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Maka really, really hated weddings.
There were a lot of things to dislike. The dress she’d been forced to wear, for example, which was uncomfortable and ill-fitting and still somewhat wrinkled from sitting in the back of her closet for who knows how long. Or the music, which was almost always awful and absolutely always too loud. The old ladies whose names she couldn’t remember approaching her and asking how long until she settled down and found a man and had a couple kids.
The prospect of losing her best friend and roommate, the sweetest, most stunning girl she’d ever known, to an idiot like BlackStar.
But she was Tsubaki’s maid of honor. She was the only one who could keep Kid from running around and frantically trying to making the venue symmetrical. She was the only one who kept an eye on the guest list and the caterers, double-checked with the company that hand-made the bride’s maid’s dresses, ensured everything was in place for the big day.
If she missed it, Tsubaki would murder her. Brutally.
So instead of sitting at home in her footie pajamas, reading her newest novel and sipping hot chocolate, she was slumped at a table in the center of an enormous tent, blinded by a strobe light across the dance floor, while the baseline of a pop song she’d never heard reverberated in her chest.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was starting to look like she was the only single one here.
A couple chairs away, Liz Thompson was making out with an enormously tall guy Maka didn’t recognize. Harvar and Ox had disappeared half an hour before to join the throng on the dance floor. She could see Tsubaki and BlackStar every once and awhile, when the tide of other dancers shifted just right. Tsubaki was laughing, and BlackStar was attempting to breakdance.
Maka really, really hated weddings.
Maybe if she left now, nobody would notice. She could just sneak out the back for a little while, come back in when the party was winding down. She had a book in her bag; maybe she could just hole up in one of the bathroom stalls, and—
A plate topped with an enormous slice of opulent wedding cake was dropped, almost roughly, in front of her. She jumped and looked up; a guy was standing over her and holding out a fork. When she stared at him, he waved it around a little and said, “If you want to eat it with your hands, I won’t stop you, but at least grab some napkins.”
Maka took the fork hesitantly. “Um. Thanks. Do I—?”
“Know me? No.” The guy sat down in the seat next to her and leaned back on the chair’s two rear legs. “But you’ve been staring at this table like you want to set fire to it and I thought I would offer my assistance.”
He was exceptionally good-looking, Maka realized. Deeply tanned skin, a mop of artfully messy white hair, and startling, almost ruby red eyes. His suit was jet black, a violently crimson button-up underneath with the top few buttons undone. He wore his tie loose, like he was regretting putting it on in the first place.
“You must be a friend of BlackStar’s, then,” Maka said, taking a bite of the cake.
He winced. “I’m trying not to be offended by that.”
“No, no, I just meant… I’m Tsubaki’s best friend. If she’d invited you, I’d have remembered.”
“Soul Evans.” He stuck his hand out and grinned. He had a dangerous sort of smile, the kind somebody wears when they’re about to detonate a stink bomb or drop a live snake down your shirt. His teeth were also weirdly pointy.
(Maka definitely did not think about what they would feel like at her neck. Nope, nope, nope. That would be highly inappropriate.)
“Maka Albarn,” she said, taking his hand and shaking.
“Good to meet you, Maka. So, you gonna tell me what this table did to personally insult you? If we’re really gonna torch it, I should know why.”
She rolled her eyes and took another, aggressive bite of cake. “Weddings are stupid,” she mumbled around the food, and braced for him to laugh at her.
Instead Soul said, “Tell me about it. You see that lady over there?” He pointed, and Maka leaned toward him to try and follow his gesture. She could smell his cologne, something warm and a little musky. “She’s asked me when I’m gonna get myself a girlfriend three times already. I’ve never even met the woman before tonight.”
Maka sat up a little, and narrowed her eyes at him. He didn’t look like he was messing with her. “They do that to you, too?”
He nodded. “And don’t even get me started on my parents. They think since BlackStar’s ‘settling down’ and ‘maturing’ I’m the late bloomer. You know what that blue-haired idiot did the last time he was at my house? He climbed onto the roof stark-ass naked and started screaming about how he was going to defeat God.”
She snorted. “I’m not surprised. He challenged Tsubaki’s father to a fight the first time they met.”
Soul’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you serious? For fuck’s sake, I thought he was joking.”
“BlackStar doesn’t joke,” she said.
“Legendary,” he marveled. She watched as he leaned forward to grab her fork and take a bite of her cake, and tried desperately not to think indirect kiss, because she was an adult, goddamn it, not some blushing schoolgirl. “How does Tsubaki put up with him?”
“No idea.” Maka shook her head and looked back out at the dance floor. The song was slower now, and most of the couples had changed their rhythm to match. BlackStar, however, was still doing something that looked like a mixture of the chicken dance and krumping. “When he asked her out the first time, I thought for sure she was going to turn him down. But she’s so goddamn nice. She was all, ‘I need to give him a chance, Maka,’ and, ‘What if he turns out to be a good guy,’ and look where we are now – oh, for God’s sake.”
This was in response to an outburst on the other side of the tent, where it looked like Dr. Stein, Maka and Tsubaki’s favorite professor from Shibusen University, had attempted to get a sample of one of the other guests’ DNA.
“Stay away from me, you freak! I’m going to call the cops!”
“Hey, hang on, it’ll be mostly painless – come on – it’s for science—!”
“Can’t Marie control him?” Maka groaned.
“Is that Franken Stein?” Soul asked. “BlackStar said he was some kind of genius.” This, while a punch bowl was upended over Stein’s head. “I… didn’t quite picture him like that.”
“He’s definitely a genius,” she affirmed. “But he’s also absolutely out of his mind. He brought a live goose in for us to dissect once.”
“He was your biology professor?”
“Nope. I had him for History of Science.”
Soul burst out laughing, and Maka decided that she liked it when he laughed. A lot. Probably more than she should.
She was too smart for this. Too smart to get flushed and blushy and nervous in front of one of BlackStar’s friends. Too smart to get roped into some weird fling at her best friend’s wedding. Too smart to crush on a guy at all, because men were gross, and Maka knew it. She’d always known it.
And yet. And yet.
“I don’t think there is a single sane person here,” Maka observed grimly. “Also, the cake is gone.”
“That,” Soul said, “is a travesty, and completely unacceptable. I’m getting more.”
He got up and she watched him walk away, and there was something twisting in her stomach, something she couldn’t explain and wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Maka really, really hated weddings. She really, really hated dresses and music and pushy old ladies. But she liked Soul Evans, and suddenly, the party didn’t seem half-bad.