Page 24 of Dearly Unbeloved
Jazz
Happy Friday! I’m picking you up in 10. We’re getting breakfast at Ethel’s before work.
What? When did we plan this?
We didn’t. I figured we were just springing things on each other now! Like, I don’t know… you marrying my sister. :)
“Shit,” I groan. I knew this was coming. Jazz has been suspiciously quiet about me and Rose in the week since family dinner. And by that, I mean, she hasn’t brought it up once. And I certainly haven’t volunteered anything.
I drop my phone on the kitchen island and hop down from the stool. “Do you want this?”
Rose looks over from the coffee machine and arches a brow at my avocado toast. “What did you do to it?”
“You got me. I’m giving up on the inheritance, and I took out a life insurance policy on you instead. I mashed poison into the avocado,” I reply, rolling my eyes. “I didn’t do anything to it. Jazz just sprung on me that she’s picking me up in ten minutes so she can take me to breakfast—presumably to grill me about us—and I need to finish getting ready. Eat it or don’t. I don’t care.”
Ten minutes later, when I’m rushing out the door, the plate is empty.
“So.” Jazz narrows her eyes at me over her iced latte.
“So,” I echo.
“I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“What the fuck are you doing, Sierra?” Jazz asks, slamming her latte down on the table so hard that some of the lavender whipped cream falls off. “Look, I’m no stranger to a drunken mistake, butgetting married?”
“You and Liam got married after two months of dating,” I point out.
Jazz glares at me. “‘Dating’ being the optimal part of that sentence. There’s also something to be said for the fact that Liam and I didn’t hate each other approximatelytwo hours before said wedding. I was with you, remember?”
It’s hard to argue with that. In Vegas, hungover in the diner, this all seemed so much more manageable. I didn’t consider how hard it would be to actually lie to people I care about—how guilty I’d feel. And it feels really fucking unfair that I’m the one feeling guilty when it was Rose’s idea to stay married. She doesn’t seem remotely fazed by any of this.
“I understand that this seems a little out of the blue,” I say, finally, and Jazz rolls her eyes.
“Seriously? Did you practice that? What the fuck, Sierra?”
I throw my hands up with a frustrated groan, almost upending my coffee. “What do you want me to say? I’m not going to apologize for marrying someone I… care about. I know the circumstances aren’t ideal, but since when did love happen conveniently?”
It doesn’t sound remotely convincing to my ears, but Jazz’s expression softens.
“How did it happen?”
“What?”
“How did you go from hating each other to being in love in the blink of an eye? I mean, I assume it’s been building a while, but it didn’t seem like that when you were both pissed that the other was coming to Vegas.”
Right. This is something Rose and I should probably have discussed ahead of time—the story. Liam got Jazz hooked on romance books, and the two of them love a love story. Lying comes naturally to me, something I shouldprobably unpack, but storytelling has never been my forte. I only just scraped a B- in my college creative writing class.
They say the best stories are rooted in truth, but there’s zero truth to our nonexistent love story, so I’m on my own here. I clear my throat.
“Well, it’s like you said: it’s been building for a while. We spend so much time together, not intentionally, but we live together, you know. And I guess it started to change when…” I wrack my brain, trying to think of something that might trigger our feelings to change, and almost clap my hands when something comes to mind. “Do you remember when I had that really bad flu a couple of months ago?”
“I remember. You sounded so rough that I started mentally planning your funeral,” Jazz says nonchalantly.
“That’s… What?”
She just shrugs.
