40
VEEJAY
The Wedding Day, 6:40 P.M.
Vee grabbed Emma as soon as she came back into the cocktail room.
“Hey. I need to talk to you,” he said.
“Don’t worry. I know Fiona changed. I took care of it; she’s covered in the stuff. And I have enough left to pour into the glitter bin. It’s almost over.”
“It flippin’ better be,” Vee said, his voice somewhat threatening. He didn’t mean to be.
He impatiently looked around the room and saw Trevor, with Fiona wrapped around him like ivy. Her mother, Uncle John, Jesse, Hector, and Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn were all huddled together with them, so proud, so loving. From the distance, he looked like a doting new husband.
Closeness. Fiona was all over him.
“Why isn’t he reacting?” Vee asked Emma.
She pushed her eyebrows together. “What do you mean?”
“If Fiona is covered in peanut powder—why nothing? That time at lunch he went down convulsing, in seconds.” He wiped his brow. “What if it’s not enough?”
“It’s going to be fine, Vee. I promise.” Emma looked past him and shook her head. “We can’t do this now. Ethan’s on his way back. Listen. You have to trust me.”
“Trust. Well. Sorry if that’s a little hard for me right now.”
“Wow.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “This is what I was afraid of. Losing you anyway. But please, Vee, I’m begging you. If you ever cared anything about me, anything at all—please don’t let me lose Ethan too.”
Everything was always about Ethan. Sometimes, in the past, that bothered Vee. He was always there for Emma. Not that it wasn’t reciprocated—she’d always been there for him too.
In fact, the longest “relationship” Vee’d had was with a girl named Jessica. It was for almost a year, and they’d only recently broken up when he’d slept with Emma. He’d rationalized their night of passion—of baby making—in his head: he was lonely, Emma was lonely, and they were both completely heartbroken. Add alcohol and common misery, and it was a recipe for the disaster he’d recently found out his life had become.
He’d rationalized it because he had to. It wasn’t at all because he was in love with her. Nope.
Sometimes, he’d convinced himself of that fact so deeply that he thought he could have an actual relationship with Jessica back then. Well, that was doomed from jump street. He didn’t even realize at the time how much the three of them went out together. How he’d blown Jessica off because Emma was sad about Ethan and needed him. He’d told himself she was like a sister, and that he was just being a good friend.
The whole truth was, back then, he’d do anything for her. Anything. Was that love? Devotion?
He may have even carried that torch as he stood up next to Ethan at their wedding. He may have pushed it down when he helped her move in with Ethan after they got back from their honeymoon. He kept it away from the surface at all their get-togethers. And he may have even brought the feeling with him to Miami and felt it right until she ripped his flippin’ heart out that morning.
As much as he did still care about her, until his own problem was taken care of, he didn’t have time for her worries. He couldn’t put her first—not anymore. It had gotten him nowhere, except in the dark. Sure, she’d said she didn’t want to lose him, and he really wanted to believe that. To be honest, he wasn’t going to pretend that he knew what it was like to be a woman—a woman in love with one man and pregnant with another’s baby.
But part of him was needled that she’d slept with Trevor to further her own agenda. Sex, with that asshole. With her friend’s fiancé. She was married!
Maybe he didn’t know Emma at all. Maybe he never did, because now she was about to kill someone and never look back.
He ran his hand over his hair. “Yeah, I know. Everything is for Ethan and fuck my feelings.” His words bubbled to two hundred degrees, just shy of boiling. He’d used that word again.
“What’s gotten into you, Vee?”
“How dare you,” he whispered, with a soft shake of his downtrodden head. “How dare you ask me that.”
Ethan showed up to their standoff with a bottle of water for Emma. “Uh, is everything okay here?” he asked, sensing the tension.
“Yes,” Emma said, slipping her arm around his waist. “I just want this wedding over with already. I just want to go home. I wish we’d never come here.”
His face fell. “Babe, if this is still about the picture—”
“I think Emma’s just being emotional,” Vee cut him off, diffusing another awkward situation. “Maybe she is still sore about the picture. Let’s just try to get through the next couple hours. We all get to go home tomorrow.”
Vee had made a promise to Emma, and he was already waist-high in bull crap. He was the one who got her the peanuts. He was an accessory to what was about to happen.
“Hey, Ethan, where are those cigars?”