Getting Even

“Prove that she’s not.”

CHAPTER FIVE (#ud4cf92d5-f66d-5682-8d96-80b2d2ca9591)

THE FOOD WAS FABULOUS. The wine excellent. Teague’s best-man speech was a triumph of gentle wit. Romy and Matt’s jointly delivered response weaving superheroes, damsels in distress and mere-mortal babies into a love story was flat-out adorable. And Veronica prayed for the night to be over so she could go to bed with a bottle of gin.

She’d been feeling so proud of herself out in the marquee. Parading Phillip under his nose, exuding fan-girl charm all over Felicity, resisting the urge to smash a champagne flute and stab Rafael through the heart when Felicity dropped that bombshell about playing Julie—playing her—in Catch, Tag, Release and called him “Rafa” like she owned him.

She’d entered the hall and taken her seat and told herself that elusive thing called closure was almost within her grasp.

And then Rafael had strolled in, arm-in-arm with Felicity, and sent her a look of such smugness she was all the way back to fury again.

Which had obviously made her a diabolically bad companion for Phillip, who kept disappearing whenever he wasn’t required to sit at the table to eat.

Rafael couldn’t have been much of a companion for Felicity, either, because when he wasn’t sitting at his table to eat, he spent his time gloating at Veronica from various vantage points. Yes, gloating! There was no other way to describe his secretive, self-satisfied smile.

If she hadn’t been giving zero fucks, she would have been tempted to go up to him and smack it off his face. As it was, all she could do was not look at him. Which was easier said than done because it required her to keep him in her peripheral vision to make sure she didn’t do it by accident while simultaneously directing her eyes elsewhere wearing an I-am-fascinated expression. And maintaining her eyebrows in a perpetual go-fuck-yourself arch while performing those ocular gymnastics had given her a crick in her neck and a headache.

Worst of all, the joy she felt for Romy and Matt had been tainted by a bone-deep envy she hadn’t been expecting and they didn’t deserve.

It was just that she’d somehow assumed Romy and Matt would be the way they’d been in the old days—together but not especially together; tactile but more like the way you physically interacted with your best friend; joking around but inviting the rest of the gang in for a laugh. She’d been so certain their marriage would be predicated on a position of Hey, why not do it? since they were both single and were going to have the kid Romy needed anyway. That would have meant today was more college reunion than wedding, with Veronica and Rafael tag-teaming the group hugs to avoid any partisanship.

But the reality was vastly different from her expectations. The way Matt and Romy had looked at each other in the chapel was the first indication. Then Matt’s at-the-altar kiss. And the jolts had been coming thick and fast ever since, making it abundantly clear the Romy and Matt partnership was nothing like the way it used to be. Oh, there was a glimmer of their old friendship in there, but it was embedded deep in something much more visceral.

Matt looked at Romy like he was hungry for her. He touched her like he was dying for want of her. His fingers had lingered at her lips after he’d fed her the obligatory piece of wedding cake as though they had their own taste buds and she was some kind of divine nectar. Even the smallest kiss was imbued with a sense of sexual urgency that made Veronica feel like a voyeur.

And the bridal waltz they were currently performing? It was like nothing Veronica had ever seen. Certainly nothing like either of her own, which had been carefully choreographed and perfectly executed but completely devoid of the barely tethered lust that pulsed between Romy and Matt as they glided across the floor.

They finished the dance with a bedroom kiss. The way she imagined Rafael ending their bridal waltz, and the envy inside her morphed into a boa constrictor, wrapping itself around her internal organs and squeezing tighter and tighter until she thought one of them might burst through her skin in some Alien-like horror moment.

She watched as Romy’s parents joined Romy and Matt on the dance floor—Romy going into her father’s arms, Matt dancing with Romy’s mother. A few minutes later Teague—doing duty as MC as well as everything else—invited all the guests to join in. But Veronica couldn’t bear the thought of it. Even if Phillip miraculously reappeared to ask her, she’d say no. Maybe she would have roused herself for Teague, but he was standing on the other side of the dance floor looking as though the idea of dancing after that sensual display was as nauseating to him as it was to her.

Well, that was something she could do: try to cheer Teague up.

But when Veronica’s impetuous steps took her to the edge of the dance floor, she saw that Rafael had beaten her there. God! He was turning into her nemesis!

As she watched, Rafael slung a casual arm around Teague’s shoulders and said something that made Teague throw back his head and laugh. It was the first time she’d seen Teague laugh all night and her heart softened, her hostility automatically depressurizing.

But it was a bittersweet moment.

In the old days she would have thought nothing of joining Rafael and Teague. The fact that now she couldn’t brought the truth home to her: her old life was in pieces that could never be put back together.

It didn’t make any difference to tell herself it was normal for some groups to splinter and others to form, for individuals to unexpectedly pair up and couples to split up, that that was what was supposed to happen when college students moved into the big, wide world and got jobs and changed lifestyles. Because despite knowing that intellectually, in her heart it was different. In her heart, in her soul, she’d been waiting in limbo for this moment to come...and then go. The moment when she’d accept that Rafael would never again be hers. Only now it was here, it suddenly seemed wrong for the world to keep spinning as though nothing had changed.

