Chapter 2 A Toast to Poor Decisions
A Toast to Poor Decisions
Cassie
By six o’clock, I had learned three important things about Halcyon Ridge.
The first was that the resort staff could appear anywhere within twelve seconds of a guest looking mildly inconvenienced.
The second was that “partial ocean view” meant I could see the ocean if I leaned over my balcony far enough to make my father nervous.
The third was that blush chiffon looked good on me.
That was the problem. If it had been ugly, I could have hated it honestly. I could have stood in front of the mirror and blamed Tessa’s taste, Grant’s audacity, and the bridal industry’s long war against female dignity.
Instead, the dress fit. It skimmed where it should skim. It softened where it should soften. It made my skin look warm and my waist look dangerous. The neckline was low enough to remind people I had breasts and tasteful enough to make them feel rude for noticing.
Tessa had chosen well.
She always did, when she was apologizing for something.
I stared at myself in the mirror while my phone buzzed on the vanity.
Another text from Grant.
Unknown: You still wear pink better than she does.
I had not saved his number. I had blocked his old one after the second time he called me at midnight to say he missed how easy we used to be before I “made us complicated.” Apparently a man with Grant’s confidence could acquire burner numbers the way normal people acquired airline miles.
I deleted the text.
Then I washed my hands because even looking at it made me feel touched.
A knock sounded at my door.
“Cassie girl,” my father called. “You decent?”
“Physically or emotionally?”
The door opened two inches. My father peered in through the gap with the caution of a man who had survived marriage, divorce, and raising two daughters.
“Physically.” He said. “I know better than to ask the other one.”
I smiled despite myself. “Come in.”
He stepped inside, wearing a navy jacket and no tie. His hair had gone mostly gray at the temples since the divorce, which suited him better than the forced cheer he used to wear around my mother. Being unmarried had made him quieter. Not sad. Just less edited.
He stopped when he saw me.
“Oh, honey.”
“No.” I cut him off.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You had a face.”
He smiled weakly. “My face was proud.”
“Your face was tragic.”
“It can be both.” He closed the door behind him. “You look beautiful.”
I looked back at the mirror. “That feels like losing.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is when the bride picked the dress to prove she forgave herself.”
Dad exhaled through his nose and leaned against the dresser. There were people who would have told me Tessa loved me. People who would have said today was about her happiness, or family was complicated, or Grant was old news and I needed to move forward.
My father didn’t say any of that.
He rubbed one hand over his jaw and said, “Your sister has always been able to cry at the exact moment consequences arrive.”
My throat tightened. “That was mean.”
“It was true.”
“Still mean.”
He shrugged. “I’m trying it out. Your Aunt Linda says I’m too generous. She also thinks Grant has the moral depth of a puddle in a gas station bathroom.”
“She said that?”
“On the shuttle. In front of his uncle.”
I pressed my lips together and Dad’s mouth twitched. It was the first clean laugh I had almost had all day.
“Is Mom furious?” I asked.
“Your mother has chosen denial as her weekend activity.”
“She does love a theme.”
“She wants this to go smoothly.”
“She should have raised fewer people with terrible impulse control.”
He looked at me then. Really looked.
“She should have protected you better.”
The room went quiet. Outside the balcony doors, the resort moved on without us. Voices floated up from the terrace. Glassware chimed. Somewhere below, someone laughed in that sharp pre-dinner way of people trying to prove they were having the correct amount of fun.
I turned away from the mirror. “Dad.”
“I know.” He lifted both hands. “Bad timing.”
“It’s not bad timing.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s going to make me cry, and I put effort into this eyeliner.”
He nodded once, accepting the terms. “Then I’ll say this. You don’t owe anyone grace tonight.”
“I think Mom has a different contract.”
“Your mother and I have not agreed on a contract since 2014.”
“Is that why you divorced?”
“No. We divorced because she alphabetized my spices during an argument and told me I was just like paprika, which I still don’t understand.”
I stared at him.
He shrugged. “There were other things.”
I laughed then, it came out rough, but it came.
Dad smiled, relieved.
Another knock hit the door before either of us could get sentimental and ruin the makeup anyway.
“Open up,” Aunt Linda called. “I brought contraband.”
Dad sighed. “She means wine.”
“She always means wine.”
He opened the door, and Aunt Linda swept in wearing a black jumpsuit, gold earrings, and the expression of a woman who had come to watch a building fall in formalwear.
She held up a small bottle of gin.
“Plane bottle,” she said. “For emergencies.”
“We are at a luxury resort with four bars,” Dad said.
Aunt Linda kissed my cheek, then held me at arm’s length.
“Well, damn.”
“What?”
“You look fantastic.” Her eyes narrowed. “That dress is manipulative.”
