Chapter Seven
Frank’s here!!!
Roman
Will’s home has turned into a madhouse.
“Brian, can you pass me those wax seals?” Frank—a lovely woman with a round face and large glasses, whom I met an hour ago as she kissed her husband goodbye at the door—asks, arm darting out as her hand makes grabby motions at Brian, the branding company’s mailman and Liam’s best friend.
Frank works at Whirlwind Branding with Will, Brian, Liam, and Liam’s wife, Amber, doing what Will deems “graphic magic. "
Brian’s sandy hair falls over his forehead as he hunches above an invitation to Will and Ruby’s wedding he made himself, ignoring Frank. “Busy,” he tells her, drawing careful blue slashes along the invitation’s edge with a marker. “Liam, can you grab it?”
“Boy, I will stab you with my scissors. I asked you to give it to me,” Frank hisses. “Are you insane?”
He is, undoubtedly, insane. He showed up to Will’s house with a cart full of postal supplies and a pair of Cupid wings on his back, declaring his excitement to be a part of the “best man group!” Frank was less excited than confused when she showed up, expecting the bridesmaids to also be here.
“You’re a best man!” Will had exclaimed, squishing her round cheeks—a move she did not appreciate. “Ruby wanted you on her side, but I called dibs. Sucks to suck for her!”
Frank had removed Will’s hands, sighed the sigh of a woman beleaguered, and approached the table where Liam and Brian already sat, muttering about how she’d rather be home with her husband.
Something immediately contradicted by the way her eyes lit up upon seeing Brian’s cart and Will’s tote bags full of even more craft supplies.
“Here,” Liam, the billionaire, says, handing Frank the container of wax beads as well as the box housing the metal stamp head options for the wax, neatly arranged by type. They range from “floral” to “sympathetic," with several handle options running along a longer section at the bottom of the box.
Frank accepts the supplies with a grimace, frowning at Brian.
“Do you think that Erin from HR will like flowers or hearts more on her invite?” Will asks, holding up two paper shape cutters for group perusal. “Hearts fit the vibe more, right?”
“Flowers made of hearts, for optimal cuteness,” Liam says, gluing a four-thousandth little pink heart to his… no. I’m not calling that an invitation. That’s a monstrosity , if ever I’ve seen one.
“Will, focus,” I plead. “The appetizer. Artichoke bruschetta and stuffed mushrooms, or artichoke bruschetta and goat cheese quiche?”
“The mushrooms,” Will answers, going with the heart-shaped cutter. “And make sure the stuffing is vegan, please.”
My eyes roll so far back into my head, I imagine I see about as much as Ruby does. That “much” being nothing. “Half the menu will be vegan,” I promise. “I know.”
I didn’t go through a year and a half of testing vegan recipes for Sweet & Salty, at Will’s request, for nothing.
Liam, his boss and friend—and not the second best man—does not consume animal products.
Liam will be at the wedding. Liam put a quarter of a million dollars into the budget.
Liam will have the best vegan offerings this earth can provide, and I don’t need anything so silly as a reminder to make that happen. It’s insulting to my craft.
“Can we have gumbo at the wedding?” Frank asks, stealing a roll of light pink ribbon from Liam, who twitches as though she stole his first-born child. “Normie loves it, but it’s one of those things you don’t get often, you know? In Indiana, anyway.”
Will points at her, teeth sparkling as he grins, “Absolutely.”
“You have glitter on your teeth,” I tell him, then turn to Frank. “Does Normie have any dietary restrictions I should be aware of? Any substitutions that will be made?”
“Not a one,” she assures me.
“Frank is lactose intolerant,” Liam cuts in, eyes stuck on the pink ribbon.
I blink, then nod. “Lactose-free options that don’t suck. Got it.” Easy enough when I’m already offering a half vegan menu.
“Is there a theme we’re supposed to be following?
” Frank asks, coming out of her craft-induced haze for the first time to have glance around at…
chaos. Utter, ugly chaos. Will’s invitation looks like a kindergartener threw up on it, and Liam’s now has so much frill you can’t read the wedding details at all.
Brian’s, while neat, might as well be an advertisement for the post office.
He’s even drawn a little stamp in the corner.
Frank’s, though… Frank’s invitation, I can get behind. They told me that she’s the queen of graphic design, and I fully believe that. Her invitation is soft blues and pale pinks—swirls and subtle pops of texture that show at least one person making these things has an eye for design.
“The theme is love ,” Will says, sighing happily, the lovesick fool. His blue eyes spark with unbridled, unmistakable joy.
