Cocktail hour at the Cottage was always fun because it was like being at the epicenter of the party. You caught a glimpse into the lives of the couple and their friends as they rehashed the ceremony and took silly photos. The change of scenery also made the night go faster somehow.

“Aww, baby, maybe if you had your butt here on time. I already picked the new guy,” he said, motioning with his chin over to a tall, blond boy who appeared confused as to how to arrange the water goblets.

“New guy? Come on,” I said. “But I guess it’s not his skills you like.”

“Um, don’t go there, Baby Caswell. I’m not into jailbait,” he said. “You’ll just hafta sling those cocktail franks yourself tonight, darlin’.” He handed me the box with the rest of the engraved donation cards and summoned Clueless Blond Boy to follow him across the parking lot to the cottage.

By the time I’d finished setting out the favor cards, there were guests in the lobby waiting for cocktail hour. I closed the curtains on the glass doors to the ballroom so the big reveal would be more dramatic and made my way to the frenzied kitchen to pick up a serving tray for the first round of hors d’oeuvres. I waited and watched as others walked by with platters of mini quiches, fried ravioli, and shrimp-cocktail shooters, getting a sinking feeling about what I’d get stuck serving.

Chef Hank pushed a tray of cocktail franks toward me. I reluctantly grabbed it and made my way to the already bustling ballroom as the opening strains of the wedding band’s version of “Fever” echoed through the back room.

Little hot dogs were the bane of my existence. On my first day serving, when a guest asked what they were, I felt like saying, “Duh, are you blind?” but instead came out with “Tiny batter-wrapped kosher frankfurters with dipping sauce” in a formal voice that Eben never let me live down.

“The proper name is cocktail frank, but I like your style,” he told me, after he composed himself in the back room.

“I was just trying to make them sound . . . I don’t know, more impressive.”

“Call ’em whatever you want. They’re the height of tacky, but everyone gobbles them up faster than you can say, ‘Mustard with that?’”

Since then, whenever a guest asked that idiotic question, Eben and I made up some lavish-sounding name to make the lowly cocktail frank sound classy. The hot dog game was more fun when the two of us were working the same room. I was not in the mood.

When I ran the Camelot, they would be banished from the menu.

I put on my cheek-busting service smile and wandered into the crowd, offering the tray to anyone who looked interested. It wasn’t long before I ran into the other bane of my existence at work: the group of rowdy guys. They were the ones at a wedding who made obnoxious jokes, drank too much, and flirted with anything that had a pulse.

“The Weenie Girl!” bellowed a ruddy-faced man in a brown suit.

Rowdy guys who gave me a nickname: a special breed. At least I knew they wouldn’t ask me what I was serving.

“Not a party till the wieners come out!” someone else said as thick hands emptied the tray, leaving nothing behind but grease stains and crumbs on the paper doily. I went back to the kitchen, hoping to snag more trendy hors d’oeuvres like crab-cake sliders or raspberry Brie bites. Instead I watched helplessly as Chef Hank gave me more of my vile food nemesis.

“You really hate me, don’t you?”

He saluted and busied himself with the next server.

Back in the Lancelot, I took my time weaving through the crowd, ducking here and there and trying to avoid the Rowdies.

“Hey, Weenie Girl!”

People actually turned to look at me. I froze, embarrassed from the shouted nickname and the laughter it provoked. My face cramped from smiling. I walked slowly toward them, but all I wanted to do was throw the tray Frisbee-style across the room and let them deal with the fallout.

“Grayson, just the girl you’re looking for,” said the brown-suit man.

The person in question spun around and flashed a dazzling, white-toothed grin that made me want to fix my French knot. He was younger than the rest of them, with dark, jagged hair that fell into his eyes. I held up the cocktail franks to him, softening my smile and praying he wouldn’t ask any questions, since his appearance had completely short-circuited my brain.

“Sweet. Watch this,” he said, grabbing at least five dogs.

He tilted back his head, threw one of the hot dogs high in the air, and caught it in his mouth to the applause of the surrounding group. While chewing he kept his eyes on me, maybe wondering why I wasn’t cheering along with the rest of them. I should have left, but there was something about the way he oozed confidence while acting so asinine that fascinated me. He was a complete tool, but I bet no one ever accused him of being too quiet.