“Thank you.”
She waved a hand. “I hate it.”
“Also thank you.”
Aunt Linda set the gin on the vanity and glanced at my father. “You told her?”
“Told me what?” I asked.
Dad closed his eyes.
Aunt Linda smiled with all her teeth. “Your mother seated me at a table with Grant’s divorced uncle because she thinks two unattached people over fifty should either flirt or become furniture.”
Dad groaned. “Linda.”
“What? I told her I already had a date.”
“You do not have a date.”
She shrugged. “I do. I’m dating the drama.”
“That tracks,” I said.
Aunt Linda pointed at me. “And you, my love, are the main event.”
“I was hoping to be a tasteful side dish.”
“No chance. The groom cheated on you with the bride. You showed up in the assigned color. Your cheekbones are doing God’s work. Every woman here is either horrified for you or taking notes.”
I blanched. “That is comforting in a violent way.”
“Good.” She lowered her voice. “Also, if Grant touches you, tell me.”
Dad straightened. “Did he touch you?”
“No.”
I looked between them. Dad’s face had changed. The softness was gone, replaced by something still and careful.
“He’s being Grant,” I said.
Aunt Linda’s mouth flattened. “So yes.”
“I can handle Grant.”
“I know you can,” she said. “I just want a turn.”
Dad looked at me. “Cassie.”
“He made a comment where no one else could hear.”
“What comment?”
“One designed to make me react so I’d look unstable.”
Dad’s jaw worked once. Aunt Linda picked up the gin, unscrewed the cap, and took a neat sip.
“Fantastic,” she said. “I hope his photographer gets my good side when I ruin his rehearsal dinner.”
“No one is ruining the rehearsal dinner,” Dad said.
“I said hope. I didn’t say plan.”
“Linda.”
“Fine.” She handed me the bottle. “Drink. Smile. Eat the expensive food. If he corners you, you come find me.”
“And if Mom tells me to be the bigger person?”
Aunt Linda snorted. “Tell her you’re five foot five and tired.”
Dad opened the door. “We should go before your mother sends a search party.”
“No,” Aunt Linda said. “She’ll send guilt. It travels faster.”
The rehearsal dinner was on the west terrace, where the resort had arranged long tables beneath strings of warm lights and enough white flowers to make the air smell sweet and expensive.
The ocean stretched beyond the stone railing, darkening as the sun lowered.
A quartet played near the bar. Servers moved between guests with trays of champagne, crab cakes, and the kind of tiny food that forced people to pretend they were not still hungry.
It was beautiful.
Annoyingly beautiful.
The kind of beautiful that made betrayal feel overdressed.
Tessa stood near the center table in a white silk dress, glowing so hard she nearly needed a dimmer switch. Henry sat at her feet with his floral collar and pink leash attached to a chair leg. He watched Grant with the same distrust I felt, though his came with better hair.
Grant held court beside her.
That was the only word for it. He had one hand wrapped around a whiskey glass and the other resting on Tessa’s lower back. He laughed too loudly at his own jokes. He clapped men on the shoulder. He bent to kiss elderly relatives and somehow managed to make even that feel rehearsed.
When he saw me, his eyes dropped.
Aunt Linda made a noise beside me. “Pig.”
“Linda,” Dad warned.
“What? I saw his eyes crawl down her body. I’m naming wildlife.”
“He’s the groom,” my mother said, appearing with a glass of champagne and the brittle smile of a woman already under siege. “Could we please not start?”
Aunt Linda turned to her. “Marianne, your future son-in-law has the sexual discipline of a raccoon in a dumpster.”
My mother stared at her. Dad looked at the ocean while I covered my mouth with my glass.
“This,” my mother said, “is exactly why I was concerned about seating.”
“I thought it was because I’m divorced and unsupervised,” Aunt Linda said.
“You are impossible.”
“And yet…invited.”
Mom looked at me next. Her expression softened in the way that usually meant she was about to ask something unfair in a gentle voice.
“You look lovely, Cassie.”
“Thank you.”
“I know tonight may feel awkward.”
“There’s optimism.”
She sighed. “But Tessa is very nervous. I need you to help keep things calm.”
Dad’s head turned and Aunt Linda’s eyebrows shot up.
There it was. The old family reflex. Tessa trembled, so I steadied. Tessa cried, so I quieted. Tessa wanted, so everyone rearranged the room until wanting no longer looked selfish.
“Mary,” Dad warned.
She ignored him. “Just for the weekend.”
I smiled at my mother. It was not a kind smile, but it behaved in public.
“I’ll do my best to make the man who cheated on me with my sister feel celebrated.”
Her face tightened. “Must you say it that way?”
“How would you prefer I phrase it?”
“This is her wedding weekend.”