Page 4 of With Any Luck

I wish I could say that our relationship hasimprovedsince we met again yesterday, but the few choice moments we chatted yesterday afternoon and during dinner were anything but amicable. I don’t know what I saw in him in New Orleans. Probably his good looks. I was a sucker for good looks. My one downfall, apparently, because Theodore Luck is like a cardboard cutout of a man—all sharp edges and paper-thin emotions. If beige were a person, he’d be the premier paint color. Even though he’s the living embodiment of vanilla, he still looks good, even in my haze of a hangover. A sharp jawline and a straight nose and soft green eyes. And that insufferable lone freckle beneath his left eye, as if his impeccable frown had scared away all of the others.

And that mouth. I still wonder what he tastes like.

Probably like a tragedy.

He doesn’t even give me the pleasantry of a hello before he barrels into my hotel room. It takes a moment for me to register that his clothes are just as crumpled as mine—and that they are still fromlast night—and he’s lost his tie somewhere between dinner and now. I guess the mani-pedis really got wild.

“Where is he?” Theo demands.

I follow him into the hotel room. “Well, good morning and happy Valentine’s Day to you, too.”

“I know he’s here.” He storms through the living room, into the bedroom—which is surprisingly untouched. I guess I just crashed right on the couch last night, this morning,wheneverI stumbled in. Everything after those tequila shots from Ye Olde Bartender’s cleavage is a blur.

“You can’t just come barging in like this,” I call after him.

As he rounds through the bedroom into the bath and back into the living space, he looks a shade paler than he did going in. “Where is he?”

I massage the bridge of my nose. “I can’t read your mind. Who are you talking about?”

“Who else would I be looking for?Rhett!Thegroom!”

“And why would he behere?” I snap, because that assumption suddenly and viscerally gets on my last nerve. I’ve had to play this game for ten years. “No, we aren’t dating. No, he doesn’t like me like that. No, we’re just friends—no, Idon’twant us to be more.”

It’s easy for people to think that I’d be jealous of Carmilla. She’s probably the most beautiful woman on the East Coast,andshe gets to keep Rhett Song all to herself? I guess if this was some nineties rom-com, I was supposed to be the Julia Roberts character trying to destroy their wedding, but I’m not.

And the assumption that Rhett would beherereally pisses me off.

“I don’t remember anything from last night. Have you checkedhisroom? Uh, Mike’s room? Or the guy—what’s Carmilla’s cousin’s name? Jerry? Jeffrey?”

“Josiah, and yes,” he replies sharply. He clenches and unclenches his fists, and then lets out a long breath. Then he says in a surprisingly patient voice, “He isn’t in any of those roomsorhis own. That is the first place I looked. Nothing?” he adds, his tone a little conflicted. “You don’t remember anything from last night?”

My stomach begins to turn sour, and I still have a long day ahead of me. I wave my hand flippantly. “It doesn’t matter. And Rhett’s probably out for breakfast or something.”

His impressively thick eyebrows furrow, crinkling the skin in the middle. Not that it’s cute, because it’s not. Not at all. “What time do you think it is, Audrey?”

“I don’t know,” I say dismissively. I just want two Advil and a vodka tonic. “Too early.”

“It’s four in the afternoon.”

“Ha,”I wheeze, and turn to go find that Advil in my suitcase, when he takes me by the forearm and holds it firm.

He repeats, “It’s four in the afternoon.”

“No.”

“Yes, and the wedding is in two hours,” he goes on, his voice still patient, but there is a note of panic at the edges, like he’s walking on a tightrope. “Rhett isn’t in his hotel room. He never made it to the brunch this morning. We can’t find him.”

No, wait,no. That can’t be right. Rhett’s never late for anything. He’s infuriatingly early, actually. This isn’t like him.

I pull my arm out of Theo’s grip and turn away so he can’t see the panic creeping across my face, and pace toward the window of the bed-and-breakfast. Outside in thegarden, the pergola has already been erected, chairs covered in white satin placed in rows across the green grass. The late-afternoon sun turns everything a lovely shade of gold, the sky without a single cloud. The best possible weather for an outdoor wedding. Carmilla’s parents had insisted on putting us all up in this beautiful and secluded bed-and-breakfast, though I’d never stayed in anything better than a Best Western before in my life. (The bestroomsat a Best Western, but still.) Everything about Carmilla’s life is so vastly different from mine, from Rhett’s. She’s a three-time Emmy-nominated actress, withVoguecovers and an entire closet just for her shoes. I have three shoes I rotate between, so I can’t imagine having a whole closet full of them. When Rhett first told me about Carmilla, I thought she was just using him as one of her many various flings, and Rhett makes poor choices of relationships (see: the girl who stabbed him and took his credit cards), but then things got serious, and they moved in together, and when he called me up, I knew ...

It was real.

By then Carmilla wasn’t just a pretty detective in a TV show, but a woman who loved a crust of sugar atop her lattes and long walks in the woods and books about whales. She’s perfect for Rhett. In almost every way. I’d always be his oldest friend, but she soon—and forever—will become his best.

That’s the part that is hard to stomach.

I massage my temples. “Did you try his cell phone?”

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