Brenna, Brat (Detroit ABCs)

Chapter 11

W e all stood back and looked, and honestly, the sight was awe-inspiring.

“Well?” Juliet asked us. “Why isn’t anyone saying anything? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Nicola answered her. “You’re just…”

“You’re stunning,” Grace said, and we all nodded.

JuJu’s face lost its cast of anxiety. “Really?”

“Holy Mary, Juliet, yes,” Patrick told her. “I don’t know much about dresses, but that’s a good one.”

“No, it’s not the dress,” I said. “It’s you.”

“Thank you. You guys look great, too,” she told us. “So beautiful. And handsome,” she added to our brother. He did look nice in the suit I’d forced him into, along with the tie that coordinated with our bridesmaid gowns. Since we’d had a few issues with fit at Addie’s wedding (and a lot of complaints from Nicola about that), I’d been very careful to make sure that everyone’s dress was exactly right. I’d been very careful to chose styles that suited them best…what was she doing?

“Grace, so help me, if you get peanut butter on yourself before the ceremony, I’ll kill you,” I told her, and she put down the jar.

We were all in Juliet and Beckett’s big bedroom in their big house, and the big tent outside was full of guests waiting for the ceremony. It was beautiful this afternoon, perfect weather for it. After they’d said their vows, we’d all go inside where the ballroom was decorated to be equally perfect for the reception. I had checked everything again and again, then again, just to make sure.

“I want to say a few words to my daughter,” our mother started to announce, and the atmosphere immediately tensed. But then Patrick stepped up to do his job: today he would prevent her behavior from going off the rails. He was on it until Juliet and Beckett took off in his grandfather’s Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud to stay at a hotel for the night, after which they would head to the airport the next morning. Both of them would temporarily block her until their return from their honeymoon.

“Mom, will you come downstairs with me?” my brother spoke up now. “I don’t remember where we’re supposed to stand and I’m nervous about it. I need your help.”

She beamed at him. “Of course, honey! Let’s go.” Without another look at the bride, she took his hand to lead him away. It had never been much of a secret that Patrick was her favorite, and as annoying as that was, it was sometimes amazing when we could use it to our advantage. I remembered sending him into the kitchen to run interference when I’d come home drunk from a party, one of my first experiences with a failed date, and my mom hadn’t even noticed when I’d puked on the staircase. Nicola had helped me clean it up, and she’d been the one to yell at me. I should have worried more about distracting her.

And speaking of puking and of dates, I went to the window to look for signs that something was going wrong outside, and I looked for specific guests, too. But I didn’t see any problem that would make me vomit and I also didn’t see a particular person. I hadn’t seen him today at all, but he’d been texting a lot of encouragement, and when he’d arrived at this house, he’d written that he was amazed at what I’d done. “Holy shit, it’s incredible,” he’d said, and I looked at that message again. It would have been even better to hear his voice telling me that it was ok, and I could do it.

“Brenna, sit down and let me do your makeup,” Addie ordered, and I touched my face and realized that I’d forgotten that because I’d been busy supervising and scrutinizing everyone else’s. She and Nicola both started working on me as fast as they could, and as they were finishing, there was a knock on the bedroom door.

“Holy Mary,” our dad said when he opened it. His eyes were on Juliet, and she smiled back at him. “You’re a beautiful bride, JuJu. It’s time for pictures. Are you ready to go down?”

“I’m ready,” she said firmly.

This was it. I’d spent weeks preparing and now…

I turned to look at Nic, feeling just like when my stomach had started to revolt after that date in high school.

“Nothing in life will ever go totally without a hitch,” she told me. “Nothing’s going to be perfect, not ever. But you can’t focus on the flaws, and no one else will, either. They see something fun and beautiful, and they love it. I love it, and more importantly, the bride and groom do. They’re over the moon, Bren. You did a great job.” She turned to Juliet and grinned. “Let’s do this!” she said, and we all cheered.

