17
The bridal suite is a mess. I find Second Aunt in her work corner, trying to put the finishing touches on Jacqueline’s hair while Jacqueline visibly tries not to cry. Maureen holds Jacqueline’s hands tight, speaking to her in a low, comforting tone of voice.
“I can’t believe he’s drunk,” Jacqueline says. “On our wedding day!”
“I know,” Maureen says, rubbing Jacqueline’s arms. “But I think he’s sobering up right now. He’ll probably be okay.”
Second Aunt brightens up when she spots me. “Ah, photographer is here, you no cry anymore, okay? Later ruin picture.”
“Who cares about pictures anymore? My groom is a dumbass!” Jacqueline cries.
“Oh, sweetie.” Maureen pulls her into a hug.
I bite my lip and give the two of them a bit of space. The truth is, people often judge brides for being high-strung and call them “bridezillas,” but honestly, without a groom like Tom, Jacqueline would’ve been a perfectly calm bride. After a few minutes, I gently say, “Seb’s over in the groom’s suite, helping the groom and groomsmen get ready. It’ll all work out okay.”
Jacqueline’s chin trembles, and her eyes shine with tears. “It’s just—we’ve been planning this for over a year, and everybody’s here, and—”
“I know.” I crouch down so I can look her in the eye. “And everybody is going to enjoy themselves and remember this as one of the most beautiful weddings they’ve ever attended, with the most gorgeous bride they’ve ever seen.”
A sad smile touches her lips. “But even if Tom and his groomsmen do wake up in time, they’ll look awful, and Tom won’t even be able to enjoy his own wedding day.”
“If you want to call the wedding off or postpone it or whatever, you can,” Maureen says.
My heart does some complicated gymnastics move. Yesss, call off the wedding! We’d be able to leave early with the body—
Jacqueline shakes her head. “People have flown all the way from Indo to get here. If I canceled it there would be hell to pay.” She takes a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. Tom’s the right guy for me. I’ve just got to get through today, and then we’ll be fine. He makes a shitty groom, but he’ll be the perfect husband.”
I have to consciously stop myself from sighing out loud in disappointment at the missed opportunity for us.
Second Aunt resumes putting on the finishing touches while I aim my camera at Jacqueline and take pictures. This is usually one of my favorite parts of the day—taking photos of the bride. There is no doubt that the bride is the highlight of every wedding. There’s just something about taking pictures of a woman wearing a gauzy, frothy wedding dress that makes me love my job. Usually. Today, I just want to get everything over and done with. And knowing that the bride is secretly unhappy doesn’t help matters.
Once we’re done, Second Aunt and I leave, giving Jacqueline and Maureen some privacy to bitch some more about the idiot groom and his idiot friends. As we walk out of the room, I turn and catch a glimpse of Maureen giving Jacqueline a quick hug while speaking in a reassuring tone to her, and I’m glad that Jacqueline has such a good friend to lean on. Outside the bridal suite, I quickly fill Second Aunt in on what’s happened.
“So now we just waiting for Big Aunt to steal suit from laundry room?” she says, incredulously.
Put that way, it does sound pretty crazy. It sounds like the kind of plan that has about a gazillion ways to go wrong. “Well, we couldn’t think of anything else, and that cooler’s been seen by just about everybody.”
“Is all Big Aunt’s fault,” Second Aunt says, triumphantly.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that. The fridge was just too busy, people coming in and out.”
“Nobody notice cooler, especially if we stack at bottom. You see, this is what Big Aunt do. She think she knows better, so she just do something without asking everyone. In the end, she create bigger mess.”
“I mean—it’s a difficult situation. I don’t think there are any right answers, you know?”
Second Aunt harrumphs. “I been telling everyone for so long, cannot just rely on Big Aunt, but everyone always ask, ‘Big Aunt, is this okay? Is that okay?’ How would Big Aunt know? No, cannot rely on her. I will think of something, better idea.”
“Uh.” This feels bad in a too-many-cooks-spoil-the-soup kind of way. “I really don’t think—”
“You go back inside, tea ceremony going to start soon. You get ready.” With that, she walks off, wearing a firm expression of someone who knows absolutely what she’s about to do.
I stand there for a while, hesitating. I should stop her. Or should I? I don’t know. I’ve been raised never to go against my elders. Like I said, it’s a difficult situation with no right answer, and left to my own devices, I would . . . well, I honestly don’t know what I’d do. Killing a dude and covering up said dude are all a bit out of my normal comfort zone.
It’s barely noon. Unbelievable. I feel as though it’s the end of a very long day, but now it turns out there’s still some time before the penjemputan ceremony. In Chinese-Indo weddings, the groom and groomsmen go to the bride’s house (or in cases where the bride’s already at the hotel, to the bride’s suite). The bridesmaids are supposed to greet them at the door and make them do a series of embarrassing stunts before they’re allowed to walk through the door and jemput—pick up—the bride. I wonder what torturous stunts Jacqueline’s friends have concocted, especially to get back at the guys for getting so shit-faced. Despite myself, I smile at the thought. They deserve a bit of ass-whooping, honestly.
“Well, at least somebody’s having a good time.”
I look up to see Nathan coming down the corridor. “Oh, hey.” I can’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. The sight of him. I can’t describe it. I mean, objectively he’s gorgeous, obviously, but there’s also something about him that makes me feel that I’ve come home after a long day.
