Archive of Our Own

“She’s all wrong for me,” Michael had said, with his phone-thinned laughing voice.

Laying eyes on her at the airport, Jules can’t help but agree.

She’s cute, sure. Button nose. Flashing pale blue eyes peering upwards. Coming over like an All-American Princess Di, just without the bangs to peer demurely through. The newly engaged, doe-eyed, blind-for-how-wrong-it-all-is late 70s Di, of course. Not the strolling-through-landmines, revenge-dress-donning modern day Di.

Though that wouldn’t be right for Michael either.

She’s instantly warm, in a way that makes it hard for Jules to cling to her plan to deeply dislike her, this woman who is the only obstacle between her and the great love that she’d overlooked for nine years.

Hard. But not impossible.

It’s insincere, she decides, as Kimmy throws her arms around her, tells her, “This just makes everything so perfect.”

Rude. Over-familiar. Entitled, like everyone should just like her so much.

Jules finds herself, slowly, hugging back.

“All I’ve heard is Julianne this, Julianne that…” Kimmy is saying, close by her ear.

Jules digs for the vein of jealousy in her tone. Can’t find it. Huh.

“I’ve never had a sister.”

And you still don’t. Bitch.

*

Not a sister, but still, somehow, Jules becomes her Maid of Honour.

The original title holder has shattered a pelvis, and the other bridesmaids—twins, relatives in default positions who don’t seem to have much of Kimmy’s real favour—can’t be distinguished for the position.

It’s decided as Kimmy rips apart traffic, careering boldly in and out of lines of cars, the sound of horns bursting in and away around them. All the while her smile is wide and innocent, bright eyes gleaming over at Jules and not nearly trained closely enough on the road.

There’s something charming about the confidence. A little dashing. Jules won’t be taken in, though. It’s another display of the deeply set privilege of a rich little daddy’s girl, Jules reminds herself. Kimmy is safe in the knowledge a pileup of twenty cars in her wake probably wouldn’t be allowed to come back to bite her.

When Jules had glanced back at Michael, he’d seemed unfussed, even like he was enjoying the display, flashing her a gormless grin and two ridiculous thumbs up.

Kimmy is saying something about them becoming best friends by the wedding day, and that she already knows intimate facts about Jules.

Alongside… not a small amount of surprise that this has entered Michael’s conversations with his new fiancée, a quick intrusive fantasy flashes behind Jules’ eyes. Michael and Kimmy, limbs wrapped together on a couch. Him pulling her on top of him. Kimmy flushing with shock as Michael tells her how Jules likes to fuck.

Jules feels a rush at the idea of Michael talking to Kimmy like this.

A welcome reminder of why Jules is here, she notes. Michael still wants her.

Another look back at Michael. He can’t hear them over the whipping of wind and roar of traffic around them, and is grinning blankly.

“It’s time for you to learn about me,” Kimmy says, pulling her gaze back again from the road. “Force yourself. To get personal.”

Jules finds herself smiling. “Sounds like a plan.”

*

They’re fitting Jules for a dress. Jules finds herself uncharacteristically handwringingly anxious on the way there.

This just isn’t how she bonds with other girls. The closest connection she’s ever forged over fashion is George telling her she looks like a lesbian in her pinstripe blazer, Jules flipping the bird right back at him over a dead smile.

Slightly alarmed by not being forced into the already selected bridesmaid’s dress, Jules panic-picks out some lavender monstrosity and Kimmy tells her that she’s distinctive, unconventional. It sounds like admiration, and not judgement.

Catching herself in the mirror, maybe the lavender isn’t so bad.

“That’s why Michael and I were the wrong fit, right from the start,” Jules finds herself saying, right into the reflection of that perpetual, piercing eye contact of Kimmy’s via the full-length mirror in front of them.

“He said that, too,” Kimmy says, unfaltering still. Like Jules and Michael’s incompatibility is as true as anything. As sure that the sky is blue.

She steps down from the platform, and sits on its edge by Jules’ feet, and as she carries on talking she alternates between comparing shoes close at the hem of her dress and peering upwards.

“I thought I was like you,” Kimmy says, and it feels loaded with something unsaid. She carries on, tells her that Michael changed all that, made her just like the silly girls she’d always pitied. Her voice stays heavy.

She leans into Jules’ eyeline, spoiling Jules’ attempt to avert her gaze. “It’s funny, huh?”

Funny.

Jules has to run.

Barks out some excuse about a smoke.

Steps. Stumbles.

Tears the fucking dress.

*

Jules intends all the next day with Kimmy to bring it up. The argument in the hallway that she’d heard later in yesterday evening, while she’d been busy stewing in her own post-fitting embarrassment. Two hushed voices, and she’s sure it was Michael and Kimmy. She’d not managed to hear anything specific before clumsying the opportunity, banging about behind the door and alerting them to the possibility of listening ears.

But maybe she could get Kimmy to reveal a card. Show a little weakness. Hey, I thought I heard the two of you last night, is everything okay? Don’t worry, Michael didn’t say anything to me. I just want to check you’re okay.

Then she could mention Michael coming into her room not long afterwards, not perturbed by her state of undress. Flirting a little.

But then her head all day is a mash-up of two moments, and every time she thinks there’s a chance to say something, the film reel spins in her head:

First, how right after the dress had torn, Kimmy’s hands had been back on her, stripping the dress down to hand it back for repair. Her touch—careful, but efficient. That wealth-laden confidence. That all-girls-boarding-school, unblinking comfort with another woman’s half naked body.

The warm flush that had poured over Jules’ skin.

That same steady hand making work of the buttons on Michael’s shirt. Unzipping his trousers.

Jules can’t bear it. She doesn’t embarrass this easy. And each time she thinks about it, that same hot prickle creeps across her chest and up her neck.

But she’s never had a love rival before. And it’s hardly threatening to the incumbent lover, that kind of behaviour, tripping over your own feet. Falling on your ass.

And, second, there’s that moment with Michael in the hotel, walking in, unfussed that she’s nearly naked. Spying that same ass in the mirror (unbruised, thankfully), flirting, but a little distant. And the way she’d not wanted him to see her. That was new. A little off. Must be the difference of knowing how she feels about him. The next time he sees her naked, she resolves, there’ll be another difference, and it’ll be that they’re together.

At least, instead of sewing doubt the planned way, she finds herself talking honeymoons, and—importantly—the lack thereof. Kimmy is insistent all the way up from the parking lot to the elevator that she’s seen all the sun she needs and that the ideal honeymoon really is watching Michael stoop over a laptop at a motel dresser night after night as he rattles out his five hundred words for Sports Illustrated.

“Takes one woman in a billion to put up with his array of shit,” Jules is saying as Kimmy slams the penthouse button. “You’ve been introduced to the symphony of…”

Kimmy’s almost a step ahead of her, and soon snorting out an unnerving impression of Michael’s sleeping cacophony, undeterred as the elevator stops at the lobby and a family of four come in, right as the impression develops to demonstrate an apparently new “phlegm rattle”. She closes the distance between herself and Jules to give the family space, eyes wild, but there’s a smile behind the heaving snorts that betray some affection for Michael.

A pang of jealousy again as another image bursts through her mind—Kimmy and Michael in bed this time, him with his head rolled back, mouth open, thunderous and oblivious; Kimmy propped up on one arm, bleary with disturbed sleep but still betraying amused affection, prodding him to roll onto his side and then curling up behind him when he does, a ridiculously undersized big spoon.

Kimmy’s snorting impression ends nearly as abruptly as it begins, and Jules resurfaces.

“Guess what?” Kimmy asks. “Earplugs work.”

Then she’s reeling of a list of other documented flaws of Michael’s, some of which had slipped Jules’ mind for a while. She hadn’t been thinking of his Playboy subscription on the flight here while imagining a Dirty Dancing run into his welcoming arms, funnily enough.

“He likes karaoke and I hate to sing. And he sucks his soup through his teeth,” Kimmy reminds her, as the elevator stops and the family shuffles out.

That one is a little gross. “It’s a trademark move.” The doors slide shut again. “Don’t touch it.”

“But he sure can kiss.” Kimmy is so close to her that Jules can almost feel the hiss of the word “kiss” on her own lips.

“It’s been a while. I’ll take your word.”

Kimmy’s neck is arched, chin tilted upwards.

Until it isn’t. She steps back to the button panel. “After two weeks of cataloguing all his faults I made a decision that changed my life,” she says, and just as they are about to reach their floor, slams the emergency stop.

Everything around them halts. Jules feels a rising panic. What is Kimmy playing at? There’s only so much oxygen in one of these things, right?

Kimmy seems unfamiliar with this idea and starts to eat up more than her share of the oxygen by continuing in her sighing speech: “I threw the list away. He’s not a balance sheet: so many wonderful qualities, so many faults. He’s Michael.”

“Do you get nervous in small, confined spaces?”

“It’s so sweet of you to be protective—”

“Let me rephrase that—”

“But nothing ever could, ever did, give me a moment’s pause about this marriage—”

“Do you get hysterical in small—”

“Except one.”

Jules falls silent, the once screaming claustrophobia falling into background noise. Kimmy has a doubt?

“Oh yeah?”

