
“C’mon, Jack,” Chuck said, walking over and giving a chin nod toward the east exit. “Time for us gents to get our stogies on.”
“I want to go with you guys—”
“Get over here, Hal,” Hallie’s mother half shouted from the west exit. “Please?”
“Git,” Chuck said, giving Hallie a tiny push. “Go be a good little female.”
“Screw you,” she said to Chuck, and then she pointed at Jack and said, “Be ready to hold my hair tonight, because if I have to drink cosmos with my mother and talk about what happens on the wedding night, swear to God I’m getting hammered.”
He and Chuck were still laughing when she turned and marched away, and there was nothing he could do but watch her go.
What a fucking force.
* * *
? ? ?
“So, can I ask you a question about Hal?”
Jack slowly shook his head and exhaled a puff of cigar smoke, watching it rise in the night sky. “If you must, Chuck.”
Chuck cleared his throat and said, “So, things are good with her?”
Jack tilted his head and looked at the guy. He really, really liked Chuck. Chuck was nerdy and nice and funny as hell. Jack said, “Yeah.”
“So you like her a lot?”
“Yeah.” Jack looked at the other side of the patio, where the groomsmen were playing some stupid drinking game, and said, “I do.”
“Here’s the thing.” Chuck frowned and said, “Did she tell you anything about Ben?”
“Who’s Ben?” he asked, fully knowing it was Hallie’s ex.
“Who’s Ben?” Chuck lowered his eyebrows and said, “Ben Marks, her ex . . . ?”
“Oh, that guy.” Jack raised the cigar to his mouth and looked over at the man in question, who was talking to Hallie’s dad. He looked like the kind of guy who enjoyed talking about what he smelled in his wine. “I don’t know much about him.”
“I’ll give you the dirt, but you never heard this from me, okay?”
Jack gave a nod.
“Hallie and Ben dated for a few years and were living together.”
Holy shit. “Years?”
Chuck nodded. “He’s this wannabe sophisticate, passive-aggressive asshole who made her feel like shit about herself. Convinced her to do things like play tennis and buy a Volvo.”
“A fucking Volvo?”
“Yes. Shit. I hate that guy and also Volvos.” Chuck leaned back in his patio chair and looked up at the dark sky. “It seemed like he made her feel like her Hallie-ness was embarrassing or something—I’m paraphrasing, by the way. This is my analysis after seeing them together for years.”
Jack fucking hated that guy.
Didn’t really mind Volvos, though, he thought as he took a long drink of whiskey.
“One day, out of the blue, Ben came home and told Hallie that he’d had an epiphany. He realized that he was in love with the idea of her—what he thought she could be—but not actually her.”
Jack lowered his glass. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
“That he didn’t love her. That he loved what he wanted her to be but she never, like, got there for him.”
“Shit.” Jack pictured Hallie crying after Alex broke things off and felt like an even bigger asshole for causing that. She might not have had deep romantic feelings for him, but she didn’t need another guy to make her feel like she was less than.
Because she was fucking everything.
“Between you and me,” Chuck said, leaning a little closer and lowering his voice, “I disconnected Ben’s car battery like three times after that, just to fuck with him and make him late for work.”