Page 108 of Drunk on Love

The next few hours flew by, with setup and extra staff arriving and the food vendors making last-minute calls to her with questions and more RSVPs coming in every time she looked at her phone.

Margot looked around the lawn. The pizza guy was here and setting up, Sydney and Charlie were at the table for the Barrel, and the taco women were at their station. But where was the guy with the tiny cheeseburgers?

She pulled her phone out of her pocket. Missed call, from an unfamiliar number. She checked her voice mail. And then she took a long, deep breath.

She went to find Taylor.

“Hey—the burger guy isn’t coming. His power went out last night, all of the meat spoiled. Let’s take down his table and put some seating for guests over there, before anyone gets here.”

“Okay,” Taylor said. “Want me to fix the menus and print new ones out?”

This was why she adored Taylor—she never panicked about anything.

“Thank you, that would be fantastic.”

When Taylor came back, Margot took the stack of menus from her and set them in the barn.

“Hey. Can you hold down the fort for like”—she looked at her watch—“ten minutes? I have to change and put some makeup on.”

Taylor waved her away.

“Make it fifteen. I’ve got this.”

Margot glared at Taylor.

“Are you saying that I look so bad right now that ten minutes isn’t enough to fix this?”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, okay?” Taylor grinned at her. “Go.”

Margot went.

She jumped into the tiny shower in the winery bathroom, showered faster than she ever had, and pulled on the red sundress she’d bought just for the party. She’d almost worn black—it made more sense for a day when she’d probably be moving stuff around and spilling things everywhere. But she knew that people would be pointing her out all day from a distance—at least, if all went well they would—and so she decided to take a lesson from Queen Elizabeth and wear a color that made her easy to spot in a crowd.

She laughed at herself. Was she literally thinking of herself as a queen? No, but look, despite the many problems of the monarchy, the woman had some good ideas, okay? Plus, that would be a good fantasy, if today went poorly—she could just pretend she was on some royal holiday somewhere.

No, she couldn’t think like that. Today wasn’t going to go poorly. Today was going to be great.

However, today was also going to be far too hot and frantic for a lot of makeup. She swiped on a few coats of waterproof mascara, put her longest-wearing red lipstick on, and called it a day. She put the final touches on her hair, sprayed it with an enormous amount of hairspray, and checked her phone. Twelve minutes. Not bad. That meant people would start arriving... any minute now.

She smiled at herself in the mirror to make sure there was no lipstick on her teeth, and then she took a deep breath. It was showtime.

When she walked back out toward the lawn, the first personshe saw, walking toward her with a huge smile on his face, was Luke.

“You’re here early!” she said. “I didn’t expect you here until later.” She wanted to reach for him, but she didn’t. Not here. She and Luke had been together for almost a month now, and she was going to have to tell Elliot about it sometime, but she didn’t want him to find out like this. Not today especially.

He beamed at her, but he didn’t reach for her, either.

“Avery called to see if she could get a ride here, since her car was in the shop, and we thought it would be best to get here early, to get parking.”

It wasn’t until then that she noticed Avery was with him. Margot smiled at her.

“Hi, Avery,” she said. “Thanks so much for all of your advice for the party. You’re on the list, you know. This is on me.”

“Thanks, Margot, but it was my pleasure,” Avery said. “I can’t wait to see what you put together.” Then Avery looked from her to Luke, and smiled indulgently at them. “You two are so cute.”

Margot blushed. Luke grinned.

“I... um—”

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