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To them, I’m an unknown. I’m not a CEO or some kind of fancy important person. I don’t travel in the same circles as Xavier, Dominic, and Tristan. I don’t go to fundraisers or office parties or whatever else it is these kinds of people do. They don’t know anything about me, and most of them are probably sizing me up, trying to figure out what’s so special about me.
I just keep a smile on my face, accepting each well wish with a heartfelt thank you, the way I was taught to as a kid. Manners come easily to me at least, and if a little more of my Southern accent slips out as I fall into the old lines of Southern hospitality, then so be it.
“You must be so excited,” one woman says. She grins at me, tossing deep red hair over her shoulder. “You’ve just taken threeof the most eligible bachelors in the country off the table in one fell swoop.”
“Oh,” I say, trying to smile and not grimace at her phrasing. “It wasn’t about that at all.”
She waves a hand. “I’m sure it wasn’t. But still, it was masterfully done. You’re going to have plenty of people wondering exactly how you did it. And besides them being powerful and making a name of themselves in the tech sphere, they’re also… you know.” She gives a significant look to where the three of them are deep in conversation with a shorter man dressed in a suit that probably cost more than my entire apartment building.
“Sorry?” I say, looking back to her. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“They’rehot,” she says, dropping her voice into a dramatic whisper. “Most of the men at their level are either old, addicted to something that makes them awful to deal with, or can’t manage to dress themselves without help from their much younger assistants.” She gives me another significant look, and I just smile helplessly. “Or some combination of the three.”
“Oh,” I say again. That word is getting a lot of mileage so far. “I guess I lucked out.”
“I’ll say you did,” the woman replies, smiling wistfully. “What’s your secret?”
“I… don’t think I have one?”
Luckily someone else breaks into the conversation then, rescuing me from this conversation. It’s someone else wanting to congratulate me, only they follow it up with asking if I can manage to convince my husbands to take a meeting with them.
“I’m really not the person to ask about that,” I say, trying to edge away from him.
“Nonsense!” He grins brightly. “You’re their wife. They’ll listen to you.”
If only he knew how untrue that was.
I turn my smile up a notch, trying to go for amused flattery. “That’s kind of you to say,” I tell him. “But we haven’t even been married for an hour yet. I don’t want to start asking for things too soon. And I definitely don’t want them thinking about work at our reception.”
He gives me a look that definitely says he thinks I’m naive, but whatever. If it gets me out of this conversation, I’ll take it. “The work never stops, I’m afraid,” he says. “But we’ll talk some other time maybe?”
I nod noncommittally and make an excuse that I need to greet more guests to slip away from him and go to the other side of the room.
Xavier is there, already holding a glass of champagne. He smiles when he sees me and passes me the glass, appropriating another for himself from a passing waiter’s tray.
“How are you holding up?” he asks.
“I’m all right,” I say immediately. I take a sip of the champagne, wrinkling my nose as the bubbles tickle it. “It’s just… a lot.”
He nods, draining his own glass in one smooth swallow. “You can say that again. We would have had something more private if we could have, but that would defeat the purpose of this whole thing.”
“I know,” I tell him. “I get it.”
He’s called away by another group of people wanting his attention, and I stand off to the side for a while longer, finishing my drink and gathering my strength before diving back into the fray.
Thank goodness for the staff at least. All of them seem to have worked this kind of event before, and they keep the drinks and fancy canapes moving around the room, trays constantly full of little finger foods that I can’t even identify on sight.
But they also make sure to stop and offer things to me, Xavier, Dominic, and Tristan specifically, either because they know who’s paying for this or because they understand that the bride and groom—grooms, in this case—always manage to end up starving at wedding receptions with the amount of people they have to talk to.
So at least I get to eat little garlic steak bites wrapped in puff pastry and covered in a sweet and smokey sauce as well as dates stuffed with a tangy cheese and drizzled with hot honey.
That alone carries me through most of the small talk that I barely understand, at least until I managed to slip away to the relative silence of the bathroom.
I check my hair and makeup and then take a deep breath and step back out into the fray.
Luckily, people don’t seem to notice that I’m back, and I manage to find a quiet corner of the room to stand in. Tristan seems to have had the same idea, standing there with a glass of water in his hand, staring out at the proceedings.
He doesn’t so much as glance at me as I join him, and I stand there awkwardly for a bit, before I think of something to say.