Page 24 of The Wedding Menu

It can’t be.

I turn, the movement resulting in a stab of pain, with my neck as stiff as it is, and when my eyes meet his blue-speckled ones, it starts all over again. Like a fireworks factory just exploded in my brain. “I-Ian?”

He’s motionless, gaping as he stands in front of the hotel’s revolving doors, a bottle of champagne that must have slipped through his fingers in broken pieces on the floor around him. He’s wearing a light blue sweater, and he’s so handsome—even more than I remembered. His ash-brown hair sweeps the top of his left eyebrow, and the stubble he had on his cheeks the last time I saw him is gone. The same speckled-blue lakes that represented a source of safety radiate, too, though at this very moment they’re bugging out, wildly terrified.

He walks around the glass shards, staring at me as if I’m a ghost from his previous life. And maybe I am. Once he’s standing a couple of steps from me, he stops. I’m almost certainly imagining it, but the citrusy, clean smell that’s integral to my memory of Ian envelops me. His warmth, his comfort.

Am I dreaming? This can’t be real, right? It’s almost too good to be true. Too fortuitous to be casual. Too fateful even for fate. “You—” My hand clasps Barb’s arm. “You—”

“Yes, I see him too,” she breathes. “It’s a meet-cute.”

Ian’s eyes haven’t moved from me at all. He obviously didn’t expect to see me, either, but what is he doing here at all? Why is he in this hotel, so far outside Mayfield? How is he in front of me?

“What—what are you doing here?” he asks in a warm, velvety voice.

Words. I need to say words. My brain has forgotten how to form them, or maybe the cable connecting it to my mouth has been severed and now information can’t get through. Though the whole sentence in my mind goes,We’re here for an international conference about fine dining, and I’m one of the speakers, the only strangled noise that comes out sounds like “Work.”

He nods, silence stretching again for more seconds than necessary, until Barb clears her voice. “Hmm. I’ll… I’ll be in the dining room.” She brushes past me, her back to Ian, and frantically mouths, “Get it together,” before waddling away.

But how can I get it together? I’m alone with Ian. Well, the hall is filled with people who froze in their position at the commotion and now resume walking from one side of the room to the other, but we might as well be alone. Just as a hotel worker approaches the mess of glass and champagne with a broom, Ian takes a step closer. “You look good.”

“You do too,” I offer, and he really does look good. Elegant, excruciatingly gorgeous, and he’s certainly maintaining his composure better than I am. All of a sudden, I’m aware of the weight I lost since he last saw me. Of my hair, which could use a nice trim, and the fact that I haven’t smiled in a really long time; I wonder if he can see that just by glancing at me.

“I’m sorry, I just…” His hand moves to the back of his head, stretching his lovely sweater over the waistband of his jeans. “I guess I never expected I’d see you again.” My expression mustbe conveying my feelings about that, because he quickly corrects himself: “I just mean… I’m a little…a lotsurprised.”

Likewise. I mean, I was obviously hoping this would be the outcome, but I didn’t expect it to happen like this. On my first night here. With no effort on my part. Now it dawns on me: I should have probably prepared a speech of some sort, because he definitely deserves one. A carefully crafted explanation, a declaration of feelings, and an admission of mistakes. After the way I treated him, I’d beg him on my knees if he asked me to.

“Well, how’s… how’s everything?”

There you go. The most innocuous yet unwanted question he could possibly ask. How’s everything? Shit, pretty much. I’ve got no job, no relationship, basically no friends. My life, compared to when he last saw me, is a whole lot better and worse at the same time.

I’m sure he’d understand if I explained it, but it’s hardly a conversation to have in the middle of a hotel hall, one second after reconnecting, when I’m struggling to get two syllables together.

“It’s… um… good.”

He nods, his eyes darting away for a moment.

“What about you?”

“Good. Great.” His jaw tenses, the lines so sharp they could cut concrete. “Everything’s great.”

An uncomfortable silence stretches yet again as we study each other with tentative smiles. God, there was a time when Ian was the only person I could talk to. The only one who was there, who made an effort to understand; the only one who truly cared. And now we’re back to being strangers.

“It was nice seeing you,” he says, awkwardly looking away. “I should probably—”

“Would you—” I blurt the words even before my brain fullyputs the thought together. I just know he’s about to leave, and I’ll be damned if I let him disappear from my life again. “Would you get a coffee with me? Or dinner, or…”

His eyebrows knit with suspicion, as if I just asked for his credit card details.

With a slight shrug, I ignore the bite of nausea in my stomach and say, “I still owe you drinks, don’t I?”

“Hmm.” He looks down between us, then back up at me. The tension in his shoulders tells me he’s either about to say no or he’ll say a very displeased yes. It’s unfair of me to expect he’d be thrilled to see me—not at first—but it’s a punch in the stomach anyway. “Yeah, of course. Of course I would.” He smiles softly. “We should catch up.”

Oh. He almost looks like he… like he means it. “That’s—I’d love that.”

“I’m staying here for a weeklong conference. When do you—”

“A conference?” My heart beats a thousand times faster. “You’re attending the ICCE?”