Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 53349 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 267(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 178(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53349 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 267(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 178(@300wpm)
“What if you took someone with you?” Tamara asked. “If you had someone there at the wedding, would they leave you alone?”
Nate shrugged. “I’ve thought about that before,” he admitted. “It’s a big ask, but it would probably work. They’d think I was taken or committed, and they certainly wouldn’t try to set me up with anyone else. The only difficult part would be finding someone who’d agree to do it without it being weird.”
“I’ll go with you.” The words were out before Tamara had even thought about them. What was she doing?
“You will?” Nate sounded a little stunned by the offer, but he recovered quickly. Far too quickly for Tamara to even think about taking it back. “That would be great, if you’re sure. It would take a lot of pressure off me, and I know they would be thrilled to meet you.” He grinned. “And it would definitely mean fewer bridesmaids trying to hit on me.”
“Well, I’d hope so,” Tamara said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing a good job.”
Nate gave her a look as if to say he couldn’t conceive of a situation where Tamara would be a crummy girlfriend. It made her heart flutter a little.
“And it’s this coming weekend?” Tamara said. She had hired help for the summer, but they’d never been left alone before. The idea of a road trip to the beach sounded so fun, though, that the temptation to go with him was too much.
“Yes,” he said, looking at her earnestly.
“Okay, then, it’s a date.” Tamara blushed as she realized what she’d just said. “Not a date date. A thing. An arrangement. You know what I mean.” Trying to ignore the restaurant’s romantic low lighting, and the couples everywhere, Tamara was doing all she could to make this feel not like a date, and yet, here she was talking about a date next weekend.
“I do,” Nate said, giving her a small smile. “But you’re sure you’d be okay with it? Coming down to the wedding? Staying at my brother’s beach house for the weekend?”
Tamara frowned slightly at that. “Your brother’s renting a beach house?” Did that mean they would have to play at being a couple the whole time?
“Actually, he bought the place. His marketing business has really taken off, and he’s got plenty of room, so I guess he wants to show off the place. Plus, he really loves the beach.”
“Who doesn’t love the beach?” Tamara said dreamily. Maybe she shouldn’t have put it that way. She should have said that maybe they should get their own place. But too late now. She could do this. “It all sounds great. I haven’t been to San Diego in ages. Just let me know if I need to bring anything special.”
“Thanks so much, Tamara.” Nate took a sip of wine and seemed to disappear into his thoughts for a moment. When he looked at her again, he asked, “But what about you? Do you find yourself going to a lot of family weddings?”
“My family is the opposite of yours,” Tamara explained. “My parents have been married for more than fifty years now. They met in high school, fell for each other, and they’ve been together ever since.”
She normally didn’t talk much about her family, even with Nate, but he’d been open about his parents, so it was only fair. Besides, Tamara found that she actually wanted to talk about this, at least a little bit.
“It’s the same thing with my brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and all my cousins,” Tamara said. “It’s like they’re genetically programmed to find the perfect person as early as possible, marry them, and spend the rest of their lives together. Maybe it is genetic, because it was like that for my grandparents too.” She paused. “And then there’s me.”
“How so?” Nate asked. “What happened?
Tamara hesitated. She really wasn’t sure whether she should tell him this part of her story, but if she couldn’t tell Nate, who could she tell?
She took a deep breath. “In my family, you meet your one person, and that’s it. But it didn’t work out that way for me.”
“What do you mean?” Nate asked. He leaned forward slightly, and they could have been any of the couples in the room. Except those couples probably weren’t talking about how badly their love lives had turned out.
“Quite a while ago, not long after high school, I got engaged to this guy, Brad. We’d known each other pretty much all our lives. We grew up in the same town, a few houses away. We went to the same school, hung out together all the time, and knew all the same people. It just seemed so obvious that things were going to work out for us in the long term. My family knew Brad and his family, and they all got along just great, and…” Tamara was trying to laugh about it, but even after all this time, it still hurt. Was it the sting of what had happened, or wondering if it would still impact the rest of her life?