by Kyle Autumn
I raise my eyebrows and give them a tight smile. “Yep. I’m fine.”
Amelia’s brow creases a little more.
So I take a few tentative steps forward. “But your friend isn’t, and I think I can help.”
~~
“You’re a genius!” Cadence exclaims once a sample floral arrangement for the tables is done. “I stage homes for a living. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this.”
I smile, giving the faux flowers in two-feet-tall vases a little fluff. “It’s a different arena, really. Weddings and other events are such a different ballgame. But these should give your tables some oomph while allowing your guests to see each other around the table.” Then I shrug her nice words away. “It’s a trick I learned in college. I’m glad I could help and put my degree in hospitality to use, finally.”
“Help?” she questions, her eyes wide. She places her hands on her dining room table and rises from her seat. “You’ve literally saved this wedding.”
Laughing, I get up too. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Dani chimes in as she walks toward the kitchen. “Um, did you see what state Cade was in when she got to the bakery?” As she picks a chocolate chip muffin out of the box Amelia sent us home with, she laughs. “Come on now. You’ve saved it. Take the compliment.”
I can’t help the smile that curves my lips as I approach the kitchen to see if there’s another one of those peach cobbler Danishes in there for me. As if Amelia is magic, I find one more in the box. And then I realize I never saw any of Mason’s croissants in the display case today. Yet my favorites were ready and waiting for me when I got there. So maybe Amelia is magic.
“Is there any chance,” Cadence says, breezing by me to the fridge, “that I could compliment you enough that you’d help me work on the favors?” Her eyebrows are high on her scrunched forehead as she pulls a water bottle out and passes it to me.
I take it from her, grinning. “Let me guess. You hate asking for help?”
“Ding, ding, ding!” Dani shouts, a grin splitting her face. “This woman. Let me tell ya. I haven’t known her for long, but it doesn’t take much time to know that about her.”
Cadence waves a hand at us as she goes to the boxes in the corner of the room.
“You haven’t known each other long?” I question, taking my water bottle back to the dining room table. “But aren’t you…”
“Yeah.” Dani nods. “She’s marrying my brother.” She stays facing me as she goes to help Cadence with the boxes. “And thank god for that. He needs a woman like her in his life. Plus,” she says to Cadence, “that means I get a sister!”
Soft, kind laughter comes from Cadence. The sound lets me know she’s glad to become part of the family.
She puts one of the boxes on the end of the table. But, when Dani goes to grab one, she shoos her away. “Don’t even think about it.”
One of Dani’s hands goes to her stomach, and I immediately think I understand, but her age throws me for a loop. She can’t possibly be…
When she catches me staring, I look away as quickly as I can. But the damage has been done. I was gaping at her and she saw.
“I-I wasn’t judging you,” I stutter. Then I bring my gaze back to hers. “It’s just, I… Mason and I were trying for a while. But it never happened, so we stopped.” There was nothing I could do to hide the emotion in my voice. I just hope they haven’t figured out which emotions those were.
“Sorry,” she says simply. But the weight of the word is far too heavy for a girl her age.
Cadence places another box on the table. “Okay, so…” While pulling mason jars and bags of Hershey’s Kisses out of the box, she says, “We’re filling all eighty of these jars with these candies.”
With the topic effectively changed, the mood shifts to something much lighter. Which I’m glad for. I didn’t want to discuss any of that with these women. Not when I haven’t had a chance to process any of it myself. Especially after the phone call I received. I didn’t think I’d have a reminder of my failure so soon. But I take a deep breath and silently send my gratitude to Cadence for moving us right along.
“On it,” Dani says, unloading boxes and making neat piles. “We can make an assembly line of sorts. We can each have a job: fill, cap, and store.”
Cadence gives her a wide-eyed look. “Man. Any chance I can steal you away from Amelia so you can organize my office? I could use another secretary with how busy I’ve gotten lately. And with the honeymoon coming up.”
After setting a bag of candy down, Dani chuckles. “Probably not.”
Faced with an empty box, Cadence sets it on the floor to give us more room. “I didn’t think so.” She shrugs. Then, after a warm smile, she starts uncapping mason jars and setting the lids in neat piles. “For now, I want to get to know Veronica a little more.”
“Me?” I ask, reaching for a jar. “What about me?”
“Tell us how you know Aidan,” she suggests. “He’s Matt’s best man, but I barely know that much about him. Yet I do know about you. So your story must be good.” Her grin reveals she has no ill intent. She’s just curious about the people in her life.
“Oh, okay.” I uncap jars while I figure out what to say. “Well, I’m dating his brother, but I met Aidan first. We were best friends for a year, until he moved away.” My heart’s rhythm steady increases as I think about that year of my life, how everything changed for me once I met him.
He was so open and friendly. That’s what I remember about the first moment we met. He was working at the local grocery store, bagging groceries and helping people out to their cars. The cashier asked me if I needed any help out, but before I could answer, Aidan finished putting my groceries in bags and said he’d do it. I wasn’t sure if it was an attraction thing, but after one look at him, I’d hoped it was.
