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“Be sarcastic if you want. I know how these things work. You’ve been out of the loop. I’m working really hard to establish us and it would help if when you are around, you do your part to develop the right image.” She acts as if I’m not around because I’m off on vacation and not because I’m busting my ass to graduate at the top of my class.
“Fine, let’s go,” I bite out and take her outstretched hand and leave our room to meet the rest of the party.
And when our hands touch I feel… absolutely nothing.
16
SURPRISE
REMI
“Remington, can you please put that thing down for five minutes and let me introduce you?”
My finger pauses mid-press and hovers over the keyboard of my phone. I slide my eyes to Joni and am met with her disapproving frown—what’s become her standard facial expression when she’s talking to me.
“Right, sure.” I quirk my lips in an attempt at a smile, finish scanning my email quickly, and then slip my phone into the inside pocket of my suit before I look at the man who she’s been talking to while I’ve been checking my email obsessively to see if there’s any news about my interview.
As soon as we stepped off the elevator she saw someone and rushed off in their direction. I followed absently, reading my emails as I walked. The room was packed and loud, the volume of the music warring with people shouting to be heard above it. But it was like white noise to me.
Society weddings like the one my mother was throwing for Regan were nothing but an excuse to party, get drunk and not feel like a loser in the morning. The only reason this one would be tolerable is because it’s my beloved sister’s party and I’d walk over burning coals for her.
Even though, I also spend a lot of time wanting to strangle her. I look around the room at the half-dozen bars where our nearly three hundred guests are drinking like fish, the ice sculptures, and huge garlands made entirely of roses and thank fuck my sister’s expensive-ass taste is about to no longer be my problem. And thank fuck her husband is even richer than we are. Or else, she’d have him in the poorhouse in less than a year.
“Remi—” Joni’s voice is a hiss and I finally turn my attention to her. She scowls at me and then plasters a huge smile on her face before she turns to face the man she’s trying to introduce me to. “Paul, this is my boyfriend, Remi. He’s a third year at Howard Law School in DC. He got into Georgetown, of course, but he’s obsessed with Thurgood Marshall so that’s where he went.” She says it like she has to explain my attendance at Howard. It is, of course, a lie. I never even applied to Georgetown.
“Remi this is Paul.” I look up with a practiced smile on my face and almost choke on my inhaled breath.
Behind the man Joni’s pointing at, is a halo of dark riotous curls that I’d recognize anywhere.
“Kal?” I say her name and my throat tightens around the word. Paul’s eyes widen, and he looks behind him like he forgot she was there. There’s a beat of nothing, breath, movement, sound all stop. And then Kal steps out from behind him.
I have imagined this moment, and yet, nothing could prepare me for the force of the longing that slams into my chest when I actually see her again.
I see her.
I miss her.
I want her.
“Remi.” Her voice is high pitched, breathy, and full of surprise that rings as false as that smile on her face.
I narrow my eyes at her. She was fucking hiding from me.
I clear my throat and force my expression to remain neutral. But inside, my mind is hurtling backward through time to the summer I spent with this girl. No longer a girl, not at all.
She looks… so beautiful. Her skin still glows like she’s been brushed in rays of sunlight. The space below her high round cheekbones not as full as they had been. But those lips are still bare, and they still make mine pulse just to look at them. They’re not in the soft set of the innocent she was that summer. They’re firm, determined, experienced.
Someone else made them that way and I feel my first of, what I know will be, many pangs of envy. I drink her in, trying to see if everything is as I remember it. One thing is exactly the same. She doesn’t look like anyone else here.
It’s a spring wedding. Everyone is in pastels and neutrals.
In a sea of pale pinks, buttery yellows, and icy blues, Kal stands out like an orchid blooming in the desert. Her slim, but curvy body is draped in a rich, candy apple red dress that is cinched around her waist with a gold chain. The dress leaves swaths of her dark honey skin exposed—at her shoulder, and at her waist. My fingers itch to touch her.
Her deep, wide-set dark brown eyes flare when our gazes meet and I see all the questions in her eyes. But I also see the same longing I’m feeling.
Holy shit, yes. My heart is going to fucking explode and I’m not sure I would even mind.
I was so not ready… I’ve dreamed. I’ve imagined. But all of that falls short to the reality of how beautiful she is. The noise falls away as I take her in.
