They turn to face me. “Hey!” Tarek says, and I want to believe the enthusiasm is genuine, that he’s not forcing his eyes to light up when they land on me. Even last year, he was never this happy-go-lucky guy—unless he was telling me about one of his grand gestures. “How’s it going out there?”
“Asher’s a little seasick. Could I get a can of ginger ale?”
“Oh no, poor girl,” Elisa says. She opens a cooler and digs around inside before tossing me a green can. “Here you go. I hope she feels better.”
I thank her and turn to leave, but Tarek catches me, hurrying over to where I’m standing in the doorway. “Quinn, wait a sec.” Now his brows are drawn together in concern. He plants a hand on the wall next to me, leans down so that only I can hear him. “Are you okay? You seem a little…” He trails off, as though he doesn’t know me well enough to understand what mood this is.
The truth is, he doesn’t.
“I’m fine. I have to get this to my sister.” I tighten my hand around the cool aluminum and make my way back to Asher.
She lifts the can to me in cheers before taking a sip. We watch the couple and the photographer, my mom supervising while my dad helps the DJ with the sound system.
“They look so happy,” Asher says. “I love second marriages. Well, I don’t love whatever bad shit led to the end of the first marriage, if that was the case, but couples like this, they always seem the happiest to me. They tend to know exactly what they want, and they just seem so sure of everything.”
For a moment I want to confide in her about Tarek, get some of that sisterly wisdom, but I’m not sure I can put it into words for myself. Somehow I doubt she’s had enough of this particular experience to counsel me through it.
Even if she had, we’ve seen so little of each other lately. I’d have too much to fill her in on.
“Hi, um—you’re with the wedding planners, right?” a redheaded guy in a tux is asking me. He’s the bride’s son, about my age, his face full of freckles. “We have a slight problem with the cake.” He runs a sheepish hand along the back of his neck. “Apparently there was an issue with one of the fridges, the main issue being that it wasn’t working, and the cake is kind of…”
“Melting,” fills in the girl next to him, laying a hand on his shoulder. She’s in a lilac dress with a sweetheart neckline. “One whole side of it is melting.”
“We can fix this,” I assure them. Or at least, Tarek can. Another reason to go talk to my new best friend.
I lead them back into the kitchen, where Tarek is finishing off another tray of appetizers. We open up the fridge, and there’s the saddest cake I’ve ever seen. It’s falling into itself on one side, the chocolate pooling in the plastic beneath it. The leaning tower of pastry.
Tarek examines it, and the two guests lean forward, waiting for his verdict.
“Chocolate and heat do not get along,” he says. “I can fix it, but it’s not going to look the same as the cake they thought they were getting. I think the best thing we can do is scrape off the frosting that’s left, take the layers apart, and try to re-form them before re-frosting it. Quinn, your mom has bamboo skewers in her emergency kit, right?”
I nod and slip out to grab some. When I return, he gives me this big smile.
“Thanks, friend,” he says, and it’s the heartiest thank-you I’ve heard in a long time, like I’ve saved him from toppling overboard instead of handing him a few sticks of bamboo. The word “friend” might as well be Edith’s claws on a chalkboard. This isn’t the Tarek I talked to at two in the morning, his hair rumpled, his voice soft like a secret.
This is a performance, and I’m not sure if he’s doing it for his benefit or for mine.
When it becomes clear that this is going to take a while, I turn to the couple. “I’m Quinn, by the way,” I say. “And this is Tarek.”
“Rowan,” says the girl, and the guy whose mother just got married introduces himself as Neil. I’m not sure how long he and Rowan have been together, but they can’t seem to stop touching each other. Even now, she has a pinkie tucked into his pants pocket.
“Are you guys in college?” I ask.
“Just finished freshman year,” Neil says. “We’re home for the summer.”
“Ah, so there is life after high school.”
“Barely,” Rowan says, and Neil gives her a playful nudge. In her heels, she’s taller than he is. “It’s very grim.”
“The wedding was beautiful.” I think back to what Asher said. “I haven’t seen a couple that happy in a while.”
Neil and Rowan exchange a look. “It took a lot to get here,” he says, and I get the sense there’s a deeper story there, one that isn’t the kind you tell during a first conversation with someone.
Tarek deconstructs and reconstructs the cake, stealing some berries from the hors d’oeuvres and adding them to the top. By the time it’s finished, I’m not sure I’d have ever known its sordid past.
“Voilà,” he says. “Franken-cake.”
“Thank you so much,” Neil says. “Truly. I know there’s no such thing as perfect, but I really wanted this to be as close to it as possible for my mom.”
That emotion tugs at the place in my heart I thought had hardened to weddings. We’ve dealt with so many nightmare families; it’s refreshing to see the earnestness with which he speaks about his mom.
Rowan brushes her long bangs out of the way and leans closer to inspect it. “You know, I think this looks better.”
Tarek blushes a little at that, but I refuse to let myself think it’s cute.
