Chapter 3
Three
CLARA
B ecky entered my flat the following day with such authority that, for a brief moment, I thought it was Drew and felt dread rise within me.
As I registered the tall body that walked through the door as my best friend, I felt relief that it wasn’t him.
“Pretty sure I only gave you that key for emergencies,” I said as I wandered to the front hallway. She dumped two heavy shopping bags on the floor and started removing her shoes.
“Is there a bigger emergency than your douchebag boyfriend of ten years leaving you?” she asked as she kicked her second shoe off and put them both on the shoe rack by the door.
“It was a mutual decision,” I said.
Becky pulled her sunglasses off her face and narrowed her chocolate brown eyes at me as she slipped them on top of her head. “Even if it was, there were better ways for him to go about it, and he probably shouldn’t have waited until he discovered that you wanted to walk down an aisle to end things.”
She didn’t give me a chance to respond to that before she picked up her shopping and carried it through to the kitchen. A stray trio of onions fell out of one of the bags. I picked them up and followed her.
“Do you think I don’t have food in?” I asked when I reached the kitchen and found Becky already in the process of unpacking what looked like a month’s worth of food on my kitchen counters.
“I think you have a lot of lasagne knocking about, and you need comfort food that doesn’t remind you of plans gone wrong. I might have gone overboard with your favourite snacks. You’re welcome.” There was a knock on my front door. “That’ll be the other two,” Becky called as I walked back to open the door.
Sure enough, on the other side of the door were ‘the other two’.
Lucy was Becky’s twin sister. They were nearly identical, with the same deep brown skin and tall athletic bodies that were moulded by different sports. Becky was built by tennis, Lucy by gymnastics, and, more recently, rock climbing. Both could deadlift twice their body weight. The easiest way to tell them apart when we were growing up was the fact that their eyes were different shades of brown, and Lucy had a scar on her nose from when she broke it at thirteen. As adults, the difference between them was more obvious. They both had black hair, but Becky wore hers straight, and Lucy kept hers closely cropped to her scalp. We’d known each other almost from birth.
Rachel was a later addition to our friendship group, and even then, we’d known her since we were four. The beginning of her summer tan warming her skin, and at some point within the week since I’d seen her last, she had dyed the bottom layers of her hair a midnight blue that worked beautifully with her dark brown hair.
There was a fifth member of our girl group, but my sister, Addie, lived in Canada and showed no signs of returning any time soon. So, I would have to rehash the disaster that was my love life to her later.
Lucy and Rachel were carrying a box of doughnuts each, which told me that Becky had told them exactly why they had been summoned to my flat at such short notice.
“I’m guessing she’s here?” Lucy asked as she slinked past me.
“She’s clattering around in the kitchen,” I replied to her retreating back as I closed the door behind Rachel, and we both went back to the kitchen.
“Are we being civilised about this and watching Dirty Dancing, or am I going to have to locate a baseball bat?” Becky asked as I slid into a seat around the kitchen island.
“I say baseball bat,” Rachel said around a mouthful of a doughnut that she started eating before she even put the box down.
“You’re projecting,” I teased.
“Do not try to therapize the therapist,” Rachel shot back before she stuck her tongue out.
“We can’t take a baseball bat to anything. His stuff is still here, in my flat , and I would like it to stay undamaged,” I said.
“We can do it in spirit while Bex cooks, though,” Lucy said, scrolling on her phone just before Lemonade started playing through the speaker. “And then we can pretend we can do the lift while we eat,” she continued.
“Lucy, I will forever remain of the belief that there is some configuration between the five of us, well four today, that can execute that lift. We have all the tools we need for success within us,” Becky said as she crouched down for a saucepan from the cupboard embedded in the island.
“How many times are we going to try before you accept that you’re wrong?” Lucy asked. Becky rolled her eyes in response.
Rachel had finished her doughnut and was rummaging around in the cupboard where we kept the expensive alcohol.
“I think, in keeping with tradition, we should toast to Clo’s return to the single life,” Rachel said, a bitterness to her voice that had nothing to do with me as she found the whiskey she was looking for.
“Yeah, how are you feeling about that?” Lucy asked.