“Just came out from the groom’s suite,” he says with a sigh.
“Oof. How’re they doing?”
“Well, they’re awake, so there’s that, but a couple of them are trying to shift the blame by saying that their drinks must’ve been spiked in order for them to get that drunk.”
I stare at him in horror. “Seriously?” How fucking entitled can you get?
Nathan sighs again. “Yep, seriously. Unfortunately, this kind of thing isn’t unique. You won’t believe the number of times guests have blamed us for some random thing just to cover their asses or get a freebie.”
“That sucks. I empathize. I deal with people on the most stressful day of their lives, so . . . yeah. I don’t usually see the best side of them.”
His mouth quirks into a crooked smile that doubles my heart rate. “Did you mean ‘the happiest day of their lives’?”
“I meant what I meant, dude. Sure, it’s a happy occasion with some truly beautiful moments, but it’s also stressful as hell, especially when you’re Chinese-Indo and need to invite two thousand people to your wedding.”
“True.” He continues smiling at me as if I’m very interesting instead of a wildly ranting weirdo. “So, um, I have a confession to make.”
I have to swallow before speaking “Yeah?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot.”
“Uh-oh. Don’t overdo it.”
His smile widens, and I’m treated to a full view of its gorgeousness. It’s a full-on assault. His face should be illegal, the way his dark chocolate eyes crinkle at the edges and the way those dimples appear. He looks like a combination of Daniel Henney and Lewis Tan, a combination that is waaay too hot for his own good.
“I’ve mainly been thinking about feet.”
“Uh.” Okay, this is not where I thought the conversation was going to go. “Well, I’m glad that you’ve picked up a fetish since college . . . ?” I smile in what I hope is a very open-minded way. I think the smile ends up looking slightly demented.
Nathan laughs. “Sorry, I wasn’t being clear. Though it’s interesting that that’s where your mind went.”
“Oh, like there’s a different way to take ‘I’ve been thinking about feet’?”
“Good point. Anyway, more specifically, I’ve been thinking about your feet.” He winces and quickly adds, “Okay, wait, that came out a lot creepier than it should have.”
“Yeah, that did come out pretty creepy,” I laugh, though the thought of Nathan thinking about anything that has to do with me makes things inside me flutter.
“I’ve been thinking about how, when you go to sleep at night, your feet wag back and forth.”
I bite my lip as memories come rushing back. Of us, tumbling about under the sheets, not leaving my bed for days. Of the conversations we had in between devouring each other, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. We’d talk about everything, from physics to games to mutual friends, and we’d watch from bed as the sky went from inky black to smoky purple and wonder about how we’d just spent the entire night awake and didn’t feel tired at all.
That first night we spent together, as I was dozing off, he said, “Do you always do that with your feet?”
My feet stopped still. “Do what?”
“No, don’t stop. They were like, wagging back and forth under the covers.” He turned his head to look at me, smiling. “That’s so cute.”
“Sorry,” I moaned. “My mom said my future husband would complain about my restless feet.”
He laughed. “Your future husband?”
“Well, according to her, I can only share a bed with one dude in life, and that’s my husband.” I wince inwardly at the magnitude of this statement. “Not that I’m saying you’re my future husband, I mean, you’re not the first guy I’ve shared a bed with. I’ve been with plenty others before. Not plenty, but like, you know. I don’t want to marry you, is what I’m saying. I mean, not like—”
His mouth covered mine in a sweet kiss that ended with us giggling at each other, our lips still touching.
“I know what you mean,” he said gently. “Don’t worry. The feet don’t bother me at all.”
And then we had fallen asleep like that, in each other’s arms, and I’d woken up with him hard against me, and—
I snap back to the present, with Nathan—my Nathan—smiling down at me. I grin weakly, my stomach fluttering at the vivid memory of our first night together. Did he bring up the feet thing on purpose, to remind me of that night?
“This is probably the most important weekend of my career,” Nathan says. “The success of this wedding will basically make or break the hotel.”
I nod weakly. “I understand.”
“I really should be focused on work and making sure everything goes well, but Meddy—god, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss.” He leans close to me, and everything about him fills my senses. His scent floods me, that good, clean, fresh smell he has that has nothing to do with cologne. He’s always smelled of fresh, warm laundry. “I should be focusing on making sure everything goes well, but I keep coming back to you.”
Of course, now that he’s talking about it, it’s all I can think of too. He’s so deliciously close to me, I can see his ridiculously long, thick eyelashes, and the way the muscles in his jaw move as his lips part ever so slightly. He dips his head toward mine. His lips are only an inch away when my phone goes off. We jump apart, and I scramble to pick it up. It turns out to be my alarm, set to go off five minutes before the penjemputan.
“Alarm. It’s time for me to go in,” I say, waving the phone vaguely. My heart is screaming. Can hearts scream? Mine’s doing some weird shit, anyway.
Nathan gives a rueful smile. “Maybe later, when there’s a lull, we can talk about us?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” More than anything, I long for the chance to talk things out with Nathan, to close the years’ worth of gap between us, to know everything that’s gone on with him. But the dark worry of Ah Guan’s body in my hotel room resurfaces from the depths of my consciousness like a swamp monster, and I step away from Nathan. “We’ll talk,” I say, and it comes out more curt than I wanted. Nathan’s smile loses a wattage or two, but he nods before walking away, leaving me feeling like I’ve lost him for the second time in my life.