A glance up at Diesel showed her he didn’t look even remotely nervous. But then again, he wasn’t a bridesmaid who had let her best friend down. Tuesday knew that she hadn’t done anything horrible. She hadn’t puked at the reception or blown a groomsmen in the bathroom, but she still felt bad.
That seemed to be the story of her life lately. She managed to forget or escape briefly, then she crashed back down to reality, feeling worse than she had before. Her stomach churned and she found herself edging closer to Diesel. She didn’t want to be judged and found lacking. She had always prided herself on her strength, on her ability to keep her emotions private, and since her dad had gotten sick, that had been nearly impossible to do.
Now, standing here in front of all these put-together women, both young and old, her hair wet and her makeup jacked up, totally late and hungover, she suddenly felt raw and exposed. Vulnerable. And Tuesday hated that feeling.
“You’re a liar,” she told Diesel. “But I appreciate the effort.”
She really couldn’t figure his deal out. No guy was this nice without some ulterior motive. It just didn’t happen.
Or did it? Her dad had been that kind of guy. So when had she started assuming no one would ever measure up to him?
Diesel said, “Do we have assigned seats or what?”
She shook her head no, but the truth was, she wasn’t really sure. About anything.
When she would have stood in the doorway indefinitely, struggling to get her shit together, Diesel took the lead. He took her by the hand, literally, and drew her into the room, choosing a table that had two empty chairs side by side.
Her hand in his felt wonderful, big and strong, like him, and for once she was grateful to have a man taking charge because she wasn’t sure she could have walked into that room by herself.
“Are these seats taken?” he asked an ancient relative in a blush pink pantsuit.
“No. Have a seat, sweetie,” she told him, patting the chair next to her.
Tuesday swallowed hard as she sat down in the other available chair, smiling to the ladies at the table and struggling to remember any of their names. Her head was pounding again and she felt the inexplicable need to cry. What the hell was wrong with her? Why was she so weepy all the damn time?
“I need to go say hello to Kendall,” she told him, dropping her purse on the floor. “And I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?”
“Coffee is fine.” He smiled at her. “Thanks, babe.” Then he reached out and touched the tip of her nose with his finger.
That stopped her urge to blubber. Really? Did she look like a woman who wanted her nose tweaked? She was too tall, too independent, too . . . uptight.
She’d never thought of herself as uptight, but the truth was she was a control freak. And wasn’t the one just a synonym for the other?
But she should be grateful he didn’t know her well enough to recognize that nose tweaking was a mistake, because his action had prevented her from embarrassing herself any further by crying. She couldn’t help but make a face at him as she stood up. Diesel just grinned, like he knew full well that wasn’t her style.
Kendall was surrounded by well-wishers, but she extracted herself and said, “Let’s get a drink, Tuesday.”
Tuesday found herself whisked away to the bar, which was being used to serve juices, coffee, and mimosas. “Sorry I’m late,” she told Kendall. “I didn’t hear my alarm.”
“Did you sleep with Diesel?” Kendall asked, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially. “What’s he look like naked?”
“Kendall Holbrook Monroe,” Tuesday said with a grin, suddenly feeling better. “Why do you care what he looks like naked? You’re an old married woman.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not curious. He’s really tall for a driver, well over six foot.” She paused, glancing around the room, and dropped her voice even lower. “Is he, you know, proportionate? Because I’d hate to think that all that height doesn’t translate. It’s not fair that we can’t judge men’s penis size by looking at them. I mean, they can see what our bodies look like, how big our br**sts are, but we have no clue until we’re confronted with it, and by then it’s too late.”
Tuesday eyeballed a mimosa and debated whether hair of the dog made sense or not, totally amused by Kendall’s speech. “I completely agree with you. We need those scanners they have at the airport so we can gauge his size before we go home with him. But if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were lamenting Evan’s lack of stature.”
Kendall hit her in the arm. “Of course not! Evan has a perfect . . . one. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t encounter a tiny one or two along the way.”
Unfortunately, Tuesday knew about that all too well. “Yeah, no kidding. For awhile there, I felt like I was strolling through the Munchkinland of penises. Not good. No matter what they want to claim, size matters.” She went for the mimosa. One wouldn’t hurt. In fact, it might help.
After taking a sip, which tasted like a little bit of orange juice heaven, she then lifted a mug and pulled the spigot to fill it with coffee for Diesel. “But sadly, I can’t tell you if he’s hung or not, because I never saw it.”
“You never looked?” Kendall’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. “You must have been drunker than I thought.”
“Oh, I was plenty drunk, trust me.” Trashed. Bombed. Shitfaced. Whatever you wanted to call it. “But Diesel turned me down. Apparently sloppy drunk women don’t do it for him.”
Glancing over, she saw he was politely chatting with Pink Pantsuit. Hungover women probably didn’t do it for him either, yet here he was, forced to make painful conversation simply because she’d asked him to. “I can’t figure him out. If he wasn’t interested in getting laid, why is he here with me? Why did he drive me home?”
Kendall shook her head. “It’s amazing how blind we can be about our own relationships. Sweetheart, he is interested, he’s just too nice of a guy to take advantage of you loaded. And I’m sure he wants you fully conscious, not flopping around like a rag doll.”
“How do you know he’s interested?” She snuck another glance at him. Damn, he was cute, with his shaggy hair and chin scruff.
“Because he’s at a freaking wedding brunch where he only knows about five people and almost everyone in the room is a woman over the age of fifty. Hello. Of course he’s interested.”