Page 15 of In Love With Mr. Wrong

She zooms in. “That is definitely a conga line, and, wait, am I leading it?”

I bite back a laugh. “You look like the tequila took over your entire soul.”

She groans. “This is not how I imagined my wedding.”

“You imagined it?”

She glares. “Don’t push your luck.”

We keep walking. There’s a new kind of silence between us, not tense, not distant. Just… lived-in. Our steps sync without thinking, and the smell of pine needles and woodsmoke filters through the trees. Birds flit above us. The world is so quiet out here, it makes everything loud inside.

“I still can’t believe we got married by a man in an Elvis jumpsuit who also offered to bless our WiFi,” she mutters.

“To be fair,” I reply, “he had really great posture. I respect that.”

Margot lets out a laugh and it hits me harder than it should. She laughs like the world’s still worth it.

“We are the weirdest almost-couple in the history of love stories,” she says.

“We’re not an almost-couple,” I say. “We’re married.”

“That’s even worse,” she adds.

“You’re smiling again.”

She tries to hide it, but I see it. And I think she knows I do. Back at the cabin, I make peppermint tea and grab the trail mix we both pretend to like. When I hand her a mug, she gives me a look that says she’s still processing everything, and probably ranking my snacks as part of her mental to-do list.

She asks quietly, “Do we tell people?”

“Eventually, or we let them find out in the company newsletter.”

“You’re a menace.”

“You like me anyway.”

“Jury’s out.”

She opens her laptop again but doesn’t do much with it. Just stares at the photo. I recognize that look. It’s the same one she had the day we launched the algorithm. Overwhelmed. A little scared. But determined.

“Do you think it means something?” she asks. “That we did it without realizing?”

I close my eyes and lean back. “Sometimes the things that make the least sense are the ones that matter most.”

She asks if I remember what we said to each other that night. I tell her about her lecture to the bartender and how she kissed me like it was the only language she knew. She nearly drops the laptop. I grin. I remember that part vividly. She stretches her legs across my lap, the laptop forgotten. I tease her about the vows. She threatens me about video footage, and then she laughs again, this time quieter. Realer.

A little later, I pretend to sleep while she sits at the kitchen table, her tea untouched, staring out the window. Eventually, I sit up, rubbing the back of my neck. "You’re not fooling anyone, Evans. What are you thinking about?"

She hesitates, then exhales through her nose. "I was thinking… what would it have looked like if we’d done it for real? If it wasn’t Vegas and neon and tequila-fueled karaoke."

I lean against the doorframe, watching her carefully.

She stares at her mug. "I think I’d want something on the coast. Somewhere quiet. Maine, maybe. A little fog. A lot of wind. A simple dress. Olivia crying, Priya pretending not to. And you…”

She stops, eyes flicking up to mine.

I step closer. "Me what?"

She smiles faintly. "You’d be in that navy suit again. Looking annoyingly good. Hair a little messy. Tie abandoned before dessert. You’d kiss me like we wrote the ceremony in code."

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