Page 76 of Man Cuffed
Like I needed one more reason to never get married.
* * *
“You looklike you’re marching to your doom,” Meg chides as we walk toward the dock in Grand Haven. “It’s just a party, Mac. You can get back to Hemingway in only a few hours.”
“But I hate parties in general and this one in particular. I am going toward my doom.”
“No, you’re walking toward temporary discomfort. I bet you’re a baby when you get a cold, too.”
“Am not,” I argue. But I totally am.
She smiles at me like she knows the truth.
“Can you believe that bullshit he spewed in the churchyard? Like it’s my fault that we’re never in the same place at the same time?” It took us thirty minutes to drive here from the church, and I thought I’d calmed down. But I’m not calm.
Meg’s hand slips into mine. “My mother has this thing she says whenever my sister or I get upset at someone else’s bullshit. She says, ‘There are other paradigms of logic.’”
“What does that even mean?” I grumble as we approach the line of people waiting to walk up the ramp and onto our floating jail.
“It means that everyone thinks he’s the good guy, even when he’s not. You can’t change your brother. You can only change how upset you are at him.”
“Your mother doesn’t know how angry I still am.” Usually I can just ignore it. But today it’s like a hot coal in the center of my chest.
“I do, though. Honestly when Mom used to say that, I used to slam a few doors to get back at her. Fuck that noise.”
I let out an uncomfortable bark of laughter. “Meg.” I stop on the sidewalk, a few yards short of the ramp.
“What? We’re not bailing now.”
“No,” I admit, turning to her and taking both of her hands in mine. “We’re not bailing. But I just wanted to say thank you ahead of time. Thank you for going to this shit show with me.”
Meg’s eyes go soft. “Hey, you’re welcome. It’s my pleasure.”
“I also need you to know something important.” I lean forward and kiss her on the nose. “The best bail bondsman in the city is Biff’s, on Fuller Street.”
Meg giggles. “It won’t come to that.”
“You don’t know for certain.”
She leans against my chest and laughs. “I do, Mac. Let’s go eat some expensive appetizers and drink Hemingway Daiquiris.”
“He liked a nice dry martini, too. Just saying.”
“Fine. Whatever. Just get your very tight butt onto that boat. There’s dancing later.”
“I don’t dance.”
“Tonight you do,” she says, wrapping her arms around me. “I told Julie that we were taking ballroom lessons from a nice teacher named Ernesto. And that your pachanga is particularly smooth.”
“What?” I yelp. “I don’t even know what a pachanga is.”
“Me neither! And neither does Julie. So I don’t think it matters.” She beams at me.
“What did you go and do that for?”
“Because I want to dance with you, and this was the only thing I could think of to make that happen.”
“But…”
