After We Got Engaged, the Six of Us Planned One Last Trip Together Before the Wedding or 24-Hour Couple Swap novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Salad Bowl
On the second night at Larch Point, Vera starts a 24-hour couple swap and reads Signe's slip as Winston, but the slip in Signe's pocket says Tyler, and Winston knocks to say Vera wrote every slip on the plane and Melina watched.
Vera dropped three folded slips of paper into the wooden salad bowl and pointed her camera at all of us.
"Rule one," she said. "For twenty-four hours, you belong to whoever you draw."
It was our second night at a lodge on the lake, and the six of us were on the rug in front of the fire.
Three engaged couples. One last trip before the triple wedding in two weeks.
Vera had planned every minute of it, the way she planned every birthday I'd ever had.
"Rule two," she said. "The camera stays on. This is going in the wedding video."
"Rule three," said her fiancé, who had already heard it, and she grinned at him.
"What happens here stays here."
One of the women laughed too high. My fiancé, Tyler, squeezed my knee.
"Come on, Sig," he said. "It's a game. Nobody's getting hurt."
"You just want to know who you get," I said.
"I want to know who you get. So I can warn him."
Everyone laughed. I laughed too.
Vera held out the bowl. "Girls draw. Hand me your slip folded, and I'll read it out for the camera."
I drew first, because I always draw first. I handed my slip over without looking.
Vera unfolded it, turned it to the lens, and smiled.
"Signe gets Winston!"
Winston, at the end of the rug, pushed his glasses up his nose.
He was Melina's fiancé, a city inspector who checked parking garages for cracks, and in three years I had never heard him finish a joke.
"Melina gets Casper," Vera read next, and Melina, our friend from college, covered her mouth. "And I get," she held up her slip with a flourish, "Tyler."
Everyone cheered.
Tyler raised his beer to her. He didn't look surprised at all.
"Everybody move your bags," Vera said. "Twenty-four hours starts at nine, and it's nine."
"I'm easy," Melina said, still laughing too high. "I'm in six and Winston is in nine, because I snore, so nobody has to switch."
Winston was already standing with her bag in one hand. She didn't thank him.
Vera hugged me hard from the side. "You got the safe one," she whispered. "I would never put you with anybody you couldn't handle."
I hugged her back. She smelled like the lavender oil she put on her pillows at every hotel we'd ever shared.
Upstairs, Tyler was zipping his duffel in the room we had shared for two nights.
"Don't look like that," he said. "You'll be mine again by tomorrow night."
"Are you okay with this?"
"Babe, it's a bit. Winston is the nicest guy alive. Go play Scrabble with him."
He kissed my forehead and carried his bag down the hall to Vera's room.
He didn't knock.
I stood there a minute with my hand on the bedpost.
Then I went back downstairs, because I'm the one who cleans up.
At every party I'd ever been to with Vera, I was the one who gathered the cups and the paper plates while she finished the toast.
The living room was empty. The fire popped.
I picked up the salad bowl and tipped the slips into my palm to throw them away.
There were three of them, folded small.
I opened the first one.
It said Tyler, in Vera's round handwriting.
I opened the second. Tyler.
I opened the third. Tyler.
Vera had read them out loud to a camera, and she had read them wrong, and nobody had checked.
I didn't cry. I stood very still and counted what I knew.
Tyler had not been surprised.
Melina had laughed too high.
Vera had told me I got the safe one before I had said a single word about who I got.
I folded the slips back up and put them in the pocket of my sweater.
The game said I belonged to Winston for twenty-four hours.
Fine, then. I was going to play.
"Signe."
Winston was standing at the foot of the stairs with my duffel bag in his hand.
Tyler had left it in the hall, and Winston had picked it up without being asked, the same way he picked up Melina's.
"I'll carry it up," he said. "Before we go, you should know something."
He looked at the slips showing in my pocket.
"They all say Tyler," he said quietly. "I sat behind Vera on the plane and watched her write them on her tray table."
My mouth was dry. "You knew since Thursday?"
"I took a picture. I wasn't sure what I was looking at." He pushed his glasses up. "And Melina was sitting next to her the whole time."
"So Melina watched her write them."
"Melina watched," Winston said. "And Melina didn't say a word."
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