The Fix Read online

  Damn.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  We manage to go through another run of the rehearsal without the coordinator complaining about my walk, and the officiant actually gets a chance to run through the ceremony. Poised where I am, I get a great view of Anja’s face as she smiles through the jokes Mattias makes, and Lukas’s insistence that he isn’t really going to pretend to lose the rings when prompted for them. It’s good to see her smiling. If anyone in the world deserves to smile like she is, it’s Anja, who’s been repeatedly saving my ass for the last six months. She had the same smile in her eyes even when I was screaming at her during the darkest of my detox days. She smiled at me when I told her to stop smiling at me, because nothing about how I was feeling was something to smile about. She wisely told me I was right, but that she had to smile so she wouldn’t sob for me instead. And really, when it came to sobbing, I was doing more than enough of that my own pathetic self.

  The officiant’s throat clears, and I realize I’ve lost myself in my thoughts so completely that I haven’t noticed Lukas and Amanda following Anja and Mattias up the aisle. Juliana has her eyebrows raised at me. I fake a chuckle that isn’t 90% nerves and offer her my arm. Well, sort of my arm—I hold out my hand expecting she’ll loop her arm through the bend in mine, which she does, but not before her palm grazes mine. It’s almost reflex to close my fingers around hers before our elbows link.

  There’s a shot of disappointment surging through me—I would have loved to hold her hand. I wonder how her fingers would feel laced through mine. Then I remind myself I shouldn’t be thinking like that. I really, really shouldn’t be thinking like that.

  So why fucking me? Why her? And most importantly—why fucking now?

  CHAPTER TWO

  I wake up the next morning absolutely freezing. I hear the cat meowing in some hidden away corner, pathetic as ever, and tug my covers around me. I shouldn’t have slept with the window open last night, but it’s just habit by now unless it’s below freezing when I go to bed. I force my eyes open and hunt for the clock to check the time. First, however, I see the view out my window, and my stomach drops. Snow had not been in the forecast, and yet….

  My phone begins to trill and Mattias’s name comes up on the caller ID.

  “Hey, Ez. You up yet?” He sounds exhausted.

  “Just woke up,” I tell him. “How’s the weather over at your mom’s?”

  “White and fluffy. It’d be nice if I hadn’t woken up to sixty text messages from Anja about it. That’s what I’m calling about: I know you, me, and Lukas are supposed to meet up here at Mama’s but I think Anja needs another person around her this morning. I guess Amanda is being passive-aggressive on behalf of their parents and Jules said Anja’s sort of losing it. I don’t think it’s bad enough that she’d, you know—”

  Yeah. I do. “No problem. Um, my tux is at your place.”

  “Hey, as long as you show up to the Clock Tower shaved and showered, it shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to put that on. I just… if anyone can get my girl down the aisle in one piece, it’s probably you.”

  Mattias and Anja have this funny way of giving me way more credit than I’m worth. But for everything I owe my sponsor, making sure she gets through the morning is the least I can do for her.

  “No problem. You said Juliana is already there, right?”

  Mattias laughs. “Jules. Mama calls her Juliana when she’s in trouble. But yeah, she’s there, holding Anja together best she can. I think they’ll need a lift to the salon. Couldn’t tell you the last time Jules drove in weather like this.”

  “Got it. Anything else?”

  Mattias breathes a relieved sigh. “No, this is above and beyond the call, Ez. Thank you.”

  “Anytime,” I say.

  I slam the window shut and blast the heat while I get ready. I punch in a quick text to Anja telling her I’ll be heading over there as soon as I get out of the shower. A response is almost automatic. It clearly wasn’t typed by Anja.

  Anja: Good man. She needs you something fierce. Also, coffee? ;)

  I normally hate emoticons in text messages. But surmising that came from Juliana, I find it damn endearing.

  I spend my entire shower thinking about how I’ll be spending the wedding ceremony and reception breathing in Juliana Almeida’s perfume—it shouldn’t be what I’m focused on, but it is. Which, of course, is fucking terrible.