Kimmy nods, blinks, and then reveals… “You.”

In a moment Jules didn’t see coming, she feels her vagina react to this admission. Briefly. The excitement of being perceived as a threat, a chink in the armour of, what had seemed until now, serene un-jealousy.

But Kimmy is jealous. Ha.

“At first I thought it was that, you know, you’ll always be there. The one that got away, the perfect creature he loved for all those years…” Kimmy continues.

“Well, perfection can get wearing—”

“I’m not joking, Julianne.” Her face has fallen serious, grave in a way that Jules hasn’t seen in the few days that they have known each other. “Believe me, I’ve got competitive drives, and until you got here, I thought that was it. Well, it was that, but I made peace with it. He had you on a pedestal, sure, but me in his arms.”

Jules finds the background hum of panic resurfacing. Why the hell has Kimmy trapped them in here?

“And then I met you. And I meant it yesterday, that I used to be a lot like you. And I know you’re Michael’s friend, first and foremost, but… can I trust you with this?”

Anything to be out of here. “Sure, but shall we talk about it outside of this elevator?”

Kimmy seems to hear the yes and nothing else. “I know for a lot of women it’s a, you know, ‘til graduation thing, but I guess I’m technically never going to graduate. I thought it had totally passed because everything with Michael is so easy but…”

Jules has no idea what Kimmy is talking about, but she does know that she needs to get out of here, and she lunges past her and yanks the emergency button.

The elevator creaks back into motion, and not far from their floor as they were they are quickly spilled out into the banquet room, buzzing already with all of Kimmy’s extended family—the two nearest, matching floral dresses and near matching faces, must be the twin bridesmaids.

“My god, it’s the bride and the woman she’ll never live up to,” one of them says.

“That would be us,” Kimmy mutters to Jules. Her smile is wry, but she seems a little sadder than before.

*

Kimmy looks overwhelmed at the karaoke bar that night, and (even though it’s really not the point of Jules being here) when she looks desperately excluded after Jules and Michael get caught up in an anecdote (in a way that perfectly highlights who there has history and who doesn’t), Jules can’t help but throw her a conversational bone.

Without a lot to go on, she starts laying into Michael about the no honeymoon thing. Surely they can fit it in before school starts for Kimmy in September.

“Oh, I’m not coming back to finish my masters,” Kimmy says, sharing a look with Michael. “I mentioned it to you yesterday, in the… elevator…” Her eyes flutter a little with unexpected shyness.

Ah yes, Jules remembers something about something that’s true for a lot of women until graduation, but she’ll never graduate. Whatever that had meant. Jules wonders if she should follow up on that now.

Instead she says, “Don’t architects find a masters sort of… an asset?”

Kimmy laughs, and breathes in to speak, but Michael is already regaling all the travel he needs to do for work, an unspoken implication that Kimmy must follow.

Jules finds herself annoyed with him for the first time this trip. When they’d been together, he’d never talked like he expected a lapdog for a partner.

“The most important thing is for us to be together,” Kimmy ends up agreeing. Jules almost tastes sick in the back of her throat. She’s almost overwhelmed with the urge to argue, that at least they could do a little distance while she finishes her degree. Michael even seems to spot her gearing up, flashes her a little warning with his eyes, but they are quickly interrupted by a drunk woman with a microphone practically collapsing across Kimmy’s lap.

“I want to hear you sing, pink lady,” she says, shoving the mic into her reluctant hand.

Michael is grinning ear to ear, clearly not intent on saving her.

He loves karaoke and I hate to sing.

Jules leans over and snatches the mic. “No, no, Kimmy hates to sing. She hates it!” She waggles it in Michael’s face.

He seems to take it as a challenge, wresting it back, standing with a flourish and announcing Kimmy’s performance - “my bride-to-be”, he calls her (barf) to the whole venue, while Kimmy mutters a string of “no no no”s at him.

“Michael, she doesn’t want to. Leave her alone, come on.” Jules stands, and wins the mic back again.

Michael has an unbearable look on his face. It almost makes her want to aim for it with the blinking light on end of the mic in a quick sharp jab. She resists, and tries to remember what she’s here for. Not to save Kimmy from doing whatever pleases Michael. To remind Michael that he should be with someone who can hold their fuckin’ own.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says in the mic, ready to announce her own performance. But Kimmy catches her eye, nods and holds out her hand. Michael raises his eyebrows at her. Fine. “Please give it up for the dazzling vocal stylings of Miss Kimberley Wallace!”

Kimmy is wide-eyed, shoulders curling in on themselves as she stands and forces out the first few bars of the song. And it’s awful. Hard to believe such awful shrieking can come from such a pretty face.

The crowd starts out a little hostile, someone heckles, “you suck!”, but she’s soon laughing into the words, and a few scattered cheers turn into a supportive smattering of whoops. Her confidence grows, and as awful as it is—and it really, really is—it quickly turns charming.

Jules smiles up at Kimmy despite herself, and finds herself caught up as the whole crowd starts to sing along.

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jole-e-ene, I’m begging of you please don’t take my man.

*

“My loyalty is to the bride in her time of need,” Jules is saying to Michael as she swings herself into the back of the cab after Kimmy.

Kimmy is supposed to insist she’s not in a time of need, or Michael is supposed to ask that he gets some time one-on-one with his friend to get a late burger and stress about his reception speech or something. But neither one of them plays the role that Jules has scripted in her head right, and so, somehow, she finds herself alone with Kimmy again.

They haven’t had a whole lot to drink, but Kimmy doesn’t seem to have built up a tolerance with a whole lot of senior year keg stands, so the couple of Amstel Lights have made her a little drowsy drunk. On their way back to the hotel she drifts off, her head lolling over onto Jules’ shoulder.

She’s awake by the time they pull up at the front of the hotel. In the elevator, Jules stands in the way of the panel this time, body blocking access to the emergency button in case Kimmy has any more breathless speeches in her.

Kimmy seems to notice, her mouth twisting a little in a way Jules can’t read, maybe like she’s wrestling with saying something again, but she doesn’t until the bell dings for Jules’ floor.

“Can I come to your room?”

Jules finds herself, without really deciding to, saying, “Sure,” and Kimmy follows her there.

Perhaps Kimmy’s the reflective sort of drunk, Jules wonders, when they’ve still barely said anything twenty minutes later, Kimmy with a glass of water in hand, Jules sipping straight from a miniature gin (hey, well she may as well be on Kimmy’s level, right?) and a late-night talk show playing quietly in the background.

Jules hasn’t always been great with a silence, and that question about what the fuck Kimmy had meant in the elevator is ricocheting around her skull like a pinball, setting off flashing lights in every corner.

“About you not graduating…” she starts.

Kimmy looks like she instantly sobers up, sitting upright and fixing Jules’ gaze in the glow of the TV.

“You don’t approve of me leaving school.”

“Oh no, honey, you go right ahead and drop out if you want to,” Jules rebuts. “I just haven’t heard you saying that you want to.”

“I want to be with Michael.”

“Are you not hearing the difference between those two things?”

Kimmy takes a deep sip of water. “I can always go back to school later.”

“What’ll be different about what Michael is doing then?”

“He loves his job.”

“Ah yeah, bad games, bad towns, bad pay, real bad food. No home. Lonely. Maybe he gets published one issue out of four. What’s not to love?”

It’s clear that this perspective isn’t new to Kimmy. “He always says…”

“I know what he says, but he’s saying it from the perspective of a single man, isn’t he? And you at least must have thought about options, right?”

“Right,” Kimmy confirms.

“A big piece of the PR at a powerful, complex, challenging conglomerate like your dad’s?”

Pursed lips. “My father and I have discussed it.”

It should be a eureka moment in Jules’ head. Michael would hate that. Steam would billow from his ears at the idea of his future being discussed on his behalf, without his input, like this. This is the kind of wedge that could force them apart.

“Do you think he’d accept?” Kimmy asks. The wide eyes of someone who wants to hear information that contradicts what they already know to be true.

“I think…” Jules hesitates. This is what she came for. And yet. “That you should only get married having considered compromise from both sides. And honestly by any yardstick that involves sanity, it would be the greatest opportunity he’s ever been given. But he’s proud, and likely wouldn’t admit that.”

A knowing smile. “It’d have to be his idea,” she agrees. “Or at least not mine.”

Jules has an idea.

*

She’s not sure what she expects when she opens the door to her room the next… morning? (She checks her watch. 8:33. Yes, morning.) Not room service, not an ambulance for her throbbing head, not Kimmy here to backtrack out of their loosely formed evil plans, but… George?

“You needn’t look so surprised, darling, unless you don’t remember the completely chaotic answering machine message you disturbed my otherwise highly civilised dinner party with last night…?”

Jules does not remember. “Right. Voicemail. But you hate flying.”

“It will be a flying visit too, I have to leave again tonight, something with Werner’s family in the morning,” he says, the details of the where and why fading in his speech as he steps in and over the litter of half-eaten chip packets and used underwear. “Death by minibar, I see. How glamourous… Come. Bathroom. Let’s get you sorted.”

George makes quick work of throwing her in the shower, and by the time she’s out there’s a room service breakfast waiting for her as he picks idly at some peanuts.

