First to Ask

Nobody warns you about the invisible guest spot at a wedding. You know the one I mean. You're not family, you're not in the wedding party, and you didn't bring a date, so you land in that weird middle zone where people smile at you exactly once and then scan the room for somebody more important.

I'm Sebastian, by the way. Thirty-seven, mechanic, never married, and before you ask, yes, I do fix my own car, no, I don't want to look at your check engine light at a wedding. That happens more than you'd think!

I'd come to this thing as the plus-one of a guy named Barrett, who I've known since trade school. Barrett bailed on me three days before the wedding. Something about a girl and a concert and a flight to Denver. So there I was, holding two invitations and no friend, and honestly the stubborn part of me said, go anyway, you already bought the tie.

So I went.

The reception was at this lodge on a lake, the kind of place with a barn converted into a dance hall and a veranda so wide you could park four trucks on it. Mismatched chairs everywhere, candles in jars, the whole rustic package. The uncle of the bride owned the place, some distant uncle named Lucas who mostly stood by the bar looking like a man counting the minutes until everyone left his property.

I knew maybe five people there, and Barrett was supposed to be the sixth. So I ate the chicken, I complimented the flowers to somebody's grandmother, and I watched the dance floor fill up with people who all seemed to know each other's middle names.

That's when I noticed her.

The bride's younger sister. I found out later her name was Tam, she was twenty-eight, and she did graphic design freelance from home, which meant she could stop a conversation cold with her views on fonts. She wore this green dress and she kept scanning the room the same way I was, like she was doing inventory and coming up short.

We caught each other looking maybe five times. Every time, I looked away first. Why? Because I've done this dance before, and at my age you learn that eye contact at a wedding is mostly a trap you set for yourself.

Here's the part that stings, though, and I'll say it plainly. Nobody at that reception looked at me twice. Not once. I was a body in a borrowed-looking suit next to the dessert table. And I know how that sounds, poor me, but it's a real feeling. You spend the whole night being furniture. You start wondering if you could leave and anyone would even notice the chair was gone.

So around ten I did what I always do when a room stops needing me. I found something to fix.

There was a railing on the veranda, out past the barn, one of those wide posts with a baluster that had worked itself loose. Somebody had put a wobbly cocktail on it earlier and the whole section had rocked like a bad table leg. I'd noticed it during dinner and it had been sitting in my head ever since, the way loose things do when you're me.

I found a small multitool in my car, because of course I had one, and I went out there. The lake was black and quiet, music thumping faint behind me. I got the baluster snug in about four minutes and I was tightening the last screw when I heard the door.

"You've been out here a while."

I turned and it was her. Green dress, arms crossed, standing about six feet away like she was deciding whether to come closer.

"Railing was loose," I said. "Somebody would've caught a dress on it."

"Somebody almost did. It was me, actually."

She came closer and nudged the baluster with one finger. It didn't move. "Huh. You fixed it."

"That's generally the goal, yeah."

She laughed at that, a real laugh, not a wedding laugh. "Okay, honest question. Are you avoiding me?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Are you avoiding me? Because I've caught you looking at me five times tonight, and every single time you do this," and she did an impression, turning her head away fast, shoulders up, "like I'm a cop asking for your license. So which is it? Am I scary, or are you just weird?"

"Wow, just come right out with it, huh?"

"I'm a direct person. It's a character flaw. My cousin Lindsey says I should charge money for it."

She leaned her hip against the railing, testing it, and it held. "So? Answer the question."

I put the multitool in my pocket and bought myself a second. "I'm not avoiding you. I'm avoiding everyone. There's a difference."

"Everyone," she repeated. "Including me specifically, though."

"Okay, yes, including you specifically. You caught me. Four times, was it?"

"Five. You missed one while the cake came out."

"That doesn't count, everyone looked at the cake."

"It counts! You looked at me, then the cake, then me again. That's a two-look play. Very inefficient."

I had to laugh at that. She grinned like she'd won something, and the thing was, she had. Nobody had called me out on anything in months. Barrett would've just said hey man and moved on. This woman was standing on a dark veranda interrogating me about eye contact like it was a deposition, and I was enjoying it.

"I'm Tam, by the way," she said. "In case you were avoiding me without knowing my name."

"Sebastian."

"That's a very formal name for a man with a multitool in his pocket."

"It's a very formal multitool."

She laughed again. God, that laugh. "So what's your deal, Sebastian? Lindsey says you're here with someone, some friend of the groom's side? But I haven't seen him all night."

"Barrett. Yeah. He bailed three days out. Some girl, some concert, a flight to Denver. I got the whole story over one very sad phone call." I shrugged. "I already had the tie. Seemed wasteful not to use it."

"You came to a wedding alone where you barely know anyone?"

"Yep."

"On purpose?"

"Well, not on purpose at first. But I showed up, so at some point it became on purpose." I looked out at the water. "Look, I'll be honest with you, since you're the honest-question type. I figured I'd eat, fix that railing, and leave by eleven. Nobody here knows me. Nobody's going to notice."

Tam was quiet a second. Then she said, "I would've noticed."

"Would you have?"

"I noticed the railing was fixed, didn't I? I noticed a guy out here with a multitool instead of a drink. I notice things, it's my whole job."

She turned so her back was against the railing, facing me, face half lit by the light through the barn door. "You want to know why I asked if you were avoiding me?"

"I assumed it was the five looks."

"That's part of it. The other part is I've spent six hours being complimented on my dress by people who then ask what I do for work and stop listening at the word freelance. And you're the first person tonight who hasn't done that. Because you've been too busy being furniture by the dessert table."