And the day really started moving, and it became a bit of a blur. I remembered my sister walking up the aisle and Beckett, who had always seemed pretty stoic, wiped his eyes. He looked so handsome in the suit I’d chosen and Juliet…well, all my sisters had been beautiful brides, but she was breathtaking. It was her happiness that did it, I thought. It was like there was a glow around her when she looked at him, and then we were all carefully dabbing away tears. I had, of course, provided everyone with handkerchiefs which Addie and I had embroidered with the couple’s initials, and I’d edged them with lace that coordinated with her veil and her gown.

I heard the words that the judge spoke, kind of, and then I definitely heard them both say “I do.” We all clapped and whistled when they kissed and then we were following them back down the aisle on the runner that I’d carefully painted with the date and their names, all in subtle tones so that it didn’t read “homemade” or “craft.” Grace had helped with that. I’d allowed her to do the protective clear-coat, and she hadn’t messed it up.

We stood in a reception line as the guests entered the house, and I saw Campbell briefly then. But then the wedding party had to take more pictures. The photographer got all the shots from the very specific list I’d created with Nicola, and Patrick did a great job of keeping Mom occupied while Sophie fulfilled her role of steering Dad away from any tricky situations. Not that he seemed to want to tangle with his wife, as much as she may have wanted him to. That had always been the nature of their relationship: she was emotional and trying to engage, and he would shut off and close down. I remembered hearing their arguments, though. If he was pushed enough, he would respond, and no one wanted that today.

By the time that we got inside the ballroom again, my nerves were at another peak. It seemed to be going ok, with the guests enjoying drinks from the bar selections that I’d carefully chosen after consulting a lot with Beckett on his liquor choices (they were a little more high-brow than what I’d gotten sick on at that party in high school). They were also enjoying the appetizers that Sophie and I had spent hours choosing (and fighting about). I peered around the crowd, looking at faces, studying each man in a dark suit to find one in particular.

“Hey,” someone said behind me, and I spun, so relieved.

“Hi,” I said. I reached out, and Campbell took my hand.

“Holy shit, you’re shaking. Are you cold or is it nerves? You don’t have that blue color in your lips that you get at the rink.”

How attractive that must have been. “It’s probably nerves,” I said. “Or, maybe it’s too much adrenaline. My heart is pounding, too. Did you ever feel that when you played hockey?”

“I did,” he agreed, “and you know what helped? Champagne.” He took a glass off the tray of a waiter who was circulating just as I’d instructed, and he handed it to me. “Drink up.”

“You were having champagne during games, as a minor?”

“You have no idea what went on in those locker rooms,” he said. “I was a maniac.” He grinned at me. “You look beautiful.”

“Juliet does,” I corrected, and he had to agree. But then there were many things that I needed to check on, based on the lists that I had on my phone. I’d sewn a pocket into my bridesmaid dress so that I could have that available to me, and I took it out now and went into action. And Campbell helped, which was wonderful, as did my sisters. Even my mom did stuff, like talking to some of the older guests to make them feel at home.

All the guests did appear content. Juliet’s old neighborhood friend Liv was here with her husband, but Patrick (who had been engaged to her first, before he’d ruined it) acted ok about her presence. She was ready to pop with their first baby and she looked huge but very pleased about it. Her dress was the wrong color for her, but neither she nor her husband appeared to mind. No, they just seemed happy.

There was too much to check on, monitor, and solve for me to stand around and chat, myself. At one point, I did have to sit down and eat, though, and we heard speeches from everyone. My mom kept to the written words that Sophie and Nicola had helped her to prepare, and it was really beautiful. My dad spoke, too, and did fine although getting up in front of a crowd like this was really not his thing. Addie, the matron of honor, made us laugh and then also cry, and Beckett’s best man made everyone crack up all over again.

