3. Salty Virgins’ Club
Chapter 3
Salty Virgins’ Club
R ose
“So you understand now why you owe me your first born?” I clasped that damn BFF necklace around Lily’s neck while she cackled at my story. She was late as usual, and I’d been standing around the outside of the venue like a creeper. I smoothed the netting on my dress’s skirt down, one of my own design.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I had no idea Jason bought the church. Here. Hold this.”
Not even a thank you as she passed me two heavy bags with her photography equipment. “Why was the stupid thing in the capsule in the first place?”
Lily laughed harder as she shut her trunk. “She told Finn LeBlanc I liked him, and I was pissed. I put it in with this snotty letter telling future Becca how I bet she regrets her actions. Oh—did you bring the letter too? I’d love to read it.”
“No! I was too busy trying not to get arrested for trespassing and vandalizing. Is that a T and V? Or maybe it’s a T and D—trespassing and digging.”
“Pssh Jason wouldn’t have done that. He’s so sweet! And you’re standing in his sister’s wedding.” Her pale green eyes got big. “Did you swear him to secrecy about the necklace?”
I exhaled a sharp, audible scoff from the back of my throat. “Yes, while I was in the middle of my T and V I remembered to beg him for secrecy. No, I didn’t think about it.”
“But that’s such a great story, oh my God. I wish I could tell Becca. She’d think it’s so funny.” She lifted a tripod from the sidewalk, and we walked in together. “We always wanted you to marry one of her brothers so she could be our sister.”
That forced a short laugh from my chest. “Where were y’all on that when I had a crush on him in middle school?” But also, no way would that’ve worked. He was a popular jock, and I was a shy nerd. I spoke maybe five words to him the whole time his locker was under mine, eighth grade year. We barely made conversation at prom. Thank God I could avoid him for most of tonight while I checked final measurements on bridesmaids.
Our heels clicked on the polished marble floor on our way into the cozy ballroom Becca’s mom rented for the night.
“Well, you’re both all grown up now.” Lily nodded toward where Jason stood using a selfie stick to take photos of himself with an elderly couple.
Okay, damn , he looked fine in that suit—impeccable fit—and it was pretty dang adorable how he was pressing a kiss to the top of the older woman’s head.
“Maybe now’s your chance,” Lily said softly. “He’s pretty cute, right?”
“I’m seeing someone. Besides. I’m not interested in anybody who uses a selfie stick, thank you very much.”
“Don’t be so quick to judge. Selfie sticks are just a tool.”
“You’re just a tool,” I muttered under my breath as Lily squealed at Becca’s approach and I set one of her photography bags onto an empty table.
“Guidry girls!” Becca danced up and hugged Lily, then me. “Rose, your dress is gorgeous. Did you make it?”
“Thank you, I did.” I put the second bag down, and when I turned back around, Becca’s fiancé, Brad, and Becca’s mom were greeting Lily. I liked to pretend Becca was my friend too, but I barely knew these people. I was only in the wedding because she had to replace a bridesmaid who would be too pregnant to fly to New Orleans next month.
Brad hugged me. “Great to finally meet you in person!”
“Mom,” Becca said, “you remember Lily’s little sister Rose, right?”
“Yes, of course. The dressmaker.” Becca and Jason’s mom adjusted her glasses higher up her nose to assess me. Her dark eyes, the same shape and color as Jason’s, glanced at the tattoo on my bare arm, my crystal pendant. Her smile faltered and became Polite , but she still came in for a slight hug. “Thank you for stepping in. Becca couldn’t bear for someone in the bridal party to walk unpaired down the aisle.”
“Hi Mrs. Betty.” Great. Let me add another mom who didn’t like me to my collection. Why were so many of them like this? I was a delightful mess.
“How long have you been making dresses, Rose?”
Translation: Are you sure you’re good enough to make my Becca’s wedding dress?
“Oh gosh, I’ve been sewing and sketching dresses since I was able to hold a needle and pencil. And I just finished up an internship at Lovelace Bridal in New York City.” Boom . Big name-drop.
Her eyebrows went up in grudging respect. “Well, if the dress itself is anything like the sketches Becca showed me, it will be just beautiful. I was just asking Becca the other day…”
Jason’s presence moved into the edges of the group like warm sunshine, greeting Lily with his brother, Alex. I tried to catch pieces of what he said while answering Mrs. Betty’s questions about sourcing fine fabrics.
“Hey, Rose.” Jason came around Lily, smiling, our shared time capsule secret dancing in his big brown eyes. “It’s been such a long time!” His dimples deepened as he came in for a hug.
His arms came low, so mine went high around his neck, my breasts pressing against all those muscles. My cheek brushed his beard as I murmured into his ear, “Thank you again and please don’t tell Becca.” He winked at me as he left the hug, and heat shot up my face. Curse my pink skin. I had to be red as a lobster. Again. And now I’d smell like his panty-dropping cologne all night.
