19. Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Lis
O nce all the food is served and the cleanup is done, I stay behind to prep for tomorrow’s rehearsal dinners. We’re doing two, one for each of the two weddings this weekend. By the time I’m done, the corporate clients have left and so has Vic, Derek, Adalie, and all the rest of the staff. Spencer and I are the last ones.
I stop by his office.
“Hey. I wondered if we could go over this weekend again. I just want to make sure I have everything ready.”
He nods. “We can do that. I’m hungry though. You want to order something?”
“Sure.” I pull out my phone, about to ask what he wants to order, when it starts ringing. “Sorry. Daze is calling. Hello?”
“You’re still at work, right?” she asks without preamble.
“Yeah.”
“Are you done? Come out for dinner.”
“I was going to have a meeting with Spencer about this weekend. We have two weddings.”
“Sophie and I are across the street. Both of you come. It’ll be nice to finally meet him. You can have a meeting after dinner.”
I roll my eyes at her tone, but don’t comment on it. “I thought you guys were going out for your anniversary today?”
“We are. But since we’re across the street, we want you to join us.”
I sigh. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope. Now get your little ass over here.” She hangs up on me, not letting me protest anymore.
“They’re at the restaurant across the street. You want to get dinner and then we can talk about this weekend?”
“If you want to go with them, I can wait until after.”
“She said you could come, and you said you’re hungry. Come with me. I don’t know why she wants me to come to dinner, anyway.”
We leave the building and go across to the restaurant. I spot Daze and Sophie immediately and make my way over to them.
“Shit,” Spencer says as we sit down, his head swiveling between us. “You guys are identical.”
“I told you that,” I say.
“It’s one thing to know it. It’s another thing to see it.”
I give him a nudge with my elbow and then turn to my sister. “Well, you got me here,” I say. “Spit it out. I know you want to say something, so let’s have it.”
Sophie and Daze exchange a look and then Daze turns back to me, her face alight with joy. She holds up her left hand, showing me a ring that hadn’t been on her finger yesterday.
I slap my hand over my mouth. “Are you engaged?” I ask through my fingers.
Daze’s grin grows even wider as she nods, gripping Sophie’s hand.
I jump up and circle the table, pulling my sister into a tight hug, tears flooding my eyes. “I’m so excited for you guys.”
I hug her again. Then I hug Sophie. Then ask to see the ring again. The server has come over a couple times by the time we’re settled enough to order.
“Congratulations,” Spencer says once the server is gone. “Have you guys thought about where you want to get married? Because I know a pretty great place with an extremely talented chef.”
I smile at his compliment.
“I would love to get married at Blue Vista,” Daze says. “On the rooftop with the ocean right there. But I don’t think it’s in our budget.”
Spencer shrugs. “Come to a meeting. I’ll introduce you to Vic. You let us know what your budget is, and we can see if we can work something out.”
“Tell me all about how it happened,” I say, practically vibrating with excitement.
“Sophie told me to take the day off today. She had something special planned for our anniversary. In hindsight, I probably should have suspected then, but I didn’t.”
Sophie laughs. “You can be a little oblivious to things sometimes. I really wanted to do it at sunrise, but I knew that would be tricky because I’d have to get her to take the day off.”
I nod, a twinge of pain stealing over me, a feeling that reminded me I don’t have what they have. My sister and Sophie are so cute together. Sophie always does little things for Daze like making sure she has coffee ready when Daze gets up and drawing her a bath when she’s had a long day. They make their bed together every morning.
“So I take the day off and she wakes me up at way-too-early-o’clock, and we drive out to Queen Elizabeth Park—”
“Where we had our first date,” Sophie interjects, looking at Spencer.
“—And there’s so few people around—because it was so early—and Sophie got down on one knee.”
They share a look of pure love and happiness and that stab of envy flares again. I hate the feeling. I should only be excited right now. But I also want what they have. I want it so much and it’s never happened for me. Even the relationships I’ve been in, I’ve never felt that overwhelming sense of rightness.
The feeling I had in those few hours with Spencer.
I have such a mix of emotions inside me and I’m not entirely sure what I mean when I shift my water glass toward Spencer. I’m not even sure he’ll understand the gesture since it was a few nights ago and I don’t exactly want to change the subject. I just want to move on from this moment so I can feel excited, and only excited.
“So how did you two meet?” he asks.
And the moment is broken. The pain in my chest eases because I know this story. It’s one I’ve heard a dozen or more times. I lived part of it. It’s cute and funny and I help tell it. How they’d met at a small Christmas party five years ago through a mutual friend, but both had been seeing someone at the time. They became friends and both broke up with their girlfriends sometime between Christmas and Valentine’s Day.
“Yet neither of them realized they’d done it because they wanted to be with the other,” I say, dryly.
Our food arrives as Sophie continues. “Finally, Daze asked me out and we went on our first date. We went to Queen Elizabeth Park with the intention of going for a walk before getting some dinner. Of course, it started to rain, so we went into the Bloedel Conservatory to stay dry. Have you ever been?”
“A really long time ago,” Spencer says. “I went with school when we had a unit on birds.”
“So you know it’s a pretty short walk around the path. But we probably went around that place ten times, just talking. A year later, on our first anniversary, we got these.” She rolls up her sleeve to show off the silhouette tattoo on her left wrist of two birds on a branch looking at each other. Daze pushes up her sleeve to show off her matching one, placed right below the daisy and amaryllis tattoo that matches mine. “Since Daze asked me out first, I decided a while back I wanted to be the one to propose. I’m glad I got to do it and make it a surprise.”
They smile at each other again.
“So wait. You guys were engaged at sunrise?” I ask. “Before I even left for work this morning?”
“Yes,” Daze says. “Then we went for breakfast and walked around the park for a while. Then went to Bloedel since it opens at a reasonable hour.” She casts a sidelong look at Sophie who shrugs.
“I wanted to do it at sunrise. A lot of people choose sunset. But it’s the beginning of our life together, not the end of it.”
Daze and I both clap our hands to our hearts from the sheer sweetness of that statement. And the envy is back.
“Okay, guys,” Spencer says. “You’re giving me a toothache from all the sweetness.”
The joke is so well-timed that I find my way back to only being excited.
“You’ve been engaged all day,” I say. “Who have you told so far?”
Daze gives me a secret smile. One we’ve shared since we were kids when we were the only two people in the world who knew everything about each other.
“So far, we’ve told you and Spencer.”
“I’m the first to know?”
“Of course you are. You think I’d tell anyone else before you?”
Tears spring to my eyes and I hate myself for all the jealousy I’ve been feeling.
“And I’m going to ask this, to make it official, even though it should go without saying,” she says, reaching across the table for my hand. “Will you be my maid of honour?”
I take her hand and roll my eyes. “That’s a stupid question. If you tried to choose anyone else, I’d have to have a duel. Pistols at dawn.”
“I have to warn you,” Sophie says, “dawn is pretty early these days.”