Page 33 of What's in a Kiss?

I stand to face him, my eyes bright with accusations. But when they land on his, all my ire disappears, like someone opened a trapdoor inside me. Bitterness and rage dandelion away. What remains is a feeling for which I know only one word.

Home.

That’s what it feels like to look at him. As crazy as it sounds.

Are we smiling? I think we’re smiling. Now he’s... leaning in... to...

Holy shit. Glasswell’s going to kiss me.

Stranger still: it feels like we’ve practiced this pre-kiss pose a million times. I don’t just mean his grip on my hips or the tangoing tilt of our heads. I also mean the chemicals amalgamating within me. I find myself softening, opening... forhim. I’m so swept up that for several breathless eternities I forget to ask myself what the hell I’m doing.

This would be a waste.

His words from all those years ago return. I break away and catch my breath. When I’m not looking at Glasswell, and not touching Glasswell, and not being touched by Glasswell, I can see clearly. And what I see are tacky folding chairs, smarmy Cousin Jeffrey, a strobe light Morse-coding how wrong this wedding has become. Masha must be on the edge of passing out.

“I’m gonna check on—” I say as a caterer comes between Glasswell and me. He holds out a finger-smudged tray of gray stuffed mushrooms and sad crab cakes—the hors d’oeuvres Masha and I have choked down at all her cousins’ weddings.

“Where did you come from?” I demand of the waiter. I point at the food in his custody. “This isall wrong!”

“Is that Olivia Dusk?” A whisper pricks my ears.

I turn toward the voice and find a woman I’ve never seen before. “Who the hell are you?” I say, which makes her and her friend laugh and turn away.

“What’s their problem?” I ask Glasswell, not really wanting an answer, especially one whispered like an orgy on my neck. What I want is to find Masha, to snap my fingers and make this reception deception disappear.

“We can leave whenever you want,” Glasswell says.

I laugh.Leavein the middle of my best friend’s wedding?

“I’m going to find Masha.”

Glasswell looks alarmed, like I’ve just said I’m going to strip down and run naked into the ocean. He intercepts me, his broad shoulders squaring off in front of mine. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Yeah, well, neither was all that cologne.” I motion for him to step aside.

“I thought you liked—never mind.” He sighs. “It’s her wedding day, Olivia.”

I pat his shoulder. “I knew you could figure it out.”

I scan the crowd for Masha. There. I exhale at the sight of her—an island of sanity in this paint-by-numbers storm. Thank god she looks the same—beautiful dress, vintage Temperley, loose ringlets I watched her cousin wind around a curling iron this morning. Her lips in Vice by Urban Decay, spotlighting her smile.

“She’s swarmed,” Glasswell says, looking at the crowd aroundher. This is true, and precisely why I need to save her. “You can email her tomorrow.”

I whip my head around. “Did you say ‘email’?Tomorrow?”

“You heard the rabbi,” Glasswell says. “All that talk about Masha and Eli needing peace in their new life. It’s important to them. And we should honor it. Tonight of all nights.”

My mind hones in on one word, and it isn’tpeace.

Rabbi?The only rabbi at this wedding was the one Masha’s babushka brought as her plus-one. And he certainly wasn’t given a speaking platform. Doesn’t Glasswell remember the mission to recover Yogi Dan?

“Where’s the celebrity officiant?” I ask.

“Where is what?” Glasswell asks.

“Yogi Dan? Willie Nelson’s little brother in pretzel form?”

Glasswell’s staring at me, straitjackets in his eyes.

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