“Hey Rose.” Alex gave me a half-hearted, bored sort of hug. Closer to my height, the youngest Soniat was the one I knew the least about, save for their parents. And I think there was an older brother off somewhere else?
“Rose, how do you like being back home?” Becca asked.
“Girl, I’m not gonna lie. It’s been rough. I’m three days into apartment hunting, and I can’t find anything in my price range. So, I’m stuck living with my mom and her boyfriend. And let me tell you, the walls in that little house are so thin—”
Mrs. Betty literally clutched her pearls as Lily laughed and Jason snorted. I bit my lip. I had to stop being so blunt when so many people were squeamish about sex.
“Oh, Steve, um, Steve snores like a freight train. Yeah. So, I’m desperate for a new place. I’d live in my car, if I had one.” I laughed awkwardly. Way to sell yourself to the crowd, Rose.
Becca turned to Jason. “Wait, this is perfect timing! Aren’t you ready to rent your apartment at the church?”
Nooo. No no no. My pulse was a tiny tribe of cannibals pounding on my ear drums, and I was on the menu. Jason nodded, smiling but not meeting my eyes. Yeah, he clearly wanted nothing to do with that.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I blurted, to save him. “I’m sure I’ll find something soon. I have headphones to drown out my—Steve’s snoring.” My face had to be a darker pink than my dress, and Jason’s eyes were sparkling with held-back laughter.
Did I have to add Becca to my shit list?
Jason
At Becca’s suggestion, Rose’s already-red face had gone wide-eyed and still, still , she wasn’t fooling me that Steve’s “snoring” was anything but code for loud sex. I could listen to her put her feet in her mouth all night.
“It’s just the old rectory.” I was damn proud of that “just the old rectory,” but I was downplaying it now, both to bail Rose out from something she obviously wasn’t interested in and to head Mom’s disapproval off at the pass. “And I’m not exactly ready to rent. We’d have to share the bathroom and the kitchen until I get those built in the church, so...”
Mom bristled beside me. Her next phone call was already playing in my head: you can’t let that Guidry girl move into the rectory and share your bathroom. Lightning might strike her when she walks into the church! And what will Misty think?
Although, a seamstress would be a quiet neighbor, and at least I knew she wasn’t a serial killer or anything. “If you’re interested, you should come by tomorrow to see it.”
Rose’s eyebrows went way up. “So, we’d be, like…roommates?”
“Don’t worry about all that tonight, dear.” Mom put her arm around Rose’s shoulder and started walking, physically removing her from the conversation. “What I want to know is, what did Becca pick for the flower girl’s dress? She still hasn’t shown me…”
Mom’s voice faded as Rose’s big eyes glanced back at her sister, who walked along with them and Becca.
Alex chuckled beside me. “Mom’s gonna give you so much frickin’ grief if you let a woman move in with you, especially one as hot as Rose, especially one of those ‘godless Guidry girls.’”
I shook my head, but my eyes followed Rose across the room. She pulled her iPad out of her bag and fumbled it, nearly dropping it. Adorable. “She says that shit around you too? I thought it was just me.”
“Mark my words. If Mom comes over one day and finds some pagan altar in your house, she’ll freak the hell out.”
I heard Alex, I really did, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Rose. She’d been beautiful, all sweaty and mud-streaked last night, but tonight she was luminous in that petal-pink dress, long dark curls falling around her creamy shoulders and arms. That sexy tattoo of roses rambling down from her shoulder.
Annnnd now Mom was introducing her to Misty. Fantastic.
“Your girlfriend’ll have a problem with it too.” Alex grinned at me behind his drink.
“Stop. You know Misty’s not my girlfriend.”
Misty said something to Rose, and they looked directly at me. Both caught me watching them, then Misty touched Rose’s arm, recapturing her attention.
Alex snorted. “I think you need to have that conversation with her then, because she looks like she’s claiming her territory, bro.”
It was hard not to compare the two women since they were standing side-by-side. Misty was all thorns, all sharp angles in her personality and body. Like a drama-seeking beauty queen, she wouldn’t be caught dead in anything less than full stage makeup and hair-sprayed perfection, and she thought the world owed her whatever she wanted. And what she wanted was to cultivate her devout religious persona while banging anything that breathed in the shadows. She was loud and pretty, and she turned a lot of heads.
But never mine.
Rose, like her namesake, was effortlessly beautiful and velvety. That strapless dress was all feminine beauty, showing off her ample cleavage and voluptuous curves like petals. Her skin was a temple treasure, and I’d devotedly perform whatever sacred rites would grant me the honor of touching her. Fuck, how would it feel to draw a finger, or my tongue across the length of her collar bone?
