Page 31 of What's in a Kiss?

Now, as I look out at the friends and loved ones gathered, all is as it should be. I know each one of these eighteen guests intimately. And for all their bellyaching, the mothers of the bride and groom don’t seem to mind that their bridge clubs and accountants weren’t invited. They only have eyes for their kids, who only have eyes for each other.

You did it right, Mash, I convey with a light squeeze when she hands me her bouquet.

For ten minutes, Yogi Dan speaks about marriage’s joys and trials. Before I know it, it’s my turn to step forward, take the mic, and give a reading.

When Masha asked me to choose a passage, I knew immediately which one. It’s fromTo the Lighthouseby Virginia Woolf, which we read together in AP English our senior year. She was falling in love with Eli, and we’d found these words to be impossibly romantic.

“ ‘What art was there, known to love or cunning,’ ” I read, holding my paperback copy from the class, the pages detaching from the spine, “ ‘by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving [make them] one?’ ”

As I pass the microphone back to Yogi Dan, I catch his eyes,a quick blaze of interest in them, as he says, “And now a reading from the world’s best man.”

As the congregation chuckles, I struggle for composure. I didn’t know Glasswell was giving a reading. It’s not listed in the program, unlike my reading.

He pulls out a King James Bible and opens it to a bookmarked page.

“ ‘Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?’ ”

Glasswell’s eyes cut toward mine. I quickly look away. I wonder if this reading was his choosing or Eli’s. I wonder what Ecclesiastes means to him. Is he religious? Does he believe in marriage? Does he even believe in love? Does Glasswell believe in anything beyond the life in his lenses?

And, perhaps most pressingly, was he naked when we talked this morning?

I stop myself from prancing down that tempting mental lane. I’m not jealous because Glasswell is successful and I’m not, but I struggle with how he glided to the top of a game I never really got to play. In high school, he wanted to be a journalist;Iwas supposed to entertain. When Masha told me the story of how Glasswell sat by a TV executive at a Tuesday afternoon Yankees game, struck up a conversation, and by the seventh-inning stretch had landed a seat in the writers’ room ofThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert, no one but me could believe it.

I believed it, because that’s how life works out for him.

The thing is, deep down, I know that if my dad hadn’t died, if I’d taken a place at Juilliard, the odds are long that I would have become a Broadway star. Too much luck involved, too many things would have had to go exactly right. Still, it bothers me that I never even got to take my chance. That’s how life worked out for me.

It’s embarrassing to wallow in regret. Most of the time I don’t even let myself imagine the alternate reality where my dad is still alive, where I went after every dream.

Except when I’m around Glasswell. Then I can’t seem to shake the feeling that something better might have happened had I done things differently. I know I made my own choices. I can’t blame my dad’s death or my mom’s heartbreak. But if I’d been bolder, more ruthless, if I’d gone to New York like I planned, consequences be damned...

What would have happened? Where would I be?

“Our maid of honor made a fascinating point,” Yogi Dan startles me by announcing to the wedding guests.

I glance at Glasswell, intending to smirk triumphantly if he looks my way. But he’s not simply looking my way. He’s staring. At me. And I can’t stop staring back. His gaze holds me in place, goose bumps rising on my skin, as Yogi Dan goes on:

“Olivia saidinextricably, a gold-gilt frame for the union you dawn today. Your lives never will untangle after this ceremony. You are forever connected,inextricably.”

Glasswell and I are still staring at each other, and it’s gone on long enough to feel like a game of visual chicken. This time, I’m determined to win. Competitive heat builds in my core, so warm it’s a little alarming. I feel my cheeks starting to flush—

I don’t care how juvenile it is, I’m going to win this stare-down.

“You may kiss to seal your love,” Yogi Dan says.

Wait... it’s already time for the kiss?

The opening chords of the string quartet’s version of “Just Like Heaven” begin to play around us. Light blooms in my periphery, but I don’t blink. The ground beneath me shakes, but not even an eight on the Richter scale would make me quit this contest. When the guests erupt in applause that says the kiss is underway, I’m still staring at Glasswell, and he’s still staring at me.

But something has happened. Something has changed. He’s not shooting eye daggers anymore.

He’s looking at me kindly. Affectionately.

He’s looking at me like a man in love.

Chapter Nine

The bleat of an accordion startles me back to reality. The notes are loud, aggressively festive, and too close to our party. The tune verges on familiar, accompanied by... is that a tuba?

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