The Maid of Honor and the Two Groomsmen No One Seated Beside Her novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Plus Nobody
At a table marked Plus Nobody, Lacey ends up between two groomsmen and a slow dance gets away from all three; she asks which of them has a truck.
The place card on Table 12 said PLUS NOBODY, in block capitals, in the groom's handwriting.
I knew his handwriting because he had labeled every box in that barn all week with the same fat black marker.
I stood in my sage green dress holding a plate of brisket and read it twice.
I was the maid of honor.
Forty minutes earlier I had given the toast, and I had made two hundred people cry into their cloth napkins.
Now I was being seated by the kitchen door.
I had written "nobody" on my RSVP, on the line for a guest.
I was thirty-four and three years divorced, and I had thought it was funny.
The groom had thought it was funnier.
There were two groomsmen at Table 12, and my chair sat between them.
The one on my left stood up when I came over.
He was tall and lean, with light brown hair still flat on top where a ball cap had been.
There was a sunburned stripe on the back of his neck exactly where his collar ended.
When he smiled, one of his front teeth was chipped.
"Colt," he said. "I'm the groom's cousin."
"Lacey. I'm the one who cried first."
"I know. I was there. Good toast."
"It was a great toast," I said.
"It was a great toast," Colt agreed, and the chipped tooth showed again.
The one on my right stayed in his chair and stuck out a hand across the tablecloth.
He was bigger than his cousin and broad through the shoulders.
His dark curls had given up to the humidity, and his brown eyes went straight to the plate in my hand.
"Jesse," he said. "I'm the little brother."
"How little?"
"Twenty-two."
"I own a toaster older than your driver's license," I said.
His ears went red, and I watched it climb from the lobes up to the tips.
Colt picked my place card up off the table.
He read the front, then turned it over and read the back for longer than the front took.
He looked at Jesse and put it down.
"Plus Nobody," he said. "At least he spelled it right."
"I earned it. It's what I wrote on the RSVP."
"Why'd you write that?"
"I was making a point," I said.
"What was the point?"
"That I'd rather come alone than bring somebody I'd have to watch eat," I said, and Jesse laughed so hard he had to put his fork down.
Colt put the card back, a little to the left of my plate, and I didn't think about it again for a long time.
The brisket was the best I'd had in a year.
I ate all of it, and then Jesse slid half his cornbread onto my plate without looking at me.
Colt refilled my water every time I looked at the glass.
Neither of them asked me one thing about the divorce, which meant the bride had told them not to, or they were just decent.
Around nine the band stopped doing the Cupid Shuffle halfway through and went into something slow.
Everybody in the line scattered, and Colt stood up and held out his hand.
"Dance with me," he said. "Before somebody's aunt does."
I took it.
His other hand settled low on my back, flat, right above where the dress zipped, and it was warm through the fabric.
He didn't move it.
He didn't slide it down, and he didn't pull me in, and somehow that was worse.
Nobody had put a hand on me on purpose in three years.
My own hand kept looking for a place on his shoulder and not liking any of them.
"Cousin," Jesse said behind me. "She's been out here a whole song."
"Till the bridge," Colt said.
"Is that right?"
Jesse said it flat, as a fact with no question in it.
He stepped in and set a hand at my waist.
Then neither of them let go.
I stood between two men in the middle of the dance floor, with a hand low on my back and a hand at my hip.
I could feel Jesse's breathing on the back of my neck, quick and shy.
I could feel Colt's thumb, still, against my spine.
"This is just how the Cupid Shuffle goes wrong," I said.
"Is it?" Colt said.
"It's a known problem."
"Lacey," Jesse said, quietly, and I looked at his ears, which were scarlet.
I was thirty-four years old.
I was not sitting at the kids' table.
I was not going to let two boys in rented vests find out how much I was enjoying myself.
"I'm thirty-four," I said to both of them, to see what it did.
"I'm twenty-four," Colt said.
"I can do math."
"Then you know what you're doing out here," Colt said, and his hand did not move off my back.
The slow song ended, and the band went into a fast one, and nobody let go of anybody.
At the end of the night the groom and the bride ran out under a tunnel of sparklers and into a pickup with cans tied on.
Everyone cheered, and I cried a second time, because I loved her.
Then the lot emptied out into gravel and fireflies and the sound of car doors.
I stood at the barn door with my shoes in one hand.
Colt and Jesse had come out after me and stopped three feet away, one on each side.
I hadn't been told to do anything for three years.
It was near midnight in October and the sky over the pasture was clear and full of stars.
I looked at the black F-150 parked at the edge of the grass, and at the gray Silverado with the cracked taillight beside it.
"Okay," I said. "Which one of you has a truck I can climb into?"
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