Free Borrow-A-Bridesmaid by Anne Wagener Page A

suddenly reticent, as if he’s left his chattiness in the midst of the reception hall noise. This is quiet Charlie, blowing-smoke-through-his-nostrils Charlie. This Charlie I can picture writing screenplays, huddled over his notebook at a coffee shop, one pen in his hand and one tucked behind his ear.
    We walk toward the historic house, a bed-and-breakfast where Susan and Brandon will spend their wedding night. Out of Beltway range, the quiet is delicious. The June night is warm with a soft breeze. A lone cicada hums us a song that swells and then subsides.
    I’m not sure what to say, afraid my clumsiness with words will get worse with the wine instead of better. I’m terrified last night was an anomaly. I couldn’t possibly swing two magical nights in a row. I need Lin’s smoothness, his confidence. Instead I have my aching feet, ridiculous hairdo, and fading stage makeup.
    When we reach the steps of the house, we sit, alternately inhaling smoke and night air.
    â€œI’ve decided that my next screenplay is going to be about a certain Peter Vandermoorten,” Charlie says. “I feel a burst of inspiration coming on.”
    I shake my head. “I hope I can write again one of these days. I used to stay up all night writing.” The feeling I had on those nights—that whisked-away-on-a-magic-carpet-of-my-own-imagination feeling—seems like it belongs to a past self, a different me. Not the me of airport bookstore stockrooms.
    Charlie looks at me like he’s picturing that girl, hunched over her notebook, scribbling furiously, dorm room lit only by a chain of paper lanterns. He lifts a finger to my lips. “You are writing. Starting tonight.” He fumbles in his suit jacket pocket and hands me a wedding favor from our table: a blue spiral-bound notebook with silver music notes dancing across each page. A delicate blue pen the size of my pinkie is tied across the front cover with a bit of sparkly ribbon.
    I press the notebook to my chest, a silent assent to his directive. Then I slip it into my purse and retrieve my wineglass.
    A few notes of music seep through the wood of the reception hall barn and float our way. It smells like autumn all of a sudden—a burnt wood smell that mixes in with our smoke. I shiver.
    Charlie crushes his cigarette with the polished toe of his dress shoe. He cocks his head to one side, then pulls my still-burning cigarette from between my fingers, slow, so that I’ve completely left my mind and am conscious only of the cigarette paper sliding between my index and middle fingers. He puts my cigarette out and extends his hand.
    When I take it, he pulls me off the step and into his arms. We slow-dance for a few minutes, the music barely audible over the pounding of my heart. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” fades into “It Had to Be You.”
    My cheek lolls against his shoulder. I let my eyes close, and when I open them, he’s looking at me: a pointed look, a hungry look. I meet his gaze for a moment that swirls between us like the smoke.
    We kiss.
    And kiss.
    Everything else—those hours in front of the register, riding trams, restless when I’m stationary and restless when I’m in transit—curls and burns away.
    The taste of him is salty, smoky: It sinks in below my lips, forming a sense memory.
    He pulls away, and I have to resist the urge to grab him by the lapels and drag him back to me. “How about that?” he asks, his voice huskier than I’ve heard it. “Can you get a poem from that?”
    I catch and release my breath. “Maybe a couplet.”
    â€œLet’s give you more material to work with, then.” He leans in again, traces the inside of my top lip with his tongue. I wrap my fingers around the back of his neck. Through the crack of my eyelids, I can see the last bit of our smoke dissolving into the night—and just past that, but also light-years away, the glow from the