Then the groom stood and put his hand on Juliet’s shoulder. He talked about meeting her, how he’d seen her for the first time and been bowled over by how beautiful she was, and then by how much he’d liked her as they got to know each other. “I realized that I wanted to be around her all the time, that when we were apart, she was what I was thinking about,” Beckett said. “I needed to be with her. I had believed that I would probably never marry, because I didn’t understand what it meant to want to share your life with someone. It’s a gift.” He looked down at her and smiled. “And now, when I need her so much, she’s here. I hope that I’m always here for her, as well. I’m so grateful to her and I’m so grateful that I was given this gift, the love of this amazing woman.”

I looked over at my sister. She was holding herself together, but her control seemed fragile to me.

“She’s my strength and my backbone, and I couldn’t do it without her,” he continued. “I don’t want to do anything without her. I love you, Juliet.”

I realized that I was gripping Campbell’s hand very hard. He was here at the table with us, the bridesmaids and their plus-ones, because Nicola had looked at my seating chart and said no. She had grabbed my red pen and put him next to me. “That’s better, and don’t try to change it back,” she’d instructed.

And now, I was so glad that I hadn’t messed with things, because it was very nice to hold his hand. With my other, I picked up my glass of champagne and finished it before Beckett raised his to the crowd.

After the speeches, the newlyweds took the floor for their first dance, which was so sweet and beautiful that it made a lot of people among the guests wish that they had their own monogrammed hankies. Then my dad went with my sister and my mom went with Beckett, because he really didn’t have any close family. The rest of my siblings moved onto the floor, too. Patrick danced with his daughter, and Nicola, her husband, and their baby went together. Both of the little girls wore the dresses I’d made, which coordinated with the bridesmaid gowns. They were adorable and neither of them had spit up or gotten food on anything yet. Not yet, but I’d learned that babies had an unfortunate habit of mussing up their outfits.

“Let’s go,” Campbell told me. He offered his hands like when we went skating, and we walked out into the center of the ballroom.

Of course, he was a good dancer. He was so graceful on the ice, the way he moved his hips…no, I couldn’t think about his hips.

“The band is great.”

“What?” I asked. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Your mind is on everything that could possibly go wrong,” he said, and that wasn’t exactly true. “Stop worrying. Everyone’s having fun, and Juliet and Beckett love it.”

“Do you think so?”

“Look at them,” he told me, and danced us in a semicircle so that I was facing them. Beckett was definitely smiling as he talked to my mom, but my sister…

“See?” Campbell prompted. “Look how happy they are.”

“Right.”

“Good,” he said. He moved his palm over my back, sliding it up and down. “How did you learn to dance so well?”

“It’s something we did with our dad,” I answered. “He taught us. He’s an introvert but he loves ballroom dancing. My sisters and I tend to get crazy when there’s a fast song.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Hang around long enough, and you definitely will.”

He didn’t answer anything about how long he’d hang around me, but his palm moved on my back again, like how I’d rubbed his arm when he’d slept on my lap. His hand slipped low enough that it was almost on my butt, which must have been by mistake, but he left it there.

“How long do you think this party will last?” he asked, and I felt myself getting worried again as I thought about trying to wrap it up.

“JuJu doesn’t want things to go late. She’s afraid that Beckett will get too tired, and that’s why we had the early dinner. But it was fine, right?”

“It was delicious. Everyone ate like very sophisticated cattle at a trough,” he said.

Good. “We can stay up as long as we want,” I mentioned. We would be sleeping here tonight, as would my siblings and their various hangers-on (children, husbands, et cetera). There were more than enough bedrooms and Juliet had wanted to encourage us to live it up at the party, rather than worrying about driving home late through the city.

“Campbell could stay, too,” she’d mentioned at our last fitting. “One bedroom for you guys?”

“Two bedrooms,” I’d said, and then had poked her with a pin on purpose.

“There will probably be a lot of work to do to get the house back in shape, even with the cleaning crews,” I said now. I realized that my fingers on his shoulder had been creeping up to play in his hair, and I put them firmly back into the appropriate position.

“Or, instead of working, we could have fun running around this mansion,” he said. “My mom and my sister would kill to see it. It’s exactly what they both want in life.”

