Chapter 42 – Eden
EDEN
Three Days Until the Wedding
“Are you twerking?” Brinley asks, pointing at Pippa with a horrified expression.
“I’m trying to twerk. Don’t think I’m succeeding, though,” Pippa says, rotating her butt a little more. “There, is that better?”
“No!” Brinley, Maura, and I scream in unison. Cat, who passed tipsy a while ago, slurs a delayed, “Noooooo.”
“Don’t listen to them!” Mom declares, and grabs the arms of her wheelchair to hoist herself up to standing. “Don’t stop. I’ll join you.”
“You don’t have to, Mrs. Locke,” Brinley says.
Mom just waves her hand dismissively. “I’m fine. I’ve still got a few moves left in me.”
Thankfully, my mother doesn’t attempt twerking. She does shimmy a little, which makes us all whoop.
If it weren’t Brinley’s bachelorette party, I might worry about Mom having a flare-up from dancing.
In the moment, though, with a glass of champagne and a pint of cookie dough ice cream in my system, I can’t bring myself to care.
I join in with the cheering as I watch as Pippa and my mother perform the world’s most awkward version of “Pony” by Ginuwine for us.
The bachelorette party I planned doesn’t have strippers or penis-shaped anything.
It started with a florist coming over and helping us make wildflower crowns.
That was followed with wine and a luxurious picnic spread, prepared by Beau.
Then, the girls and I watched the sun set over the fields while we sat in rocking chairs on the porch and shared our favorite memories of Brinley.
I’m not sure exactly when things took a turn.
Maybe when Cat opened her own personal champagne bottle, celebrating drinking for the first time in over a year.
Maybe when Maura shocked everyone by gifting Brinley a remote-control vibrator.
All I know is, by the time Pippa put on her playlist of the filthiest songs ever written, we were all more than ready to let loose.
Mom wasn’t supposed to join us, but when she went down to the kitchen to make tea, Brinley insisted on dragging her into the celebration, at least for a while. Now, I’m watching Pippa put her flower crown on Mom while Mom does the hand jive.
“I can’t believe you remember that dance!” I laugh.
“How could I not?” Mom says. “You only made me watch Grease about a thousand times as a kid.”
“Ugh, I wanted to be bad Sandy so bad.” Pippa sighs. “When she comes out in the leather leggings and says ‘Tell me about it, stud.’”
“Me too!” Cat says. “I never got up the courage to buy the leather leggings, though.”
“Me neither,” says Pippa.
Mom raises her brows. “I did. Eden’s father loved them.”
The entire group shrieks, and I press my hands over my ears to protect myself from both the sound and the mental image.
“Please tell me there are pictures!” Brinley says.
“There might be some in one of my albums,” Mom says. “They’re on the bookshelf in the living room. It would be before the kids were born. Eden can get it.”
“No,” Pippa says as she helps Mom back into her wheelchair. “I’ll get it. I have a feeling Eden would conveniently be unable to find it.”
“You must have been really in love with Mr. Locke if you pulled out the leggings,” Brinley says.
Mom smiles. “He was the love of my life. He would have hated all this—the party, the people in his house, the sportscars in the driveway. He was a quiet, simple man, and all these city folks would have driven him insane. But he would have loved watching Edie make her dreams come true.”
She beams at me, and the image of it warms me from the inside—of Dad seeing what I’ve made for myself and celebrating me for it. I like to think that’s exactly how he would have felt.
For a second, I let myself build the picture the way I’d build an event: Dad at the edge of the porch light, arms crossed, saying nothing—because he never needed to say anything.
Just there. Just proud. It’s the one guest list I can’t fix, and tonight, for once, that feels less like a hole and more like a hand on my shoulder.
Maura wipes a tear from the bottom of her eye, and I know she’s thinking about love and loss.
The initial results of her clinical trial have been promising, but they’re far from a guarantee.
Despite the tears, she’s still grinning, her face glowing with happiness.
That’s the incredible thing about Maura.
She spends far less time worrying about the future than being thrilled that she made it this long.
Before anyone can get too maudlin, Pippa bursts outside, photo album in hand.
“Avert your eyes, Eden,” she says. “This is a pretty hot photo.”