“Part of me is convinced that it’s not real. It doesn’t feel quite real. Like I said, all his stuff is still here, so it’s like he’s gone away for a long weekend or something. There was a point last night where I forgot it even happened.”
“What do you mean you forgot?” Becky asked, sounding both horrified and confused. I understood where she was coming from. It was odd that I had forgotten my boyfriend left me. But I knew how and why it happened.
“Jesse ended up having dinner here last night, so I wasn’t alone with my thoughts, and in a lot of ways, it felt like a day where one of our writing sessions had run on for so long that we had to eat while Drew was out with people from work or whatever.”
Becky frowned. “You’re telling me that Jesse ate the lasagne you cooked for your proposal meal?”
It was amazing how even after twenty-eight years of knowing someone, they could still say things in such a way that you had no idea what to make of it. I couldn’t tell if she was confused, annoyed, or amused about how my Thursday evening ended up turning out.
“Hang on, what proposal?” Rachel asked as she placed a tumbler with two fingers of bourbon in front of me. I took a nervous sip.
“I was going to propose to Drew last night,” I said quietly.
“Did anybody know about this?” Rachel asked the room. Becky nodded slowly. Lucy shook her head. Rachel cut her gaze back to me. “Did your family know?” It was my turn to shake my head. “That didn’t feel like a red flag to you?”
I took another sip, savouring the bourbon on my tongue to buy me some time. “In the eye of the storm, no, it didn’t. But as I watched the ship sink, yes, I can see that it probably meant something that I didn’t tell anyone but Becky.”
Rachel hummed, nodding slowly. “Interesting.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” I spat.
“It doesn’t mean anything. I just think it’s interesting that you were planning to marry someone with a saviour complex.”
The reflex to defend Drew kicked in like it was second nature. “He wasn’t that bad.”
Rachel scoffed. “What were his exact words when he stopped the proposal that never was?”
“I don’t remember,” I replied. Too quickly and pointlessly. I had an incredible memory, and these three knew it.
“Try again,” Rachel said, just the wrong side of polite, one of her flawless eyebrows arching. I could feel the weight of the twins’ gazes on me as they waited for my answer. I knew when I told Becky to come over today that we would have this conversation, but I still wasn’t ready for it.
“Fine.” I took another sip. “He said I wasn’t the person he fell in love with anymore.”
Rachel nodded slowly. “The person who was at about ten per cent life force within weeks of meeting each other? That person? The one that he decided he would be responsible for bringing back to life? You think it was a good idea to enter a legally binding contract with a man who was still in love with a version of you that you haven’t been for at least eight years?” She wasn’t being unkind. In fact, what she had just said was nothing that I hadn’t been thinking. But it felt so much harsher to hear it laid out like that by someone who knew me so well.
“Well, we broke up before anything was signed, so we don’t have to worry about me being saddled with someone with a saviour complex. All we need to worry about now is eating Nigella’s chicken and potatoes and our own body weight in doughnuts.” I drained the rest of my bourbon. I knew Rachel wanted to say more, but as a general rule, she wasn’t allowed to activate therapist mode around us, so whatever it was went unsaid.
For now, at least.
“What about the wedding? If you’re single, doesn’t that mean that you can utilise the plus one we got on the invite?” Lucy asked after a pause.
“There is no way she can find a plus one who is willing to drop everything and go to a wedding with practically no notice.” Becky scoffed.
Here’s the thing, though. She didn’t say no.
“What if I could?” I asked, a truly stupid idea forming in my head as I looked at the book still out on the kitchen counter.
“What do you mean?” Becky asked calmly.
“What if I could find a plus one?”
“Who? I know everyone you know, and they are either coming or have very purposefully not been invited.”
“Just trust me,” I said, slipping out of my seat.
“I trust you with my life, Clo, but this is my wedding you are messing with,” Becky said as she followed close behind me.
“I’m not going to mess anything up,” I replied as I left my flat and stepped across the hall. I knew without looking behind me that I had been followed.
Before I could second-guess myself, I knocked three times on Jesse’s front door. Once my final knock echoed through the hallway, the doubt crept in. I didn’t even know if he was in today, and if he wasn’t, then I was going to have a lot of explaining to do. Hell, even if he was in and agreed, I was going to have a lot of explaining to do.