Still unsure exactly what was said between her and George’s answerphone the night before, she regales from the beginning, between mouthfuls of scrambled egg.

“You like her,” George says after a time.

“If I didn’t have to hate her, I’d adore her.”

“On the phone the other day you called her…” he pretends to check an invisible notepad. “All bright-eyed and dreamy. And literally two minutes ago she was, what, only annoying because there’s nothing annoying about her perfection?”

“What’s your point?”

He shrugs. “No point. I do observe, however, that you’ve said very little about the love of your life that you have come here to claim.”

“I’ve barely been able to see him! It’s this whole Maid of Honour thing, I have to follow Kimmy around all over Chicago! And whenever I do see him, she’s there as well, being all…” With a frustrated gesture, she clatters her plate back onto the trolley, no appetite left for the crusts on her toast.

“Sure.” George’s smile is warm, as he shifts up from his seat to join her on the end of the bed. “Jules, do you really love him? Or is this about winning?”

She wants to shove him in the shoulder. Wants to say George, just be on my side. But, with a pout, she has to recognise that might be what he’s already doing.

“In the beginning, it was mostly just this prior claim.” The pledge to marry her at twenty-eight if they were still single—they were basically already engaged. “But now, when I’m with him…” she sighs, and flops down onto her back, and George quickly mirrors her, sidling up close to lie beside her.

She lets the sentence go unfinished. He probably doesn’t want to know about her picturing the Michael and Kimmy deep in the throes of passion every five minutes.

Okay, actually, he’d probably love to hear that.

Jules, for some reason, doesn’t want to tell him.

“It’s amazing, the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy,” George says.

Then a thought seems to strike him, straightening his spine from where he sits. “Jules, remind me what she said to you in the elevator. Try to be exact.”

“What, why?”

He raises his eyebrows almost sternly.

“It’s a little patchy because I was being falsely imprisoned, but…”

“Jules.”

She props herself up on her elbows. “Okay, okay, it was… She felt competitive with me because Michael thought I was perfect, but then she got over it. But then she met me and… she thinks she used to be like me. The way women are until they graduate. But she’s not going to graduate.”

George’s eyes narrow. “What do you think she meant, she was like you?”

“Oh, I think a little romance averse. Independent. Ambitious. Didn’t want to be tied down by a man, that sort of thing. She said similar in the dress fitting.”

George looks unconvinced. “But you’ve graduated,” he says.

This has occurred to Jules in her unpicking of how little sense Kimmy was making. “Do you think she’s calling me immature?”

“No, darling.” A weighty pause.

Jules gestures impatiently.

“I think she’s calling you a lesbian.”

A short bout of laughter erupts from Jules' throat. Then she falls silent for a beat.

Then she says, in a voice much louder than she normally speaks in, that maybe the whole hotel hears, “A lesbian?!”

*

She wants to laugh every time she thinks about it. A lesbian. Why would Kimmy even be thinking about who’s a lesbian?

And the suggestion that that’s what Kimmy thinks they have in common…

God love George, but he sees gay people everywhere. Everyone. George Michael. John Travolta. Jodie Foster. Every man he’s attracted to that passes by in the street. He’s a professional baseless homosexuality claimer. It’s a mercy he’s a food writer and not a gossip columnist because he’d have been sued into oblivion thrice over by now.

And he hasn’t even met Kimmy.

“You haven’t even met Kimmy,” she tells him. “She’s this bright-eyed, bushy tailed, blown-out coif, blonde, debutante, Daughters of the Revolution, meatloaf, Miss America, apple pie, cherry pie, pumpkin pie—hell, all the pies!—pearl necklace, yellow summer dress, straight.”

They’re headed to another fitting, rounding the corner to the front door of the tailor. George was only too eager to tag along. In the market for some new silk ties, apparently.

He shrugs, in his way—entertained, but not invested.

He explains that his lesbian friends sometimes complained of girls they’d been involved with in college who’d got their degrees and then vanished compulsively into a heterosexual cloud, and beyond those mists all that was ever known of them again was weddings, husbands, white picket fences. Gay until graduation, they called it.

“I don’t think that’s a thing,” Jules protests.

“Well, I do defer to you as the utmost authority on the homosexual experience, naturally.” A quirk of his eyebrow as he holds the door open for her.

Jules might not have… fucking… graduated from Wellsley or anything, but she’s been around. She knows lesbians. She’s met George’s friends! That one couple, who own the steak restaurant he’d reviewed when it opened in ’95. Chris and… and… Shirley? And she’d marched down Fifth Avenue for Gay Pride! She’d seen the women. On the bikes!

Kimmy was not like any of those women.

But she’s cut short of pointing any of this out to George by the sight of Michael, propped up on a little platform, face on with the tailor, the two of them framed by an ornate wood-framed mirror behind him. Together they look like an old painting.

This isn’t very Michael, this swanky little boutique tailor. It doesn’t smell of stale beer, first of all. And, hard to tell from the current distance, but the dress shirt he’s trying on doesn’t look like it’s yellowing at the collar from a mix of sweat and sunscreen, slapped on in the stands of whatever series of miserable games he’s traipsed to this season.

“Jules.” George is beckoning her close. He twirls a finger to tell her to face him.

He fixes the lapels of her blazer (while a wry toothless smile betrays some unexpressed joke about her wardrobe) and fusses briefly with her hair.

“As we discussed, yes?” he says.

Intimating it had been a discussion is a little rich, but maybe George had had a point. Maybe operation ‘manipulate Kimmy into causing an awful rift over Michael’s career prospects’ was a little bit convoluted, and she might get from A to B a little more quickly with a straight up no frills confession.

George had said to say that she has loved him for nine years, but she was scared of love, scared of needing to belong to someone. He said to tell him that this is the worst, cruellest, dumbest moment to do this to him, but there it is.

It sounded pretty wonderful, the way he said it, and so she had nodded.

She nods again now, and when she looks back across at Michael sees that he has just spotted her, his face creasing into a handsome, boyish grin.

She closes the distance between them, bringing the chalk lines on his jacket into view. She’s planning on just launching right into it, but after some quick greetings, Michael is off his little pedestal and picking something out of his jacket pocket—the one on the coat hook, not his body.

It’s the wedding rings, in their box, quickly shown to her and then getting pressed into her hand, with missives to not let anything happen to it.

Another fucking smutty montage in Jules’ head. A flashing image of the band on Kimmy’s hand, and that hand… curling into a tight fist around bright white bed sheets. She’s not sure when she loaded this much softcore porn into the old brain-VCR.

But now she’s white hot with jealousy again and it’s all she can do to blurt out the most batshit God fucking insane shit she’s ever said.

*

“I don’t recall that being what we discussed,” George says close to her ear, a heavy arm slung across her shoulder in the back of the cab. His other hand drifts with a comic shake up to her tit, and she elbows him away.

Michael is glancing over from her other side, trying to figure out what has been said that he’s missed.

“Sorry, I’ve just missed my darling Julianne,” George says.

Jules shoots George a warning look.

Because Michael has all the subtlety of, well—of Jules getting fitted for an elegant dress—he stumbles into a question about George’s sexuality and George, who is already enjoying this predicament far too much, shakes out a laugh that is (deliberately, she’s sure) an octave higher than his usual.

Michael is agog as George tells him he only pretends to be gay to attract women. “And look.” He grabs the closest of Jules’ hands to him, and holds it up. Her left. A gasp. “Honeybun, where’s your ring?”

Jules squeezes his hand right back, as hard as she can, forcing him to hold in a wince. “Baby,” she says through a sickly-sweet smile. “You know it’s getting resized.”

She rolls her eyes at Michael, as if to say, “Men!”

*

They’re late for being early for the rehearsal, so Michael runs in ahead while Jules and George pay for the cab.

George shoots her a I’m sayin’ nuthin’ look.

“Underplay it,” Jules instructs.

“Gotcha,” he says with a wink.

Jules grits her teeth. He’s going to make it his mission to humiliate her.

The happy news seems to have preceded them as they join everyone inside some moments later, and the first thing she sees is Kimmy’s glowing face as her eyes find them first across the room, and she looks the both of them up and down, turns to say something to Michael.

“… something attractive about a feminine man,” Jules hears as they approach the pews, Kimmy clearly not speaking as quietly as she thinks in the church acoustics. “But anyway I don’t really know why that would bother you.”

Michael is about to respond and Jules squints as if that will make her hear better, really very eager to hear exactly how bothered Michael is, but George is already blundering ahead.

“You must be the woman of the hour!”

“Not nearly,” Kimmy says with a nod to Jules now and a giggle, “Michael just told me! You should have said.”

She throws her arms around George’s neck, and he squeals back at her, immediately entering a giggling feedback loop that must last minutes. Or that’s how it feels.

“It’s so… It’s so…” Kimmy says.

“Against God’s plan?” George suggests as they break apart.

“Oh, no. It’s just wonderful! Julianne, why didn’t you say?”

“Well—”

“I wanted to!” George cuts over her. “I wanted to shout it from the rooftops! But Jules said, ‘Pumpkin, no. This is Kimmy’s day. Let’s not take the attention away from Kimmy. Dear, sweet, adorable, chocolate-covered Kimmy.’” He takes Jules’ arm in his and looks back at her. “Those were her very words.”