She flips open the album to several photos of Mom, thirty years ago, dressed in tight leather leggings and a Nirvana T-shirt she clearly cropped herself with a pair of scissors.
“Damn!” Brinley says. “You look incredible!”
“Please promise me my kids will think I’m this cool when they grow up,” Cat says.
“Kids?” Pippa shrieks. “Don’t tell me you’re already going for round two. I can’t handle it.”
“I promise, Sylvie’s enough for now. Ask me in a year though…”
Pippa turns to Brinley. “Oh, god. Please tell me you won’t catch baby fever after marriage, too.”
“Maybe I have already,” Brinley says, waggling her eyebrows.
“With the amount of vodka you have in your system?” Maura says. “I think she’s safe for now, Pips.”
Brinley throws her head back in laughter. Her crown of white and pink flowers contrasts beautifully with her dark hair, and she’s glowing with happiness, surrounded by love. It’s everything I ever wanted for her, and seeing it makes me thrilled and heartbroken at the same time.
We haven’t talked, really talked, since our elevator argument.
For the past month, we've been acting like we're not friends. I play the polite, professional wedding planner, and she plays the grateful, eager bride. I miss her so much that it hurts, even though she’s always only a text away. She’s just not acting like Brinley.
My eyes sting a little, warning me of tears. I quickly excuse myself to the kitchen to refill the snack bowls. I’m opening a new bag of Sour Patch Kids when Brinley appears at the kitchen door, her face flushed and grinning.
“Hi,” she says. She stumbles the tiniest bit on her way to the kitchen counter, letting me know that the drinks have gotten to her.
“Hi,” I reply carefully. “Can I get you anything?”
She shakes her head. “You’re already on candy refill duty. That’s all I need.”
“Good.”
I open a bag of peanut M&Ms, wondering if now’s the time to talk to Brinley about everything. Maybe I can ride tonight’s good energy into making her forgive me for letting things go too far with Luke. Maybe she’ll agree that falling in love with him, knowing I can’t have him, is punishment enough.
I stop myself from saying anything. I’m not about to ruin her bachelorette party by starting up an awkward conversation.
Like she can read my mind, Brinley reaches for my hand and squeezes it tight.
“Eden, you’re so good,” she says. “You’re so incredibly good at planning. I’m blown away by how perfect tonight is. Everything—the cottages, the wildflowers, the whole week—it’s better than I ever imagined it. Thank you.”
I smile tentatively at her. “I’m happy to do it.”
“I’m serious.” She leans forward, her eyes bright behind her glasses. “Your talent is incredible. You’re already doing great things with Flair, but in a few years, you’re going to build something even bigger. I know it.”
Joy fills my chest, making me feel like I could float away. “You don’t know how much that means to me, Brin. Especially coming from you.”
Brinley scoffs. “You mean coming from the girl who has no idea what it takes to plan an event? Who had never once thought about wedding favors until you asked me?”
“No,” I say fiercely. “Coming from the owner of the Peppermint Press, one of the most exciting new businesses in the city. You built a phenomenon, Brin. If I weren’t already your friend, I’d really want to be. I admire you so much.”
“Don’t make me cry,” she says. “I’m already susceptible to big feelings tonight as it is, and I don’t want to ruin my makeup for pictures.”
“Brinley.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “If you think I would let anyone take pictures of you at this stage of drunkenness, then you don’t realize what a consummate professional I am. Nobody is going to have evidence of you taking Jell-O shots while you lip sync to Rihanna.”
She throws back her head and laughs, and has to grab quickly for her flower crown to keep it from falling off, which only makes her laugh harder.
“I guess I better get back to the party before your mom decides to go to bed,” she says. “But we should talk. About—well, you know. Not right now, but maybe after the wedding?”
“Yes. Of course.”
I smile weakly as she makes her way back to the porch. Once Brinley and I get around to that conversation, the thing she wants to discuss won’t even exist anymore. Luke and I will be broken up, and everything can go back to normal—at least, for Brinley.
Grabbing the candy bowls, I plaster a smile on my face and rejoin the group. For the rest of the night, my plan is to take the wine bottle and keep on pouring. If I have a job to do, maybe I won’t think too hard about how this new chapter in Brinley’s love story will be the last chapter in mine.