“Uh, yes…” Sutton stammers. “Me too. Very glad.”
“Mom.” I smile softly at her. “You’re going to scare her off. This is new. Remember?”
“Oh, but it’s just so great that you agreed to come! And I love your dress! Feathers! They’re beautiful. You have an excellent style! We should go shopping together sometime, you and me. Maybe you could help me with my own wardrobe.”
Sutton gives me a panicked look. She and I both realize, at the same time, that this ploy is probably too successful. I thought my mom would be satisfied with knowing I have a girlfriend and that I’m at least making an attempt to have a personal life. I thought I could make excuses a few weeks after and then tell her we broke up.
I didn’t actually think me doing that would make my mom even more disappointed than me coming here alone today would have.
Eff. Me. Sideways.
Sutton recovers before I do. “I’m afraid I can’t take credit for it. If you want someone to go shopping with, you’ll have to ask your son. He’s the one who picked it out. It was a surprise, actually. He’s the one with the good taste. If it were up to me, I would have shown up here in a cotton maxi dress and an oversized sweater.”
My mom shoots me a surprised look, but she’s still all happy smiles and bubbliness. My sister just got freaking married. Of course, she’s over the moon at the moment. “Oh! Well, nothing wrong with a good oversized sweater! You’d be beautiful in just about anything, dear.”
“Mom,” I groan.
Sutton giggles nervously. “Thank you. Really. You’re too kind. I always thought I was quite plain.”
“Plain?” Mom scoffs. “Nothing wrong with that either. You have no idea how beautiful understated beauty is, especially right now. If you can leave the house without a cake face on, I applaud your aptitude for independent thought.”
“Mom! Please!”
Sutton is smiling though, and not a fake one either. I can tell it’s genuine because I can see it reflected in her eyes. She’s actually amused. Genuinely. “I’ll remember that. I always hated makeup. I actually have really sensitive skin, and it always made me so itchy. I didn’t think it was ever worth it.”
“We should go get in the line. I want to congratulate my sister,” I put in, hoping to end the conversation before my mom chases away my fake girlfriend.
“You had better congratulate well.” Mom gives me that disappointed mom look she’s perfected over the years. “She was still upset that you wouldn’t walk her down the aisle.”
“Mom…” I glance at Sutton, quite obviously indicating that airing family drama in front of the new girlfriend, which Mom was so desperate for me to find, probably isn’t going to help her stick around.
Sutton saves the day by taking my hand, smiling up at me like I’m her whole world. It makes my heart hitch. It makes my breath stop. And everything freezes. I feel like it’s just us standing here. It surprises the hell out of me, and it scares the hell out of me too. Especially since a part of me wishes the look could be real.
“Go,” Mom says more gently. “Get in line. It looks like it’s nearing the end anyway.”
I make a fast exit out the side aisle before she can change her mind. Sutton keeps up with me, so I don’t have to drag her along. She keeps her hand clenched tightly around mine, a silent gesture of support I appreciate the hell out of. Only Sutton wouldn’t ask me why I wasn’t in the wedding party. Why I didn’t walk my sister down the aisle. Only Sutton wouldn’t dig and dig and dig into the parts I’m not ready to talk about with anyone.
I feel like I have to give her something, so near the back of the line that is actually quite short by now, I bend my head and whisper near her ear. “I hate public things. I told my sister if I had to stand up there, I’d puke for sure. I wasn’t kidding. As for the rest, I—I’m not my dad. It didn’t feel right pretending. And I would have probably puked all over her dress with everyone staring at me. She knows me. She might have been disappointed, but she gets it.”
Sutton’s brows lift up just a fraction. “But you lead board meetings all the time. Talk with clients.”
“I also don’t do presentations or speak to audiences. Ever.”
“Yeah, I know. I see that now. Thank goodness I’ve never had to prepare a motivational speech for you. Not that I could. I’m actually quite pessimistic about most things.”
“You?”
The very tiny, very fine lines bracketing her eyes crinkle when she wrinkles her nose up at me. “Yes, me. Does it surprise you?”
Does it? I realize that for a person I’ve worked with closely for a very long time, I hardly know anything about Sutton at all. I know important details, like how she lives with her grandmother and is willing to lick the cheese off someone else’s pizza. I also know what her pussy tastes like…