Chapter 30
Gretchen
three years ago
I’ve gone and fallen in love with my best friend.
What began as a girl with a crush in need of a friend, turned into so much more. I found not only a best friend, but my person.
I don’t know if he loves me back. But seeing him last night, the touches, the flirting, the date we planned for tomorrow—it feels like we’re on the same page.
Secrets have never been difficult for me.
This introverted girl of few words has relished in having Connor Vining all to herself for the past year.
But I’m also not ignorant to reality—whatever this thing is between us can’t stay a secret forever.
While Drew’s wedding isn’t the time or place to hard launch the idea, we’ll have to put it out into the open sooner rather than later.
But for at least one more day, until we get the chance to talk about what the future holds with him in Chicago and me in New York, I plan to enjoy our little secret for a bit longer .
The door to the hotel suite opens. Reagan and her bridesmaids file in, getting-ready bags and formal gowns in tow.
I’m not technically a bridesmaid—Reagan has plenty of those—but I have been helping with some wedding-related tasks from afar as needed when she and my brother’s schedules got crazy with law school and studying for the BAR exam.
Today, while the bridal party was downstairs doing a quick run through of the ceremony, I prepped the ladies’ getting-ready suite.
“Oh my gosh, this all looks so great! Thank you, Gretchen!” Reagan exclaims as she peruses the assortment of snacks, mini-sandwiches and fruit I’ve laid out for everyone.
The girls hang up their gowns on the rolling rack in the living room while Reagan goes rummaging through her overnight bag.
“Has anyone seen my phone?” she asks.
A quick scan of the living area reveals nothing. “I haven’t seen it.”
Reagan looks under all the girls’ purses littering the entry table. “I need to text the planner and tell her to add a seat at the head table.”
“I think she’s up in the ballroom. I can go up there and tell her.”
“That would be amazing! Thank you so much.”
I smile and grab my purse. “No problem. Just tell me where you need them to go.”
“I guess Connor’s bringing a date now,” she says.
My head snaps toward her, but she doesn’t notice as she’s still on the hunt for her phone.
My thoughts go in two different directions. One says I wholly trust Connor—maybe the extra seat at the head table is for me. The other says I don’t think he’d make such a bold move at Drew’s wedding without talking to me first.
Dread sweeps in. My palms begin to sweat, eyes burning. “Okay,” I strangle out. Do not cry. “Do you know her name? I can have one of Sharon’s staff make her an escort card.”
Reagan rolls her eyes. “No. It’s some girl he met at Drew’s bachelor party last month. ”
My heart pounds frantically one moment and barely registers a pulse the next. Do. Not. Cry.
I spoke to Connor that night. He told me he wanted to hear my voice before going to sleep.
I told him that’s the kind of line someone who’s had a little too much to drink would say.
He said he was stone cold sober. I blushed, even though he couldn’t see it.
He never mentioned anything about meeting someone.
Tears well. I sweep past Reagan on the way to the door as she adds, “I don’t care that the girl gets an escort card. Just ask Sharon to add a seat next to him and leave it at that.”
I’m already halfway out the door when I say, “Got it.” The first sob comes before I even reach the elevator.
It’s exhausting going hours with your tear ducts constantly at max capacity. Four hours in, I’ve developed a system where I escape to the bathroom every twenty minutes, let a few tears fall to relieve the pressure, clean myself up and return to wherever I’m supposed to be.
I haven’t seen or spoken to Connor since dinner ended last night. Of all the ways I imagined today would go, none of the possibilities included me, in full hair and makeup and a floor-length formal gown, heaving over a toilet.
I’ve labored over every detail of last night, the past year, and can’t, for the life of me, figure out how I misread everything so immensely.
Now, all of ours and Reagan’s immediate family is gathered in the hotel lobby turned ceremony space awaiting the wedding party’s arrival.
Right on schedule, the crew of tuxedo-clad guys and girls in shimmering purple gowns barrel through the lobby doors, my brother and his bride-to-be on their heels. The photographer at the helm immediately starts barking out orders.
Our family is up first as we’re called to the front for pictures with the bride and groom. All the groomsmen are seated off to the side, but I don’t let myself look at them. I can’t. If I look at him and he’s looking at me, I’ll burst into tears.
When our side of the family is finished, I beeline for my seat on the front row. Eyes ahead, deep breaths in and out.
