Page 7 of The Marriage Blunder

He noticed me noticing, and for the first time, he didn’t look away. His mouth twitched at the edge. He reached for his wine again, but the glass was empty. He set it back down, softer than necessary, and then laughed at himself.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to be sitting next to him. I imagined the accidental brush of a knee under the table, the warmth of a body at rest after holding itself tense for hours.

I imagined, more than once, what he’d look like in the hotel room upstairs, glasses on the nightstand, shirt open, voice low and embarrassed, but not unhappy.

Somewhere in there, Carolyn performed a set piece of the evening—a cake, delivered by a server in a black tank top and tight pants, bearing a cartoonish representation of her and her future spouse. The sugar created future spouse had my jawline, and nothing else in common. Carolyn laughed with the rest, took a hundred photos, then did a tequila shot with the server.

Jude took a picture, too. Not of the cake, but of the whole group. He checked the preview, made a small satisfied noise, then leaned over to show it to the bridesmaid in red, who beamed and hugged him, smearing frosting onto his sleeve.

The music shifted, louder and faster, the DJ determined to finish the crowd off before last call. I checked my own drink. It was empty. I poured another, with the practiced wrist of a man who has outlasted more parties than he cared to count.

I didn’t see Carolyn leave the dance floor, but she appeared at my side, breathless and glowing, eyes bright with what I recognized as pure social adrenaline.

“Are you having fun?” she asked, the words already performing themselves.

An execution would be more fun, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “The most.”

She kissed me on the cheek, careful not to smudge her lipstick. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, and I believed she meant it. Then she was gone again, swept up in her own orbit again.

I looked for Jude. He was still at the booth, now leaning back with his head against the leather, eyes closed for just a second too long. When he opened them, he saw me watching. He smiled. It was the first time I’d seen him do it without irony.

I smiled back.

The night stretched on. The ice bucket refilled itself, or someone did it. I wasn’t sure and I didn’t care. The champagne made the rounds, three bottles downed and counting. The noise in the club, once impressive, was now numbing.

The world had reduced to a few square feet, the only things worth tracking being the curve of the booth, the coolness of my glass, and the man at the end of it who kept pushing his glasses up with two fingers, who kept being the best part of the evening by simply refusing to try.

At some point, Carolyn passed Jude on her way to the restroom, leaned over, and whispered something into his ear. He looked mortified, and then amused, and then nothing at all. I watched the color climb his neck and settle in his cheeks. He looked up at me, then away, and then back, this time longer.

I raised my glass again. It felt, at this point, like the only gesture left.

He met it, nodded, and did not look away.

The party roared around us, all color and noise and bodies. Carolyn’s laughter cut through, clear as a bell. For the first time, I realized I could not remember what her laugh sounded like when it was just the two of us.

Maybe there had never been such a time.

But I could imagine, with complete clarity, what Jude’s would sound like up close.

I watched him until the night was done.

He let me.

And at the very end, with the club winding down and the party’s energy spent, I found myself thinking that I didn’t want this. Not the party. Not the woman. Not the life I’d built by following the best available script. What I wanted was sitting at the end of the booth, pushing up his glasses, eyes soft and tired and perfect.

That thought, once made, did not go away.

I finished my scotch.

It happened by inches. One moment, Jude was stationed at the far end of the booth, separated by a parade of empty glasses and the bodies of half a dozen party-goers who had not so much found their seats as staked them out for the night.

The next, there was a vacancy to my left—Carolyn had migrated to the dance floor again, her friends orbiting in a loose, unpredictable pattern—and Jude had drifted into the space as if pulled by a tide neither of us had invented.

He slid in with an apologetic glance, as though proximity itself required a waiver. I said nothing, only raised an eyebrow in invitation, which he accepted.

We sat side by side, both facing out to the club’s main floor, the bar lights playing across the table in irregular pulses. He smelled faintly of hotel soap and something herbal, maybe the wine, maybe a lingering aftershave. His knee was close to mine, not touching, but close.

The booth insulated us from the worst of the noise, but the music still came through at a level that would have made normal conversation impossible. Instead, we leaned in.