Page 29 of The Wedding Fake

“For God’s sake,” I moaned, recognizing Emily’s pounding just as easily as I’d recognized Mom’s. I stood up straight and walked to the door once more.

“I have to talk to you,” Emily said without preamble when the door swung open.

Hud inhaled deeply behind me. “I’m gonna go jump in the shower,” he said, grabbing one of the towels and his bag and walking out of the room.

Emily watched him go, then swung the door closed and leaned back on it as if she might have to be a human barricade. “Did you pay him to come here?” she hissed.

My eyes went wide. “Pay him? No. Gross, Emily. You think I went from quarantine to hiring prostitutes?”

“A gigolo.”

“Do people still say ‘gigolo?’” I asked, my voice a harsh whisper.

“Does that feel like the point right now?” Emily shot back.

“Why are you asking me this?” I asked, wide-eyed and exasperated.

“I’ve seen your date’s videos,” Emily said, giving me an I-know-the-truth look that set my heart racing. Did I not know the truth? What videos was Em talking about? Was Hudson some sort of pornstar?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, trying to sound calm but clearly failing.

Emily scrutinized my face the same irritating way she had since we were children. Em could alway read me like a book, no matter how hard I tried to obfuscate my feelings. “Oh my God,” she breathed out. “You’ve never seen them.”

I thought I might vomit as Emily pulled out her phone and tapped her way to whatever she was looking for. As Emily held the device, I braced myself to see Hudson in a very compromising position.

But I didn’t. I saw a video of Hudson shirtless, then throwing his shoe and becoming magically dressed in his paramedic outfit. “Go ahead, scroll down,” Emily encouraged her.

The next few were edits of Hudson going from half-dressed to all the way dressed, not too different from the first, but in one he was wearing low-slung gray sweatpants that drew my eye down to the curve of his package. Another began with him in a towel, water dripping down the contours of his chest. Then there were a couple pictures of the forest, then Hudson chopping wood at a cabin, which I shamelessly let run twice. I scrolled a little more. One where he took off his mask and smiled, another in the dark with a light behind his head that lit up his muscled torso to perfection. Then there were some more pictures out in the woods, and then Hudson with me. I looked up at Emily, shaking my head in confusion. “What does this mean?”

“I don’t know,” Em said, spreading her arms wide in an I’m-out-of-my-depth shrug. “You didn’t hire this guy?”

“No,” I snapped, my eyes drifting to the now darkened phone.

The memories of sitting on my bed, reading and rereading the email that told me Dan was cheating were still so vivid. That night, I’d stared at the screen until it went black, just as Emily’s was now. It was different, and yet it felt exactly the same.

But at least that night there hadn’t been a witness to my humiliation.

Emily’s expression was uncomfortable and pitying, and though I shared so much with my sister, right now all I wanted was to be alone. “I guess you talk to him about it,” Emily suggested, but the suggestion came out like a question, and I clenched my jaw, my lips pursed tightly.

“Great. Very helpful,” I muttered, pushing the phone into Emily’s chest and leveraging her toward the door. “Night, Em.”

“I’m sorry, Claire Bear.”

The words made my throat constrict. I didn’t want to hear sorry from Emily or Hudson or anyone else. I wanted to be home—to be alone. “I know you are,” I muttered, eager to get Emily out the door.

It was probably less than five minutes that I sat in the center of the bed, waiting for Hudson to come back from the shower, but it was long enough to relive every terrible, humiliating memory of Dan. I didn’t cry. I simply sat and stared at my hands and remembered every feeling from the day I’d found out about Dan as if they were fresh wounds.

Hudson shot me a smile as he came into the room, but the grin withered on his face as he saw my deeply etched frown. “Is everything okay with your sister?” he asked, shutting the door and sitting on the edge of the bed, twisting one knee up in order to face me.

“She’s fine,” I answered coolly.

“Oh,” he replied, clearly unsure how to proceed.

I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt, building up the guts to ask him—“Are you a stripper?”

14

HUDSON