But firmly, no. Alex was right, and that almost never happened. Rose was like cheese fries at Lee’s Hamburgers—amazing in every way, but something I should stay away from.
“But damn, Rose grew up fine as hell, huh? She was so awkward in middle school, remember?”
Alex wasn’t helping.
“Shy at her prom, too.” Seeing her last night unlocked more memories. When Becca asked me to go to Rose’s prom all those years ago, she said she’d offered Rose a choice between me and Alex. I’d been flattered until prom night. She barely talked to me, barely wanted to dance. She either didn’t want me there after all, or she was really shy. But she was kind enough to pretend not to notice when I got a boner the one time she agreed to dance with me.
Alex clapped a hand on my shoulder. “On second thought, now that Mom’s got Mark married off and Becca almost married off, she’s been pushing pretty hard at me and Bess to get married. So, you should definitely let Rose move in. That’ll put the Eye of Sauron on you instead, and with all that”—his eyes tracked Rose down and back up—“temptation around. Who knows, you might even end your dry spell.”
“Yeah. I don’t know.” Getting involved with anyone casually was too risky for my bruised heart. But also, the next woman I date should probably come Mom-approved if I wanted any peace at all.
Misty’s laugh rose above the soft music and din of conversation, and Alex tossed his head toward her.
“How’s Misty’s salty virgins’ club going?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s called the Single Adults Living Truth group—SALT. And yeah, it sucks. It’s not at all what I signed up for.”
“I still can’t believe she took over your group. Girl’s obsessed with you.”
Alex may not have been wrong on that one, either. In a classic example of no good deed going unpunished, I’d excitedly joined a church group that volunteered to help around the houses of elderly parishioners with small repairs and accessibility renos. But Misty learned that the other members of my group were all single and talked everyone into combining our group with hers. The days we worked on houses were fulfilling, but the nights we met to plan were a nightmare.
I still think she did it to get access to me and so I couldn’t block her phone number without missing the info I needed for volunteering. But I had her in my contacts as “DO NOT ANSWER,” and that’d already saved me a few times.
“Mom’s thrilled about me being in a church singles’ group,” I said. “She thinks I’ll find a good, churchgoing wife there.”
Alex laughed mid-sip, coughing on his drink. “Bro, you can’t let Mom keep you under her thumb like that. You have to—”
“I know,” I said, drowning him out. If there was one phrase I never wanted to hear again in my life, it was “under her thumb.” Kasey’s favorite thing to say to me about Mom still made my shoulders tense and my gut twist.
“I don’t get it. Why don’t you want to go out with Misty? She’s hot, down to fuck, and Mom would award you son of the year if you married her best friend’s daughter.”
Dad walked up, saving me from answering Alex. “Hey Jason, I didn’t see you come in.” He hugged me then leaned back, adjusting his glasses as he peered at me. “You wouldn’t believe who I ran into yesterday when I was inspecting a house out in New Orleans East. Jack Kumar.”
My heart sank. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah! He’s doing well. Busier than he can manage.” Dad folded his arms, nodding and leaning into his story. “I told him you were still looking for a good architecture firm to put down roots in. I told him about your church reno, and he said they could use your experience on an adaptive reuse project they have coming up—converting some office building downtown into a couples’ resort. So, I gave him your number, and he’s going to call you sometime next week.”
This again. “I appreciate it, Dad, but I’m not looking to work anywhere. I like what I’m doing, and I don’t have time to take on anything else.”
“I know you’re doing well, but a full-time job would give you security. Benefits. A retirement plan.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Do me a favor and go meet with the guy. See what he has to say. It can’t hurt to get more information.”
“But can he work there shirtless?” Alex ran a hand through his short, dark hair, laughter gearing up in his voice. “At least shirtless Fridays, and he wants to be in the firm’s man candy calendar. They can call it ‘Kumar’s Kuties’ with a K, and all proceeds will go to rehabilitating the wild Jason back into a professional workplace.”
I rolled my eyes and held my tongue. Calling him out on making fun of my work would only make my little brother double down and get dirtier. Alex guffawed at his own joke, and Dad shook his head.
“I love you, son.” Dad put his arm around Alex. “But you’re a mess.”
“Hello, gentlemen.” Becca came up to us with her keys out. “I forgot my planner in my car. Would one of my favorite brothers go get it for me?”
“Mark will, but it’ll take him a while to catch a plane from Chicago,” Alex joked.
“On it.” I grabbed Becca’s keys, eager to walk outside and escape my family for a few minutes.
Okay, longer than a few minutes, as guest after guest arrived and went in, including Rose and Lily’s mom, Ms. Dahlia. Becca didn’t mention her planner was in the back cargo space under a pile of wedding magazines.
Planner acquired, I was three steps back into the hall’s foyer when a woman’s soft, stunned voice met my ears from around the corner.
