FORGE TO A NEW DAWB
Chapter Six: The Best Man's Plus-One Problem
Preston Vance shook JJ's hand like he was closing a business deal, and asked, within the first ninety seconds, what JJ did for a living, where he'd gone to school, and whether he had plans to buy or was still renting.
"Renting," JJ said cheerfully. "With Wren, actually. That's sort of how this whole thing started."
"Right, the roommate situation," Preston said, in a tone that made roommate situation sound like a diagnosis. "Very efficient. I did the dorms myself, then straight to a place near the hospital for residency. Never saw the appeal of, you know, figuring it out as you go."
"Some of us like figuring it out as we go," Wren said, sliding into the empty chair beside JJ before Preston could settle into the one on her other side, an old, practiced maneuver from a decade of family gatherings where proximity to Preston Vance was treated as an achievement she'd never once wanted.
"Sure, sure," Preston said, unbothered, the way he was unbothered by most things that weren't directly about him. "Anyway, good to meet you, JJ. Marisol mentioned you'd be here. I have to say, I was a little surprised, Wren's been so, well, focused, the last few years. Didn't think there was room for much else."
"There's room," JJ said, easy as anything, and reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind Wren's ear, the exact gesture from the coffee shop, an eight out of ten delivered flawlessly for an audience that mattered infinitely more than Devon ever had. "You'd be surprised what fits when you make room for it."
Preston's smile flickered, just slightly, the first genuine reaction Wren had gotten out of him in ten years of forced proximity, and she felt a small, mean satisfaction bloom in her chest before she reminded herself, firmly, that rule four applied here too. It wasn't real. None of it was real. It just needed to look real enough to survive dinner.
Dinner, as it turned out, was where the real trouble started, in the form of a groomsman named Marcus who Wren vaguely remembered as Marisol's fiancé's college roommate, and who took his best man duties, apparently, to include an unofficial vetting process for every plus-one at the table.
"So how'd you two actually meet?" Marcus asked, halfway through the salad course, in the exact tone of a man who had already decided the answer would be interesting for the wrong reasons. "Marisol said something about an apartment mix-up?"
"The leasing office double-booked a name," JJ said smoothly, exactly as rehearsed. "I showed up expecting my own place, found Wren instead. Best clerical error of my life."
"Huh." Marcus turned to Wren. "And that just, worked out? Living with a total stranger?"
"We had ground rules," Wren said, keeping her voice light. "Turns out we were compatible."
"Compatible how?"
"He does the dishes, I do the budgeting," Wren said, which was true, technically, and got a small laugh from the table that she used, gratefully, as an exit ramp from the question.
It should have ended there. It would have ended there, if Marcus hadn't, twenty minutes later, cornered JJ alone by the drinks table while Wren was in the bathroom, and asked, with the particular bluntness of a man three glasses of wine into feeling responsible for his friend's family, how long they'd actually been together, because something about the timeline Wren gave didn't match something Marisol had mentioned about her cousin being single at Thanksgiving.
Wren came back from the bathroom in time to catch the tail end of it, JJ's face doing something careful and controlled that she recognized now, after weeks of watching it, as the face he wore when he was thinking fast.
"Two months," JJ said. "Which lines up fine, Thanksgiving was, what, ten months ago? Plenty of time."
"Marisol said Christmas, actually. Said Wren was single at Christmas."
"Family gossip's not always precise," JJ said, still easy, still smiling, but Wren could see the tension in the set of his shoulders now, the effort it was taking to keep the story from fraying in real time in front of a man who clearly had nothing better to do at this wedding than solve a mystery nobody had asked him to solve.
"I'm just saying," Marcus said, holding up both hands, "it's a little fast for the kind of introduction Carol's been making, is all. Bringing someone to a family wedding this early feels like a lot."
"Would you rather I'd shown up unannounced," JJ said, "and let everyone find out about me over the cake?"
Marcus laughed, more from surprise than anything, and the moment passed, loosened by the joke exactly the way JJ clearly intended it to, but Wren, watching from six feet away with her heart going too fast, understood something she hadn't fully let herself understand until just then: this wasn't going to survive a full weekend of casual scrutiny without cracks, not unless the two of them got better, fast, at being a couple that had actually built a history together instead of one invented over a kitchen table with a notebook and a handshake.
She crossed the room and slid her hand into JJ's, deliberate, natural, the kind of gesture that needed no rehearsal because by now, three weeks and one very effective rehearsal dinner into this, it had stopped requiring one.
"There you are," she said, loud enough for Marcus to hear, soft enough to sound real. "I was starting to think you'd escaped out a window."
"Never," JJ said, and the relief in his voice was so plain, so unguarded, that for a second Wren forgot entirely that anyone else was in the room.
Marcus wandered off toward the bar a minute later, apparently satisfied, or at least bored of the investigation, and it was only once he was gone that JJ let out a breath he seemed to have been holding since the salad course.
"That was close," he said quietly.
"Too close," Wren agreed. "We need better details. A real story, not just dates."
"Working on it," JJ said, and did not let go of her hand, even after the danger had clearly passed, even after there was, technically, no witness left to perform for.
They found a quieter corner of the porch, away from the drinks table, away from Marcus and his unofficial investigation, and stood there for a minute in a silence that felt, for once, less like performance and more like two people catching their breath after a close call.
"We need an actual story," Wren said again, quieter this time. "Something with texture. Not just dates and a leasing office joke."
"Okay. Let's build one. First date, real answer, go."
"There wasn't a first date, technically, we live together."
"Fine, first time you knew. When did you know this was more than a lease."
Wren thought about it, and found, to her own mild alarm, that an actual memory surfaced before she could stop it, unplanned and uninvited. "The night you brought home the egg rolls. Not because of the egg rolls. Because you'd noticed I hadn't eaten, before I'd said anything about it, and you didn't make it a whole thing, you just put the bag on the table and said there's plenty and went back to your box of cereal like it wasn't a kindness."
JJ went quiet for a second, and when he spoke again his voice had lost its usual quickness. "That's a really specific answer for a made up relationship."
"It's a good story. Details sell it. That's all."
"Sure," he said. "Details."
"What's yours. When did you know."
"The folder," JJ said immediately, like he'd had it ready for weeks, which, Wren suspected, he genuinely had. "Not the folder itself. The fact that you made one at all, forty minutes after meeting me, because you needed the ground under your feet to stay still, and instead of kicking me out or calling the leasing office again, you built a system that had room in it for the mess I brought with me. That's when I knew you were going to be a problem."
"A problem."
"The good kind," he said. "The kind where I stopped minding that my life doesn't have a five year plan in a binder, because apparently it has you instead, at least for the next five weeks, which I am choosing not to think too hard about the math of."
Wren didn't have a response ready for that, which had happened to her twice now in one weekend, an unfamiliar and slightly alarming rate, and she was still working on finding one when Aunt Carol's voice carried out from the house, calling everyone in for the toasts, and the moment folded itself away before either of them had to decide what to do with it, though Wren carried the shape of it with her all the way back inside, tucked someplace even the folder didn't reach.