Kimmy rests a hand on her chest, looking, somehow, genuinely touched. “George, you’ll join us for lunch after all this?” She gestures back to the altar.

George inhales—

“Oh, no,” Jules says, getting in there first. “George has a flight. He’s only here for a few hours to um…”

Everyone is looking at her. To what?

“Fuck me.”

She wishes, ardently, that she had let George speak.

Kimmy’s eyebrows twitch upwards, but otherwise gives little away. Michael, standing slightly off, is too out of Jules’ view to read.

George smirks, a light in his eyes dancing. Fixes Kimmy’s gaze closely. “Takes a few hours,” he says.

Kimmy bites her lower lip. Is she… imagining fucking George?

At least, Jules is imagining it for her in technicolour. This is getting out of hand.

“But never mind my flight!” George is saying, saving Jules from the image of his head between Kimmy’s legs.

“But, George, isn’t Werner hosting that—”

“I’m sure my dear old friend Werner will understand…”

*

Jules has had her timelines mixed up. Instead of the rehearsal dinner, which is actually later tonight, and would have had dozens of other people to distract George with, lunch is just the four of them.

George is in his element. He practically skips there.

She finds herself pulled by an elbow to the bathroom with Kimmy, who has to powder her nose, and, “uh, yeah, gotta piss too, I guess” Jules adds. George blows them delicate kisses as Michael looks between the three of them, incredulous.

Jules is mid-flow, a pee stream to envy Niagara Falls (hey, she’d needed to go the whole damn endless rehearsal), when Kimmy speaks over the sound of it.

“I spoke to my father this morning,” she says. “About your idea. He thought it was excellent. I want to tell Michael at lunch.”

Jules’ bladder cuts her right off.

“Shit,” she says to the cubicle door.

“I hope you and George don’t mind.”

It’ll be all George can do not to whip out the popcorn. “Uh… no… but are you sure this is the right time for you and Michael?”

“Well, we’re getting married day after tomorrow. Time is rather of the essence.”

Right. God. This stupid half-formed minibar-fuelled idea that she’d said to Kimmy last night. She hadn’t thought anything would come of it, had she?

When Jules emerges from the cubicle, Kimmy immediately finds her eyes in the mirror. She’s slightly leant over the basin, lipstick just leaving her lips, and just a little unguarded.

“And it would help me,” she says. “If you were there.”

If Jules hadn’t deliberately not packed her conscience, she’d feel a pang of guilt.

“Sure.”

A grateful smile, as Kimmy blots her lipstick on some toilet paper.

God, she is beautiful, Jules has to admit to herself. If Jules is serious about Michael, maybe the incoming fireworks will be worth it.

*

“She. Is. Exquisite,” George says through his teeth to Jules as they get seated. “We took the liberty of ordering drinks,” he says, now to the table, and takes a sip from an outrageously pink cocktail. “Strawberry daiquiri," he explains.

Jules narrows her eyes. George hates cocktails. He says all the acid and sugar gives him indigestion.

He holds it up to Michael for a wordless toast. Ah, that’s who this little performance is for.

Michael has a stein of beer, and he’s concentrating very, very hard on not smashing it too hard against the fine edge of George’s glass.

Jules looks in front of her. An Old Fashioned. Very funny, George. But what the hell, she needs it.

She takes an enormous swig.

Kimmy is looking at her, corner of her mouth turned up, eyes flitting occasionally, nervously, to Michael. She can feel George, looking at both of them, looking at each other.

Jules tears away, to pointedly stare at Michael. Michael is looking at his napkin.

Wherever anyone looks, it’s painfully awkward.

“Well, isn’t this…” she starts saying, but then Kimmy blurts—

“Michael, my father needs a favour!”

Oh, so they’re not wasting any time, then.

Michael turns to her, one arm resting on the table. He says nothing, but he’s already looking at her with a dead expression, lips slightly parted.

Kimmy swallows. “You see, he’s, um, reorganising some of the divisions of the company.”

Oh God. These are some of Jules’s exact words from the other night.

She clenches her hand around her glass.

“Public Relations is a real problem area for him,” Kimmy continues.

Michael breaks eye contact with her, blinking, jaw jutting forward, and Jules knows it doesn’t matter what comes next. He’s not listening.

“It would only be… six months, maybe.”

A scoff from Michael.

“Or three or four,” Kimmy bargains. She’d already lowballed. Jules had suggested the academic year, so she could finish her degree.

Michael is silent.

Jules can’t help herself. “Listen to her, Michael. It’s her life too.”

He ignores her. When he finally speaks, it’s bitter. Condescending. Asking who cooked this up.

George tries to look like he’s busying himself with a menu, but is very clearly staring right over the top of it.

Jules is a little surprised when what Kimmy says next is her own words: “What, all of a sudden I’m supposed to drop out of school? Forget my family? Forget my career? Forget all the things I had planned for my life?”

Go Kimmy.

The scar on Michael’s lip—the one Jules had always found so handsome—gets curled up into a snarl. He glowers.

Then before long he’s ranting about what he wants, and he sounds like a petulant child, unable to hear that he is saying the same thing right back to her that she is saying to him, not seeing that she doesn’t want to give up everything just like he doesn’t. Except his stuff is more important, because… because… He doesn’t think to explain.

Kimmy grows tearful, and her attempts to protest his narrative are shot back in a few words, each time, but it only seems to embolden him, and he’s on his feet, looming over her.

Jules can’t help but note that all Kimmy had done is mention that she might want something, and somehow Michael had got to:

“I’m an insensitive, sexist asshole and you’re better off without me!”

Which no one has said.

George, now slumped down his chair, cups his face with his menu and mouths widely to Jules: IF THE SHOE FITS.

“No, Michael, no!” Kimmy’s eyes are the same pink as her dress. She reaches, clings to his sleeves. “You’re so, so right. It was so wrong of me... We settled this, and I reneged. That just wasn’t fair. You have to forgive me and forget this ever happened! Please.”

Michael sighs, and sits slowly back down, muttering apologies.

And as suddenly as it had blown up, they’re gazing into each other’s eyes. And Michael is smiling.

And Jules feels sick.

*

“So, what did you think of… Ki—”

“Michael?”

“—mmy?”

A moment while George holds in a laugh, hand to his mouth. “Sorry, indigestion, it’s the daquiri…”

“Fuck off. Yes, what did you think of… them?”

“Well, I don’t know about you but that—” a gesture back towards the city “—cured me of my homosexuality forever,” George says.

They’re outside the airport. It’s their first moment alone together since the tailor’s that morning.

Kimmy had insisted on dropping them off, introducing George to her creative driving. Sharing the backseat with Michael, he had clung to anything he could grab onto the whole way, but even through the fear for his life he couldn’t resist instructing Kimmy to turn the volume up when Dionne Warwick came on so that he could sing along animatedly and make pointed eye contact with Michael.

The happy couple couldn’t get out with them, however, having to shoot away again to check up on something to do with the wedding cake.

“I must call my mother. She’ll be so pleased.” George mimics holding a phone to his ear. “Mummy, yes it’s me. No, don't hang up. I will marry a woman but unfortunately I witnessed a man do something that made my balls dry up and fall off so there won’t be any grandchildren still. Ta-ta now.”

Jules sighs. “Right? What was that? I’ve never seen Michael act like that before.”

“It was the best and worst lunch of my life and I’ll be telling everyone I know in excruciating detail so…” He grabs Jules’ shoulders. “Thanks, I suppose, for dragging me into your spectacular drama.”

He looks at her so kindly, a dashing crinkle around his eyes. She doesn’t deserve that. She’s lowlife pond scum who just dragged Kimmy into a public shouting match because of a half-formed suggestion she made in the dark wincing through a shot of gin, of all things.

“Go on, I know you’re dying to ask me about Kimmy again.”

She glares at him. Thinks about not giving him the satisfaction, but… “You see how wrong you were?”

“About?”

“You know the suggestion that she might be a… a…”

“You can say lesbian in public without them shooting you on sight these days, you know.”

Jules gives him a gentle shove on the shoulder. “Your findings?”

“Inconclusive.”

What.

“I spent all of four hours with the woman, darling.”

“But you’ve seen her.”

“And? Because she doesn’t resemble k.d. lang there’s no need for the jury to deliberate?”

“You saw her with Michael.”

A shrug. “Julianne, it’s the nineties. Sexuality is fluid. Maybe she’s bisexual. She seemed to be trying to tell you something, but, hey, maybe she stumbled blindly into a common lesbian trope and I’ve got the wrong end of your half-remembered stick. Or maybe she is gay and thinks Michael looks like k.d. lang.” He lets out a little snort and mutters, “He does a bit now that I…”

But then his face turns sombre. It’s a pretty unfamiliar sight.

“Are you really sure about this whole love thing, sweetheart?” he says. “Because it might have been one thing when you were fucking all night nine years ago, but it’s another how things would be in a life together now. If yes… tell him you love him, bite the bullet. Either way, it might just turn out that Kimmy’s destined to take that bullet for you.”

