The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

            “Who’s Ben?” he asked, fully knowing it was Hallie’s ex.

            “Who’s Ben?” Chuck lowered his eyebrows and said, “Ben Marks, her ex . . . ?”

            “Oh, that guy.” Jack raised the cigar to his mouth and looked over at the man in question, who was talking to Hallie’s dad. He looked like the kind of guy who enjoyed talking about what he smelled in his wine. “I don’t know much about him.”

            “I’ll give you the dirt, but you never heard this from me, okay?”

            Jack gave a nod.

            “Hallie and Ben dated for a few years and were living together.”

            Holy shit. “Years?”

            Chuck nodded. “He’s this wannabe sophisticate, passive-aggressive asshole who made her feel like shit about herself. Convinced her to do things like play tennis and buy a Volvo.”

            “A fucking Volvo?”

            “Yes. Shit. I hate that guy and also Volvos.” Chuck leaned back in his patio chair and looked up at the dark sky. “It seemed like he made her feel like her Hallie-ness was embarrassing or something—I’m paraphrasing, by the way. This is my analysis after seeing them together for years.”

            Jack fucking hated that guy.

            Didn’t really mind Volvos, though, he thought as he took a long drink of whiskey.

            “One day, out of the blue, Ben came home and told Hallie that he’d had an epiphany. He realized that he was in love with the idea of her—what he thought she could be—but not actually her.”

            Jack lowered his glass. “What the fuck does that even mean?”

            “That he didn’t love her. That he loved what he wanted her to be but she never, like, got there for him.”

            “Shit.” Jack pictured Hallie crying after Alex broke things off and felt like an even bigger asshole for causing that. She might not have had deep romantic feelings for him, but she didn’t need another guy to make her feel like she was less than.

            Because she was fucking everything.

            “Between you and me,” Chuck said, leaning a little closer and lowering his voice, “I disconnected Ben’s car battery like three times after that, just to fuck with him and make him late for work.”

            “That is awesomely psychotic,” Jack said with a laugh, puffing on his cigar and looking at the asshole Hallie used to love. “I think I really like you, Chuck.”

            “You know that fucker had no idea what was wrong when it wouldn’t even turn over,” Chuck said, chuckling.

            The conversation soon turned to Volvos. Chuck was clearly a car guy—and a Volvo hater—and saw something in Jack that made him think they were of a like mind. Jack just listened, enjoying the cigar and trying to imagine not finding Hallie to be enough. He couldn’t.

            “Hey, jackasses.” She came out of nowhere in the darkness, just walking across the grass, and Jack found it a little hard to breathe. Hallie was still wearing the white dress, but her curls had come undone, leaving her hair a little wild and wavy, and she was no longer wearing any jewelry. Her smile was big and her eyes were twinkling and her high heels were dangling from her fingers.

            “I’m telling, you scandalous piece of shit,” Chuck teased.

            “Shhhh,” she said, glancing toward the rest of the groomsmen, who had now switched to playing cards. “I ran all the way around the building and had to climb that fence.”

            Jack was looking at the fence she’d pointed to when she snatched the cigar from between his fingers and sat down on the ground between his and Chuck’s chairs. She looked up at him, her head leaning back in a way that exposed the entirety of her graceful throat, and she said, “You don’t mind, do you?”

            He watched her take a puff and thought it was on-brand for Hal that she looked completely natural smoking a cigar.

            “You know, you’re going to ruin the back of your dress, sitting on the cement like that,” Jack said.

            “I already got chocolate all over the ruffle—see?” She moved the ruffle, which appeared to be affixed in place with silver duct tape, and he saw that its underside was splattered with a big, brown stain.