“Maybe for about two seconds,” I say. “But when Sunny said she was pansexual, it just tracked.”
Nadia smiles as she spears another piece of the yardbird. “I can see that about her. Knowing how she is with people and how she’s always seemed more attracted to hearts than anything else.”
“Exactly,” I say, digging that Nadia gets it in a way few others have. When Daria met Sunny last year, she couldn’t fathom that my mom had been with my dad for a couple decades before falling for a woman. Daria’s not the only girlfriend I’ve had whose expression went all furrowed and confused when they met Sunny. “That was what Haley and I said to each other the night Sunny told us. We kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Yep, that makes perfect sense. Pass the blueberries.’” I take a bite of the chicken, chew, then ask, “What about you?”
Nadia brings a hand to her chest, her brow knitting in confusion. “Am I pansexual?”
I laugh, shaking my head. Then I think better of it. “Are you? I guess I sort of assumed from our conversation earlier that you weren’t, but maybe you are. I try to operate under the assumption that I don’t assume anyone’s orientation at all—it’s not up to me to try to glean who people love.”
She shakes her head. “I like men, despite the few sons of mailboxes.”
“The douches,” I say, since she won’t. “Or as you might say, the duckweeds.”
A smile spreads nice and easy across her face. “You’ve got it.”
“So you’re really done with men?”
“Confession time,” she says in a whisper. “I tried a matchmaker in Vegas, and it was a disaster. We’re talking category five hurricane level.”
“Does that mean you were caught in the eye of a storm of men?”
Laughing, she shakes her head. “Maybe that was the wrong analogy. More like a black hole. The vacuum of deep space. She couldn’t really find anyone for me,” she says, with a what can you do sigh.
But that shocks the hell out of me. No sighing here. Just a drop of the jaw. “Men ought to be falling all over themselves to get to you.”
“I wish I could tell you I was tripping over a long line of men,” she says. “It was more like a Tampa Bay baseball game,” she says, and I laugh at the comparison to the team with the worst attendance in the Majors. We’re talking rows upon rows of empty seats.
“Why on earth would they not want to be set up with you?”
Nadia takes a sip of wine. “Let’s just say they were more interested in their own ability to buy tickets for a fancy suite at the football game than going on a date with the owner.”
Shock rings through me.
What the hell is wrong with some people? “That doesn’t even compute in my world. My dad was an easygoing dude who took a few years off to raise us when Mom was building her business, then he went back to his accounting practice. And my mom’s always just been open-minded about everything.”
Nadia nudges my arm with her elbow, tossing me an appreciative smile. “And they rubbed off on you.” Then she smiles. “But honestly, it doesn’t matter. Maybe in the end I was meant to come to San Francisco and be single.”
Maybe she was.
Maybe I like that plan.
Because it’s easier to hang out with her, I mean.
And hell, it’s good that she’s as on board with her singletude as I am with mine.
“You think the universe was doing you a favor?” I ask.
“I have so much to focus on with building the team, and I want that to be my priority. Maybe that’s why the matchmaker couldn’t find anyone for me. Perhaps it was meant to be like this,” she says, sweeping her arm out widely to indicate the reception, and maybe this moment too, her and me, hanging out.
Whether it was the universe or bad luck, who knows?
However you slice this night, I’m glad to be here with her, and I want her to know that. She beats me to the punch when she says, “By the way, it’s nice to catch up with you.”
The grin she flashes me throws me off-kilter for a few seconds. It makes me want to touch her arm, tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and whisper, Same.
I do one of those three.
“Same,” I tell her. “Same here.”
9
Nadia
I love champagne.
It makes me feel so . . . floaty.
So effervescent.
Like everything is coated in a warm, delicious glow.
Glows are great. Absolutely, officially great.
I would like to commission a glow to surround me wherever I go.
Tonight I’m glowing after the ceremony, after the toasts, after the cake that Crosby didn’t touch, of course.
After the moment in the hallway earlier, when he roamed his nose over my neck, like he was drinking in my smell, and then after that fantastic get-to-know-you-even-better chat at the table.
Now we’re dancing, along with the rest of the wedding party.
“You promised stories. I need the tales,” I say.
He arches a brow. “Are you sure you can handle them?”
“Oh, I’m sure. I love anti-fairy tales.”
“That’s all I’ve got when it comes to romance,” he says, spinning me in a circle, then bringing me close again, but not plastered-up-against-each-other close. The music is fast enough to shimmy, but slow enough for me to keep my hands on his shoulders.
Translation: we aren’t doing that melt-into-each-other slow dance.
His lips curve up in that delicious lopsided grin that he wears so well. That easygoing, lighthearted one. “Let’s start with Alabama.”
“As in the state?”
“As in the name.”
“Her name was Alabama?”
“Yes indeed. Alabama Venus.”
I grin. “Where did you meet