They hug, say their goodbyes (“I’d be lucky to marry you, George”, “miles out of your league.. completely implausible… don’t know how anybody bought it…”) and George leaves.

And another film rolls on the silver screen in Jules’ head, but this time no one is passionately making love. It’s just Kimmy’s bloodshot eyes, giving up everything to please Michael, over and over and over again.

*

Michael has left her a message at the hotel. Let’s spend some time alone together in the morning.

The note, in some stranger’s handwriting, is exactly the kind of thing she’s been waiting for since she got here. Her hand squeezes, and it crumples in her palm.

It doesn’t quite feel how she expected. But… she needs some time with her friend. She hasn’t really seen her Michael since she got here.

And then. Then it’ll be better.

*

They’re on a boat tour down the Chicago River, sun drumming down on the open top deck, a tinny voice telling them barely audible facts about Sears Tower. The seats are full of older couples and young families, forcing Jules and Michael to stand along the edge for the view.

He’s squinting with the sun in his eyes; her hair is buffeted in the wind. He reaches over, brushes a piece out of her face.

He begins reminiscing, talking about how this might be one of their last times alone together, talking through all their past relationships and how they’d never said I love you all that much to anyone.

He’s sweet, affable, charming, smiling Michael. Shoulder to shoulder with her.

It’s blisteringly romantic.

It feels almost as good as it ever did.

Almost. Almost, almost.

“Kimmy says if you love someone, you say it,” he says. “Otherwise the moment just…”

They’re floating under a bridge as he trails off.

“Passes you by,” they both echo.

Every second of this has been like he’s teeing her up for the moment she’d been waiting for, but this one. Almost like he’s doing it on purpose.

She looks that shaded handsome face up and down, eyes to lips. He stares back, lips parted.

He breaks her gaze seconds before the sun hits them from the other side, and the moment just… passes them by.

And Jules feels…

Relieved.

*

She’s waiting at Wallace Companies for Kimmy’s father. She has volunteered to collect him for the bachelor party, insisting that Michael focus on getting himself ready for his last night of freedom. Truthfully, it’s an excuse to be away, however briefly, from either member of the happy couple, even if just for the drive over.

And Kimmy’s Merc was a pretty nice drive. Jules understands the temptation to drive it like she’s in fucking NASCAR, but is smart enough to know she’s not quite blessed with the same luck as Kimmy.

Walter spots her hovering outside the boardroom and shuffles out to greet her.

After a short exchange of pleasantries, he says, “Well, Kim said that when Michael turned the job down that there was no friction.”

Kimmy either has a very broken barometer for friction, even though everyone else in that restaurant practically left with carpet burns, or she feels the need to lie to her father about Michael. Maybe it’s the first time.

Maybe not.

Jules isn’t about to interfere… This time. “Friction? No.”

“Good,” Walter says, but looks a little unconvinced. “I haven’t caused a problem, have I?”

“No, you haven’t. Nobody has!”

*

Jules splits her time between bachelor and bachelorette. Something that she might have resented a couple of days ago, being bound to not leave Kimmy without her Maid of Honour on her night, but she finds herself suspended somewhere in a strange acceptance about the whole ordeal.

She starts with the boys, reasons to Michael: “I want to be gone before there’s strippers’ tits in everyone’s faces.”

He insists it won’t be like that with a laugh. Jules has been more convinced in her life; Walter is still in earshot at this point, and even if it’s not planned she knows sooner or later his little brother Scotty will be steering the group to a gentleman’s club.

All the same, it’s a decision, a running order. A plan to get through.

Going from a thrumming dark club to civilised drinks with the girls turns out to be a bit more of a tone shift than she expects. In the warm light of the cocktail bar and next to the gentle chit chat, three Bud Lights feel like she’s wiped out the whole bottom shelf.

Kimmy is so pleased to see her, extricating herself from between the twins to rush over to greet her, tucking an arm in hers, as she guides her over to the group.

“Thank you so much for being here,” she says low in Jules’ ear.

Jules nurses a vodka soda and lime, feeling every polite laugh and carefully measured gesture weighing on her as the twins and Kimmy’s mom buzz over last-minute details, menu options, and hairstyles. Each detail feels tiny and endless.

She watches Kimmy fuss with the edge of her dress as the chatter continues, smoothing the folds, tucking stray strands of hair behind her ears. Jules envies her composure, envies the restraint—but beneath it she senses a quiet sacrifice, the little compromises Kimmy is making to play a role.

Kimmy catches her gaze. “You’re different tonight,” she says. “Quiet.”

Jules shrugs. “Just a little tired. A busy few days. Not as busy as yours, I’d guess.”

Kimmy smiles faintly, understanding but not pushing. She squeezes Jules’ hand.

“Are you missing New York?”

Jules thinks about it, weighs it up against Chicago. “Yes,” she admits. “It’s dirtier, and louder, and busier. But I have a good life there, one I can disappear into. But in fairness, with the wedding and everything, the most I’ve seen of Chicago is a little boat tour. I don’t know if you can know a place without living there.”

Kimmy nods sincerely. “I’d always imagined living in New York after college,” she says. “Another life. At least I should get to pass through, with Michael. And it will be nice to have a friend there.”

Her smile is deep, and seems genuine, even as she is describing the future that is being set alight by Michael’s demands on her. That same smile that, in the face of it, Jules’ attempts to find Kimmy stuck up, insincere, conceited, stuffy—have all kept failing since she got here.

Jules finds herself smiling back. For a heartbeat, the noise of the lounge, the chatter of the other women, all fades.

The twins squeal from across the table, breaking the private current, and Jules lets herself be guided further into the group—but her eyes keep returning to Kimmy, who should be able to live in New York if she fucking wants to.

*

“George and Werner are not in. Brevity is the order of the day.”

A long beep.

“George, damn your stupid English face, why did you say that shit to me at the airport, now I have to do something!”

A click.

“Hallo, Jules.” It’s Werner. “Please could you stop swearing during your deranged messages into our answerphone? My parents are here.”

“Well, if you two ever answered I wouldn’t have to leave any deranged messages.”

“It is two in the morning in New York.”

Oh shit. A small but somewhat significant time difference, completely muddled in Jules’ head by few drinks, and an already late call became even later. “Sorry. Thought you’d be up having safe sex. Did I wake you?”

“Not on this occasion.” A voice in the background. “Einen Moment, Mama! My parents have an early flight. George is asleep, but I promise to curse his English face for you in the morning.”

Jules sighs. “Sorry, Werner.”

“Alles gut, Julianne. Good luck in whatever George has encouraged you to do. But, for the record, Michael sounds like a… how do you say…?”

Werner’s English is impeccable, and this little feint of ignorance normally precedes something delicious.

“A cunt.”

*

Gotta do it now, gotta do it now. A bit of lingering Dutch courage from the night just gone. And she knows Michael won’t be asleep yet.

There’s something she said days ago to George in a previous deranged message. One of the ones she remembers. “I have to be ruthless. I am breaking her heart in the short run but really doing her a favour.” That had been one hell of a rationalisation then, and George had all but told her so.

But now.

She bangs on his door in a furious, wall-shaking knock. No going back.

Michael swings the door open. As she thought, still dressed, lights on. He has a notepad in his hand.

“Good. I thought you might be up.”

He smiles so serenely small birds almost start flying around his head. “Going over the vows,” he says, holding up the notepad.

Jules’ heart jumps. In a moment of weakness, she wants to abandon the whole thing. “You’ll be falling asleep at the altar,” she says.

“You here to tuck me in?” he asks, stepping back to let her through. “Kiss my forehead?”

Flirting again. It occurs to her that you’re not supposed to do that with your ex sixteen hours before you say I do.

She finds her resolve again. “No.”

He looks surprised that she’s not playing along, but doesn’t linger on it, and gestures to the sofa.

“Drink?”

“No. I’ve had enough.”

He laughs, sitting down next to her. “When did you learn to say that? Who are you and what have you done with…” When Jules doesn’t laugh back, he scowls. Puts the notepad to the side. “Everything okay?”

She ignores the question. “Do you remember when I broke up with you?”

A nod. A feigned arrow to the heart, oof.

“And you said that you didn’t want to lose the best friend you ever had?”

Another nod, then a tilt of the head to say, where is this going.

“I need you to remember that for the rest of this conversation, Michael.”

He looks faintly amused, as if to ask why he would forget, but it shifts into apprehension. “Jules…”

“Just. Let me talk. Or I’m never going to say it.”

Something compels Jules to her feet, turning on a heel to face down at Michael.

“I came to Chicago with every intention of asking you not to marry Kimmy.”

His jaw slackens.

She holds a hand up to stop him speaking before he even has the chance to think about it.

“I came here to do the dumbest thing that I have ever thought to do,” she says. “So dumb, in fact, that I couldn’t. I can’t…”

She’s burning hot. She’s on fire under all this hair. She runs a hand back through it, allows a little air to her neck for a brief second before it flops back.

Michael stands up, steps closer, looking ready to reach out to console her. His body heat, with hers, is unbearable. She wants to run, stick her head out into the night air. Maybe jump.

She puts her hands out to discourage him coming any closer, but they end up landing on his chest. The physical anchor is a little steadying, at least.