She smiled, and it was softer than the grin. "So which of us is the invisible one, huh?"

"That's a tie, I think."

"Ties can be broken." She tilted her head toward the barn, where the music had shifted to something slow. "You dance?"

"Badly."

"Perfect. Everyone dances badly, the trick is admitting it first."

She pushed off the railing and stood there, hand out, waiting. "Well? Are you going to make me ask twice? Because I told you, I'm direct, but I do have a daily limit."

I looked at her hand. Then at the door, where the light spilled out and the whole loud warm room was waiting.

"You sure you want the furniture guy?" I asked.

"Sebastian. Take my hand before I change my mind and go compliment someone's dress."

I took her hand. Her fingers were cold from the night air and she held on like she meant it, and we walked in out of the dark together, and I remember thinking, huh, so this is what it feels like when somebody looks at you twice.

We danced one song, badly, both of us admitting it right up front like she'd ordered. She stepped on my foot twice and blamed my shoes. Fair, they were my good shoes, which are still not good shoes.

Then a hand landed on her shoulder.

"There you are!"

Lindsey. I recognized her from the toasts, loud cousin, taller than Tam, holding a glass of wine like it was a microphone. "I've been looking everywhere. Lucas wants somebody to sign for the cake delivery tomorrow and I am not doing paperwork at a party."

"Then don't?" Tam said.

"It's your sister's wedding, you do it." Then Lindsey actually looked at me. Up, down, up again. "Oh. You're the railing guy!"

"Word travels."

"Lindsey," Tam said, in a voice that had a warning in it.

"I'm just making conversation." But she was already tugging Tam's elbow. "Come on, two minutes, bathroom, girl stuff."

Tam looked at me and rolled her eyes so hard I thought they'd stick. "Hold that thought," she said. "Literally stand right there. Don't be furniture somewhere else."

So I stood there, next to the dessert table, holding my own thought like an idiot, and watched them go. The barn was heating up again, some song with a horn section, and Lucas was by the bar telling a story with both hands.

They were gone maybe six minutes. Long enough for me to count the exits, which is a mechanic habit, you always know where the doors are. Then they came back, and I could tell from thirty feet that something had happened, because Tam had her shoulders up and her jaw set and Lindsey was walking a half step behind her like a chaperone who'd lost the argument.

Tam walked straight to me. "Okay. So. Funny story."

"Oh no."

"Nothing bad. Just, Lindsey had Opinions."

She said it capital O and I got it immediately. "She wanted to inform me that you're, and I quote, nobody. As in, 'Tam, sweetie, he's nobody, he fixes things for a living and he came to a wedding alone.'"

"She said that to your face?"

"She said it in the bathroom, which is apparently where face-to-face happens now."

Tam crossed her arms. "I asked her what exactly made you nobody and she said, get this, 'he's a mechanic, honey.' Like that's a disease."

Lindsey had appeared behind her. Of course she had. She still had the wine microphone. "What do you do?" she asked me. "I'm not being rude, I'm being curious."

"Mechanic. Own shop, two bays, four years now."

"See? Tam. Honey."

"Lindsey, he fixed a railing in ten minutes with a multitool. That's the opposite of nobody. That's a guy who's useful at parties."

"That's a guy who's useful at parties," Lindsey agreed, "and then never calls."

I laughed before I could stop it, and Lindsey pointed the glass at me. "He laughed. He knows I'm right. Look, I'm not saying he's bad. I'm saying nobody. As in you'll have a nice night and Monday he's a story."

"Or," Tam said, "you're projecting, because Vic the musician also played you a song on a rooftop once and you've never recovered."

That landed. Lindsey's mouth opened, closed, opened. "That was uncalled for."

"So is 'nobody.'" Tam grabbed my sleeve. "We're going to look at Lucas's game room. For reasons. Come find me when you want to apologize, Lindsey."

And she pulled me out of the barn, through the dining room with the mismatched chairs, past a hallway with family photos, into a side room that had clearly been a game room before the wedding got its hands on it. A pool table pushed against the wall to make room for a coat rack. A dartboard with no darts. A couch the color of mustard. Somebody's speaker in the corner playing the party at about a quarter volume, so it sounded like the party was underwater.

"Okay," she said, letting go of my sleeve. "Sorry about that. She's protective since, well, since a guy. There's always a guy with her."

"You don't have to apologize for her."

"I know. I wanted to get away from the horn section."

She sat on the arm of the mustard couch like it was a throne. "Also I did want to see the game room. There's a pool table, Sebastian. I'm very good at pool."

"Is that true or is that a direct person thing to say?"

"It's true. Freelance means I get out maybe twice a month and two of those are league night. What about you?"

"Pool? Fine. Bar pool. I'm not going to impress you."

"Everything about you so far has been unimpressive and I keep wanting more, so that's not the insult you think it is." She patted the couch next to her, and I sat, and the couch made a sound like it disapproved.

For a while we just sat there, listening to the underwater party. I could see the lake through a small window, black with a few lights floating on it from the dock.

"Can I ask you something direct?" she said.

"I feel like you're going to anyway."

"Why were you going to leave at eleven? Really. Nobody's going to notice. That's a weird thing to have planned."

I turned the multitool over in my pocket, which is what I do instead of fidgeting. "Because I've been to a lot of things where I'm the extra. Barrett's plus-one, somebody's cousin's boyfriend, the guy who fixed the thing. You go, you're