Page 40 of How to Ruin Your Ex's Wedding
She pushes at me, I let her go. “I hate you,” she seethes.
“Feeling’s mutual, darlin’.”
“Don’t call me that either!”
“That?”
“Yes!”
“Or darlin’? I’m making a list but it’s hard to keep track.”
“Seriously?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to be clear on what I can and can’t say.”
If she were a cartoon character, this would be the time when steam blew out her ears and her face turned bright red. “You know my name, use that.” She turns and walks away.
“Tabatha?”
Her feet stop moving, but she keeps her back to me.
“Can I have my mustache back so I can return to work?”
She holds her hand out to the side and drops the mustache on the ground, then smashes it with her shoe, her sole rotating back and forth on it until it starts to come apart beneath her foot.
“Aw, come on, Tabs. That’s my only mustache,” I call after her.
She walks into the building, flipping me off as she goes.
* * *
Gregor laughs for a good thirty seconds before slapping his knee and pausing to drink his beer. “Oh god, that’s a good one, Pax. Holy shit.” He wipes at his watering eyes. “Really, she did you a favor. That mustache was not a good look on you, man.”
“It was a disguise. It’s not supposed to be a good look.” I finish my beer and signal the bartender for another. I met Gregor at one of his pubs for a beer after I left Tabatha at the venue. I sent Liza a text expressing my sincerest apologies, but I had an emergency that would take me away for the remainder of the afternoon. I don’t see where getting pictures of Tabs and Pimplecock at the place they aren’t going to be married at really matters anyway.
“If there is one thing I ever liked about that girl, it was her temper. And she could keep you in line. Never a boring moment with that one.”
“Okay, but have you seen my upper lip? It hurts, man.” After leaving the venue, and before joining Gregor, I stopped at a drugstore for some ointment to treat the now tender skin under my nose.
“Don’t be a pussy,” he scolds.
I reach over and pull hard on his beard.
“Ow, man. What the fuck?”
“Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but that’s because it’s a real beard growing out of my actual face. Not just something glued on temporarily.”
“I have sensitive skin,” I mumble.
“You’ve got a sensitive something.” He scoffs.
I flip him off. He blows me a kiss.
“What happens now?” Gregor asks. “Since Tabatha knows it’s you.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she’ll tell the coordinator or the fiancé since it will reflect badly on her. I think we just continue to pretend I’m someone else. And I keep taking terrible pictures of her.”