“Look just, don’t say anything okay? But. Michael…” She stops. It feels like she’s silent for an age, her tongue dead, unwilling to move. But a deep breath in and she says, “I came to Chicago to tell you that I love you.”

He stares, dumbstruck. She feels his pulse quicken through his shirt. Or maybe it’s hers, furiously pounding in her palms. When she finally moves, he’s going to have wet handprints on his chest.

She can’t look at his dopey awe-struck face.

“On Tuesday, I thought you were calling about that stupid pact we made in Tucson, of all things,” she tells the top button of his shirt. “Because it’s my birthday in three weeks, and I’ll be twenty-eight. And I was thinking of all the ways to turn you down. And then you told me about Kimmy and I was so surprised, and so jealous, and… I fell on the floor, actually.”

“That explains the thud,” he says, trying so hard to joke but his voice is thin.

She nods, not laughing. “So, I thought if I felt like that then that must be because I had a claim to you. That I must have loved you for nine years and been too dumb to know it when I had you. So, I had to come and tell you… ask you… not to marry Kimmy.”

Michael takes a sharp breath in, hesitates. Before he can form any words she removes her hands from him, steps away.

“I wasn’t finished. Before you say anything. Don’t worry, you don’t need to reject me. This trip has been… clarifying. It’s become clear to me that whatever I was feeling wasn’t love. That’s not to say I don’t love you, Michael, I clearly do because otherwise I wouldn’t be doing… this…” She flaps her arms “… with you right now. But it’s not that kind of love.”

“Then what is it? That you’re doing?”

“I’m here to say… albeit with a different emphasis…”

“Jules…”

Shit. “Michael. Don’t marry Kimmy.”

*

An interlude in the proceedings, as Michael mumbles, “Well, I do need a drink,” and marches over to the minibar, tears the lid off a teeny tiny scotch, throws it back, and asks Jules for a cigarette.

“This floor is non-smoking,” Jules observes. Which admittedly she only knows because of a run in with a bellboy outside his door while she’d still been psyching herself up.

He raises his eyebrows, and doesn’t drop his outstretched hand.

She shrugs, complies, and takes one for herself while she’s at it. Whatever. It’s his credit card on file. Or, realistically—looking around—it’s Walter’s.

“I knew it,” he says in a breath of smoke. Head cocked back slightly. Smug. “George? You’re not actually engaged, right?”

Shit. Jules is losing track of her own insane behaviour. “No…” she says, sliding the window open as far as it will go before the safety catch snags it. A draft of blessedly cool air on her lower arm, at least.

“I mean.” A schoolboy snigger. “The cocktails, the singing…”

Jules feels a spike of anger. “Of course you knew it, Michael; you knew it because I told you he’s gay like three years ago, not because he had a pink fucking drink. He was messing with you with that stuff because he took five minutes to recognise the kind of guy you are when I took nine years.”

Michael looks thrown by the shift in tone. “What kind of guy am I?”

Jules feels her teeth grinding. She puffs on her cigarette, tapping the ash end roughly into one of Michael’s used coffee cups.

“The kind of guy who acts like he’s all cool and not like everyone else. Alternative. Long suffering, anti-establishment low-paid genius who’s best friends with a girl and cool with the gays. But when it comes down to it you’re like any other guy, skin-crawlingly uncomfortable if another man dares even know the lyrics to one of the best songs that there has ever been, by the way. And, bringing me back to my point, actually, the type of guy who wants a placid wife to follow him around and cook your dinner and fuck you nightly and tell you that you’re so clever, Michael, that your dreams are her dreams, Michael, and I’ll never have a thought in my head that you didn’t have first, Michael.”

“And that’s why you don’t want me to marry Kimmy?” he asks. “You don’t like her? You think she’s too ‘placid’?” He holds up his hands to do angry little air quotes. “Too dumb?”

“God, you really hear what you want to hear, don’t you?” She stabs the butt end of the cigarette out in the cup, and it hisses in the dregs. “Kimmy is wonderful, obviously. I’m practically as obsessed with her as you are.”

In her head, a flash of George giving her a knowing smirk. But she doesn’t have time for that.

“I think, and please take this the way I mean it, that she’s too good for you.”

Some of Michael’s indignation gives way to a little sadness. But only a little. “I’m really looking hard for more than one way to take that.”

“Let me explain. Kimmy’s beautiful, smart, charming, funny, confident, selfless in her own ways, an absolutely horrifying driver but I guess at least she hasn’t killed anyone yet, and clearly, and I can’t overstate this enough, Michael, incredibly wealthy. But none of that is why I said she’s too good for you.

“I said that because I don’t think you see beyond all the simplest notions of those things. Because if you did, if you really saw her as a person, you wouldn’t be asking her to give up everything without so much as a conversation.”

“Did I miss you being in the room when we planned our lives together, Jules? We can’t be married and living two separate lives. We had that conversation.”

“Like you had it at lunch yesterday? Because in my experience conversations normally go two ways. And I’ve had some conversations with Kimmy, too, you know. Don’t worry, she had your back, but I can read between the lines. She was scared to talk to you about that job.”

“You knew about the job?” He grabs the pack of cigarettes up on the table, and angrily chains a second, muttering with a cloud of smoke building around his head, “Unbelievable. Did you… You had something to do with that, didn’t you?”

Shit, shit, shit. “I… only stumbled across something she already wanted anyw—”

Jules is cut off by a head-explodingly loud blaring noise. It’s the fire alarm.

*

She loses Michael in the evacuation. Or really, he loses her, striding off until they’re caught up with others spilling out of their rooms, and she couldn’t catch up with him if she wanted to without bulldozing through them, probably causing an avalanche all the way down the staircase to the emergency exit.

She sees him again at the assembly point half a block down the street. He’s looking everywhere but at her in a way that betrays his awareness of exactly where she is.

Walter reaches him before she could anyway, a hotel robe pulled over his grandad pyjamas, a fatherly hand reaching up to Michael’s shoulder, as they enter a close conversation that Jules can’t hear over the buzzing of the hotel guests, their annoyance at being awoken.

A few close by are wedding guests that Jules doesn’t know, muttering how awful this is—the night before your wedding.

“Maybe it’s a good omen,” one of them chirps. “Like rain on your wedding day.”

Jules ends up staying grounded where she is. Not like they can carry on out here with an audience anyway, she supposes.

She pats herself down in search of her pack of cigarettes, not remembering at first that they are still in Michael’s room, and her hand bumps up against something else in her pocket.

It’s the rings.

She slips the box out and, angling her back towards the crowd, opens it. The bands glint in the flashing lights of the fire truck that has pulled up nearby.

She pulls the smaller of the two rings out, a gold band with a delicate pattern engraved. The metal is cool against her fingertips.

She doesn’t know what she’s thinking—she isn’t thinking—when she slips it onto the ring finger of her left hand.

It fits, almost. Not quite. Her knuckle swells slightly, and it refuses to slide all the way home. She tugs uselessly at it, and it doesn’t budge. Her fingers are hot, suddenly slick with unhelpful sweat that allows her no purchase.

Somewhere behind her the all-clear comes and the crowd starts immediately surging around her back to the hotel doors.

She shoves her hand deep into her pocket.

She notices Michael brush past her, but he’s soon lost again with that determined stride surging him forward, and he’s swallowed by the throng.

“Jules?” She jumps. Kimmy has materialised a few steps behind her. “You coming back inside?”

“Uh, yes, just waiting for the crowd to pass,” Jules says, driving her hands even more firmly into her pockets like she’s hoping to break into the lining of her jacket.

“Good idea,” Kimmy says, that sincere smile breaking across her face again as she settles to stand beside her to wait. “You haven’t been to bed yet?” she asks, her eyes flitting down and up again over Jules’ clothes.

It’s only then really that Jules lets herself take in what Kimmy is wearing fully: the hotel robe has been slipped on over a pale satin camisole that softly clings across her breasts. Her eyes snap back up to Kimmy’s where even in the darkness of the parking lot emergency assembly point they glint in that fierce blue.

“Got lost in the old pay-per-view,” Jules lies.

“Oh, anything good?” Kimmy asks.

“Um. Indecent Proposal,” she says, immediately inwardly cursing herself. Why that of all things?

Kimmy’s eyebrow quirks. “I’ve heard… good things,” she says.

It feels like an eternity passes in a couple of minutes as they stand, quiet, as the crowd thins until it’s just the two of them and the sound of the door swinging.

Jules gestures ahead. “Shall we?”

Kimmy nods, and they move back towards the hotel. Jules reaches for the emergency exit first, reaching across with her hand to hold the door open for Kimmy.

Kimmy glances at her hand as she passes.

Shit. It’s her left.

Jules flushes and tries to tuck it back in her pocket as she follows her in.

Kimmy doesn’t let her get away with it. “You have your ring back?” she asks, swirling around to get in Jules’ way. “Let me see! I bet George picked something exquisite.”

“Oh, I, um—”

But Kimmy is tugging on Jules’ sleeve to bring her hand out of the safety of her pocket with a gentle pressure. Her fingers brush lightly along Jules’ forearm and wrist and into her palm to angle her hand in the stairwell lights.

Then she stops still.

