Page 14 of My Vampire Plus-One

I looked helplessly at Gracie, who seemed to have given up on judging my life choices in favor of bathing her right front paw.

“I don’t want to open it,” I told her.

Instead of backing me up, Gracie signaled this conversation was over by jumping off the counter and sauntering over to my living room couch. One downside to having a nonhuman roommate was when I needed someone to validate me, I was usually out of luck.

“Fine,” I muttered. I supposed there was no point in putting off the inevitable. At least Gretchen had sent this to my apartment. My cousin Sarah had sent her invitation to my office. That tacitly pitying implication that I spent more of my life at work than I didnotat work had just added insult to injury.

I took a deep breath and slid my finger beneath the envelope’s seal.

Purple calligraphy slanted gracefully across the front of the ivory inner envelope:

Amelia Collins, Plus One

I had to admit that the invitation looked very nice. I didn’t realize Shutterfly carried such formal-looking card stock.

Mr. and Mrs. Alex Madden

and Mr. and Mrs. Francis Whitlock

Do hereby request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their children

gretchen elizabeth

and

joshua cole

on Saturday, May 14, at 5 in the evening

at Twin Meadows Country Club, Chicago, Illinois.

Reception immediately to follow.

Another family wedding at Twin Meadows, then. Half my uncles belonged to it, so it had become a family wedding default.

I peeked inside the envelope again and saw two additional off-white three-by-five cards. One of them was an invitation to an engagement dinner at Aunt Sue’s house that Sunday.

Crap.

That wassoon.

The other card was an invitation to a couples’ getaway to our families’ cabins in Wisconsin the following weekend. My great-grandfather had owned several acres in Door County, and when he died, my grandfather built cabins on it, deeding one to each of his four children. My family had spent two weeks up there every summer when I was a kid; as far as I knew, my aunts had done the same thing with their children.

All my associations with the place involved hiking, fishing, s’mores, and mosquito bites. I’d always loved our family trips up there, but it seemed an odd place to hold a pre-wedding getaway celebration. But then, I wouldn’t know anything about that.

Two truly terrifying thoughts occurred to me.

First: Would my family expect me to bring my nonexistent boyfriend to these events?

And then: Would I be able to find someone in time?

Either way, I probably needed to reply to Mom’s and Sam’s texts. I was still on the fence about whether I was actually going through with this charade, but I had to tell Sam the truth about what was going on. We’d told each other everything since childhood. I was bad at lying to anyone; it was impossible for me to lie to Sam.

AMELIA:Sam, please keep this a secret until I decide what I’m going to do

AMELIA:But when I said I was taking someone to the wedding at first I was totally just being sarcastic

AMELIA:It wasn’t until everyone BELIEVED me that I decided this could maybe be a way to get mom and dad off my back about dating somebody