  It probably seems dramatic, how wrapped up I am in not wanting to be as attracted as Juliana as I clearly am. If I were a normal person, I’d just take it at face value as a simple crush and let it flit on by. One day out of my life, and really, it’s not like it should be a problem to spend it with a pretty, funny, alarmingly smart woman. Most groomsmen should be so lucky as to have someone like Juliana on their arm for an evening. But not all groomsmen are six months into a recovery from an addiction that ended because he couldn’t keep his damn fly zipped around a woman he shouldn’t have been attracted to.

  I have to remind myself that this day isn’t about me and my lack of self-control. This day is about Anja and Mattias, who probably never should have taken me in as part of their family, but did anyway because they’re that sort of wonderful people. They deserve to have me level-headed and not distracted for a few hours so Anja can cope with shitty parents and a bratty sister, and walk down the aisle with a smile on her face, because she and Mattias belong together. They fought hard for one another. My demons have no place in their day.

  I pull a hoodie on, grab a couple of packs of cigarettes from the carton stashed in the freezer, and toss a handful of food into the cat’s dish. I realize I’ll need my winter coat, and root around in the back of my closet for it. The fabric smells a little musty, and it occurs to me that I haven’t worn it since last March. Last time I’d needed it, I had a flask in the breast pocket, necessary for getting through the shitty-beyond-shitty day that was Mac’s funeral.

  Never mind all that, I tell myself. It’s not important. I dig in the pockets for my gloves, happy that they’re all I find, and head out the door. I watch the snow fall for just a second. I breathe in the frigid air, which prickles my throat and lungs. Thirty seconds—that’s all the time I give myself to think of Mac and what he’d think of me today, of what I’m doing, of how I’m doing— andthen I head down the cement stairs, wondering if my ice-scraper made it through last winter and my perpetually messy backseat.

  ***

  It’s Juliana who opens the door to Anja and Mattias’s apartment. She and Amanda slept here last night while Mattias crashed in his old room at Mama A’s so the girls could start all their preparations for the day together. It doesn’t escape my notice that Amanda is nowhere to be seen. Juliana looks about how I met her yesterday—pajama-clad and sleepy-eyed. I hand over the Box o’ Joe I picked up on my way.

  Her eyes light up as she takes it from me and goes as far as clutching it to her chest as though I’ve given her something far more valuable than crappy drive-thru coffee.

  “You have no idea how badly I needed this. Thank you. Anja’s in the bedroom. Mat’s gonna kill her when he figures out she was smoking in there, but I wasn’t gonna tell her no,” Juliana says.

  I set down my car keys and cell phone on the kitchen counter. “What happened?” I ask in a hushed voice.

  “I’m out of the loop about the exact issues her family has with mine, but I heard a lot of ‘not good enough’ and ‘disappointment’ thrown around between the two of them first thing this morning. Do you know any of those details?”

  I know enough to know that it isn’t the Almeidas that Anja’s parents have the big problem with—it’s Anja. You’d think two years of sobriety, a stable job, and a fiancé from a good family would be enough to placate her incredibly demanding family. You’d be wrong unless you knew the MacCullors.

  “It’s… complicated. And maybe not my place to say anything,” I say. “I don’t hear screaming. Is Amanda still here?”

  “Nope. Anja suggest
ed she take a hike and she seemed all-too glad to. Haven’t seen her in over an hour.”

  “Well, I guess that solves that dilemma. What time are you supposed to be at the salon and all the other, you know, girly places?”

  “We’ve got a little time, but I think she still needs to shower. Were the roads bad?”

  “Nah, nothing CDOT can’t sort of handle. You know, in the way CDOT handles anything.”She laughs, and my heart almost leaps out of my chest. Dammit. I really shouldn’t feel my heart race every time this girl laughs. “I haven’t lived here in five years, so I really don’t.”

  “Right. I knew that,” I say as I fix myself and Anja cups of coffee. “Have you checked in on her at all?”

