Always a Bridesmaid

by Lizzie Shane

  “How’d that go?”

  “He wants me to run Titacorp.”

  Parv blinked, thrown by the non sequitur. “What?”

  “His company. Titacorp.”

  “I know what it is.”

  “Apparently his new wife has convinced him that his relationships with his children are broken and she doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her kid, so she’s insisting he retire—or at least cut back. She wants to patch up his relationship with me by bringing me on as his successor. And apparently she’s also the reason he’s been such a dick to Sidney. She encouraged him to be more ‘parental’ toward her—which he translated as going after her fiancé with a metaphorical shotgun. And he’s insisting Sidney invite her to the wedding because she wants us all to be one happy family. Not sure how she sees my mother fitting into that picture.” Max frowned at a broken belt as if it had personally offended him by cracking. “I’m not sure if she has him totally whipped or if I just never had the first idea who he was. Maybe both. I thought they’d have to pry his business from his cold dead hands. Queen Elizabeth seems less attached to the throne of England than he is to Titacorp.”

  “Do you want it?”

  His chin jerked. “It never seemed like a possibility. The idea of wanting Titacorp is so foreign I can’t even process it.”

  Which wasn’t a no. And Titacorp was headquartered in Switzerland. Thousands of miles away.

  “You already have a business,” she reminded him.

  “I know. That’s what I told him.” Max paused to study a hat, a slight grin tipping his lips before he tossed it onto the bed with the other items she assumed were part of the keeper pile. “He said he knows someone who has been wanting to buy out Elite Protection for a while. Some British company that specializes in political sector close protection in Europe and wants to expand into the celebrity side of things as well as the U.S. market. It could be a smart move. Always good to sell while you’re hot. When you need to sell is when you’re gonna get screwed.”

  “Why do you have to sell at all?”

  He didn’t answer, frowning at a perfectly good shirt and chucking it onto the trash pile with a grunt.

  “Max?” He was obviously intrigued by the idea of selling Elite Protection—far too intrigued for Parvati’s comfort. Had he even thought of her once as he wrestled with the decision? “Are you going to take over Titacorp?”

  “No. The one thing I know is that I don’t want to be my father. And as nice as the idea of being one big happy family is to my step-mother—who’s younger than me, by the way—I don’t live my life trying to make him proud anymore.”

  It sounded like he was lying to himself, but Parv kept her opinion to herself. “What are you going to do?”

  “Just because I sell Elite Protection doesn’t mean I have to work for him. I could just get away. There’s nothing like the perspective you get when you’re traveling. You never know yourself better than when you’re outside your comfort zone. It’s tempting. To just take off. Hit the reset button.”

  She didn’t want the reset button. She liked where they were—but if she was the only one in this relationship who liked it, that wasn’t worth much. It was obvious he wasn’t taking her into account, which really drove home the fact that they weren’t a couple, no matter what they called themselves. He had one foot out the door—on a plane to Thailand.

  “I’m always judged by him,” Max said, his focus far away—and on the items he was sorting. “No one would have paid attention to the sale of my first business or really cared much about Elite Protection if not for who my father is. Forbes wouldn’t have given a shit about me if not for my father, but Titus Dewitt’s son gets a feature. And all anyone ever wants to say is how alike we are. How I’m a chip off the old block. But I never wanted that. I never wanted to be him—and here I keep turning into him anyway. All work. No balance.”

  “You’re nothing like your father. You’ve built a family at Elite Protection—it’s more than just a business.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “For once it would be nice to be my own man, but I’m never going to escape the connection. Not unless I change my name and move to Guam.”

  “So you’re going to Guam?”

  He looked at her, finally seeming to see how his words were hitting her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But you want to.”

  “Part of me is always going to want to, Parvati. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”

  But he wanted it. And that scared the crap out of her. She was never going to be able to love him enough to make him want to stay.

  Was Sidney right? Was she walking into a tornado with a stupid smile on her face?

  “Running away doesn’t solve anything—”

  Max’s head snapped toward her, with a frown darker than any other she’d seen on his face. “I’m not running. That isn’t what this is.”

  It was just what it looked like…

  He shook his head, as if he’d heard the words she didn’t say, and swiped up his gym bag from the chair beside the bed. “I’m gonna go workout.”

  And he said he wasn’t running. “Max. Don’t go. Talk to me.”

  He was already across the room. “I need to think.”

  Parvati watched him vanish out the door with a sense of ominous foreshadowing. Was this her future? Watching him disconnect and walk away?

  Her phone buzzed and she fished it out—he couldn’t be any farther than the bottom of the driveway, but she wanted it to be Max, just something silly to reassure her that they were still good. But instead the name on the screen was Sidney’s.

  I’m sorry. I hope you’re still coming to my bachelorette party. It wouldn’t be right without you.

  Unexpected tears pressed against the backs of her eyes.

  Thank God.

  She needed her friend back. Her thumbs raced over the screen, composing her reply.

  I’m sorry too. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

  * * * * *

  The bachelorette weekend festivities began on Thursday afternoon. All the local attendees were meeting at Once Upon a Bride where an SUV limo would pick them up to drive them down to Ensenada to meet up with the women flying in from across the country, since Tori was too far along to get on a plane.