For his next trick, he threw two weenies in the air at once and successfully caught them in his mouth, to the delight of his rapt audience. This time, when he brought down his chin, he wasn’t grinning. The rest of the hot dogs fell from his hand, and he gestured frantically toward his neck.

No one in the group thought he was choking for real. The brown-suit man pounded his fist against a nearby table and chanted, “Gray. Gray. Gray.” Gray’s face blossomed into a bright shade of red, and drool spilled out of the corner of his mouth. My first thought was that if he would go to those lengths for a joke, he must be a real asshole. I was about to leave when I saw the animal-like panic in his eyes.

I dropped my tray and wrapped my arms around him from behind. The words fist, thumb in, right above the navel came out from the recesses of my brain, and I squeezed upward several times to no avail. Someone yelled for help. There was desperate movement around me, but I continued pushing my fist into Gray’s abdomen until I felt his body release. Just as the band finished playing “The Girl from Ipanema,” a gooey mass tumbled out of his mouth and landed with a splat on the cocktail table in front of him. Someone groaned. Gray gripped the table, head down, and coughed. Sound. A good sign. My arms fell from around his waist, and I stepped back.

His navy-blue jacket stretched taut across his back with each breath. Brown-suit guy put a glass of water in front of him, but Gray waved it off. He stood up straight and turned toward me, mouth dropped open like he had something to say.

His dark brown eyes held mine for a second. Open. Honest. Longing. As if the hot-dog-tossing tool was just some mask he’d put on for the party. A wave of recognition coursed through me. Did I know him? No. I’d never seen him before . . . but . . . I took a step toward him.

He blinked and lurched forward.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Then he hurled all over my black Reeboks.

TWO

GRAYSON

REGURGITATING ON SOMEONE’S SHOES IS NOT the best way to make a first impression.

Especially after that someone saved your life.

I wiped my mouth along the sleeve of my suit jacket, eyes zeroing in on her black sneakers and the puddle of upchuck around them. The noise of the room was smothered by the ba-bum, ba-bum of my heartbeat in my head—a jagged zigzag of pain. The Weenie Girl was a statue of calm shock, mouth slightly open, brows knit, as her eyes went from the pool of vomit on the floor to my face.

I was breathing, and it was a miracle.

“Grayson?”

Hands were on me. Voices urged me to sit. A chair slid underneath me, and I flopped down onto it. All the while my eyes remained on hers. She brushed some stray hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. The distance between us closed, and it was just . . . her. And me. Calm in the chaos. The hair tumbled across her face again. My fingers ached to sweep it away. I wanted to say something, but for once words wouldn’t come. Then Pop blocked her from view.

“Grayson, are you all right?”

They all thought I’d been joking. So, okay, pretending to choke would have been some smart-ass spectacle I might have pulled, but I doubt I could have been so convincing.

He clapped his hands in front of my face.

“What, Pop?” I croaked. His weathered brow creased as he tugged me to standing.

“You need some air,” he said, gripping my forearm. We knifed through the crowd made up of the extended Barrett family, always ready for a party. I craned my neck, searching over the sea of animated faces for the Weenie Girl, but she was gone.

Pop led me through glass doors into the dark lobby. The doors glided to a close, muffling the band’s campy rendition of “I Get a Kick out of You.” He took me to a quiet corner, right next to a shiny suit of armor, which was so out of the ordinary, it made the whole episode more surreal. My head throbbed.

“Grayson,” he said.

“Pop, I’m fff—” I began, but got distracted by the rise and fall of party noise as the doors to the ballroom opened again. Weenie Girl. But no, it was my stepmother, Tiffany, sauntering over holding a martini glass filled with bright blue liquid.

“What happened?”

“Nothing, I’m fine,” I said.

“It’s not nothin’,” Pop said. “He almost choked to death.”

She let out a high-pitched squeak and placed her martini glass on the stone mantelpiece.

“Grayson Matthew, are you okay?” she asked, one hand running through my hair, the other on my cheek, as she gave me a once-over. Tiff liked to use my middle name for emphasis when something significant happened. I’d heard it a lot in anger after I got tossed out of St. Gabe’s last spring. This soft version, almost a whisper, was something new, and I felt myself falling into it.