After what felt like a lifetime, his front door opened, and his face immediately broke out into a smile.
“Hey, what’s up?” he said brightly.
Shit, had Jesse always been this good-looking? I always knew he was tall, only a couple of inches taller than my six feet, but I had never fully noticed the rest of him beyond his multi-coloured eyes. Thick brown hair that always looked perfectly tousled as it framed his face. Broad shoulders, long legs currently encased in shorts that were borderline indecent, the hint of a chain around his neck disappearing under a T-shirt.
“Uh, hey! Do you like weddings?” I cringed. Of all the ways to start this conversation.
Jesse’s gaze flicked behind me before looking back at me, amusement dancing in his eyes. It confirmed what I already knew—that my friends had followed me into the hall to witness this potential shit show.
“I haven’t been to enough to have an opinion. Why do you ask?”
“Would you like to go to a wedding? With me? Fair warning, it would be a week of your life. In Provence.” I wiped my hands on the back of my denim shorts and tried to get a read on Jesse’s face.
“Who’s wedding and when?” he asked easily.
It took me a moment to realise that he hadn’t shut me down. “Second week of August. And it’s Bex’s wedding. Becky.” I gestured vaguely behind me and heard a stage-whispered, “Hi” from the bride-to-be.
Jesse smiled. “So, your best friend’s wedding?”
“Except I’m not secretly in love with her, and I’m not using you to make her jealous,” I shot back.
“Thanks for clarifying. Yeah, I’ll come. Love is fun.”
Relief made my shoulders drop. “Awesome.” I cringed again. I hadn’t called anything awesome since I was about fifteen. “I will catch up with you with more details later, then?”
“Sounds good. Enjoy the rest of your day.” He smiled again as he closed his door.
I turned around and braced myself.
“Maybe I didn’t invite him for a reason,” Becky said, although she was fighting a smile.
“Did you?” I asked as I walked back into my flat.
“Yes. I knew it would piss off my fiancé’s best friend. Jesse was on the invite list, and Drew caught sight of it and kicked off. To be honest, I didn’t want to deal with the stress, so I never sent his invite out. But my loyalty isn’t to the groom’s squad and that knobhead of a man, it’s to mine. It’s to you. If you want him there as your plus one, you can have him there.” Becky shrugged as she walked into the kitchen.
“It would be rude not to take the man you shared your proposal dinner with. That’s a soft date if ever I heard one,” Lucy said as she settled in on my sofa.
“It wasn’t a date. I am one woman. How was I going to eat a whole lasagne on my own? He came to pick up his books, sensed a vibe, and didn’t want to leave me alone. In a lot of ways, it’s what you’re doing right now.”
Lucy hummed. “Fine, it wasn’t a date. But please do not put us and him in the same category. Don’t think I didn’t notice the way you got all flustered when he opened the door. You never look at me like that when you see me.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“Don’t lie to us!” Rachel cut in. “If it makes you feel better, he looked a bit flustered too.”
“No, he didn’t. He looked—” I stuttered, dropping onto the sofa next to Lucy.
“Even if you ignore the fact that he definitely got a bit flustered at the sight of you, the man did agree to go to a wedding in a different country with less than three weeks’ notice. That’s not nothing!” Becky called from the kitchen.
“He’s got nothing on at the moment. He’s waiting for his editor to get back to him about his latest book, and he’s taking most of August off.”
“Of course you know that. Anyway, you can have your plus one, but because Drew now needs his own room, you and your little neighbour are going to have to share one,” Becky said.
I thought for a moment about the layout of the villa the Harrises were hiring for the week. There had been two spare rooms when everything had been squared up.
“That’s not true?—”
“It’s not up for discussion. You’re rooming.”
“But why?” I pouted.
“He agreed to go to the week-long wedding of your best friend with zero hesitation just because you asked. I don’t know what it means, but it means something. Something that I think you should be open to exploring.”
“And we can only do that by sharing a room?”
“Probably not. But this way is so much more fun for us all!” Becky smiled widely before she turned her focus to preparing our food.
I should have protested more about it, but I was one sentence away from her playing the Bride card, so I knew it was a lost cause.
I turned on the TV and started looking for Dirty Dancing .