Unfortunately, he never made a move. And I had my father hoping I’d marry up so I wouldn’t be such a disappointment to him. I’d done enough of that when I’d mentioned I didn’t even want to go to college. A degree wasn’t something I needed to open my own yoga studio. Clearly, I didn’t follow through with that plan—or any of the other plans I had for my life. But I try to keep all of that out of my tone as I speak.
“Then we lost touch. I don’t think he’s been home since he left,” I tell them.
“Any chance you had something to do with that?” Dani asks, looking up at me through her lashes, her head dipped low.
I shrug, not wanting to even think about it right now. “You’d have to ask him.”
“I think the guys have tried,” Cadence says. “He’s a tough nut to crack, that one.”
A humorless laugh escapes my lips. “Tell me about it.” Then a thought hits me and I can’t keep the words back. “Hey. Is he bringing anyone to your wedding?” I keep my head dipped so I they won’t see the hurt when they say yes.
“Matt and I gave him a plus-one,” Cadence answers, “but his RVSP card said it’d only be him.”
I can’t ignore the beat my heart skipped at that news. Even though Matt told me that a couple of days ago, any number of things could have changed since then. But then a wave of sadness hits me when I realize that means he’s alone.
Dani sighs and then puts her hands on her hips, effectively jolting me out of my thoughts. “Okay, once these jars are opened, I’ll fill them. Who wants to seal them and who wants to store them?”
With that, we get to work. Over the next hour, we steadily get the job done, breaking a few times when laughter overtakes us. These two women are fun, and I can’t believe how fast the time has flown when I check my phone again.
I find a text from Mason on the home screen. He’s free for lunch and wanting to pick me up. But, for the first time in too long, I make a decision without getting his input. Even without telling him I’m making it.
I slip my phone back into my purse and ask Cadence and Dani if they’d like a post-assembly-line yoga class. To my surprise, they agree wholeheartedly. So we h
ead to the living room, push furniture out of the way, and start our practice on our backs. I even show Dani some prenatal poses that’ll be good for her and the baby. When we’re done, they thank me.
And I feel more aligned with who I’m meant to be than I have in a long, long time.
***
Aidan
“Fucking finally,” I mumble under my breath as Jeremy, Matt, and I take a seat at a table in the bakery.
There’s no sign of Nic today, and now that work’s over and we’re all here, I can let out some of the bullshit I’ve been letting fester in my chest. I’ve thought I could keep it to myself and figure it out on my own, but then Nic showed up and blew my plan up.
“I’m saying,” Matt laughs as he pulls his chair closer to the table.
Amelia comes by the table to drop a plate of muffins off. One’s a double chocolate chip, which is my favorite. Jeremy, who’s suspiciously quiet, takes the plain chocolate chip muffin but sets it on the plate in front of him, not bothering to touch it after that. Matt, however, immediately digs into the blueberry muffin.
“I’m starving. Thanks, Amelia.” He smiles at her, blue staining one of his teeth.
She laughs lightly. “No problem, guys. If you want anything else…” As she trails off, she gives Jeremy a raised eyebrow. “He can get it. Don’t be shy.” Then she winks and flounces off.
I can see what Jeremy sees in her. She’s gorgeous and very sweet. But the primitive part of me recognizes that she’s not Nic. And I don’t know which part of me I hate more right now: that part or the one that would prefer to like my friend’s girlfriend just because she’s not the one woman I can’t get out of my head.
This is how fucked up I am right now.
“So!” Matt dusts the crumbs off his hands now that his muffin has successfully been inhaled. “Give us the story, man. I’ve waited six years for this one. It has to be good.”
“Better than ‘she’s my brother’s girlfriend’?” I ask, picking at my own muffin. “What more do you want?”
“Don’t even pretend like you don’t want to tell us. It’s written all over your face.” Matt leans back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest. But then he leans in a little. “Plus, Cade’s all stressed from the wedding, and stress makes her horny as fu—”
“Okay,” I say over him. I don’t need to hear those details. Not when I’m not getting laid. “No one wants to hear that shit.”
“Then get on with it and you won’t have to,” he says, splaying his hands out before tucking them back into his previous position. “Tell us already.”
I huff a breath out and prepare myself to tell this story. But, when I eye Jeremy, I notice he’s staring at the table, one arm resting near his plate. I weigh my options: ask him what’s going on and risk the wrath of Matt’s detailed future sexual encounter or detail my own past and maybe get some feedback on this shit, find out if I’m nuts or if there’s really something going on.
I can find out what his deal is later. For now, I need to get this off my chest.
“I met her when I was working at a grocery store,” I start, those words taking me right back there.
It was basically love at first sight, but I leave that part out. When Nancy, the cashier, asked Nic if she needed any help out to her car with her groceries, I felt like I had no choice but to agree to do it. Otherwise, I might never see this beautiful woman again, and I couldn’t let that happen. Even if all I got was two more minutes with her as I walked her to her vehicle, I was going to take it. And I did.
She dropped the hint about where she took yoga, and I may have mentioned that I was taking a painting class at the place next door. So we ended up running into each other on more than one occasion after that. Whether that was coincidence or on purpose, I’ll never tell. All I knew was she made me feel alive. Something about her lit me up and made my skin tingle. No one else had ever made me feel that way, so I knew there was something special about her.
