She stuffs a piece of bread in her mouth and puts her hand up, chewing. I have to work to control my expression because all I can hear are vague slurping and chewing sounds. Distinguishing sounds in a room like this is practically impossible. And rather than explain my situation to the giggling girl beside me, I decide to escape.
Standing up abruptly, I murmur an excuse before slipping into the hall. If the woman calls after me, I'm blissfully ignorant.
There is a large ballroom being prepared for the wedding party to drink and dance. But if the reception banquet was torture for a deaf guy, the idea of a dark ballroom with loud music pumping through the air is actual hell. So I head down the hallway, emerging into the hotel's main lobby. To the left, there are elevators. My room calls to me.
It would be so quiet there. The solitude that I frequently seek out would bolster me.
But it's still early, not quite 7:30. My mother would be disappointed in me if I called it a night so soon. She already called this morning, her face taking up the entire Facetime screen because she still hasn't figured out how to hold the phone at a normal distance.
She asked about my flight. She asked about my hotel room. Then she asked about grandchildren, the third time this month. "You're 30, Kostya," my dadsaid from somewhere off camera. Chance of grandchildren: low, with no improvement expected.
Instead of heading to my room, I settle for the hotel bar. Sitting on a stool, I order myself a beer and pull out my phone. Most of the notifications are from our family chat: cute pictures of my brothers and sisters with their partners. A picture of Sara, my sister, cupping her wife's growing belly.
Two brothers and a sister, all of us adopted. All married except me.
I heart the picture and look up from my phone.
The group of girls that was sitting to my right is gone, replaced by a gorgeous blonde nursing a glass of red wine. I can't help but stare because she's so pretty. A waterfall of delicate blonde waves, a heart-shaped face with large blue eyes, a button nose, and a pair of pillowy lips wearing an amused expression. She's wearing the signature lilac lace dress of the wedding and her cleavage in that dress should be illegal. She's thick and curvy with a nipped in little waist. While I watch, she slips off her gold high heeled sandals with a sigh of relief.
Fuck, she's perfect.
She glances up suddenly, sensing my gaze, and smiles at me. "Fellow fugitive?"
Her smile kills me. I duck my head. "Yep. You are one of the bridesmaids?"
"How can you tell?" Her smile turns wicked as she gestures at her dress. "I look totally normal and not at all like Prom Barbie."
"You look hot," I blurt out. The second I say it, my cheeks heat. "Sorry. I don't usually go around being creepy to women at weddings."
She snorts. "No offense taken." She picks up her wine glass and tilts it toward me. "I'm Sable. Claire's college roommate."
"Konstantin. I knew Matthieu when we were kids."
"Ah." Her eyes light up. "So you're one of the Quebec boys. Claire warned me about you guys."
"Smart woman." I take a sip of my beer. "What did she warn you about?"
"Let's see." Sable ticks things off on her fingers. "Loud, competitive, allergic to vegetables, and dangerously charming when they want to be."
"I eat vegetables." I pause. "Except mushrooms. I could never get the hang of them. They taste like dirt."
She laughs, the throaty sound catching me off-guard.
She catches me staring again and her cheeks go pink. Nodding to the seat next to me, she asks, "Do you mind if I slide down?"
I shake my head, but when I glance at the bar, a group of girls from earlier has relocated too close for comfort. It'll be hard to hear Sable over their chatter.
"Stay." I get up and take the stool beside her. "Easier to talk this way."
"So what do you do, Konstantin?" She props her chin on her hand. "When you're not crashing hotel bars and telling strangers they're hot?"
"That's the boring stuff." I lean my elbow on the bar. "No jobs, no last names. I want to know the interesting things about you, Sable."
"Interesting things." She swirls her wine and thinks about it. "I just moved to Seattle like 3 weeks ago. I'm still sleeping on an air mattress because my furniture is stuck in a warehouse in Vancouver."
"What's in Vancouver?"
"My old life." She says it lightly, but something flickers behind her eyes. "I had a pretty spectacular breakup. The kind that ends up on social media and your coworkers send you screenshots in the group chat." She takes a sip of wine. "So I packed everything I own into a storage unit and said goodbye to the City of Glass."