“Are you serious?” Rose’s sweet voice was unmistakable, and her hushed, shocked tone made me stop short.
Her mom’s excited Yes! was drowned out by Lily’s laughing and squealing. “Mom! Oh my God! When did he propose? Your ring is gorgeous!”
Oh. I should step back outside. The door was quiet, so I could probably get away with—
“Last night! We went to…”
Ms. Dahlia spoke more quietly, and I couldn’t catch the words. I turned around to leave.
“But you said you’d never get married again, after Dad.” Rose pressed. “The three of us are Team Marriage Is a Sham. Fuck the patriarchy! Remember? But now you’ve just…changed your mind?”
I paused, my heart kinda sinking at Rose’s vehement words despite none of that being my business. But it was an odd take for a woman who designs wedding dresses for a living.
“Well, honey, no. I grew, I guess. And changed. And Steve’s nothing like your father.” She laughed derisively. “Believe me. We love each other very much, and we’re excited to make this commitment. There’s nothing like having your partner in your corner, and being married means a lot to us.”
“Rose,” Lily sputtered. “You’re not the one getting married. Just be happy for her!”
Rose’s murmured, I am , didn’t convince me one bit.
“I was going to tell you tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait. And Rose, it would mean the world to me if you’d make my dress. And yours and Lily’s. And my friend’s daughter, Emma, will be the flower girl.”
“Of course, Mama.”
I smiled. That one was genuine. And sweet.
“Did you set a date?” Lily asked.
“So, about that. It’s important to Steve that his brother, Matt, stands as his best man—you know he doesn’t have much family. But Matt’s flying out to the Gobi Desert in November to start filming his latest wildlife documentary—tracking the migrations of some kind of camel that’s on the brink of extinction because of climate change. He’ll be there for over a year, and we don’t want to wait. So…we’re getting married in October.”
“ This October?” Rose’s low lament contrasted with Lily’s squealing.
“I’m so excited! We’ll help you with everything,” Lily said. “You won’t have to worry about a thing.” A phone rang, and she paused for a second. “Becca’s looking for me. Let’s do breakfast tomorrow morning, and we can start planning everything.”
“Perfect!” Ms. Dahlia replied. “Oh wait. Rose, aren’t you apartment hunting in the morning?”
“Um…yeah, but I’ll just do it after.”
“Great!” Lily said. “I’ll be at your house at nine…” Their voices faded with their footsteps.
Rose wasn’t marriage material, and that officially closed that door. I felt bad for her, though. I didn’t know anything about making dresses, but that sounded like somebody asking me to add four more custom library walls to the ten I already had to make. Within the next six weeks. Maybe I should offer her that apartment. She needed a win, and maybe a friend.
I built up momentum like I’d been walking for a minute and turned the corner. Rose was leaning up against the wall, arms crossed, staring at the floor. She looked up and turned her head away from me, wiping her face.
“Hey. Everything okay?” I asked when I got even with her.
She nodded, unspooling a soft tape measure from a concealed pocket of her dress. “Oh yeah, I’m good! I’m so good I’m finger-lickin’ good.” She shut her eyes for a moment as if screaming internally, then smiled brighter. “I’m gonna go measure some women.”
“Do—” But she strode quickly ahead, not hearing me or not wanting to. Okay. Maybe her disinterest in the apartment was about me. I should keep my mouth shut.
She stopped short and whirled around, making me almost run into her. “Do you really have an apartment to rent?”
I gulped, unable to crawfish under that soft gaze. Her eyes were still bright with tears. “Yeah. Let me give you my number. I’ll be home all day tomorrow if you want to come see it.”
A few minutes later, we’d exchanged numbers and Rose was leading a bridesmaid toward the women’s restroom. At least I’d offered, and maybe she wouldn’t want it.
Becca appeared beside me. “Thanks, Jason.” She took her planner but looked down at her phone. “Have you been watching that tropical storm in the Caribbean?”
“Yeah,” I said, still distracted. “They’re saying it’s probably heading to Texas.” And a good thing too, since I was going to try to get to Florida in the next couple of weeks to talk to the Big Dick Tools people.
“Poor Texas. But I selfishly hope we’re in the clear on this one.” She snapped her phone off. “I’m sick of evacuating every other week, being gone overnight for no reason, then coming back to all the housework we left behind. Ooh look, here comes the food!” She danced off toward Brad and his parents.
I smiled. Now they were a great match, and as the frosting on top, his family and ours were close and went to the same church. That’s what I wanted: a great match for me who was also a great match for my family. I’d have to keep looking.
I rubbed at the empty ache in my chest and scanned the room. Straight ahead, Misty was watching me. I half-smiled and made a sharp left toward the buffet table.
‘Cause Misty was not it.