I SEE CHEATERS! So Yeah, My Fiancé's Wedding Went Up In Flames! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The String
At her bachelorette party, Lainey follows a brand-new red string from her bridesmaid's head straight down to her fiancé, and the bridesmaid follows her into the bathroom knowing exactly what she saw.
I can see who people have slept with.
A thin red string glows over the head of every adult who has ever had sex, one for each person, and it runs to the other one.
You can't fake them, and you can't hide them under a hat.
Two people sleep together, and a new string lights up between their heads.
A new one burns bright scarlet. An old one goes dull and dark.
They never go away.
I started seeing them at fifteen.
At sixteen, I counted three new ones on my dad's head in one year.
None of them went to my mom.
Mom filed for divorce three times. The third one stuck.
So when it was my turn, I had one rule. Don't cheat on me.
That was it. That was the whole list.
My fiancé, Rafferty Sheridan, was twenty-seven and had nothing over his head at all.
His head was clean.
Two years ago, when I told him I was ready, he kissed my knuckles and asked if we could wait for our wedding night.
"I want it to mean something," he said.
I cried in his car. I thought I'd found the last good man in Philadelphia.
I checked his head at the rehearsal dinner on Thursday. Clean.
On Friday night, the night before the wedding, the girls took over the rooftop suite of my mother's hotel for my bachelorette party.
The suite had a balcony that looked down on the hotel's terrace bar, where the guys were having Rafferty's party.
We could hear them cheering down there.
Sinead, my maid of honor, decided we were playing truth or dare with phones.
"You pick truth, you answer," she said. "You pick dare, you hand over your phone and we read the last thing you sent."
Everybody screamed and picked truth for the first round.
Then it was my bridesmaid's turn.
Kelsey Dunn had been my roommate at Temple, and my best friend for eight years.
She had her phone in both hands, against her chest.
"Oh, hell no," she said. "My boyfriend kept me up all night. My phone is not safe for this room."
Everybody whooped.
Kelsey had been talking about a boyfriend for eight months. None of us had ever met him.
He was always working, or out of town, or shy.
I was going to let her off.
Then I really looked at her.
There was a new string over her head.
I'd noticed it when she came in, and I'd been happy for her.
Now I watched it. It was the brightest red in the room, so new it almost hummed.
It didn't hang loose or fade.
It ran straight past my shoulder, out the open balcony door.
I got up and walked to the railing with my drink.
The string ran over the edge and down through the night air, two floors.
Below me, the guys were crowded around a table with a bottle of whiskey.
The string came down out of the dark and landed on one blond head.
Rafferty was laughing at something his brother said, his tie loose.
On Thursday, he'd had nothing.
Now he had one string, and it ran up the side of my mother's hotel to my best friend.
I stood there long enough for the ice in my glass to crack.
Then I went back inside and sat down across from Kelsey.
I leaned over and tapped my glass against hers.
"So, Kels. Your mystery guy," I said. "Is his last name Sheridan?"
Wine went over the rim of her glass and onto her white jeans.
Something moved across her face, fast, and then it was gone.
"What?" she said, and laughed.
Sinead rolled her eyes at me. "Who cares about his last name? Hand it over."
She lunged for the phone.
Kelsey held it over her head. "His name is Rob!"
"Rob!" the girls yelled, and somebody started a chant.
I didn't chant.
At midnight there was pounding on the door.
The guys came in loud and sweaty, and Rafferty came in last, with his tie in his pocket.
The moment he stepped into the suite, the string snapped tight.
It ran in a straight bright line from his head to Kelsey's, right over the coffee table.
Nobody else in the room could see it. Everybody walked right through it.
Rafferty came straight to me and kissed my cheek.
"Last night of freedom, babe," he said.
I picked up my glass and stood up on the couch cushion.
"A toast," I said, and the room went quiet.
"To Rob, who kept Kelsey up all night."
Everyone cheered.
I looked down at Rafferty. "Have you ever met Rob, Rafferty?"
His smile stayed where it was. His eyes didn't.
"Never heard of him," he said.
"Me neither," I said. "See you at the altar."
I stepped down, walked into the bathroom, and shut the door.
I gripped the sink and looked at myself in the mirror.
My own head was clean. It always had been.
The door opened behind me, and Kelsey slipped in and locked it.
She met my eyes in the mirror and smiled.
"You looked at his head," she said. "Didn't you?"
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