Neither of them had been invited, of course, but neither was leaving her bedroom, anyway. That was what Campbell had gathered, but any information was filtered between their attorneys since they still wouldn’t talk to him.

“I like your house better,” I said.

“You do?”

Maybe it was my imagination, but it felt like he pulled me closer.

“I like mine, too,” he agreed. “Although, it comes in handy to have twenty bedrooms when your wife has six siblings who need to sleep over.”

I was thinking about him saying that, how nice those words about his wife having six siblings had sounded as they came from his mouth. I opened my own mouth to encourage him to talk more about the subject, but then I saw my sister. Juliet was walking quickly toward the doors that led out of the ballroom, and it may have seemed to the guests like she was heading to the bathroom or maybe she needed to fix her hair, but I could see that wasn’t what was going on. There was something wrong, because she was moving in exactly the same way as she’d left the pool deck when she was twelve and she’d been pulled out of the freestyle relay by our old coach, because he was stupid and mean. I had told him so at the time, too.

“I need to go talk to Juliet,” I said, and disengaged from Campbell’s arms. My skirt swished as I made my way quickly to the front of the room and out into the wide hallway. We’d decorated all the public areas with the same gorgeous flowers and it was lovely, and there were enough people milling around that it took me a moment to realize that she was already gone. I walked past the guests and saw that one of the doors was ajar, and I peeked into a room I recognized as Beckett’s office. I entered just as a billowing dress disappeared through the French doors on one wall, then I saw her through that glass and I kept following.

“JuJu, what are you doing outside?” I asked as I closed the door behind myself. “You’re going to get your hem dirty.”

She turned and in the silvery moonlight, I got a clear view of her face. She resembled me when I’d seen myself in Campbell’s mirror after the fire: her skin was dead white, her eyes were huge, and she looked terrified.

“I can’t do this, Brenna. I thought I could, but I can’t.”

“If you don’t want to be married to him, we can leave right now. The valet will give us someone’s keys,” I said. “Monday morning, we’ll return their car after we get this annulled.”

“No, I want to be married to Beckett. Of course I do! But all of this, all this ceremony and all the speeches about love and being together forever…” She stopped and swallowed. “It only reminds me that I might not have him for much longer. Bren, I can’t,” she told me, and her voice broke. “I can’t lose him. I can’t go back in there and pretend that everything is ok when he might...” It broke again, but she finished with a word that emerged as a whisper: “Die.”

I also swallowed hard as emotion rose up in my own throat. If she did this, if she fell apart, she would never forgive herself later. “You know what, Juliet?” I asked. “I think you’re behaving awfully. How dare you try to wreck your makeup after all the time we spent on your face?”

“What?”

“You’re going to ruin it and then Beckett will see and know that you’re upset, and that will ruin his wedding after he spent so much money and was so worried about you enjoying it!” I accused her.

“I’m not trying to do that.”

“But you are doing that,” I answered. “Do you think this is all about you? It isn’t, just like you didn’t own our high school, either!”

“You’re still carping on that, how many years later?” she asked, and I saw her chest start to move with faster breaths.

“And you’ll also ruin the party for all these people, all the guests who rearranged their lives on short notice to hurry and see you get married. They had to get new outfits or try to fit into their old ones, and yes, most of them are very poorly dressed and look terrible, but you can tell that they made an effort. They brought you gifts and sat through the boring ceremony. And how do you repay them? By throwing a fit like a baby.”

Color flooded her face and her eyes snapped in anger. “Be quiet. I am not throwing a fit!”

“Are so!” I shot back. “You better get your butt back in there and behave yourself, right now! You better, or I’ll tell Nicola that you’re out here acting like a real brat.”

“You’re the brat, Brenna!” she hissed, and when she stomped back inside, she knocked me out of the way with her hip. Yes, it was swathed in layers of fabric, but it still hurt. Maybe she was pointier since she’d lost the weight, although we’d all been working to get her to eat and I thought she seemed better. Maybe the problem was that I was still just scrawny Brenna.

