Chapter Twenty-nine

And Now …?

We had to hurry, but my hair and makeup might as well have been an advertisement for Afternoon Delight. I had to do repair work. Matt peeked in through the bathroom door. “Are you almost ready? We’re so late.”

“I can’t get this damn earring in.” I held out the offending jewelry and gave it, then him, a frustrated scowl.

“You can do it in the cab, come on.” He disappeared from the door and I rolled my eyes.

But he was right, so I cupped the earring in one hand and scurried back into the hotel room. The bed was rumpled and my shoulder bag looked like it had gotten sick on the floor, but there was no time to do anything but grab my small purse from the mess still left inside. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“You don’t have shoes on.”

I picked them up from the floor. “I’m not putting them on until I have to.”

“Whatever.” He opened the door and gestured for me to go first. We hurried down the hall to the elevator where Matt stabbed at the button repeatedly and I held my shoes between my knees while I tried once more to get my earring in. I almost had it when the elevator arrived, and had to waddle into the car to prevent losing my shoes or my chance for victory over the earring.

“Aha!” I exclaimed when it sank home. I looked in the mirrored panel in the back of the elevator and saw that my ear was bright pink from the effort. Hopefully the swelling would go down by the time we got there. I stepped into my shoes just as the doors opened on the lobby and I gave Matt a final look of triumph. “See? Totally ready to go.”

He smiled, shaking his head.

We pushed through the revolving doors to the street and hailed a cab.

He reached for my hand and threaded our fingers together.

“So, how do you want to play this?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“People are going to want to know what happened to us.” A quick check of my cell phone told me I’d ignored three phone calls from the group at the John Hancock building. I was sure Matt’s would be the same.

“You can tell them the truth if you want.” He looked at me from the corners of his eyes, not bothering to hide a smirk.

I held up a staying hand to my imaginary audience. “Sorry, everybody, urgent hotel sex situation.”

The cabbie’s eyes looked in the rearview mirror, so I gave him a wide-eyed blink.

Matt laughed. “Look, people, I can only go so long without getting Joss out of her clothes, and it had been a while.”

The cabbie glanced at us in the mirror again, but I was laughing too hard to look innocent that time.

“Aon Center’s to your left,” the driver said, pulling to the right of the wide boulevard.

“We’ll walk it,” Matt said. We got out of the car and scurried across traffic hand in hand. The sidewalk was a full story above the crashing waterfalls in the entrance courtyard. As we reached the stairs that would take us down to that level, I spotted our friends hurrying toward us from the west.

“I guess we’re not the only ones who are late,” I said.

“Jocelyn Kiel, where the hell have you been?!” came Kerry’s shout while they were still fifty yards away.

We waited for them to catch up, still holding hands. I had butterflies again, but they were the good pre-game kind. We were about to go public.

The interrogation began as soon as they were within earshot. “What the hell happened to you guys?”

“You losers ditched us!”

“You know when your phone rings, you’re supposed to answer it, right?”

“You missed a kick-ass view!”

“Sorry, guys,” I said. “We, uh—”

“Joss couldn’t handle the heights,” Matt cut in.

I elbowed him for giving me the blame.

“You still could have answered your phone,” Annemarie said.

“Sorry.”

“Well, whatever, we’re late,” Kurt said. “Let’s go.”

The group crowded down the stairs, and just before we went inside, I finally allowed myself to look up at the glass facade. My knees turned to water. The skyscraper reached eighty-three stories toward the clouds, and Jessie and Evan’s reception was on the very top floor. I couldn’t imagine standing that close to the sky. I was officially going to kick Jessie’s butt for failing to mention this in all the times I’d asked her about wedding plans. Not that she would have cared—it was her wedding.

“I can’t do it again,” I whispered, gripping Matt’s hand.

“You’ll be fine,” he assured me.

“Maybe I should just stay down here.”

“Come on, you big wuss,” he teased, giving me a tug toward the entrance.

I made a whimpering sound, but let him lead me through the lobby. There was an attendant outside the elevator who seemed to take a malicious pleasure in using his key to activate the private elevator. When the doors opened, he grinned at us and said, “Next stop, top of the world.”

“Why do they always say that?” I whimpered.

Matt laughed. “You can do it, Alvin.”

The others were chattering, ignoring my oncoming panic attack. It was all back again—the pounding in my ears and chest, the lack of air, the prickling feelings all over my body. The doors closed and I turned my face into Matt’s chest.

He kissed the top of my head and rubbed my back while my stomach sank into the region of my ankles. My curiosity got the better of me, and I had to peek at the readout in the corner of the elevator. The numbers were in the forties and climbing.

“I can’t do this! I want to go back down! Don’t make me get off the elevator!”

Matt took my face in his hands and kissed me soundly for the rest of the ride.

The silence among the other passengers was deafening. The elevator opened on the eighty-third floor, and I allowed Matt to nudge me into the lobby.

“So, uh”—Geena pointed at Matt and me with one swiveling finger—“what’s going on here?”

“We’re … together,” Matt said.

“Shut up!”

“This isn’t, like …” Kerry made an uncertain gesture and face to match.

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s … real.”

A slow smile spread across Kerry’s face. “I knew you couldn’t keep it up.”

By the time we were seated for dinner, I was already convinced that I’d never been to a more spectacular wedding. The club was luxurious, and if I kept my eyes away from the windows, the interior was lush enough that I could pretend I wasn’t nearly a thousand feet from the ground. The freely flowing champagne helped keep my nerves at a dull undercurrent. Even the table settings were the most elegant I’d seen.

We listened to the toasts and watched as a flurry of servers hit the floor with the first course. Our table was populated entirely by friends from college, and we were by far the loudest group in the room. The evening was filled with so much laughter that I had to reapply mascara after the video.

When the salad plates had been cleared, the servers returned with small plates.

“That doesn’t look like dinner,” Nate groused. “I’m hungry!”

“Maybe it’s just really small,” Geena said with a grin.

Our servers arrived to set down the chilled plates and Matt and I locked eyes. It was a sorbet course. I laughed and quickly covered my mouth.

“Is this dessert?” Mitch wanted to know.

“It’s the sorbet course, you idiot,” Kurt said.

“Why are we eating ice cream before dinner?”

“Haven’t you ever had a sorbet course?” Kerry asked.

“It’s supposed to clear your palate,” Matt said.

“All right.” Nate shrugged and dug into the small pink scoop of sorbet on his plate. “Not bad.”

I picked up my spoon, but hesitated. I knew it was stupid, but it seemed wrong to eat it. Looking at Matt, I saw that he wasn’t eating either.

“It’s ridiculous not to eat this, right?” I said in a low voice.

“Right,” he agreed, but didn’t touch his spoon.

I watched everyone else eat, still holding my spoon, until at last Matt reached over and took it from my hand. He set it on the edge of the plate in the international symbol for “I’m done,” and did the same with his own.

“I don’t care if it’s stupid; I’m not eating it,” he said.

I smiled and leaned close to kiss him. “Me either.”

He sat back in his chair with a contented sigh. “Good.”

“I mean, people can go their entire lives without ever having sorbet again, right?” I asked.

“I intend to.”