Chapter 26 No getting caught
Leah woke up the next morning—if you could call almost noon morning—with a start. It took her a moment to realize where she was. She had snuck out of her hotel room and met Gabe at the one he was sharing with Kyle. Kyle was still out drinking, leaving them the room to themselves.
Drunk Gabe fawned over Leah, unable to stop telling her how beautiful she was, how amazing she looked, how sexy she was, how lucky he was, how happy he was to marry her. Leah loved it and let him undress her with the promise that Kyle wouldn’t be back anytime soon. She had planned to go back to her hotel room before the other girls woke up, but apparently that hadn’t happened.
She woke up with Gabe’s breath in her ear. It was warm and smelled fermented. She wondered if her breath was equally dank. She could also hear someone else breathing and she looked over at the other double bed where Kyle was sleeping almost naked with his arms outstretched. There was a third arm on his chest and Leah shuddered to think about what had happened in the room last night after she and Gabe had fallen asleep.
She didn’t want Shira and Maya to worry, so she gently slipped out from under Gabe’s arm and pulled her shiny dress back on. One look at her shoes and she decided it couldn’t hurt to walk through the hotel barefoot. Then she tiptoed out of the room praying that nobody noticed.
She held her arms in front of her chest as she rushed back to her hotel room and slipped the key in the door. A sigh of relief escaped her lips when she saw Maya’s bundle of hair on her pillow. She had made it without getting caught. She went straight to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face and then she would change into her pajamas and no one would know she had been missing.
She was almost in her pajamas when she heard the swish of a key in the door. It startled her, making her stumble as she tried to get her second foot into her pajamas. She tried to fall into bed, but instead, she fell onto the nightstand.
“What are you doing on the floor?” Shira asked from the doorway. She was holding a large box of coffee and a paper bag that looked like it probably had bagels in it.
“I fell!” Leah yelled rubbing her throbbing cheek where it hit the corner of the nightstand. Her fall or her yell seemed to wake up Maya who was now sitting up in the bed looking at her. “Where were you?” Leah asked her sister who was still wearing pajamas even though she had just walked inside.
“I went to get coffee,” she responded as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, which it was.
“That doesn’t look so good,” Maya said, looking at Leah. “I’ll get some ice.”
“How did you fall?” Shira asked as she put the coffee down in front of the TV. “Are you still drunk?”
“No!” Leah responded. “I just rolled out of bed, I don’t know, I guess I am not used to being here.” Leah lied, hoping they wouldn’t figure out that she had just returned to their room. Maya got up, grabbed the ice bucket, and went off in search of the ice machine.
“Well I hope you’re not going to get a black eye,” Shira said. “You won’t be able to get content for your Instagram like that.”
“Oh, thanks!” Leah retorted. Aside from the pain in her cheek, she also felt anger bubbling up inside her. Not at Shira or anyone in particular, but anger in general, directed toward whatever it was in the universe that made things so unfair. “I wouldn’t want to ruin this party for you!”
“Not for me, for you,” Shira responded. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine, I am just in pain!” she said.
The door opened again and Maya came in with a bucket of ice. Behind her were a few of the girls from their party, all dressed up and ready to caffeinate before starting another day of binge drinking to celebrate Leah’s nuptials.
“Oh my god!” “What happened!?” Every time someone came in the room, Leah had to re-explain her lie about falling out of bed while her friends poured themselves coffee and made themselves bagels. She lied so many times that she was starting to wonder why she needed to lie in the first place. It wasn’t like she had done something really bad, had she? She was with her fiancé! But it was too late to change her story so she kept going with it, feeling more and more guilt each time she told it.
Once she’d iced her cheek, drank coffee, and ate a bagel, she went to the bathroom to try to cover up her puffy cheek with make-up. It wasn’t that bad, all her friends insisted. They said it so many times that Leah was starting to believe. Maybe no one would notice it.
She angled her face to try to hide her cheek as they took pictures that she would post on her Instagram about her amazing weekend in Vegas. Then the girls hit the casino where some of them gambled while they ordered free drinks from the waitresses who took forever to return with their orders.
When they got bored of the casino, they changed into their bathing suits and went to the pool. This time the boys weren’t there. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it really hadn’t been so bad, but after a while, Leah’s cheek no longer hurt. She smiled for pictures and posted to her story and her feed about all the fun she was having.
In the evening the girls went to see Thunder from Down Under. The girls yelped and shrieked as they watched the muscular Australian men strip down and dance on the stage. They even invited Leah and all the other brides celebrating their bachelorette parties there that night—and surprisingly, there were several of them—on stage for a personal strip tease, which made Leah blush, but she smiled and pretended it was a lot of fun.
It was a lot of fun, Leah reminded herself. The entire weekend was. It was so well planned, so well thought out, and was the best bachelorette party she could ever have asked for. So what that she hit her cheek, that it was swollen for a week after and that even though she would have liked to hide her face, she had been forced to post pictures on her Instagram at places that had given them a discount because of her influencer status.
She kept getting comments asking her what happened and she even posted a short reel where she told her lie again for the millionth time about falling out of bed. Most of her followers sent their support but there were a few who said this was “punishment” for what she was doing to her people.
She ignored those comments and flew back to New York with Gabe, who said he had an equally fun and amazing bachelor party, although less organized.
And now, the countdown was beginning. There was only one thing left and that was the actual wedding, scheduled just five weeks away in early October. Everything was set, which should have been a relief, but to Leah, it wasn’t.
The closer the wedding got, the more anxious she became, like she was going to get caught. But caught by what? By whom? Her marriage wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t something she was hiding, so she didn’t understand where that feeling was coming from.
Was it just the regular adage of cold feet before a wedding? Or something more? Leah didn’t think she had cold feet. She loved Gabe with her whole heart and she was sure she wanted to marry him. So why did she feel so…doomed?