  Parvati was the first one there, her little roller bag propped against her ankle as she waited in the small parking lot behind the shop. She hadn’t worked today, Thursday being one of Madison’s regular days, and as tempting as it was to peek inside to see how her former employee was liking Once Upon a Bride, she didn’t want to disturb her while she was working.

  And she was preoccupied anyway. Busy worrying about how things would go with Sidney and all of her new reality television friends. Busy worrying about Max.

  She’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for him the other night and woken up beside him in bed the next morning. She would have regretted that she’d missed him carrying her to the bedroom, if she hadn’t been so worried about his sudden outbreak of wanderlust.

  The backpacking gear had been nowhere in sight, all of it tucked back away into a far corner of his closet, and Max had rolled over and kissed her shoulder when his alarm went off and asked her if she wanted a quick omelet before work. As if nothing had happened. As if all her fears were just her own paranoia.

  And maybe they were. But that didn’t make them feel any less real.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. What’s up, boss lady?”

  Parvati turned at the familiar voice, a smile already tugging up her lips when she saw her former barista, her row of earrings glittering in the late afternoon sun. “Anna! What a great surprise. How’ve you been?”

  “Can’t complain.” She raked a hand through her short hair, revealing a new tattoo on the underside of her arm. “That internship thing has been amazing. They’ve already offered me a job for when I graduate in two weeks.”

  “Oh my goodness, I forgot it’s May. You’re graduating.�
�� She teared up like a proud parent and Anna just shrugged.

  “The ceremony’s on the fifteenth. It’d be cool if you came. It kinda sucked that we stopped hanging out after Common Grounds went down.”

  “It did suck. I’ve been hoping we’d bump into one another around town, but I guess without a job here you don’t have any reason to come to Eden.” Parv frowned. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to pick up Madison.” She hooked a thumb toward the back door of Once Upon a Bride.

  Parv blinked. “Madison?”

  “She didn’t tell you? We’ve been together for, I don’t know, two months now?”

  “Together. Like together together?” Though Parv didn’t know another interpretation for the word. “I thought you weren’t interested?”

  “I wasn’t. And I was kind of a dick about it. But she called me a few weeks after Common Grounds closed—right as the new term was beginning—and gave me this lecture about judging people, about how I was poisoning myself with my misconceptions about her, telling myself these stories about who she was until that was all I could see.”

  “And you started dating?”

  “Nah, I was still a dick. But I kept hearing what she said over and over in my head. It was like she was haunting me. Then a couple months later, I bumped into her on campus and she was with another chick. Like hardcore sucking face ‘with’. And my mind just exploded. That level of PDA went against everything I knew about her. She was breaking my preconceived notion of her and I was pissed. Which might have also had something to do with the fact that I have never been so jealous in my life as I was in that moment.” Anna grinned, as if the memory of her jealous rage was a fond one. “I marched over there and started shouting at her in the middle of the student union. And she told me I was just jealous because I’d missed my shot at something amazing because I’d had my head too far up my ass to see it—and of course she was right, but I was too busy losing my shit to hear it. She walked off with that girl—I don’t know why I expected her to break up with her on the spot because I was having a tantrum—but then two weeks later she texts me and asks if I’d like to get coffee. So we got coffee. And it was crazy. It was like we were two completely different people than I’d always thought we were. Our vibe was totally different. I don’t know. I’d been so busy telling myself I knew who she was that I’d completely missed her. And when I finally saw her, everything changed. She told me she wasn’t with that girl anymore and we’ve been seeing each other ever since.”

  “Wow. That’s fantastic. I’m so happy for you.” And she was, but she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Madison’s words, as relayed through Anna. Poisoning herself with her own misconceptions. She could feel the echoes of those words in her own life, but couldn’t quite put her finger on where.

  “It’s pretty great,” Anna agreed. She hooked her thumb toward Once Upon a Bride again. “You going in?”

  Parvati shook her head. “I’m going to wait out here. We’re congregating for Sidney’s bachelorette weekend.”

  “Right. Maddy mentioned that. T-minus nine days until the Wedding of the Century, huh?”

  “Yeah.” But it still didn’t feel real. Sidney was getting married. And Parv was losing her.

  “I should go let Maddy know I’m here.” Anna gave her a hug and started toward the door. “Have fun on your trip. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “That definitely leaves room for going wild.”

  “Damn right it does.” Anna grinned. “Good to see you, boss lady. Don’t be such a stranger, okay?”

  “I won’t,” Parvati promised—wondering if she would ever be as confident and self-composed as Anna. At twenty-two she seemed to have more figured out than Parv had managed with almost another decade of life experience.

  Anna knew who she was. She knew what she wanted. And even when she was wrong—as she apparently had been about Madison—she grinned when she told the story, completely comfortable with her own mistakes.

  If only Parv could be Anna when she grew up.

  The back door to Once Upon a Bride opened again within a minute of Anna disappearing inside and Tori poked her head out. “There you are! Everyone’s already here. Come inside, you’re missing the kick-off toast.”