“I’m so sorry, Kimmy, I don’t know what I was thinking but—" Jules feels the pathetic expression cross her face, the whiny break in her voice. “I tried it on, and it won’t come off.”

Kimmy’s glance up at her is so gentle, so understanding. “Missing your engagement ring?”

Jules sighs. She can’t keep up that particular ruse anymore. Michael will probably tell Kimmy soon anyway. “No,” she admits, her voice low. “George isn’t actually my fiancé. He’s… gay.”

“Oh,” Kimmy says, and her eyes flick between Jules’ own. She hasn’t let go of her hand. “I suppose I can see that. But I thought the two of you made sense, in a way. His femininity… suits you.”

Jules has no idea what to say to that, but she feels her hand stiffen in Kimmy’s.

It seems to prompt Kimmy to look down again to consider it. Her thumb brushes lightly over the back of Jules’ hand. “That looks uncomfortable,” she says softly.

Jules swallows, heat rising in her chest. “Yeah, it’s well and truly stuck on there.”

“Let me try?”

Kimmy lifts Jules’ hand gently, fingers glancing over the band as she tries to prise it off, twisting and tugging, but no dice. Jules can feel the heat from Kimmy’s touch, the press of her fingers as they try to gain purchase, blood pounding in her knuckle with every futile twist

“Here, do you mind?” Kimmy says, and lifts Jules’ hand closer to her mouth. Jules finds herself nodding without really knowing what it is she is she may or may not mind.

And then in a slow deliberate motion, Kimmy’s bringing Jules’ hand towards her face, and takes her ring finger into her mouth. Her lips close near her knuckle. Jules is stunned still, blood roaring in her ears, as she feels the warmth of Kimmy’s mouth, her tongue working around the band, wetting and prising, until she feels something loosen and Kimmy moves back dragging the ring back with a scraping of metal against teeth and into her mouth.

Jules can feel that her jaw is slack as she sees the ring glint on Kimmy’s tongue as it pushes forward to between her teeth. Kimmy then lifts it between two fingers.

Jules should say something—thank you?—but her mind is completely blank and her whole body is gently vibrating. There’s an intense, liquid feeling in her lower belly and she can’t stop staring past the ring at Kimmy’s mouth, at the pink blush of her lips, at a tongue that darts out to lick them, at Kimmy’s other hand as it meets her mouth to wipe away the wetness at its corner.

Jules realises, with a jolt, how desperately she wants to kiss her.

It’s one of the few impulses that has crossed her stupid brain this trip that she manages to not immediately indulge, before Kimmy snaps her out of it.

“It worked!” she says, brightly.

It sure did, Jules thinks.

*

The projectionist in Jules’ head works overtime all night. Only the softcore reel she’s been running for days—the Michael-and-Kimmy cut—has been spliced, shredded, replaced. Michael’s gone, stripped out of the frame entirely.

What’s left is Kimmy: icy blue eyes flickering in the stairwell, the wet heat of her mouth closing around Jules’ finger, the glint of the ring on her tongue. And then more—image after image she has no business conjuring, a whole catalogue of things Jules never did before graduation, nor since, not even once.

She doesn’t even know where she’s getting these ideas from, only that they keep unspooling, relentless, and every one of them leaves her restless, thrumming, breathless in her own skin.

*

The brunch at Kimmy’s parents house is going ahead, no sign that Michael has taken Jules’ sage advice and called the whole thing off.

Nor is there any word that she is uninvited, though she’s pretty sure, by rights, she should be, from brunch and the whole damn day.

A lightning strike of maturity hits her that morning, the first time this whole week, and she resolves to show up, to speak to Michael one last time, and to leave. It leaves Kimmy with no Maid of Honour but the twins can fight it out between them. Kimmy deserves someone there for her on her day that hasn’t spent the last four days plotting to ruin it, and the last eight hours replaying explicit fantasies about ruining her.

Michael sees her first, in the gardens of Kimmy’s parents' absolutely absurd estate. By God, he has done well for himself.

“Jules!” he says, running a few steps after her, leaving behind his table. He looks her up and down—at her sunglasses and cropped cardigan, dark low-rise trousers.

“Don’t worry, I’m not staying,” she says.

“I can see that,” he says and smiles. “Because of last night?”

“Well…” Jules raises her eyebrows and shrugs.

“I am going to marry Kimmy, Jules.”

“I can see that.”

“You should stay,” Michael says.

“Michael.”

He fixes her with his kind dark eyes, the charming ones that she thought about all the flight here. “I’m so glad you’re here, Jules,” he says. “I’m lucky to have a friend who’ll give it to me straight like that.”

Straight is not Jules’ word of the day.

“And Kimmy, too. It’s good for her to have a friend who’s in her corner. The way you’ve taken her under your wing? It makes me happy.”

Jules feels her mouth go dry, that endless replay of Kimmy’s tongue against her finger.

She clears her throat. “She’s going to finish her degree, then?”

An inscrutable expression flickers across Michael’s face. “I’ll talk to her about it again, after the honeymoon,” he says. “I can probably let her make it to the end of the academic year before we—”

“Let her?” Jules thuds him with the heel of her palm on his shoulder. “You’re unbelievable,” she sighs.

“You know what I mean,” Michael sighs.

“I sure do.” She narrows her eyes, dragging her fingers back through her mane of curls. “Michael, I meant it I’m not staying. I can’t control what you two do, but I can remove myself from this and—honestly, she deserves better than both of us.”

Michael shifts, uncomfortable. “Jules, please,” he says.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find her. I’ll tell her myself.”

*

Jules finds her at the bandstand (because of course, her childhood home has a bandstand).

Her hands are resting against the wooden rail, and she’s staring off into the trees with an unfixed look in her eyes. It’s a huge contrast to the normal piercing and focussed look and it throws Jules off her pace as she strides over.

“Penny for ‘em,” she says as she gets closer.

Kimmy starts, suddenly, lets out a small, startled noise. “Jules,” she says, with a self-conscious effort to settle her face into a smile. “I didn’t see you.”

“Everything alright?”

“Of course.” Kimmy smooths down the front of her green dress. She looks every bit the debutante—poofed-up blonde hair, headband, a silk shirt draped over her shoulders. The anti-Jules. She looks beautiful.

Jules hesitates, leaves space for Kimmy to say something different. She doesn’t.

“I came to tell you I can’t stay for the wedding. I’m flying back to New York this morning.”

A whole spectrum of expressions cast over Kimmy’s face in about ten seconds—confusion, to something softer, maybe wounded, before hardening into a furrowed brow. “What do you mean? Why?”

“Work emergency,” Jules says in a hurry. Another lie, but she doesn’t need to start being honest with Kimmy now.

“A food writing emergency?” Kimmy’s voice is flat. “On a Sunday?”

Jules shrugs. “It’s complicated. I’m sorry to miss the wedding.”

An eternity passes under Kimmy’s sceptical gaze until she finally says, “I don’t think there’ll be anything to miss.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to marry Michael.”

“Kimmy,” Jules says. She thinks back to the elevator a few days ago, how this is exactly where she’d been trying to steer Kimmy to. (How Kimmy had pressed so close to her that she could feel her breath.) But now that she’s saying it, horror flushes through her, cold right through to her fingertips. “But—Michael—”

Kimmy is shaking her head. “Your being here… You’ve really clarified some things for me, Julianne.”

“About your degree?”

Kimmy tilts her head to the side. “Among other things,” she says cryptically. “You know I really thought it had gone away. But it isn’t going to, is it?”

Jules frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Kimmy looks away fleetingly, adjusting the shirt imperceptibly around her shoulders.

“You understand food, right?” she says. “So, I’ll put it like this. All my life, I’ve been told I should order the crème brûlée for dessert. It’s beautiful. It’s sweet. Golden, caramelised top. All that polish, all that richness. It’s perfect. But I don’t want crème brûlée.”

“What… do you want?”

Kimmy sighs, considering the question. “Jello,” she says. “I just want jello. Wobbly, unpredictable. Maybe messy. Maybe others don’t like the look of it, don’t think it’s sophisticated. They think that everyone should spend their whole life aspiring to… crème brûlée. But jello… it’s what’s made me happy.”

“And… Michael’s the crème brûlée?”

Kimmy nods curtly.

“Then who’s the jello?”

Kimmy cocks her head and sighs deeply, and takes a single step closer to Jules.

“It’s not a who so much as the fact that I’m…” she starts and drifts. “I’m a—”

She bows her head low. They’re so close that a flyaway hair tickles Jules’s chin.

She lifts her head again, and then suddenly—

Kimmy closes the gap between them and presses her lips against Jules’.

The kiss rockets through her, radiating from her lips and down through her body. It’s soft and wet and the kind of kiss that makes the world shrink to a small impossible space between them. Jules finds herself, without thinking, melting into it, all the careful restraint of the night before in the stairwell dissolving as her fingers curl into Kimmy’s shirt, pulling her closer. Kimmy tastes slightly, distantly sweet as her tongue glances over Jules’.

Then Jules’ brain seems to reconnect—slow at first, a cell at a time, then all at once. Michael, she thinks.

Jules pulls back, holding Kimmy still by the collar of her shirt where it remains curled in her fists. Kimmy looks dazed, eyes hooded, pale pink lipstick smudged.

