“Yep. Couldn’t be better,” she said, lying through her teeth.
“Good, that’s good.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m really happy you’re here, Meg. You’ve always been someone I can lean on. And I appreciate it. Even if you sometimes are a little too harsh with me.” He let out a chuckle, and Meghna frowned.
“Harsh?”
He dropped his hand and shrugged. “You know. You don’t really hold back. You can be a little…mean at times. But don’t worry. I know it comes from a good place.”
Was he kidding right now? “I don’t think I’ve been mean, Seth.”
“Don’t worry about it, Meg,” he said with an easy smile. “I forgive you.”
She didn’t need his forgiveness. She hadn’t done anything she needed to be forgiven for.
“If this is about the feedback I gave before, about the song…”
He laughed, the sound coarse and brittle. “We don’t need to rehash all that. It’s in the past now. You just went a little too far and…”
But she hadn’t. She’d just been honest with him. Had given him the feedback she thought he needed. It might have been the most drastic suggestion she’d ever given him, but her advice to start from scratch had obviously worked. The song was much better than it had been before.
She was tempted to get into it, tempted to push back, to find out what he was really upset about. Seth had always been brutally honest and up-front with her, but now it was like there was a hidden meaning to his words. An extra layer she couldn’t understand. She wanted to get to the bottom of it, to find out what had gone so wrong between them and see if she could fix it, but this wasn’t the time or place to have that discussion. She pushed down her irritation and wrapped up their conversation, telling him she was excited to hear the song tomorrow. Then she left and joined Karthik at their table.
The groomsmen were seated near him, and Karthik laughed at something Eric had just shared with the group. She sat in the empty chair beside him, and Karthik greeted her with a rare open and relaxed face.
“There you are.” He swung an arm over the back of her chair, and the casual gesture made something in her stomach flutter.
“You had a good talk with Seth?” he asked quietly.
“I did.”
“He ever say sorry for hanging up on you?”
She nodded.
“Good.” His hand hovered dangerously close to her bare shoulder. A ghost of a touch. His thumb barely sliding over her skin. “You ever tell him to stop calling you Meg?”
“No.”
He opened his mouth and was clearly about to say something more when Mark interrupted.
“You call her Meg too?” he asked Karthik.
Karthik shook his head. “I don’t.”
“Oh. Sorry, I thought that’s what you said.”
“No, I…Meghna prefers to go by her whole name,” Karthik said.
“Yeah, I knew that,” Eric chimed in from across the table.
“You did?” Meghna asked, slightly surprised.
“That was, like, one of the first things you told me,” Eric said. “Seth always called you ‘Meg,’ but when I met you and tried calling you that, you shut it down. I always figured it was only okay for Seth.”
Mark nodded. “Me too. Thought it was some special couple thing just for the two of you.”
The arm around the back of her chair went stiff.
“Special couple thing?” Karthik asked.