  Parvati gathered up her roller bag, feeling more nerves than excitement as she went to join the party, apparently already in progress.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Of the eight women attending Sidney’s bachelorette party, only two of them were flying down to meet them in Ensenada, so six of them climbed into the party limo for the five and a half hour drive to the resort—which turned into a nearly eight hour drive thanks to Victoria’s baby pressing on her bladder at frequent intervals and the vagaries of Los Angeles traffic.

  Parvati had heard Sidney talk about all the women before, but she hadn’t actually met most of them—though she’d seen several on Sidney’s season of Marrying Mister Perfect.

  Elena was the notorious Bad Girl of the season—and the sexy Latina was just as outspoken and unrestrained as she’d seemed on television, visibly more relaxed than she’d been at the shower, speaking enthusiastically about her new anti-slut-shaming book and the charity organization she and another member of their group were establishing to help women facing sex tapes and vengeance porn.

  Elena’s partner in that endeavor was the former producer of Marrying Mister Perfect and current producer of Once Upon a Bride, Miranda Pierce—a frighteningly efficient woman with a way of looking at people like she was slicing away all their defenses and peering at the exposed core.

  Another producer from Once Upon a Bride, Erica Yumata, had a loud voice and a laugh that seemed to echo inside the limo, the sound startling coming from such a tiny woman. She couldn’t be more than five feet tall, but her personality rivaled Elena’s for flamboyance and she shared Miranda’s definitive way of declaring her opinions as if the idea of contradicting her was ludicrous.

  Tori, Sidney and Parv rounded out the group in the limo since Caitlyn and Samantha—another two Suitorettes from Marrying Mister Perfect—would meet them in Mexico.

  All in all, an intimidating group.

  And it quickly became apparent that every single one of them was married or seriously seeing someone—except Erica, who definitively declared that she had zero desire to have a relationship and would have kicked out any lover who tried to trap her into one. The high-decibel, high-speed clatter of conversation centered almost entirely around husbands and boyfriends—which pretty much edged Parvati out of it, since she couldn’t exactly gossip about Max’s sexual prowess in front of Sidney, even if she’d been inclined to.

  She sat quietly, sipping the pre-party margarita Elena had thrust at her, and felt like she was drowning in a sea of giant personalities. Maybe Max was right. Maybe she would have been lousy at Marrying Mister Perfect. There would have been a lot of limo rides like this one, with loudly chattering, confident women who made her feel small and insignificant.

  Sidney was smiling—not joining in the conversation, but clearly comfortable in it. Caitlyn and Samantha had seemed more tame on television, and Parvati found herself hoping the two of them would tone things down when they were added to the mix—then she felt guilty for the wish. This was Sidney’s bachelorette party. It was supposed to be a party. But Parv couldn’t seem to get into the party spirit.

  She kept thinking about what Anna had said.

  Poisoning her own mind with bitterness. Had she been doing that?

  She’d gotten into the habit of telling herself stories about how Sidney didn’t care, didn’t have time for her, dwelling on the evidence of friendly neglect, reinforcing the negative beliefs until her mental bitching became a self-fulfilling prophecy. She’d fallen into a pattern of self-pity, but Sidney hadn’t been trying to hurt her. She’d just needed a little slack.

  How differently would things have gone if Parvati had focused on the good rather than on her hurt feelings and the stories that
validated her feeling of being wronged?

  Sidney laughed with her new friends in the limo—but she wasn’t trying to evict Parvati as her best friend. Parv was doing a good enough job of kicking herself out of the post by fixating on the distance between them rather than trying to cross it.

  But deciding to focus on positivity didn’t magically eliminate that distance. She still didn’t know how to make things like they were before.

  It was hours after dark when they arrived at the villa, but the exterior lighting illuminated the tropical landscaping and three story stucco house as they piled out of the limo in the driveway. The front door popped open and a woman Parvati recognized as Samantha rushed out to greet them.

  “You’re here! We have to wake Caitlyn up. She took a nap as soon as we realized we’d beat you. Apparently any second without the baby is a second she can be sleeping and she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.”

  The next few minutes were a rush of unloading, amid hugs of greeting and laughing inquiries whether the strippers had arrived yet.

  Parvati stepped into the foyer of the gorgeous villa and felt a distinct sense of disorientation as everyone rushed past her to claim their rooms.

  She and Sidney must have talked about her wedding a hundred times over the years. They’d always just assumed that Parv would be the maid of honor. And that she would plan the bachelorette party. They’d talked about what Sidney would and wouldn’t want. Classy, but fun. Festive, but tasteful. No strippers, but definitely a spa trip.

  This was exactly what Sidney had described—supersized to Marrying Mister Perfect proportions. The only thing missing was Parvati’s role in it. She’d always thought she would be the one going early to make sure everything was set up. Hanging the decorations by hand. Picking out the novelty champagne flutes with little rings on the stems. But the resort’s staff had done all that for them. Everything had been taken care of, flawlessly, and Parvati was unnecessary.

  She caught herself starting to slide into that same poisonous bitterness and fished herself out again, slapping a smile on her face and heading off to find her room.