The Scenic Route Read Free Page B

a great place to meet someone. But only in theory. In reality, after turning thirty, attending a wedding without a spouse had become a form of public flogging.
    Gone were the days of receptions teeming with unattached young professionals boisterously engaged in high-octane flirting. Instead, the solitary “singles” table was often populated by teenage relatives of the bridal couple and stray socially challenged misfits.
    Desirable and age-appropriate single women were scarce, and Austin had grown accustomed to married women treating him with a mixture of curiosity and pity. They would interrogate him about hisdating history. Then they would offer to fix him up with an obese cousin with a lazy eye. Or worse, they wouldn’t.
    Austin slapped some of the complimentary Crystal Cove Resort mango-lime shower gel over his torso and under his arms. He poured some more onto his cotton shirt, which he had carried with him into the travertine shower stall, churning the fabric through the flowing water the way he imagined people had done for millennia—in rain showers that weren’t trademarked.
    He let the water continue to cascade over his shoulders for a precious additional minute as he wrung out the garment. Then he reluctantly turned off the tap and wrapped himself in an oversized, plush white towel before exiting the shower.
    As he grabbed hold of the hotel’s wall-mounted hair dryer, he felt like he was forgetting something. It was a feeling he’d been having a lot recently. Maybe “forgetting” was the wrong word. It was more like he’d misplaced something. Something other than his luggage. Something was missing. Or there was something he had missed. He thought it might have to do with work and worried he had missed signs of diabetic retinopathy when he’d diagnosed Myrna Resnick with glaucoma. Or maybe her husband’s floaters were a symptom of a missed ocular melanoma.
    But maybe it had nothing to do with work. Maybe it was something more intangible. Something he had missed out on. He was too young to feel that way. But then again he had felt like a middle-aged man since he was ten years old. “The little man of the house,” his mother used to call him, and “my little soldier.” She used to compliment him on how well he took care of her and his sister. As if it were something he chose to do. As if he wouldn’t have preferred playing Super Mario to packing his sister’s lunch box or organizing his mother’s meds.
    Austin was gripping the dryer like a gunslinger as he alternated between aiming it at his head and at his shirt. With ten minutes untilthe ceremony started, the shirt was still drenched. He double-checked to make sure the dryer was on its highest setting, swinging it back and forth over the stubbornly damp material. So much for his attempted ingenuity. If he hadn’t already been dreading the evening, the prospect of spending it in wet clothing would have definitely done the trick.
    He was starting to resent everything about this forced vacation. Okay, “forced” also wasn’t the right word, but the transcontinental trip definitely felt less than voluntary. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Stu get married. He just wished there was a way to do so without being physically present at a wedding. But there wasn’t, which was why he had never seriously considered any other option. Going to the wedding was the right thing to do, and Austin always did the right thing. Even if it often turned out wrong.

    â€œExcuse me, sir,” the bartender said, “this is a private event.”
    Austin was loitering in the back corner of the open-air ballroom. No, not loitering. Unobtrusively observing. But it was hard to be unobtrusive in a red plaid shirt. Let alone a soggy one.
    â€œSir?” the bartender repeated.
    The other advantage to Austin’s location was that it was next to the bar, and he had just downed his