A-List Kiss: A Laugh-Out-Loud Romantic Comedy

by Brenda Lowder

  “Bye!”

  I tuck the phone into my ruffled apron pocket. The doorbell rings and my heart does the rumba—it would take two to tango—like it always does when I know Liam’s waiting on the other side. I take a deep breath, smooth my skirt, and count to three before marching in place so it doesn’t appear I’ve been lurking in my entryway waiting for him. Which I have.

  I flex my smile muscles and fling the door open.

  “Hello, gorgeous.” Liam lounges in the doorway, and that, right there, those words, are what make me melt into a chocolate ganache. An overheated chocolate ganache without a double boiler, cooking right on the burner. He makes me feel beautiful, and my heart warms under the heat lamp of his smile.

  “Marissa.” His perfect mouth caresses my name.

  “Liam.” I throw my arms around him and mold my lips to his until I can’t breathe and have to step back for air. He works his hands up between us and only then do I notice the bouquet.

  “Flowers!” I beam my appreciation and take them into the kitchen. There’s a quote from my favorite French film that says deep down women know love doesn’t exist and so they cherish the proof of it—jewelry, chocolates, flowers. I, on the other hand, know love exists. My parents are a glued and glittered shining example of it, but I don’t mind receiving steady proof.

  Liam trails me to the kitchen, pulling off his tie as I fill the vase with water. “This is such a treat.” I gesture to the flowers but also to him. The wedding may be tomorrow, but we’re maintaining our separate residences until then. I don’t always get to see him right after work. Starting tomorrow I’ll get to see him all the days forever after.

  “Tarek’s picking me up. Or I’m driving him.” He shrugs and hangs his tie over the back of a kitchen chair. I almost want to take a picture of this tiny symbol of our upcoming joint domesticity. “He and Kya are riding over together.”

  My best friend and her brother often share rides. Tarek annexed himself to our friendship when Kya and I were in fifth grade together after my family moved from southern California to Atlanta. Twenty years later we still haven’t shaken him.

  “Great.” I finish arranging my flowers and put them in the center of the table, rotating the vase a quarter turn so the Stargazer lily catches the light on its pink-tinged petals. “Blaire should be here at seven.” Blaire’s my best work friend and has never been Liam’s—or anyone else’s—favorite person.

  Liam rolls his eyes. “If she’s not late.”

  “She won’t be late,” I say automatically.

  He cocks his head and gives me a knowing look. “She’s always late.”

  “She’s not always late.” I hurry on before he can contradict me, “And I know she won’t be late tonight for my bachelorette party that she planned.” Which had better not be a strip club.

  The doorbell rings, and Liam pushes off from where he’s leaning on the counter to answer it.

  I can hear Tarek’s attention-seeking voice before they’re even through the door.

  “Wow! Smells good in here, Duchess. What’re you cooking?”

  Inside, deep inside where I bury all my middle school and, okay, high school and college social trauma, I bristle at the nickname. Tarek began calling me “Duchess” on that humiliating day back in seventh grade. A day that remains the pinnacle of the worst days of my life, right above getting two teeth drilled before the novocaine kicked in and squatting in the swim team yearbook photo so the tampon string on the inside of my thigh was memorialized. But my face betrays nothing. Like my mother before me, I’ve learned how to keep it all locked inside and make an outward show of poise and restraint.

  “Peanut butter cookies,” I say as I take them out of the oven using the pastel floral mitts my mother made me for Christmas to coordinate with the matching ruffled apron she had made.

  “Are you going to put the chocolate on top?” Tarek crowds his six-foot two-inch frame into my tiny kitchen and my even tinier personal space to peer at the cookies. I flatten myself against the counter to avoid brushing up against him. Some women—weak, sad, intelligence-challenged women—think he’s breath-catchingly attractive, and he thinks we all do. He’s suave and slick and a total player. He’s everything that’s wrong with the dating pool today and the reason I’ve stuck to the shallow end wearing floaties. Until I met Liam, of course.

  My mouth presses into a hard line. “When they cool. When I get back from the party.”

