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And sure enough, no one tries to grab a selfie with me or asks me to sign an autograph. It’s a minor miracle and one I never thought I’d be so grateful for after spending almost a decade trying to be as famous as humanly possible.
Twenty minutes later, we’re tucked into a booth in the back with a pitcher of crappy beer, two mason jars instead of pint glasses, and some truly mediocre burgers. Quinn lays both his hands on the table and says, “Sonya says I’m not allowed to come home unless I get the whole story.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” I’m tired, my chest heavy with the weight of my failure at work. I don’t want to rehash a bunch of stuff that isn’t fixable.
“The story of what happened between you and Ivy.”
“There’s no story.”
He crosses his arms. “Shane,” he says. “That’s complete and total bullshit.”
Trust Quinn, man of few words, not to beat around the bush. “No, it’s really not,” I say. I take a generous slug of my beer and eye the bar around us. Tin and neon signs, walls that haven’t been washed or repainted since W. was president, a few tired post-work humans slumped over their drinks.
It’s the perfect place to tell this story, really.
“The story is in order to meet the terms of Granddad’s goddamned will, I needed a celebrity wedding. The one I had on the books fell through, so I created a new, fake one, where Ivy and I were getting married.”
“Plausible deniability!” he cries, covering his ears.
“Dude,” I say. “We’re so far past that. Who would you even need to deny it to?”
“There could always be a reason.”
“What, are you the lawyer now?” I demand.
“Spend a day around Rhys, internalize his sick logic.”
“I’m too tired to lie.”
He exhales. “Fair enough.”
“Then Tobuary got back together and Weggers said he bought their story more than our story?—”
There was a moment when I thought Weggers was going to look at me and I’d see my grandfather’s eyes looking out and there would be some—I don’t know, some magic resolution, where he’d say, You’re not your father’s son after all. You can, and do, love this woman, and nothing would make me happier than to see the two of you living happily ever after in blissful wedlock.
But that was never going to happen. And pretty much the exact opposite happened. And Weggers was right—pretending wasn’t going to solve anything.
“So the Tobuary wedding was back on, and Ivy and I called off our fake wedding. End of story.”
“Right,” he says. “That’s your story, and you’re sticking to it. And my story is in order to meet the terms of Granddad’s goddamned will, I needed to work at a reception desk in a spa and salon for sixty days. Which meant I was working for this sun goddess of a woman who got under my grumpy skin like no one ever has before. Plus we were living together. And then the sixty days were up. End of story.”
I stare at him.
“Oh,” he says with a surprising amount of sarcasm for such a deadpan man, “did I leave something out?”
“The part where you and she fell madly in love and lived happily ever after?”
He gives me a hard look. “Do you think you might be leaving something out of your story, too?” he asks, speaking very slowly so there’s no chance I’ll miss a word.
“Well, I’m clearly not living happily ever after,” I say, gesturing to the gloriously grim scene around us.
I don’t like the pity that moves across his face like a lightning storm. For a second, I think he’s going to leave me alone, but then he leans forward. “No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t look like it. But something happened. The night of the bachelor party, when we asked you how it felt to get the best sex of your life night after night, you said you were about to find out. Sounds like there’s a little more to the story than you’ve told me so far.”
“I’m not going to spill my guts on this table so you can go home, gossip triumphantly to your hot wife, and get laid,” I say.
He scowls at me—it’s the “hot wife” that did it; he’s still a little pissed that I pretended to be into Sonya to goad him. But then he squares his shoulders and says, “You owe me one, though. Not only did I save your life?—”
“Not feeding me a known poisonous mushroom is not the same thing as saving my life!”
