Page 30 of The Wedding Fake
I squinted, my head tilted so hard to the left I assumed I looked like an owl. “A stripper? No. I’m a paramedic, Claire. You know that.”
Her eyes narrowed. “A ‘paramedic?’” she asked, adding in the air quotes and managing to make the word sound lascivious.
From most women the question wouldn’t have stung, but something about hearing it from Claire’s mouth hurt. Maybe because it only served to validate what I already knew—Claire was a brilliant, successful businesswoman and I was—well, I certainly wasn’t a doctor, as Juliet Davis had so clearly pointed out. “Claire,” I said, ashamed to hear the hurt bleeding into my voice.
Claire shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes. “Emily showed me the videos,” she said, and for thirty full seconds I tried to think of what videos she could be referring to, until she added, “At ‘H dot North?’”
“Oh,” I said, and I felt like I’d said that word more today than I had in my entire life, but I was at a loss for anything more eloquent. Shaking my head, I replied, “They’re just videos, Claire. Online trends. Thirst trap shit.”
“Thirst trap shit?” she echoed back, and it sounded like the words were foreign to her and she was tasting each for the first time.
Her shoulders were tight, and I wished I could reach out and touch her. “They’re trends that, you know, turn people on.”
She sniffed once, her nose twitching with emotion. Her eyes were now a frightful shade of red, but the tears seemed to have dried up. “Turn women on,” she said, as if this were a cardinal sin.
I shrugged. I was straight, but I’d realized early on there was a hefty male audience for thirst trap videos. I just didn’t care. “Men and women,” I clarified, knowing as I spoke that the words were a poor defense. Did I need a defense, though? I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Her eyes sharpened like a prosecutor who’d tripped up a witness. “And then you sleep with them.”
The words may as well have been a slap for how hard they hit me. I flinched back, eyes wide, and a frown turning down my lips as I huffed out a hard exhale. “No, Claire.”
But Claire’s expression made it clear she didn’t believe me, a realization that was gutting. I was so stupid, staying in some girl’s childhood bedroom, picturing our first date or what it would be like to hear her whimper my name as her legs wrapped tight around my waist. What had I been thinking? Claire was exactly the uptight woman I thought she was the first time I saw her in the elevator. Beautiful? Sure. But nothing more.
“Really, Hudson?” she asked, and I had the sense it was a real question, that I was meant to continue defending myself, but the rage set in then, and I was too angry to bother. After all, I’d slept with absolutely no one in almost a year. In the seventeen months since I’d broken up with my last girlfriend, I’d only had sex twice—both times with an ex who was looking for a no-strings hook-up, even though we both knew there was nothing left between us. I’d gone on two dates since then. One was, in fact, a woman who’d slipped into my DM’s, but who turned out to be so crazy I’d had to block her. The other was Claire.
Claire, who’d brought me to a wedding in the middle of nowhere to stay with a family who openly disliked me while they tried to set her up with some douchebag. But the promise of Claire had been reason enough to stay.
Until this moment.
“What am I doing here, Claire?” I grumbled with a sigh, pulling out my phone and staring at the screen blankly. I opened the browser to search for local car rentals, but it was past ten, and I doubted anything was open. What I needed was a hotel. I could rent a car in the morning.
“You can’t leave. I drove you,” she reminded me, and the words reminded me of those blissful hours of sanity before we’d landed in this familial hellscape. Those hours with Claire had been more fun than most dates. Back in the car, I’d imagined this week would be something exciting and new. Certainly not this.
“I’ll rent a car tomorrow,” I replied flatly. “And you can drive me to a hotel tonight.”
Claire scowled deeply. “I’m not driving you to a hotel,” she snapped, and I couldn’t tell if her voice was laced with anger or anxiety. “Not every woman who interacts with you is going to automatically fall into your ‘thirst trap.’ She spat the words, which were clearly still foreign to her, then sniffed, straightening her spine. “You can stay here and share the bed with me. I promise to leave you be.” Without another word she laid down on her side. She probably intended to prove a point, but she was still fully clothed, and she looked awkward and miserable.
The worst part was, I didn’t want to be left alone. I wanted inside her head—I wanted to know what had taken us from amazing to this so quickly.
I didn’t know Claire well, but if there was one thing I was sure of, it was that I was not going to be privy to her thoughts. Best I could tell, Claire kept most of her thoughts and feelings under lock and key, never sharing them with anyone.
Now she was looking at the wall, chewing on her plump bottom lip while I stood at one edge of the bed. I knew she could see me, even if she wasn’t looking directly, and I pulled off my T-shirt, tossing it across the room to land in my open suitcase. The move left me wearing only a pair of low-slung navy sweats.
She didn’t look directly at me, but I didn’t miss her bright green eyes twitching in the moments before I slipped under the covers, and I knew she could see more of me than she was letting on. “Good night, Claire,” I said with a sigh, disappointment replacing the anger that had been simmering in my chest as I clicked off the bedside lamp.
“Good night,” she said coolly.
For a long while, Claire remained on top of the sheets, still wearing her clothes. I heard the occasional sniff, and it tore at my insides, but I didn’t owe her comfort, and she probably wouldn’t have accepted it anyway.
In time, the sniffing stopped and only the soft noises of breathing were audible in the room. I couldn’t sleep, but I assumed Claire was asleep until she slipped out of the bed and walked to the closet, bending down low and shining her phone flashlight into the space. I assumed she was looking for her pajamas, and was proven right when she slipped the items out and turned off her phone.
I’d been staring at the backs of my eyelids long enough to have perfect night vision, and although I knew I shouldn’t, I watched as she turned away and pulled off her shirt. She unhooked her bra, slipping it off, and her back flexed as she pulled a fresh shirt over her head. Then she bent to slip off her shorts, angling her ass at me, and whether she was doing it on purpose or by accident didn’t matter, because the result was a raging hard-on under the covers. I’d been imagining getting a handful of that ass all day, but had held myself back, waiting for the right moment when we finally had privacy. Now I’d missed out. Her hips wiggled as she slid into her pajama pants, then she walked back to bed.
“Hudson?” she whispered, her voice far too low to have woken me.
“Yes?”
“I don’t really want you to leave, but I think all of my reasons are selfish, so I’ll understand if you go.” She paused, then said, “If I were you, I’d probably go.”