Brian lifts his head and beams as he announces, “That’s why I have my Cupid wings on!”
Ah. That’s that mystery solved, then.
“What other main do you want?” I ask Will, pushing a runaway pompom back before it rolls onto the paper where I’m jotting down notes. “We need at least one more. Preferably two.”
Will shrugs, pasting a primary-blue heart on a row of alternating blue and pink ones at the bottom of his invite. “Aren’t we supposed to go over this a couple of weeks from now? Elodie scheduled us a meeting for it.”
I scowl. “ Elodie doesn’t understand the amount of time I need for recipe testing. Elodie will get over it.”
Will’s brows rise. “I thought you guys were getting along better.”
I hum, noncommittal. Better is such a relative word.
Sure, we’re only at each other’s throats four hours a day instead of twenty-four, but that doesn’t exactly mean we’re doing well.
She’s still Elodie, taking everything I say the wrong way and refusing to listen to me because of it, whether my intentions are good or not.
And, more often than not, they are good.
I’m trying . I’m making her favorite foods. I’m biting my tongue. I’m remembering what she said about wanting to be in charge of her own life, taking care of herself, and I’m doing my best to let her do that, even when I so desperately want to pick her up, toss her in her room, and bar the door.
It’s just so freaking unsafe out in the outdoors and the wild of the city, where she’s constantly roaming. Elodie, a gorgeous, slender young blonde woman, roaming the city without a care in the world.
It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.
I’ve got more than one cut on my tongue from how hard I have to bite it not to remind her to put her safety gear on before she goes to her hobby classes, though that doesn’t stop me from standing close until I’m sure she’s put on all the pads and helmet she needs before riding off on her ridiculously dangerous bike.
It’s like she sees the danger and invites it in just to spite me, I swear.
“We are getting along better,” I answer Will. “I didn’t even spit in her breakfast this morning or anything.”
He snorts, knowing I’d never desecrate a perfectly good meal like that. “What’s your deal with her, anyway?” he asks. “What’s the genesis here? Because as far as I can remember, you always seemed to hate her, and she always seemed to hate you. You guys just spawned like that?”
I sigh, tapping my pen against the table.
“No,” I answer. “I don’t think we spawned like this.
We did, however, have a terrible first meeting, wherein she insulted my lemon cake.
” My nose scrunches as I remember it. I walked into my house to find my sister sitting next to the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, discussing what I thought was a desire for me but turned out to be only a desire for supposedly subpar lemon cake.
I can remember vividly the moment Elodie turned around, golden curls brushing my skin as they flew, to look up at me with wide, dewy blue eyes.
I can extra vividly remember her insulting my cake while she simultaneously asked for a piece.
I’d just come off a rough shift of recipe development for Sweet & Salty, attempting to perfect a carrot cake recipe—a feat I still haven’t mastered, all these years later—and her, a stranger sitting in my kitchen, showering her judgment on me?
I’ll admit, I didn’t respond the kindest. I was a little petty, refusing to let her taste the lemon cake and then avoiding her for the next several months as she and Ruby’s friendship grew, despite my many pleas to my sister that it would not.
I did not want a woman who looked like an angel but had the attitude of a brat hanging around.
Ruby, as is often the case, did what she wanted, ignoring my requests that she not.
Little sisters, we know, are often bratty themselves.
She embraced Elodie with open arms, welcoming her into a sisterhood that nearly rivals the friendship I have with Will, whom I’ve known a decade longer.
“Insulting your lemon cake,” Will says solemnly, shaking his head. “How dare she.”
Exactly. How dare she.
How dare she look like that and be so sweet and smell so good and insult my freaking lemon cake . It’s rude.
“Anyway,” I sniff. “The mains? The salads? What are we thinking?”
“How abou—”
A phone ringing, cutting his words short. Then another. And another. Then, finally, my own, vibrating in my pocket. I pull it out, brows furrowed as I read “Elodie Sage” across the screen.
My greeting is echoed by three other male voices as Frank looks on, cheeks puffed in confusion.
“Roman?” Elodie’s voice tinkles in my ear, sounding… off. Behind her, several other women talk over each other. “We need a little bit of help over here.”
I blink.
“Help? Where are you?” A thread of panic slices through me.
They’re supposed to be wedding dress shopping. What could possibly have happened wedding dress shopping?
My thundering heart tells me that anything can happen anywhere. And does, all the time.
She doesn’t answer for a moment, then, in a mumble I can barely hear over the rush of blood in my ears, she says, “We’re in bridal store jail.”
In unison, the groomsmen rise.
“We’ll be right there.”