A warm body in a tuxedo slides into the seat beside me. My eyes pinch shut at the proximity. The bathroom is thirty paces off to the left, I remind myself.
“Let me be the first to tell you how hot you look in that dress.” It’s not Connor.
I turn toward the vaguely familiar voice. Tall, dark-haired, and broad-chested, it’s the man I met last night. “Mav, right?”
His chest puffs with pride. “Hey, baby Fisher remembered my name.” I wince, but quickly level it. He means to be endearing, but I hate those words.
I manage a soft smile. “Mav isn’t really a name you forget.”
Before he can say anything else, a voice from behind us interrupts him. “Mav! Get your ass back here.”
There he is.
When I make for the bathroom a second later, I don’t look back at him.
After my well-oiled routine of cry a little, repress a lot, check the makeup, I return to the ceremony space. The wedding party has left, likely instructed by the planner to head back upstairs until showtime.
In my periphery, I notice that guests are beginning to arrive. The ushers have yet to begin seating anyone, so I relish these final moments of silence. On the perimeter of the room, I lean against a pillar and release an unsteady breath. What I wouldn’t give for this day to be over already.
My respite is cut short when I scan the room again. The man mirroring my position on the pillar across the room locks his eyes on mine.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looks as afflicted as I feel.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I look as afflicted as I feel.
I don’t move and, for long seconds, neither does he. Until he does. He pushes off the pillar, closing the distance between us in quick strides while I brace myself for another round of heartbreak.
“Connor!” a perky, female voice calls from the end of the aisle.
He stops dead on his feet. His face flashes with something like irritation as his throat bobs. Slowly, he turns toward the woman prancing down the aisle and every nerve ending in my body bristles.
She zips into my line of sight, throwing her arms around Connor’s neck. Donning a hot pink micro-mini dress more suitable for a night of clubbing than a black-tie wedding and a pair of sky high five-inch heels, she’s still a solid five inches shorter than him.
Her profile comes into view as she turns and that’s when I see it.
Bold makeup. Bright pink lips. Waves of platinum blonde hair—box dye number PL1.
And there, on her right shoulder blade, is a hibiscus flower tattoo.
The same tattoo she spent months begging me to get with her because we were best friends.
Thank God I didn’t permanently mar my skin with that wholly insignificant, meaningless tropical bloom for it to end up as nothing more than a reminder of her betrayal.
“Gretchen! I knew I’d see you here.” Her voice drawing closer snaps me out of my thoughts.
Shoulders squared and tear ducts in check, I meet her gaze.
“Alexis,” I say flatly before unabashedly pinning Connor with a stare, his face stricken with confusion. I look back to my former best friend. “It’s my brother’s wedding, it’d be a shock if I wasn’t here.”
She knew exactly what she was doing by coming here. Alexis Adams may play dumb for attention, but she’s not stupid. She plots. She schemes. She conspires. And she doesn’t do anything by accident.
Be it desperation to not look weak or the need to compete with my friend-turned-enemy for dominance, I cross my arms, pop out one hip and let my thigh-high slit have its shining moment. What she did hurt me, but I’ve refused to let it break me.
Connor steps forward on cautious feet. “You guys know each other?”
“Duh!” She throws a look to Connor and then back at me, those familiar green eyes out for blood. “We graduated together. ”
The sour look on Connor’s face is my cue to exit because I’m not in the mood to explain my history with Alexis Adams. I never used her name and I may have glossed over the specifics, but he already knows the bird’s eye view of what happened in my last semester of high school because I told him. I confided in him.
“You said you were twenty-one,” Connor says and I hold back my nasty retort. Alexis lying about her age is not the least bit surprising.
With that, I excuse myself and march toward my mom who’s greeting guests at the entrance.
Mom notices my approach. “Did I see Alexis Adams pass through here?”
I take in a deep, leveling breath. I am unaffected. If only my heart and my face could get the message. “Yeah, Connor brought her. I guess they met somewhere in town a while back.”
Mom’s lips fall into a grim line. “You never did tell me what happened between you two, but for what it’s worth, I never much cared for the girl.”
Before I can stop it, a tear falls. People press in all around and I drop my chin to my chest to hide the emotion rushing to the surface. Mom hauls me into her chest. I cry for reasons she doesn’t understand, but she holds me anyway.
Stepping back, I swipe under my eyes. “Dammit. I need to fix my mascara.”