Mel saw him at the bar with Mr. DeLaura. He had his arm around him and they were crooning together as if they’d just achieved world peace, and they couldn’t look happier or more relieved.
Mrs. DeLaura and Mrs. Harper were standing off to the side, shaking their heads at their men, although Mel could tell they were secretly pleased.
Mel scouted the room for Angie and found her standing amid a cluster of female relatives, showing off her platinum, diamond-encrusted wedding band and glowing like the perfect happy bride.
While Angie stood with the girls, Mel noted that Tate was surrounded by his new brothers-in-law. There was clearly some heavy male bonding going on as they all drank a toast to brotherhood and downed a shot. Al got so into it, he tried to chest bump Tate, who wasn’t looking and was nearly knocked unconscious.
But there was Joe, catching Tate before he rammed his head into the wall and putting him back on his feet. The brothers were all laughing and so was Tate. Mel remembered the first time she’d met Tate in middle school. He’d been socially awkward like her, and had no friends, but when he found out she liked old movies, he busted out a horrible Groucho Marx impression that had landed her in detention for her uncontrollable laughter. They’d been fast friends from that moment on, easily folding Angie into their tiny group when she arrived as the new kid.
As Mel studied him now, she realized that he no longer wore the look of a lonely boy who wasn’t sure where he fit in. Being embraced into the DeLaura family by Angie’s brothers had erased that lonely little kid forever. Mel couldn’t be happier for him.
She scanned the room, searching for the rest of her people. Her mother was dancing with Uncle Stan. She made a mental note to ask her uncle if Joyce had told him who she was seeing. Given Joyce’s history, Mel didn’t think a background check would be out of order—if Uncle Stan hadn’t done one yet.
Then she glanced over at Marty and Oz. If there were two more miserable looking men, she didn’t know who they’d be. They resembled two tuxedo-wearing wallflowers that were drooping. It was as if they belonged to their own personal lonely hearts club. Without hesitation, Mel went where she was needed.
She strode across the dance floor towards the corner, where Oz stood nursing a soda and Marty a soda with some kick. She forced herself to smile as she joined them.
“Hey, guys,” she said. “What’s the good word?”
“Open bar,” Marty said.
Mel gave him a look and he took a swig of his beverage.
She maneuvered herself in between them and leaned against the wall as if surveying the crowd with them.
“Good party,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s great,” Marty said. “Angie and Tate look really happy.”
“Really happy,” Oz repeated morosely.
Mel would have hugged him but she suspected that he didn’t want her to draw attention to his pitiful state. “Come on, guys, look around you. There are loads of ladies just looking for a hot guy to ask them to dance.”
“I don’t dance,” Oz said.
“Not even with me?” a voice asked from his other side.
Oz whipped his head in that direction, causing his bangs to shift to the side. Standing next to him was his girlfriend, Lupe, and she looked beautiful.
“Lupe, I thought you had to study for midterms,” he said.
“I figured I could cram for it on the plane,” she said.
Oz stood blinking at her, not moving, until Marty gave him a hard shove to the back.
“Don’t just stand there, dummy. Kiss the girl before she thinks you’re not happy to see her,” he said.
Oz sent Marty a dark look, but then turned back to Lupe and opened his arms. She stepped into his embrace and the two of them drifted away into their own bubble of giddy couplehood.
“Well,” Marty said. He stared into his drink.
“Marty, what’s going on?” Mel asked. “You’ve been weird ever since Olivia threw you out.”
Marty took a slow sip of his drink as if to avoid talking.
“Come on, you can tell me,” Mel said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. Mel opened her mouth to argue but he held up his hand in a stop gesture. “I miss her, okay?”
Mel didn’t have to ask who he meant. Although no one understood the crazy relationship between Marty and Olivia in which they seemed to bicker as much as they did anything else, there was no denying that while he’d been with her he’d had a spring in his step and a smile on his lips Mel hadn’t seen before or since. Mel missed his smile.
“Is it over for sure?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said. “I’ve stopped by, I’ve called, I’ve texted, I even tried to pull her back in by using our old dating handles in an e-mail. She’s not speaking to me in any format.”
“Is it because your daughters are having you followed and it’s just too much drama?”
“No, I hurt her,” he said. His shoulders hunched and he looked sheepish. “I didn’t tell her I was well-off. I let her think I was just getting by on a pension.”
“Why?” Mel asked.
“Because when my Jeanie died, it was common knowledge that I was rich and all of a sudden all of these women started chasing me. Some were out-and-out stalking me. But they didn’t want me, they wanted my money. When I hooked up with Liv, I wanted her to want me for me.”
“Clearly, she did,” Mel said.
“Yeah.” Marty downed his drink.
“And it never occurred to you after a while that you should let her know you were better off than you seemed?” Mel asked.
“I was going to,” he
