The only thing that’s going to give me any peace of mind is a one-way ticket out of this fucking place and back to London, pronto. But seeing as there’s no plausible—or even semi -plausible—excuse I can come up to leave before the actual wedding, I’m here for at least another thirty-six hours. My blood is fucking boiling. No, I’m about to have an aneurysm. Or maybe a stroke. Or how about none of the above, because all that happens is this current of raging disbelief continues to course through my veins, like I’m hooked up to an endless I.V. drip of the stuff. I’ve got no choice but to grin and bear it, and that’s exactly what I try to do after I slam the door and am stalking outside. I see Dad approaching from down the hallway, and since I can’t pretend I didn’t actually see him I plaster a grin on my face and prepare to begin bearing whatever it is he’s about to tell me.
“There you are,” he says. He claps me on the shoulder. “Everything all right?”
I suspect my grin is closer to a grimace, so I attempt to rearrange my face into an expression of benign joviality.
“Couldn’t be better,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Well, get ready to test that theory.” He says this with all the vim of a game show host, and I want to slap him. For a moment I am overwhelmed with the urge to slap the ridiculous look off his face, to tell him that just because he’s getting married tomorrow and everything is all hunky dory in his world doesn’t mean that he has any fucking clue what is going to make things in my life better. It takes serious will power to keep my mouth shut. His hand remains on my shoulder as he guides me toward the front door. “Your surprise is here.”
I refrain from telling him the only thing that could make me feel even more irritated at this point is whatever fucking surprise it is Dad’s got up his sleeve, but even through my anger, I can see that he’s genuinely excited. That does make me a bit curious, and this curiosity begins to chip away at the anger just a little. I take a deep breath. Then another. At this point, I’m hoping the surprise is a very expensive, very potent bottle of scotch, or something that will numb me enough so I can make it through the next thirty-six hours without putting my hand through the wall.
“It’s this way,” Dad says. I follow him outside. I see nothing out of the ordinary. “Just a second. The surprise should be here any moment.”
While we stand there, facing the driveway, I try not to think about Emma, who is probably still in her room, caring way too much about what other people think. I hate losing control like I just did. It wasn’t cool; I wish it hadn’t happened like that, but there is only so much I can take. I have never been one who’s dealt well with the flip-flopping. Yes, I’m okay with this, wait, now I’m not, oh actually I think I am, no, never mind, I’m really not . . . The problem with Emma is that she hasn’t been around the block enough times. She hasn’t shagged enough people to know that when something comes along like the connection she and I have, you don’t just walk away from it.
“Any second now,” Dad’s saying, and I glance at him. He’s standing there, hands in his pockets, looking toward the driveway. As it becomes more and more clear that the surprise is not a bottle of cognac or moonshine, I start having to resist the urge to tell Dad I don’t give a flying fuck about the surprise and I’m going back inside. Another thirty seconds pass and I’m about to tell him as much when his eyebrows shoot up and a grin spreads across his face.
I follow his gaze to the end of the driveway, where some black sports car has appeared and is making its way toward us at a rather rapid pace. An alarmingly rapid pace, for that matter, far faster than anyone should ever actually drive a car down a driveway. I glance at Dad, but he seems completely unbothered by this car careening
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