Page 58 of Wedding Bet

The Rocky Mountains, a beautiful wedding, and meeting Landry were the perfect combination of things to kick my ass out of the same tired patterns I’d been in for so long. If it was going to feel this good,screw itwas going to be my motto for a long time to come.

I had a short conversation with a nice girl about how good the cocktails were. I complimented a guy on his hair. I even asked the piano player how long he’d been playing, and got to learn about how nice the particular piano was, when the player explained that it was imported from Vienna.

I was standing at a tall table, sipping my drink and listening to the music, when Landry appeared in front of me again, sidling up to the table.

“You’re slick, you know,” he said, giving me a grin with a lifted eyebrow.

“Pardon me?” I said.

“You think you can play matchmaker and I won’t notice?” Landry said, looking amused. “I’m the king of that. I practicallyinventedthat move.”

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Well, you look a whole lot happier than you did before, so I think I did something right.”

“Mark is a very nice guy,” Landry said with a nod, his hair shining under the pendant light above us.

“Isn’t he cute?”

“He’s attractive, obviously,” Landry said, “but nothing is going to happen with me and him.”

I furrowed my brow. “Why the hell not?”

Landry bit his lower lip, considering. “You could match me up with any of these random guys in this room right now and I wouldn’t be interested.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “It’s time to celebrate. Let loose. Have fun. Only one more night, remember?”

A glimmer of the post-wedding sadness passed through his eyes again, but he hid it pretty quickly this time.

Just then the music stopped and the piano player announced the arrival of Adam and Chase. The pianist started playing classic songs as Adam and Chase made a good show of it, striking poses. The lights were lowered in the room, and they started to perform their first dance.

“Did Chase tell you about learning this dance?” I said to Landry, leaning over to whisper in his ear.

“He told me he had dance lessons from hell.”

“Exactly. Apparently the dance instructor was a tyrant of a guy. He called Chase a wimp when he failed the first back bend dip, and then called him a ‘little bitch.’ Of course, by the end of that night, Chase had befriended him and made it all better, because Chase is a charmer like that.”

“Holy shit,” Landry said. “I’d sock someone in the face if they said that to me.”

“Really?”

He pursed his lips. “Well, no. I’d be very polite, then quietly rage, and maybe leave an online review warning people off of them. But I’dwantto sock them in the face.”

I laughed quietly. “That sounds about right.”

After the dance, the guests erupted in cheers, and the party migrated away from the bar and into the grand ballroom, with all of its lush flowers, tiny glowing lights, and sweeping early-evening views of the mountains.

Landry and I each found the little nametags that denoted where we should be sitting at the round, wooden tables. We were far apart from each other—on different ends of the room. I gave him a nod as he walked off toward his table.

How many more times would I get to see him like this?

How many more times would I get to spend hours and hours with him, aimlessly, all in one day?

Even if we ended up friendly back in California, I knew we were both very busy people, and nothing would ever be like this again.

The snowglobe was going to break tomorrow. And even though my heart needed to let go of focusing too much on Landry, I still felt bittersweet watching him walk away from me.

At my own table, so far, I was still sitting alone other than a bored teenager on the opposite end who must have been someone’s kid, staring down directly into her phone and not looking up from it once. I watched as people streamed into the room, fawning over all of the fresh flowers and complimenting the happy couple on their dance.

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and turned to see Landry, with a name tag in his hand.

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