Free Body Double by Alane Hudson

her confidence.”
    “If we’re going to be married, you have to start trusting me.” He winked at her with a secretive smile that made her insides flutter.
    Did that mean he was okay with the idea? Andrea licked her lips. She did not want to be the one to deliver this news, but Sarah had left her no choice. She leaned forward, and he leaned in to hear her. “Sarah’s gay.”
    He sat up straight. “What?” His brows hung low and those hazel eyes that had been so calm and kind a moment ago now darkened. The muscles in his jaw and neck bunched, and his face reddened. Was she about to see a repeat of whatever happened on Sunday?
    Andrea leaned back in her chair, ready to push away from the table if he exploded. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Sarah said she meant to, but time got away from her.”
    He leaned toward her again and said in a seething tone, “You’re telling me I’m engaged to marry a lesbian in four days?”
    With her lips pressed together in sympathy and understanding, Andrea nodded. “I’m really sorry.”
    Blake stood. “I need a minute. Would you excuse me?” He threw his napkin onto the table and stormed off toward the restrooms.
    Andrea had nothing but sympathy for him. How pissed would she have been to marry a man and find out he was gay? Sarah was wrong to withhold that information from him, and even more wrong to leave it up to Andrea, a stranger, to tell him. If he came back out and said he was canceling the wedding, she wouldn’t be surprised, nor would she blame him.
    But he didn’t. He came out about five minutes later looking more relaxed, almost resigned. He took his seat and laid the napkin back in his lap, taking undue care with it. “Sorry. I just needed to get my head around that.”
    “I understand,” she said, relieved and impressed with his ability to calm himself so quickly. “How long have you known her?”
    For a long moment, he sat quietly, elbows on the table and his head drooped between his forearms while his hands grasped fistfuls of his hair. At last, he looked up at Andrea with bloodshot eyes. “Four months. We’ve been engaged for three.”
    “And you never, ah, suspected?” Surely Sarah had given him some clues.
    He shook his head, hanging it in resignation. “In hindsight, yeah, I guess I can see it. She’s been kind and sweet but never intimate. Whenever she let me kiss her... Never mind. Suffice it to say, she has no passion for me. All this time, I thought she had a boyfriend she hadn’t broken up with yet and that once we were married, she would open up to me. Now I find out she thinks I’m an ogre.”
    “She doesn’t think that. Being a lesbian isn’t synonymous with being a misandrist.”
    “I know that, but my lesbian fiancée sent her double to pose as herself at our wedding and on our honeymoon, presumably so she won’t have to suffer the horror of making love with me, and I’m not supposed to take offense?”
    That was quite a leap for him to make, but given what Sarah had told her, not far from the truth. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you, but I sympathize. If you want to cancel the wedding, I’m sure she’ll understand.”
    “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I won’t cancel it. I can’t.”
    “Then if I could make a suggestion: try to work out some kind of compromise with Sarah when you both get back home.”
    “Compromise? Like we’ll only make love when she wants to? Or we’ll only cuddle if she can get past my grotesque male form?” He stabbed at a few lettuce leaves with his fork.
    “Not grotesque at all,” Andrea said to herself.
    Blake grimaced at her. “Glad to hear it.”
    She gasped. “Did I say that out loud?”
    “Yes, you did.”
    Warmth spread across her face. “I just meant homosexual women don’t necessarily find the male form grotesque, and a heterosexual woman certainly does not.”
    “And?” One dark eyebrow went up in a remarkable imitation of The Rock.
    “And what?”