Mateo wants me across from him, but with the ability to watch Mia and Carly while we eat. He’s such a fucking bastard. I’m already going over every possible motivation he could have for the way he’s seated us, and my drink isn’t even here yet.
“I love your ring,” Carly says to her new best friend, Mia.
I stab the fuck out of my salad. I somehow forgot he gave her that farce of a fucking engagement ring. Can’t be engaged to two people at once, asshole.
“Oh, thank you,” Mia says, brightly. “So do I,” she adds, a little more dryly.
“Is that Harry Winston? Wow.”
Mia flushes, but nods her head.
I make a note that Carly likes whatever Harry Winston is, though frankly, if we even survive today I will be impressed, so I probably don’t need to take notes like that.
I don’t need to look at it to see what style might appeal to Carly—now that they’ve brought it up, I very keenly remember that fucking ring; I looked at it much more than I should have in Vegas—but given an excuse, the masochist side of me can’t help looking over at Mia’s hand again. I wait for the stab of pain, but instead of pain, there’s shock. It’s not a single ring anymore; there are two.
There’s a wedding band on that finger now.
My gaze darts across the table, somehow unable to reconcile the fact. There can’t be a wedding band. Wedding rings are for married people. He had two fiancées. He can’t legally marry them both. He does a lot of illegal shit, but he wouldn’t mess with something as inane as bigamy. Maybe he bought them both wedding rings, too.
His hand is obscured from view when I first look, but he moves it so I can see the matching band on his left hand.
“You’re married?”
The table goes silent for a second once the words slip out, then Mateo answers, “Yes, we’re married.” He reaches for his drink, raising an eyebrow at me across the table. “We would’ve invited you to the wedding, but, you know.”
I feel hollowed out for about the millionth time today. I can’t quite wrap my head around it. Mateo isn’t the marrying kind. He loved Beth beyond reason and he never married her. I thought he fell hard for Meg, but that was clearly wishful thinking. It was the only way to explain the whirlwind—maybe he got swept up, but this isn’t swept up. This is deliberate. He spent years with Mia and never married her. That didn’t surprise me. He doesn’t trust people. It doesn’t matter if it’s been years; he’s always waiting for them to disappoint him. Then he creates these situations that make it almost impossible not to disappoint him, and when we inevitably fail his test, he gets to feel vindicated.
Carly told me what that was called, but I don’t remember. I call it being an asshole.
Mateo fucking Morelli finally got married, and he married Mia.
“Did you marry Meg, too? Are you a full-blown polygamist now?”
Mia’s nose wrinkles up in displeasure, but she lets Mateo answer me. “No,” he says, without answering any of the other millions of questions flooding my head.
The server finally arrives with our drinks. I don’t even let him set it down, I just take it, letting him know, “I’m gonna need another one of these,” then taking a sip.
Carly regards Mateo, pointing at the empty chair across from her, next to Adrian. “Could we move him over here? I feel like this seating arrangement is a little isolating and we might all be more comfortable if—”
“No,” Mateo says, easily.
Carly drops it, but she looks stressed. Just one more thing that makes me feel terrible. I shouldn’t have brought her. He’s going to fuck this up. We’ve only been together for six months and now we have to survive whatever torment Mateo has cooked up for me.
I’m not sure six years would be adequate time to prepare for that.
We’re all quiet for another minute. I consume some of the whiskey. Thankfully, it does its job, somewhat soothing my ragged nerves. I feel a little more like a person—as opposed to a bundle of exposed nerves—by the time the first glass is gone, but the waiter is too slow in bringing a second. This one I’ll nurse, I just needed something to calm me down.
This feels more manageable. It’s just dinner. I’ve survived a million of these over time. Granted, not with Carly here, but I need to keep it together. She’s told me before I give Mateo more power over me than he could ever take for himself, so I try to remind myself that.
By the time dinner is served, I have enough of a handle on things to reach across the table and take Carly’s hand. She and Mia have mostly been carrying the conversation, chatting about clothes and shoes and Carl Jung, for some fucking reason. Once Mia found out Carly was a psych major, she told her she had been, too, and they started talking about that shit.