  “You think Blaire’s throwing the kind of bachelorette party you can put your feet up and eat some cookies after?” my bestie Kya asks as she strolls into the kitchen. I leave my cookies to go hug her.

  “Yes. Because that’s what I asked for. A bachelorette party with just you two at a Sip ’n Paint where I can create a bad landscape I’ll hang on the inside of my closet.”

  “Yes, please tell me it will be that type of party.” Liam’s hazel eyes sparkle, and his grin is wry.

  Kya shakes her head. “Have you met Blaire?” My shoulders fall, and I mentally resign myself to whatever night of reckless abandon Blaire will shove me into. Anything short of a strip club.

  “I thought you’d be freaking out about the wedding more.” She changes topics and looks me over with narrowed eyes, presumably for signs of stress or an impending Bridezilla rampage.

  I smile and radiate the peace I feel. “It’s all done. The venue, the decorations, the caterers. It’s all handled, and Mom’s on call for any last-minute emergencies, which she says I’ll never have to know about.”

  Kya bobs her head knowingly. “Yeah. Your mom’s awesome.”

  “She really is.”

  “Tell her I want her to plan my wedding. In two years. After I find a fiancée.”

  “Will do.”

  “You ready?” Liam nods at Tarek in that bro’s way that can mean asking a question or answering it and anything in between.

  “I guess, since I’m not getting any cookies.” Tarek lingers too long on the word and makes it sound suggestive.

  “I always get cookies.” Liam smiles smugly, and I tilt my face up for a kiss, but he bypasses me and snags an actual cookie from the pan.

  “Wow! That’s hot.”

  “Told you,” I say without looking over.

  “Hey, throw me one,” Tarek says over my head.

  “No, don’t,” I tell them both.

  Liam ignores me and flips one from the pan straight into Tarek’s waiting hand.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s hot.” Tarek winks at me and then ducks as I brandish my oven mitt at him. “Don’t wait up for him, Duchess!” He drags Liam out the door so fast I don’t have a chance to kiss my fiancé goodbye.

  Kya munches on a cookie beside me. “Yup. I give it another two weeks and Tarek will have Liam forgetting your birthday and ducking your calls.”

  “Bite your tongue.” A deep rumble in my stomach that’s more than hunger disturbs my sense of well-being. I ignore it and transfer the rest of the cookies to a plate. The rising panic started three months ago when Tarek took a genuine interest in befriending Liam. Tarek is the textbook definition of a player. The last thing I want is for him to rub off on Liam in any way. But I’m stuck because my best friend will never ditch her hip-attached brother.

  “Since Liam and I are getting married tomorrow,” I remind her, “Liam will be too busy on our honeymoon in the Bahamas to get further corrupted by Tarek.”

  Kya laughs. “You’re right. Liam’s spared for those two weeks at least.”

  By the time Blaire arrives—late by almost seventeen minutes—Kya and I have eaten most of the cookies and decided that Ryan Gosling should be single (me) and Jennifer Lawrence should be gay (Kya).

  “What up, nerds?” Blaire greets us each with an insult and a hug but refuses to come inside, claiming we’ll make her late. She’s polished posh with an edge in her tight black skirt and revealing sequin-trimmed top while Kya is casual comfort in jeans and a T-shirt, and I’m what I’ve secretly dubbed romantic restraint in a knee-leng
th straight skirt and cream-colored blouse with a bow.

  I glance at Kya, still looking for a clue about tonight. She shrugs, and I give up because tonight, apparently, is now. “We’re ready,” I tell Blaire.

  “You’d better be,” she says as she pulls me by my arm out the door and into the adventure of the night. Which had better not be a strip club. [continue on Amazon]

  Brenda Lowder is originally from Los Angeles but now lives in Atlanta where she writes romantic comedy novels and lighthearted women’s fiction. She once worked as a low-level reporter for a CBS TV news affiliate and is married to a real-life Special Agent. Together they have two amazing daughters who wallpaper the house with their handicrafts. When she’s not writing, Brenda loves cooking, watching movies, and secretly updating her celebrity scrapbooks.