  “Mat told me it might be best to wait for you and make myself scarce. If she’s not going to shower, I am. Crack a window if she’s still smoking, will you? She might not beat you if you reach over her.”

  “She’ll absolutely beat me, are you kidding?”

  She laughs, my heart gallops, and she turns on her heel to head for the guest bathroom. It’s everything I have not to watch her go. Not only do I have to escort this girl during the wedding with a straight face and no condemning bulges, I have to look her in the eye all morning.

  When I let myself into the bedroom to see Anja, I barely miss the pillow she throws at my head and succeed in spilling half a cup of coffee down my hoodie.

  “Excuse you,” I say, and hold up the coffee mugs in offering, hoping she’ll see them before she starts throwing things again. “All I’m doing is bringing you coffee.”

  Her hands fly to her face, a cigarette dangling from between the fingers of her right hand. “I’m sorry! I heard the door and thought Amanda had come back.”

  “I think you’re safely stuck with just me and Juliana for the time being.”

  Anja nods and puffs away at the stump of cigarette. “Mattias filled you in?”

  “Sort of. Juliana told me she heard you and Amanda fighting.”

  “Same old bullshit,” Anja says. “Don’t put it past my father to lord around that his daughter married into a Latino family next election cycle, but far be it from him to actually attend my wedding with anything less than a scowl on his face.”

  “Would it really be the worst thing in the world if they didn’t come?” I ask her, cracking the window before I plop down next to her, my own cigarette in hand.

  “Oh, and how would that look if it ever got out? No, they’ll be there. And Amanda will too, but not before putting me out $300 for hair and makeup she’s not going to sit through because she ‘can’t handle me when I get like this.’ Like I’m the one being irrational when she’s the one being a piece of shit to me on my wedding day. This is all so fucking stupid… I should have eloped.”

  “I think it’s a little late for that now. It’s one day. I know it’ll be impossible to not think about, but maybe focus on what you can control? You’re welcome to boss me around all day, if it’ll help at all.”

  She sniffles and wipes her fingers under her eyes. Her irises are even more vibrantly blue, rimmed with red as they are. “I shouldn’t be dumping any of this stuff on you, it’s not particularly sponsorly of me….”

  “Stop it. I don’t mind. It helps keep me distracted, remember?”

  She nods, her bottom lip firmly tucked between her front teeth. I can handle girls crying fine, but there’s something infinitely sad about a bride crying the morning of her wedding about anything other than nerves.

  “And they wonder why I drank,” she says thickly, and I pull her into my side. “It’s always, always been a little bit like this.”

  “I know it,” I tell her, and give her another squeeze.

  When we were in high school, we’d sneak out past the football field and sneak sips from a flask of cheap vodka and cigarettes or the occasional joint. When we did, we’d perch together as small as we could get, her arm looped through mine and her head on my shoulder. People thought we were dating the whole of our senior year, but it was never like that. She plops her head against my shoulder now and it feels a little bit like we’re still a couple of kids who haven’t quite fucked everything up yet, but are ever on the verge of it.

  “Look, don’t focus on them,” I remind her, and rub her back softly. “Focus on you. You can control you. This is your day. You still need to shower, right?”

  She nods against my shoulder.

  “Juliana beat you to it for now, but I bet after you drink this coffee and finish that cigarette, she’ll be done. What do you need for the day? More smokes? Patches? A cliff to drive off?”

  “Can you stop the snow so I can still have my wedding pictures outside on the roof?”

  “Alas, that I could. I’ll tell you this, though: it’s not actually all that cold. No wind. And think of how pretty the city will look with snow falling in the background. Steal Mattias’s tux jacket from him and you’re all set.”

  I know inherently that what she wants more than anything right now is a stiff drink. She was a white wine drinker in her day. I’ve heard women down mimosas and Bloody Marys in excess on the morning of their weddings. She must be missing out on the idea of that. Women usually have supportive sisters on their sides, too. Maybe that makes missing out on the former even worse for her. I light another cigarette and hand it to her.

