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He is such a baby.
“You need to calm down for the love of God, it was just a bit of Menthol and Vapor Rub.”
We might not be in the church right now but he’s loud enough that the funeral-goers present, paying their respects, can undoubtedly hear his whining.
I chuckle to myself at the irony. Here we are, putting on a show in the house of the Lord, lying to the man’s entire family on a lark, while his dead grandfather lays in a casket just outside the door.
“It fucking stings! I can’t see!” His fingers try to grab at the wet wipe but I swat them away. “Where’s that water carafe I found before?”
The fact that he continues calling it a water carafe…
“I’m not letting you wash your face with holy water! No. Over my dead body.” Shit, that was a classless joke considering his grandfather lies in wake in the very next room, but it rolled off my tongue before I could stop it same as the other one had.
“Stop crying, Palmer, you’re fine. The stinging will go away in a few minutes, chill.”
I pause, studying his face now that he has his eyes squeezed shut.
Palmer isn’t unattractive looking—if you’re into the buttoned up type, which I am not. Slicked back hair. Clean shaven. Long sleeve button down shirt, navy suit jacket, matching slacks, expensive brown dress shoes.
I bet he wears socks and a bow tie when he has sex.
“I’m trying. It hurts.”
“You sure whine a lot.” I can’t stop myself from adding.
Palmer scowls. “You didn’t tell me this was going to burn, Miriam.”
“Yes, well—if I had told you, you wouldn’t have done it and you wanted to get emotional, remember? This whole thing was your idea.”
“The Vapor Rub wasn’t.” He sounds petulant and pouty, the way I would expect a spoiled silver-spooner to sound. “All I said was I wanted to sound emotional so Gemma would see my softer side. I don’t need her to see me looking as if I’d been stung by a bee and had an allergic reaction.”
His softer side?
At a funeral?
How is this guy for real?
How is he best friends with my brother, Winston?
Winston is nothing like this. My brother is cool and chill and spends most of his time in jeans and flannel shirts. Definitely always has a baseball hat on, sometimes he wears it backwards.
I mean, okay—in all fairness, Win and Palmer were fraternity brothers in college, which is how I met Palmer to begin with. But in my wildest stretch of the imagination when he messaged me and said, ‘Miriam, I need a favor and Win said you’re the only one who can help me,’ I had no idea we’d end up at a funeral with his pretty, blonde date in one of the pews.
Guess there’s a first time for everything.
I dab gently at his eye, wiping it free from menthol gel. “I still can’t believe you invited a date to your Grandfathers funeral.”
Honestly, who does that?
Palmer smiles, lids fluttering slightly. “Isn’t she hot?”
He sniffles as tears drip from the corner of his eyes in an unflattering way.
“Uh, I hadn’t noticed. I was too busy trying to be incognito at the back of the church.” The last thing I need is his mother or father, or aunt or uncle, catching me reading him the lines to his eloquent eulogy—which Palmer had paid me a nice chunk of change to spoon feed him. “You really think you’re clever, don’t you?”
“It’s brilliant, actually.” He drawls lazily, sounding a bit British. “Gemma gets to see two sides of me; the classy, casual side and today, she gets to see my sensitive side. Shows her I can get emotional.”
“Couldn’t you have just gone to the Humane Society and pet the kittens?”
