Page 72 of Take Me to the Wedding

Sam was back at work too, her rashy misery improved enough to reenter society, at least with a decent application of makeup. A good thing, too, because Ani and Tyler’s wedding was coming right up this Saturday, and we were planning on leaving tomorrow after work.

At the end of each day, we’d gotten into the habit of eating dinner together. Told each other about our days. Hung out. Sometimes we read, studying up on cases, flipping through journals, and preparing for weekly academic conferences in our programs.

Our evenings together were the highlight of my day. That and rubbing cortisone on Sam’s back, but her rash was looking better and better. Looking forward to seeing her made me focus less on the misery of hobbling around on my broken foot and more on what was to come between us. It was an understatement to say that I wasreallylooking forward to the weekend.

Every single night for the past week and a half, I’d asked her out. She’d laughed each time and said,When I don’t look like Frankenstein.

I couldn’t wait to go on a real date. I couldn’t wait to kiss her again—at a time when I wasn’t a minute away from being transported to the hospital. And I couldn’t wait to spend time with her when we weren’t debilitated from our injuries and acting like two nonagenarians on the couch holding hands. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but we were thirty-two, not ninety-two.

With those thoughts in mind, I took the stairs face-forward, my book bag hiked onto my back, then trekked down the hall to my door. Just ahead of me, there was a dark lump. Specifically, a lump in the shape of a tall, skinny girl propped up against Sam’s door, scrolling her phone.

She resembled Sam in some familiar ways—she had Sam’s thick hair, but hers was brown and wavy, not as dark, and she wore it piled up in some kind of bun thing on her head. She wore an oversized UW sweatshirt and leggings. Whereas Sam was curvy, this young woman was long and thin as a reed. But when she looked up at me, she had the same soulful brown eyes, the same arched brows, the same even skin tone.

“You waiting for Sam?” I asked.

I immediately noticed that her eyes were red. She wore no makeup, and she looked like she’d been crying. Her lips were dry. And she bit her lower lip in the same way that Sam tended to do when she was worried.

“Are you her neighbor?” the girl asked.

“Caleb,” I said, cranking my thumb behind me to indicate my door. “Are you Wynn?”

She gave me a frown so like her sister’s that I almost laughed. Great. Another skeptic. “I’m Mia’s brother.” That was a good lead-in, I thought, to establish trust right away.

“Hi,” she said in a flat tone, not offering a smile or a hand or… anything. “Is it okay if I wait here for her?”

“Yeah, sure.” I thought longingly about my giant DoorDash order, the game about to start, my evening of lying down with my foot up in the air. “She won’t be back tonight until around eight. Want to come in? I was about to order some food.”

She hesitated. Shifted the navy duffel at her side. Judging by the look on her face, her lack of put-togetherness, and what might’ve been a hasty flight, I guessed that this was some kind of crisis.

“Does Sam know you’re here?”

She shook her head—half a shake, the barest kind. Which I took to meanNo. Absolutely not.

“If you text her,” I said cordially, “tell her that I’m ordering some dinner, and she can join us when she’s finished with work.”

That was met with more silence. When she spoke, it was with great patience. “I’m not going to text her because it will upset her that I’m here. Then she won’t be able to concentrate at work, and her patients will suffer or die or something. And then she’ll call me and bombard me with questions that I don’t want to answer right now.”

Okaay. I rubbed my neck. I hadn’t dealt with a teenage girl since… well, since I was a teenage guy. I had no GPS here. She was upset and wanting Sam but not wanting to call her to upset her. “Well, how about this. I’m ordering some food, and you can come in and eat it or bring some out here while you wait.”

Another way she seemed like a carbon copy of Sam—clearly needing her but deciding to stick it out. What was with these Bashar sisters, not possessing the genes that enabled them to ask for help?

She looked up at me with reluctance. But just then her stomach growled about as loudly as a car revving it up on the street. “I don’t know you, and I’m not going inside your apartment. I’ll wait here, thanks.”

Like sister, like sister, I thought, forcing back a smile. “All righty then.” I unlocked my door and left her in the hall.

A half hour later, when I went out to collect the delivered food, she was fast asleep, her head leaning against the doorjamb.

I waved a bag of Thai food under her nose. “Hey, Wynifred,” I said.

She cracked open an eye. I saw evidence of tear streaks on her cheeks. Uh-oh. I thought about calling Sam ASAP but decided to try and get more info.

“I’ve got egg rolls, pad thai, vegetable curry, and rice.” I pulled out my phone and showed her the selfie of Sam and me from that morning at the farm, smiling into the camera, the sun peeking up from the rail fence behind us.

Sam’s beauty was fully captured in that moment. She’d humored me, but she’d given the camera a wide, full smile. I confess I looked at it often, setting it as my phone screen saver.

“See?” I said. “Friends. We’re in the same wedding together this weekend. And we work together at the hospital.”

“Are you the annoying one?”

---