The Bridesmaid

“I know, right?” Kate said. “He’s really being a jerk.”

“I was thinking she was the jerk,” Joe said.

Kate blinked. “Lisa? Lisa is doing everything!”

“And that’s your problem right there,” Joe said. “She’s so caught up in this wedding and it being perfect that she isn’t letting him do anything. He doesn’t have any ownership in it. It’s like he’s been cut out.”

“That’s what I think—he’s being childish.”

“I didn’t say that,” Joe said. “I think he’s just being a guy.”

“A guy,” she repeated with a bit of derision in her voice.

“Yes. A guy,” he repeated firmly.

“So… you don’t think he’s having second thoughts?”

“Nah,” Joe scoffed. “First of all, he wouldn’t have asked her to marry him if he didn’t love her. Second, he is doing what he thinks he should be doing—giving her everything he thinks she wants. If he didn’t want in, he would say so.”

That almost made sense to Kate. “You sound like you’ve been down this path before.”

“Me?” He laughed. “Hardly. But my brother has. Twice to be exact, and both women were totally eaten up with the wedding instead of the marriage.”

Kate scarcely heard the last bit. She was focused on the hardly. “Why do you say it that way?” she asked him.

“Say what?”

“Hardly. You said hardly, like it was so out of the realm of possibility for you. Are you opposed to marriage?”

He gave her a bemused smile. “How on earth did you get that from what I just said? I’m not opposed to marriage. I don’t think it’s for me, but I’m not opposed to it.”

“Why not?” she asked curiously. It was funny, but she’d had the same feeling about herself.

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I guess I’ve just never felt like I wanted to spend the rest of my waking days with one person.”

“A guy like you?” she asked disbelievingly. She would think he’d have his pick of women.

“Who, an IT nerd?” he asked with a chuckle.

“No. A handsome man. A gentleman. I would think you had lots of girlfriends.”

“Handsome, huh?” He grinned. “Yeah, I’ve had a few girlfriends along the way.”

“But not one that you felt that way about.”

“No,” he said, and looked at her curiously. “Why? Is that so strange?”

Something about that made Kate feel a little uncomfortable, but she wasn’t certain why. “Maybe you’re too busy partying,” she said.

“What?” Joe laughed. “Where did that come from?”

“Because this morning, you smelled slightly of alcohol. And you looked really hungover.”

Joe’s eyes widened with surprise.

“Dark circles, your hair messed up—”

“Okay, okay,” he said, and laughed. “So maybe I had a few too many last night. But it’s not what you think, kiddo. I happened to be the person of honor at a going-away party.”

“Really?” she said, doubly curious now. “Why? Where are you going?”

“Seattle, remember?” He grinned at her. “I’m on my way to a new job. The kind of job that comes around once in a lifetime.”

“Congratulations!” she said, and ignored the tiny niggle of disappointment she felt.

“Thanks.” He smiled happily. “So what about you?”

“I’m from Seattle. But now I live in New York.”

“No, I mean the marriage thing. Have you ever gotten close?”

“Umm… no,” she admitted. “Never.”

“Okay. That’s surprising, too.”

Kate could feel herself blushing. “Not really.”

“Yes it is. You’re very pretty,” he said, and Kate felt the heat began to creep into her cheeks. “And you’re smart. And, bonus points, you’re a trouper.”

“I am?” she asked, absurdly pleased by that compliment.

“So far,” he said laughingly. “So why hasn’t someone snatched you up?”

“Oh, come on—”

“No, really,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many women I meet who can’t hang. Or maybe they can hang, but they can’t talk.” He shook his head. “It’s disappointing, you know? You take a woman out to dinner, and she’s hot, and then you discover she can’t carry on an intelligent conversation.”

“Are you kidding?” Kate asked. “What about being on the other side of the table? How many guys have I gone out with and then found out they are unread and uninterested in anything but sports scores?” She realized she’d just described what she knew of him and looked at him in horror.

But Joe laughed. “Touche, madam, touche. But you haven’t answered the question. Why haven’t you settled down?”

Kate smiled wryly. “I guess because I never felt that way about anyone, either. But unlike you, I didn’t have a string of boyfriends to choose from.”

“Now that’s just too hard to believe,” Joe said. “I’d think there’d be a line around the block, your poor navigation skills notwithstanding.”

Kate laughed softly, but her cheeks were burning with self-consciousness. And pleasure. “At least I’m not an armrest hog,” she said.

“Oh no, you’re not going to pin that on me,” Joe laughed. “You are horrible with the armrest.”

“Everyone knows the middle seat gets the armrest!”

“I have never heard anything so ridiculous in my life,” he scoffed. “You’ve got some wacky ideas floating behind those pretty green eyes, Kate.”

She couldn’t help it—she laughed.

“So how do you become an assistant editor?” he asked.

“You read a lot. And majoring in English helped. How do you become an IT guy?”

“You start by taking computers apart to see if you can put them back together.”

Kate could picture a mop-top boy doing just that. “What is it about boys, always wanting to take things apart?”

“Sexist,” he playfully accused her. “My sister is the one who showed me how. Why do girls always read a lot?”

“It’s in our DNA. It so happens that there are more women book lovers than men.”

“Include more sports scores and more men would read,” he offered, smiling at Kate’s laughter. “But the real question is, how do we get more women to deconstruct computers?”

“Good question,” Kate said. “Computers are like cars. They should just work. No one wants to know how.”

For the remainder of the drive to Houston, they argued playfully about the differences between men and women, and about who had the wherewithal to get to Seattle first.

As they entered the outskirts of Houston, rain began to fall. By the time they made their way across town to Houston’s Intercontinental Airport, the rain had turned into a deluge. “You don’t think this rain will delay flights even more, do you?” Kate asked, peering up at the sky as they dropped the rental car off.

“No, not at all,” Joe said with a roll of his eyes. He grabbed Kate’s bags.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“I know,” he said with a wink. “Come on, get that pink life raft and let’s go find a flight out of here.”

They crowded onto the shuttle, Kate with the garment bag on her back, Joe with her shoulder bag slung over his shoulder and cases in each hand. They ignored the looks of everyone who eyed her pink bag with disdain, then piled into the terminal with everyone else.

And into pandemonium.