But my brother noticed too.
She’d come over to our house and even stay for dinner sometimes when we had family meals. Mason was already trying to climb his way up the corporate ladder, and I’d just finished college, so even though I had an apartment with a couple of roommates, homecooked meals were always too appealing to say no to. And Nic was all too willing to make sure she wasn’t at her own home. So we spent a lot of time together.
Just as friends though.
She’d tried dating, but with the pressure from her father to find a husband, she felt like she had no room to breathe. If she just didn’t date, the guys her dad didn’t approve of wouldn’t exist and she wouldn’t disappoint him. So she gave up. Until my brother came along and offered her everything she needed to live up to her father’s expectations.
A stable home.
A well-paying job.
The means to support her.
She could be the trophy wife her father had always wanted her to be. To a man who’d take care of her, provide for her, and help her maintain her status in life.
A man who was definitely not me.
It’s part of why I never made a move—I knew I wasn’t good enough. But no one is good enough for a woman like Veronica Collins. No one.
I also didn’t want to ruin what we had. I liked things the way they were for the most part. I had her all to myself. She wasn’t dating anyone, and maybe she wasn’t dating me, but I was the one she went to for everything. We went to dinner, watched movies, and hung out together all the time. She told me all her secrets and even slept over sometimes. Nothing intimate or sexual ever happened, but I didn’t need that if it meant I got to be the guy she was spending her time with.
Until that wasn’t enough.
Mason apparently wasn’t a stranger to father pressure, either. I don’t remember Dad being that hard on him, but I wasn’t in his shoes. He felt it though, and that meant they had something to bond over. And becoming a couple was in their best interests when it came to their respective fathers. Though I’d like to think the one Mason and I shared wouldn’t have discouraged me from being with her like hers would have. Our dad just wanted us to be happy and successful. Being with her would have made me both of those things.
So I finally grew the guts to throw caution to the wind and not give a shit what her father thought. Somehow, someway, I’d be the man who’d deserve her. I’d find a way to take care of her and give her the life her father wanted for her. I made myself a promise and intended to keep it. And I intended to make it to her and her father.
In the end, I didn’t have to. She turned me down. She’d already said yes to Mason and wanted to be with him. My own brother had moved in on the woman of my dreams right under my nose. And I’d only had the guts to tell her because our father had died and life suddenly felt too short. I couldn’t let the best thing that had ever happened to me continue to only be my friend. I wanted more. I needed more.
So I kissed her. Told her I loved her. Promised her I’d work as hard as I needed to in order to be the man her father wanted me to be. I’d do whatever it would take.
And she said that I didn’t have to. That Mason was that guy and her father had already approved of him.
That night, in the pouring rain, I drove back home, packed my bags, and goodbye to my mom. After I gave her some bullshit line about needing some space to deal with Dad’s death, I left for the airport. I bought a ticket for the soonest flight and took my two carry-ons of clothes on the plane. When I landed, I had no plan. No job. No place to live. Just two bags and a million pieces of my broken heart.
That was the last time I ever did anything so impulsive.
Unintentionally—or not, depending on if you believe in Freud’s research—I became the man Nic’s father would approve of. I got my job working at Nat Ex and started earning a respectable salary. I bought a house after a year of crashing on Matt’s couch after we’d met at work. And I saved up enough money to pay cash for a brand-new Jeep—with some left over. I’m not doing
bad for myself at all.
But I don’t have her.
“Damn,” Matt says, hanging his head. “I didn’t realize it was like that.”
“Yeah, man.” I hunch over, my shoulders falling forward over my arms, which are folded on the table. “It’s like that.”
“Maybe you need to take some time off work. Get your shit straight.”
I lift my head. “What do you think I was doing three months ago when I missed four days? I got a text from her that I still haven’t read, but it started off with enough information to drive me to drink.”
His eyebrows fly up his forehead. “That is why you fell off the face of the planet? Because of a text message from her?”
I cock my head as if to say Don’t even think you wouldn’t have acted the same way if it were Cadence. Of course I lost it because of a text message. When the love of your life reaches out after six years of no contact because you ran away after being rejected… You lose it.
When his expression relaxes, he says, “Fair enough,” so I know he gets it.
Now that the abridged version is out there, I feel better. A little lighter. But still. There’s more. So I tell them about how she kissed me the other night too.
And that’s when Jeremy finally looks at me. He didn’t bother to meet my gaze throughout the rest of my story. But, for this, he gives me a hard, cold stare.
“What?” I press. “Just say whatever you want to say.”
He holds his hands up in a surrender position. “I don’t want to say anything.” Then he pushes himself away from the table and slaps his legs with his palms. “I just think you two need to figure out whatever the hell you two have going on. Neither one of you is being fully honest with the other, and until you do—”
“Wait, what?” I squint at him, wondering what the hell he’s talking about. “How would you know if she’s not being honest with me?”
“Because I had ten minutes of alone time with her yesterday after she took a phone call that upset her.”