The other problem was that I had headed off her emotional collapse now, but if her new husband died? I thought that Juliet might go to pieces and maybe not come together again.

The French doors opened. “Do you know how hard it is to find someone in a house with this many rooms?” Campbell asked me. “I think I ended up in a dungeon by mistake.”

I nodded, because my throat and in fact, my whole upper body was clenched too tightly to allow speech.

“Did you just talk to your sister? I only found you because I saw her leaving that room and she looked pissed out of her mind. I figured you had to be nearby.” He tilted his head. “Brenna, are you ok?”

I nodded again and cleared my throat. “Juliet was out here almost crying. She’s afraid she’s going to lose Beckett soon, that he’s going to die.”

“Shit.” He walked out to join me. “Shit, that’s awful.” He reached and took my hand like he’d held it during the speeches.

“I made her mad instead. I told her to behave herself and that she was being a brat. But I…” Sugar. I was going to cry, too.

“Oh,” he said quietly, and looked at me. “I was going to tell you before that the vases you picked for the centerpieces are too small.”

I blinked.“What?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I know you were trying to choose the right size, but you really got it wrong. The scale is off. They look puny and dumb on those tables.”

It was exactly what I’d been worrying about in regard to the flower arrangements, and he knew it. “That’s not true. They look amazing! If I had picked the bigger ones, the guests wouldn’t have been able to see over them to talk!”

“I heard some other people mention it, too,” he casually added.

“You know, I see what you’re doing right now,” I told him. “It worked on Juliet.”

“Did it also work on you?”

“It did, because now I’m mad and worried about the flowers,” I said.

“Good. Let’s go in and check them out, and we’ll dance more.” He tugged me toward the French doors. “Also, I was going to tell you before that Juliet will be ok, whatever happens. She has you and the rest of the Currans.” He glanced down at me. “Did you forget cash to tip the bartenders? Damn, I bet you did even though I put it on your list.”

“I did not forget! You know what?”

“What?” he challenged.

“You’re a really good friend to me and I like you a lot.”

He was laughing as we made our way back to the ballroom.

Juliet was ok for the rest of the party, although she wouldn’t even look at me until the moment that they were getting into their Rolls to end the evening, and everyone was clapping and cheering as we waved them off. She hugged Patrick, our mom and dad, and all our other sisters, but she stopped and looked at me, right in the eyes. I thought she might take a swing and I worried about bloodying her nose and getting it on her dress.

But then she hugged me, too. “I owe you, Brenna,” she said, and the car swept them away, into their new life together.

The rest of the guests slowly peeled off and I got the cleaning crews going. Yes, my sister had wanted to end the evening early but it was very late when my siblings, their partners, Campbell, and I sat down to have a few more drinks (nonalcoholic for several of my sisters and also for me, since I was really feeling the previous glasses of champagne). We congratulated each other on the successful event, but then Sophie narrowed her eyes at me.

“Did you do something to make JuJu upset, Brenna?” she asked. “Did you get in a fight with her?”

I opened my mouth to defend myself.

“Juliet was going to cry,” Campbell answered. “Brenna followed her and distracted her so that she didn’t. It was great.”

Sophie raised her eyebrow at him and Nicola’s head turned to look at me. “Is that what happened?” our big sister asked.

“Yes,” I said briefly. “Can we discuss why you all ignored that I had expressly forbidden line dances?”

We drank more and argued a little until Granger looked at his wife, smiled, and picked her up off the couch. “We’re going to bed,” he announced, and carried her upstairs. The rest of us followed on our own two feet, and I said goodnight to Campbell at the door to his room.

“Thanks for standing up to Sophie,” I told him.

“She had the wrong idea about why you fought with Juliet.”

“Thanks for that, and thanks for everything else, too,” I said. “I’m very grateful.”