  “Look, I need to clean out the backseat of my car so there’s enough room for dresses and whatever else we need to cart around. Finish your coffee and shower, and I’ll go take care of that and get it running so you’re hopping into a nice, warm car. We’ll just one-step-at-a-time it, all right?”

  She nods and throws back a sizable gulp of her coffee. I give her another hug, a kiss on the crown of her head, and a big, cheesy grin before I head out of the bedroom.

  I feel a set of eyes on me as I head towards the front door. I resist the urge to turn around, but I see Juliana’s face reflected in a wall mirror. She slips into the guest room before I can look closer, although the last thing I need today is a visual of her in a towel or clingy, wet pajamas.

  Still, I can’t help but wonder why on Earth she’d be spying on me.

  ***

  “You’re adorable if you think I’m going to go scuba-diving,” Anja says as she and Juliana are getting primped and fawned over by the ladies at the salon.

  “It’s not scuba-diving, it’s snubaing,” Juliana says with that infectious, slaying laugh of hers.

  “Now you’re just making words up,” Anja says.

  “It’s a thing! I swear, it’s a blast. You cannot go to San Pedro and not go. As your new older sister, I command it.”

  “You’re, like, six months older than I am. And I am petrified of dark water. It’s not going to happen.”

  I want to tell Juliana she’s wasting her time—Anja can barely be convinced to get into a shallow, unlit swimming pool at night, let alone submerge herself in the ocean to look at coral and fish and WWII-downed airplanes. But Juliana is doing her damnedest to keep Anja laughing and distracted, while about all I’ve done since getting the pair of them out of Anja’s parking lot without fishtailing is finish a book on my phone and smoke the better part of a pack of cigarettes. I’ve only had to light about two for Anja, and that means whatever Juliana is saying, it’s working. I can tell from the way Anja’s shoulders have finally unwound from up near her ears that she’s more relaxed now than I’ve seen her in a couple of weeks. I sneak outside again, there being nothing better for me to do in the salon than try not to keep sneaking glances at Juliana until they’re fully styled. We’re out of there by noon, which leaves us us more than enough time to swing by a drive-thru for the greasy fried chicken Anja’s been craving for three months and hasn’t dared eating so she’ll be able to zip up her dress.

  I carry their dresses up the spiral staircase to the the bridal suite at the Clock Tower while Juliana waltzes up and down the aisle with Anja, trying to keep her laughing as they check in on the workers prepping the space. When Anja is made up an
d ready to get into her dress an hour later, she’s got as big a smile on her face as any bride could hope to. She and Juliana are sipping lattes and laughing, so I decide it’s a good time to sneak out and get dressed myself. Maybe she’s got a supportive sister around her after all.

  I duck out so they can change, smoke a couple of cigarettes, then hunt down a nervous Mattias and slightly-buzzed Lukas. I try not to be too jealous of Lukas.

  “How is she holding up?” Mattias asks. He, like me, chews his fingernails when he’s nervous. I make a mental note about slipping him the nail file I always carry around before pictures are taken of their hands with their new wedding bands. Look, my hands are basically my business card—I may chew my nails, but I know my way around a file.

  I whip out my phone and show him the picture I slyly snapped of Anja getting her hair pinned up in her elaborate up-do at the salon. She’s grinning into the mirror, her face the very definition of a happy bride. I swear, I see the guy fall for her all over again.

  Lukas peeks over his brother’s shoulder. “She’s a pretty gorgeous bride, brother,” he says, elbowing Mattias in the ribs.

  I let Mattias hold onto my phone while I change into my tux. After, he reluctantly hands it back and says, “Much as it pisses me off you get to see her before I do, can you go back up and make sure she’s still all right? She’ll need a friendly face when Amanda finally deigns to show up.”

  “’Course,” I say, and clap him on the shoulder. I haven’t known Mattias as long as I’ve known Anja, but I know he’s not the sort of guy to get all choked up. I can’t help but wonder if he’s trying to get rid of me so only Lukas can lord it over him later that he’s totally about to start crying. I’m a long way from married, of course, but that seems about right.