“Yeah,” Meta replies. “I pay attention. Just like you. Someone has to around here.”
Now the girl is offering even more than friendship. It feels like...respect. And that’s exactly what V needs right now.
Meta hits her screen a few more times, then says, “There. All set. Fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you,” V says again.
“I’m honestly not sure how you do it,” Meta tells her.
What? V wants to know. But the moment for asking passes. As Meta leaves, not sharing why she arrived in the first place, she adds, “Also, I really like your haircut.”
This almost undoes V.
J, who’s known her for so long, didn’t seem to notice.
But this girl, who she’s only known for a few weeks, did.
J is early to meet Skye at the performance space, but Skye is even earlier.
Skye takes one look at J and knows something’s wrong.
“Wedding jitters?” Skye asks. The space is basically the back room of a bar that’s a little too fancy to be a dive and a little too much of a dive to be fancy.
“No, I’m good,” J says,
Skye raises an eyebrow. “If this is good, I’d really hate to see bad.”
“Did Julia tell you the reason I wanted to spontaneously create a wedding?”
“Oh,” Skye answers, in a tone that makes it clear Julia provided the gist. “Reunion didn’t go as planned.”
J shakes his head.
“Look,” Skye says, “we don’t have to do any of this. If you’re feeling like you just want to get into bed for the weekend and not see another living soul, we can cancel the fake wedding. It would be easy—probably too easy—for me and Detroit to stage a big fight, post it online, and make a big to-do about the ceremony being called off. Your girlfriend will never know the difference. Because, if I may be a little presumptuous, I know full well that heartbreak isn’t a noun, it’s a verb, and it’s also one of the harder verbs to replace with other verbs, likeperformorsocializeor, I don’t know,exist.”
J hasn’t been thinking of anything that’s happened in terms of heartbreak, per se. But now that Skye mentions it...well, he feels worse.
“Do you want some whiskey?” Skye offers. “Or a hug? I’m a firm believer in hugging it out.”
J wavers, because from yesterday he knows that Skye does give really good hugs. But he also wants to change the subject, wants to create something else to focus on.
“If you don’t mind,” he says, “I’d like to talk about the wedding. I’d still like to do it. Otherwise...Iwillgo to sleep for the weekend. And that’s not what I should be doing.”
“Okay. Detroit should be here any minute...but I can start giving you the tour. There ain’t much to see.”
There’s an okay AV setup, and a stage that’s maybe two feet off the floor. Not a lot, but enough. There are also poles on the stage. (“There’s a pole-dancing class on Wednesdays,” Skye explains. “It’s strangely popular with people my age who aren’t paid very much.”) The décor is hardly wedding-friendly—just a few framed posters from fifties and sixties biker movies, which could have just as easily been purchased at IKEA as at a vintage shop.
“I’m sure this isn’t what you’re used to,” Skye says. “You’re so nice to do this.”
“No, you’re nice for letting me do this.”
“You know what would be fun? If we got into a total fight over who’s being nicer.” Skye smiles, and J is charmed. The two of them smile at each other for a beat longer than either would consider normal. Then Skye, a little flustered, checks their phone.
“I’m sure I told Detroit the time,” they say. “Let me just text him.” They type something quickly, then stare at the phone. Waiting. Waiting. “His phone might be off. We havethatfight all the time. I say, what good is a phone if people can’t reach you? He says, ‘It’s okay, the answering machine will pick it up.’ I swear, that’s what Detroit calls it. The answering machine.”
“I’m in no rush,” J says, feeling much more rooted in Detroit’s generation than Skye’s.
“Do you want to sit down?”