He nodded. “Goodnight,” he said as he closed the door, and I went to one of the other beautiful guestrooms. But then, I couldn’t sleep. I lay and looked in the direction of the canopy above me, a feature I generally hated but could acknowledge looked very appropriate in this room. It was absolutely pitch black and I couldn’t actually see it or anything else, so I just stared into the darkness.

After a while, I gave up. I got up, too, and walked out into the equally pitch black hallway, using my phone to light my way. I went to Campbell’s door and listened, but I didn’t hear anything besides some muffled laughter from one of my sisters’ rooms.

I knocked softly, then listened again…had he answered? I was pretty sure—no, I was almost entirely certain that I’d heard him say, “Yes?” I quietly turned the fluted glass knob and opened the door.

“Campbell?” I whispered.

“Brenna.”

I crept towards the bed. “Are you awake or talking in your sleep?” I murmured.

“I’m awake,” he told me. “Don’t shine that in my eyes, though.” I turned off the flashlight and put my phone on the bedside table. “Sit,” he offered and I did, on the edge of the mattress, drawing my knees up to my chin.

“I can’t sleep,” I said, stating the obvious. “Usually, I talk to Cleo when I get like this.”

“Am I the stand-in for a dressmaker’s dummy?” He laughed softly. “Ok, I can be mute.”

“No, it’s better to talk to you,” I assured him, and he laughed again.

“Are you still worried about JuJu?”

It sounded funny to hear her family nickname come out of his mouth, but he’d fit right in with everyone almost immediately. They’d liked him right away. “I am worried,” I said. “And I seem to have a lot of extra nerves or something. I keep thinking through the wedding, going over every aspect that I can remember and analyzing it.”

“I used to do that,” he said. “I did it about my games and I did it about things like tests and exams. I still do it,” he admitted. “For weeks now, I’ve been tracing through my memory and trying to piece together the fraud at the company.”

“That you weren’t involved in,” I said in a voice that sounded very loud in the quiet night. Just in case there were other ears listening in, they needed to hear that.

“Are you cold?” he asked, and I nodded before I remembered that he couldn’t see me and answered aloud that yes, I was. “Want to get in?” I heard the swish of the covers and maybe the sound of movement. “I’m all the way over on the other side. You have plenty of room.”

This was for warmth, not cuddling. Not anything remotely sexual, either. “Ok,” I said, and lay down in the big space he’d left for me. Campbell pulled the blankets back up and it was much warmer.

“Tell me more,” he said, and I talked. I talked about Juliet and my worries for her, my fears that the food served to the tables in the back of the ballroom had been cold due to the distance from the kitchen, and how my mom and dad had been so strained and unhappy.

“Despite all that, it was a wonderful wedding,” he told me.

“The best part for me was afterwards,” I said. “Then I knew that it hadn’t been a disaster, and it was when you defended me to my sisters. Thank you again for that.”

“You’re welcome. The best part for me was the dancing,” he said.

“That was fun.” I thought of how low his hand had dipped, and swallowed.

“I meant the dancing with you,” he specified. “You’re very smooth.”

“You’re not bad, yourself.”

“When’s the next wedding so that we can take another spin?”

“All we have left in my family are Patrick, Grace, and me. It doesn’t look good for a wedding anytime soon. How about Carrington?”

“No, there’s nothing happening there. She hasn’t had a boyfriend in a while, and she won’t meet anyone now that she won’t leave her house. We’ll have to do something about it.”

“You mean, we’ll have to get her out?” I suggested. “Or do you mean that we’ll have find other opportunities to dance, like joining a ballroom club?”

“I’m going to think about it,” he answered enigmatically. “It’s late. Are you feeling any sleepier?”

“No.”

“Ok, I’m going to explain mortgage-backed securities. We’ll start with Ginnie Mae, and that should knock you out,” he said, and he was correct about that. He went on for a while and my eyelids gradually got heavy.

Then, just as I fell asleep, I felt his hand on my back like when we’d been dancing. I thought about being in his arms and how it felt right. It felt right to be with him at this moment.

I was going to look into a ballroom club, too. There had to be a way to keep this going.