A spinning world invalidated the baffled suffering she’d endured since Rafael had left her. It made a mockery of her attempts to protect herself by burying her memories of him, banning herself from asking questions about him, stopping herself from reading his books, from searching online for news of him.

A spinning world told her everyone had moved on except her.

Was she really supposed to accept that life would go on the way it had been going on for the past seven years, two months, three weeks and five days? Did she have to keep enduring, with this barren rage choked inside her, this desperate desire for something too nebulous to name except to say that it was more than love, what she’d once had, what she’d lost?

Yes—that had to be the answer to those questions. Yes, she had to accept, she had to endure, she had to live...because the world kept spinning even if she had stopped.

She imagined this was how it would feel to be shut in a coffin with the lid nailed down but to still be breathing. Buried alive, screaming for someone to set you free, but nobody hearing you and life outside your airless cocoon going on without you. It’s how she’d felt growing up a Johnson, like she was stifling. How she’d felt at that finishing school she’d been sent to for a year when she’d been expelled from high school during her rebellious phase. How she’d felt when college finished and Rafael had left her and she’d gone back to New York to pick up her old life because what else was she supposed to do?

Oh God, she needed to move, needed air and peace and quiet. But her feet stayed rooted to the spot, longing for something else, unable to bear that this really was that final moment and she’d never see him again.

The decision was made almost without conscious thought—that if that were true, if she really was never to see him again, she would look her fill and add the last view of him to all those memories she couldn’t bear to resurrect. It was safe to look, from here—the crowded dance floor a perfect filter. People moving together, drawing apart. Now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t. Flashpoint vignettes so brief he’d have to know she was there to catch her at it.

And so she drank in the sight of him. The black hair, the so-white smile against his gold-bronze skin, his lean elegance in that perfectly tailored suit and of course he didn’t need the constraint of a tie...

She closed her eyes, the better to file the picture away. Enough. Surely that was enough. But it wasn’t enough, so she opened her eyes to see him once more...and found him staring at her from across the dance floor.

Now you see me.

Oh God, had he known she was there all along?

The crowd on the dance floor moved.

Now you don’t.

Go! Get out! That was the voice of reason in her head screaming at her. But her feet wouldn’t obey the order. It was as though a string connected her to Rafael despite the viewing channel having closed.

Sixty seconds...dancers shifting...her pulse thundering in her ears, her breaths coming short and shallow.

Now you see me.

And Rafael was still staring at her, like he’d been x-raying through the blood, bone and sinew of the gyrating bodies on the floor to watch her.

The dancers on the floor drew close together again, the line of sight narrowed and was gone, the music changed to something slow and romantic. Couples music.

Veronica imagined Rafael going to find Felicity, leading Felicity onto the dance floor, and the spell holding her there broke so that she was moving at last, weaving between the tables...exiting the hall...through the marquee...crossing the lawn. And she didn’t care that Johnsons never ran away, she just needed to breathe.

She was glad it was still light enough for her to see even though it was past nine o’clock, but she wouldn’t have long before she was stumbling around in the dark.

If only Rafael would leave early! Take Felicity and go. But, oh God, that would mean they’d soon be in bed together. He’d kiss her the moment they were alone. Peel off her skintight teal dress. He’d whisper to her that she was beautiful. Eres hermosa. That he loved her. Te amo. That he’d love her forever. Te amaré por siempre—

No! Not that! Not that he’d love her forever! He couldn’t say that, he couldn’t. The mere thought of him saying that to another woman made Veronica want to throw up.

Oh how she wished she could time-travel back to five minutes before he’d turned around in the chapel so she could escape through that side exit, go to her cottage, pack her things, drive to the airport and board the first plane out.

Or go further back to the day the wedding invitation had arrived and decline it.

Go allthewayback to the night she’d met Rafael Velez and not fall in love at first sight.

It was the most potent of all her memories, the night they’d met, and she’d been suppressing it for so long, trying so hard to seal it off in the vault, and it wasn’t fair that it could ache in her chest now like a fresh, jagged wound.

End of first semester. Finals over. Planning one last night out with Romy before Christmas break. Deciding on Flick’s—a favorite student hangout because the drinks were cheap and nobody ever got asked for ID. Thirty seconds in, noticing a tall, hunky guy surrounded by women. Matt. But it was the lean, intense man with Matt who’d caught Veronica’s attention. Rafael.

Rafael’s dark eyes had landed on her from across the room and she’d instantly made up her mind that that was the night she’d finally go all the way. He’d leaned close to Matt, whispered something, and Matt had looked at her, his vivid green eyes undressing Veronica like a bolt of fast lightning before moving on to Romy. Matt had cocked his head to the side—presumably assessing Romy’s fuckability—given a why-not shrug, and the two of them had headed over.