Movement rustles in the trees. Jules glances over Kimmy’s shoulder.

Michael is stood there, jaw slack, watching.

“Oh,” Jules says, and watches him turn on his heel and start sprinting away.

“Michael!” she calls, and breaks into a run after him.

She hears the clatter of Kimmy’s feet against wood behind them as she follows.

*

“This is not going well!” Jules screams down the phone, gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles whiten. “You know, this is what came of trying to do the right thing… Eventually!”

“Where are you?” George asks, as Jules has to swerve to avoid rear-ending a Chevy.

“I have stolen a bread van and I’m chasing Michael and Kimmy down Michigan Avenue,” she yells, like it’s obvious. Kimmy had got ahead of her in the parking lot and swung wildly out after Michael in her Merc. Jules, carless and increasingly desperate, had had to improvise.

“George, this is all your fault,” she tells George, soaring past a cyclist who is flipping her the bird. “I was trying to leave and accept my defeat graciously but you put all that—that gay until graduation stuff in my head and I guess Kimmy picked up on whatever weird frequencies that made me put out and—and—well, she kissed me!”

There’s a pause on the line. Jules sees Kimmy’s Merc turn left and does a dreadful manoeuvre to change lanes so she can follow. A chorus of car horns erupts.

“Jules, a question,” George says, and he sounds frankly not nearly surprised enough. “When Kimmy kissed you, did you kiss her back?”

It’s a question that feels rather beside the point, in the circumstances. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, was there anything on your side of the kiss?”

Jules’ mind briefly shutters in slow motion: leaning in, clutching Kimmy, tilting her head, their mouths slanting together, tongues brushing. Heat, wetness, the impossibility of wanting more.

Then a honking horn and a pedestrian stepping onto the road force her to slam on the brakes. Reality smacks her in the face.

“I… That’s not the point. Michael saw us. So, we both ran after him.”

“You’re both chasing Michael?” George asks, incredulous.

“Yes!”

“Is Kimmy also in the bread van?”

“No, she’s in her own car!” Jules shouts, fumbling the gears as the van groans under acceleration.

“And what do you think is to be gained from this chase that will have things somehow all end happily?” George asks, the faintest edge of exasperation in his voice.

“I need to explain to him—”

“That he’s trying to marry a lesbian? I think he might have gathered. Most of what remains to be discussed might be between him and Kimmy.”

Jules grits her teeth.

“Look call me back when you’re safely parked and I can force you to stop avoiding the question of if you kissed her back, darling.”

The line clicks as George hangs up.

Jules throws her phone into the passenger seat with a growl and keeps driving.

*

Jules comes to a screeching halt in the drop-off bay at Union Station, slams the bread van into park, and bolts.

Inside, the station is a blur of commuters and announcements. She threads through the crowd, scanning for either Michael or Kimmy. A flash of blond hair catches her eye along one of the platforms—Kimmy, maybe—and she barrels after it, weaving in and out of bodies, before losing it again.

Back on the concourse, she finally spots the familiar slope of Michael’s shoulders. He’s slumped on one of the wooden benches, head bowed, staring into his lap. As Jules circles around, she sees Kimmy crouched in front of him, her head dipping to try to catch his eye, one trembling hand hovering over his knees. Tears shine at the corners of her eyes as she whispers something he can’t seem to hear.

Jules can almost see George wagging a finger at her, urging her not to intrude.

Whatever. She marches towards them.

Michael glances up at the sound of her steps and lets out a bitter scoff. Kimmy’s head swivels at once, surprise sparking across her face.

“Jules,” she says softly, her voice high.

Michael takes her distraction as an opportunity to wriggle in his seat and push Kimmy’s hands from his lap.

“Go away, Julianne,” he says.

“Michael, please,” Jules blurts without any real follow-up ready.

Kimmy gets there first. “This isn’t about her, Michael. You’re mad at me.”

“I’m pretty mad at both of you,” he grumbles.

Kimmy shifts from her crouched position into the seat next to him. Jules feet stay planted where they are.

“I’m so sorry, Michael,” Kimmy says softly. “I should never have agreed to marry you. It’s not about her, it’s not you, either… It’s me.”

Michale’s head jerks up. “Am I really getting it’s not you it’s me on our wedding day?”

“You’re getting… it’s not you, I’m a lesbian,” Kimmy concedes, voice catching. “A couple years ago I… And I thought I’d—got past it. Things felt so easy with you. But then—”

Michael’s face folds in disgust and he glares up at Jules again. “You,” he snarls.

“I kissed her, Michael,” Kimmy cuts in quickly. Somewhere behind them a man conspicuously drops his newspaper to stare. Kimmy doesn’t seem to notice. “This isn’t her fault.”

The newspaper man is elbowing the woman next to him and gesturing.

“I thought you came here to confess your love for me,” Michael says.

Twin open-mouthed expressions cross the faces of the two strangers.

Kimmy straightens in her seat lifting her gaze back to Jules, a quizzical look across her brow.

Jules scratches the back of her head. “Gee,” she says. “Technically, I already took that back.”

She slumps into the bench opposite.

Michael shakes his head. “Did you kiss her back?”

The question du jour, apparently.

“Uh…” Jules mouth flaps open helplessly.

Kimmy shakes her head, “Jules, you don’t have to—”

“I did,” Jules says. “Michael, I have done nothing but underhanded, despicable not even terribly imaginative things since I got here,” she admits. “I was… just trying to… Well, you know. Stop the wedding, which… all things considered might just be the right outcome, albeit for different reasons. But that doesn’t excuse any of it. I’m pond scum. Lower, actually. I’m the fungus that feeds on pond scum.”

“Lower,” Michael mutters, his voice gravelly. “So, you’re a lesbian, too?”

A titter ripples through the growing audience around newspaper man.

Jules glares at them. “I don’t have an answer to that one right now.”

Michael leans forward, pressing his face into his hands. His voice is muffled, raw. “But no one loves me.” He drags his hands down his face and cups them over his mouth. A long, exhausted sigh escapes him. “Shame. Would’ve been a nice wedding.”

He pushes to his feet and walks away without looking back.

Jules and Kimmy are opposite one another, alone, except for their small audience, watching him leave. This time neither of them gives chase.

Kimmy’s blue eyes are rimmed red, her lashes stuck together with tears. She looks at Jules blankly for a moment.

“I need to call my father,” she says at last.

Jules nods and wordlessly holds out her cell phone.

*

Eighteen months later

The restaurant is all exposed brick and ambitious lighting—new, buzzy, impossible to get a reservation without strings. Jules and George sit at a corner table, menus open.

George swirls his glass. “You realise we’re parasites,” he says, voice pitched low and theatrical. “Descending on a poor young chef before they’ve had time to firm up the menu.”

“We’re supportive parasites,” Jules says, adjusting her napkin. “I’ll be merciful in print if it’s dreadful.”

George lifts an eyebrow. “You. Merciful. Don’t make me laugh.”

Jules smirks.

“Speaking of your blundering mercies,” he says. “Have you heard from Michael lately?”

Jules shrugs, casual. “Every now and then. A phone call if he remembers the time difference. He sent me a letter last month.”

“Sentimental,” George says. “He’s truly found his medium.”

Jules chuckles, shaking her head. “It’s not like before.”

“Obviously,” George replies, quaffing his wine. “I earned best friend tenure.”

Jules laughs again. Is still laughing when she notices a familiar figure across the room: blonde hair caught under a silk scarf, coat draped over one arm, portfolio clutched in the other. Kimmy, standing with a small group at the door, shaking hands, murmuring polite goodbyes. She looks different—sleeker, sharper. Maybe she holds herself a little bit taller.

Jules stares, long enough that George tilts his head. “Well, well. The jello has migrated.”

“Shut up,” Jules mutters, already half-rising from her chair.

Kimmy spots her at the same moment, surprise flashing across her face before breaking into a smile—warm, certain, as though she’d been expecting Jules all along. “Jules?”

They meet halfway, squeezed between tables.

“I—hi,” Jules manages.

Kimmy tucks the portfolio under her arm. “What are the odds? I’ve just had a client dinner. I’m with Pei Cobb Freed now. Junior hire, but—it’s incredible. We’re working on a tower downtown.”

“That’s—wow.” Jules clears her throat. “So you’re living here?”

“Brooklyn. Little walk-up.”

George appears at Jules’ shoulder, perfectly timed. “Well, don’t you look luminous,” he says warmly. “Stay for dessert?”

Kimmy laughs, then looks back at Jules. Her eyes linger a fraction too long, blue and bright under the restaurant’s low lights. “Rain check—I’ve got an early start. But… maybe we could catch up? Coffee, sometime?”

Jules feels the air tighten. Kimmy’s gaze doesn’t waver, and Jules can feel George silently vibrating with glee beside her.

“Yeah,” Jules says, quieter than she means to. “I’d like that. Very much.”

Kimmy’s smile deepens—something knowing, not just polite—and her hand grazes Jules’s forearm briefly before she slips out into the New York night.

George fans himself with the menu. “Darling,” he murmurs, “your life really is just one long screwball comedy.”

Jules rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling.