Long and Hard: A Bad Boy Box Set

by Lulu Pratt

I buried myself in paperwork for the rest of the day. When it was time to go to the venue, my head hurt and my throat was scratchy.

  “You can’t afford to come down with something,” Isaiah said when I complained about my headache.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. I knew my supposed pending illness was a direct result of the panic and stress I felt. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Have fun venue walking,” Isaiah said. I wished I could look forward to it.

  I met Abigail and Carter outside the venue. Grayson was there, too, of course. He looked neat and put together, calm and collected. Nothing like the emotional mess he had been last night and nothing like the open, vulnerable person who had sat at my kitchen counter this morning. Maybe he’d had a chance to vent his feelings and, for the first time, he felt all right.

  Maybe he was so damn good at putting on an act, he was still hurting, taking his friends for a ride.

  Or maybe he had taken me for one.

  I shook off the thoughts and greeted Abigail and Carter with the same bright smile I greeted all my clients. Abigail looked at me for a beat too long for me to think she bought my act. Carter was none the wiser. When I greeted Grayson, we were cold with each other. We couldn’t let the others know what had happened between us. I was glad he was like this with me. I couldn’t pretend everything was perfect, and with him being distant on purpose, it hid that my distance was natural.

  The manager came out to meet us. She was all smiles, chattering away, and I was relieved for the distraction. We walked through the venue, listening as she explained which areas we had access to and what the rules were that we had to adhere to.

  “I’ll need you all out by midnight. Any later and I have to charge you for every half hour following that to cover the extra hours for my staff,” she said.

  Grayson glanced at me with his eyebrows raised. I knew he thought it was a little excessive, and it was. But in the wedding industry, everything was overpriced, and I was used to the terms and conditions that were all similar.

  “I’ll leave you to get the feel of the place and plan your things,” the manager finally said. She smiled at Abigail and Carter. “And may I offer my congratulations to the happy couple.”

  Abigail and Carter beamed and thanked her. The contrast between how they were with each other and the couple I had dealt with earlier was staggering. It gave me hope that Abigail really had found true happiness. My friend deserved it. And after what I had found out about Carter, he did too.

  My stomach turned, and I tried not to think about Jenna.

  Abigail and Carter worked through the plans for their wedding day and decided where it would all take place in the venue. Abigail paced out the steps from the door to where the altar would be. Carter and Grayson discussed where to put the candy bar and the gift table. I stood back and watched friends come together and discuss the day that would be the happiest of them all.

  I felt like I was going to throw up. Knowing what I knew about Jenna, about how it had affected Carter and Grayson, made me feel horrible. I knew that Abigail’s happiness was due to Carter’s tragedy, that if Jenna hadn’t died, Abigail wouldn’t have found him, and they wouldn’t have been getting married now. But I was hard for me to add up in my mind. It was hard to justify one person’s pain with another person’s happiness.

  “Are you okay?” Abigail asked, coming to me. “You’ve been very quiet tonight.”

  I nodded. “I had a difficult couple today, and it gets to me when people force something that should have stayed as it was before.”

  Abigail hugged me. “Your job has the strangest challenges. They’re all so emotional. But you’re with us now, and you know we’re supposed to be together.” She looked at Carter who was measuring the side of the venue with Grayson, and she had stars in her eyes.

  I smiled at her. “I’m so glad you’re happy,” I said. “It’s the most any wedding planner and friend could ask for.”

  “I’m glad I’m happy too,” Abigail said and giggled. I hugged her. It was a small consolation that my friend was in such a good space, that she was so in love and that her future was as bright as this. There were a lot of horrible things that happened in this world, but the good things shone through the darkness like tiny points of light.

  Maybe this bit of light would be enough to pull me through the next few days because God knew I didn’t feel like I had what it took.

  When we were done at the venue, I said goodnight to Abigail and Carter. Grayson came to me too.

  “We’ll see you around,” he said as if we had nothing going on between us. He glanced over his shoulder, saw Abigail and Carter wrapped up in each other so much, they would never see anything else, and he brushed the back of his hand down my cheek. The gesture was so small, but my stomach did a little flip.

  “Goodbye, beautiful,” he whispered before he walked away.

  I took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. Panic and butterflies fought for a space in my tummy. When I climbed into my car, I was glad to be heading home.

  Chapter 20

  GRAYSON

  FRIDAY, WE WERE packed and ready for Vegas. The four of us boarded the plane and ordered vodka right away to start our celebrations. It was a special occasion, and we were going to make the most of the night.

  We were in the air, the vodka had set in, and the weather was perfect for our flight. Jack and Tony talked to Carter about the plans for the night, and I smiled, listening to the shitty banter that came from them. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to like them. Carter was friends with them, and he gained some value from them, I guess, but they weren’t my kind of people.

  I looked out the small window at the world below, thinking about Vegas. Casinos and alcohol and shows and strippers.

  Shit.

  I hadn’t canceled the strippers I’d ordered for Carter to wait for us in the room. I had completely forgotten about them. After having a change of heart and deciding to let Carter have his day, I’d ditched all my plans for disaster. I glanced at my watch. It was still a while before we landed. I had to take care of it the moment our feet hit the ground. Carter would be righteously pissed at me. I had been willing to risk that for the sake of the relationship being ruined when I had made the bookings, but I didn’t want any of that anymore.

  And Carter didn’t want strippers. He wasn’t that kind of husband to be. He had treated Jenna with the most respect before his wedding to her too. It had been something I had admired back then because I would have killed him if he’d hurt my sister in any way. I had been such a dick to consider doing something so terrible to Carter and the woman he loved now.

  I knew what my motivation had been and why I had decided to it, but I couldn’t believe I’d stooped so low. My stomach turned and canceling the strippers was all I could think about for the rest of the flight. I hardly touched my alcohol and only partly joined in the conversations, barely hearing what they were saying.

  “Why are you so quiet?” Carter asked after a while. “Is everything okay?”

  “Perfect,” I said. “I’m saving my energy for tonight.”

  Carter laughed. “It sounds like we’re going to have a crazy time, then.”

  I hoped it wouldn’t be too crazy. Before, I’d hoped it would be. God, I was an idiot.

  The time dragged by, and it felt like a million years before we finally touched down. I hoped it wasn’t too late to cancel. I didn’t care what it would take to make it all go away. I just wanted to take care of the strippers and make sure the bachelor party was the success it was meant to be. It couldn’t be what I’d hoped for it to be before.

  We made our way to the baggage carousel, and the boys were laughing and joking. I was starting to stress. I hadn’t had a chance to get away from them to make a call yet, and the more time passed, the less I could focus on our time together. After we found our bags, Tony offered to do a coffee run while Carter chilled.

  “I’ll get it,” I offered quickly. “B
est man duties.” I left the boys behind and finally had a chance to make the call. I dialed the agency I’d emailed for the strippers. The phone rang and rang without answer. I tried twice more, but I got no response.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I typed out an email while I was in line and sent it to the email address I had used to make the booking. The reply I received was the normal automated response thanking me for my booking, and it made me stress even more. What if they didn’t get the email on time? Or at all? What kind of business didn’t answer their phones? I should have thought about this earlier.

  When I joined the boys with their coffee, Carter looked at me with a frown.

  “You seem stressed,” he said. Sometimes, it was a pain when he knew me as well as he did.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Lighten up, man,” Carter said. “We’re in Vegas!”

  He was right. And the reason we were here was that I had initially looked for a way to ruin his wedding. So, it wasn’t a good thing. But if I kept the boys out of the hotel room somehow, maybe I could still avoid the mistake I’d made. God, I hoped so. If I could keep them away until I could handle it, it would all go away.

  We took a limousine to the Bellagio. We were doing everything in style, and Carter was enjoying himself. I wished I could say the same. I was shitting myself about the strippers.

  The rooms were made up beautifully with bachelor-themed parcels on the beds — chocolate molded into the shapes of naked ladies. Carter laughed about it, but I noticed he didn’t eat it. He put it away where we all sucked on ours as if it was a real woman. It made me feel even worse. At least the strippers would only come later, so it gave me a bit of time to do damage control.

  When our bags were in the rooms, and we had changed for a night out on the town, we headed down to the casino to try our hand at luck. Carter won a couple of times, which was perfect. The rest of us kept losing. I didn’t give a shit. I checked my phone for an email reply every now and then and got none.

  The alcohol was as free-flowing as water, and before long, Carter was sufficiently wasted. He laughed and enjoyed himself and started throwing money at the dealers, betting more and more. I let him because it was his party, and he won enough in return not to have regrets in the morning. I wished I could say the same about my gambling, but I couldn’t.

  After a few hours, when the partygoers all moved on and the serious gamblers stayed behind, I noticed a woman snaking her way through the casino goers. She wore skimpy clothing. She rolled her hips as she walked, and she dripped with sex appeal. She was a stripper or an escort of some kind. She had to be.

  In other words, she was bad news.

  “Let’s hit the bar,” I suggested when a slot machine didn’t pay out.

  “I’m in,” Carter said, and I was relieved. I didn’t care what we did. I wanted to get away from Ms. Sex-Me.

  We walked to the bar and ordered a round of shooters. I took my shot with the guys, but I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to have a good time, and I was stressed to the max by now. I had to get up to the room and do something about those strippers. I tried a few times to slip away from the group, but when I did, Carter caught me and either wanted to come with me or asked me why his best man was ditching him.

  I couldn’t exactly tell him it was to save him from the mess I’d made, could I?

  Carter was getting drunker and drunker, and if I’d still had the plan to get him involved with strippers, I would have been thrilled. In that state, I would have been able to do anything with him. But it wasn’t what I wanted anymore.

  Tony and Jack were starting to get quite rowdy. They were roughhousing and bumped into a guy who walked past. Immediately, he was up in their faces, and a good night threatened to turn into a bad one. I didn’t want to fight. I couldn’t afford Carter to go home with bruises and black eyes, and he was getting involved because he was drunk enough to forget about anything other than swinging his fists. This was what happened when he drank too much. It had been this way since college.

  “Let’s get up to the room,” I said, desperately trying to split up the fight before security decided we weren’t welcome in the hotel anymore.

  “Just one punch, that’s all it will take,” Carter said and he lunged forward. I grabbed his arm and yanked him back.

  “Let’s get to bed,” I said. “Abigail wants to call early in the morning.”

  Her name seemed to bring Carter back to his senses. I was glad to get them away from the fight. When we stepped into the elevator to ride back to our floor, the movement made me nauseous, and I realized I was drunker than I’d thought. I had also not stressed as much as I had before, and the feeling was a good one. Light and airy, this was why I drank. Despite trying to be responsible, the shots I had taken every time the boys had ordered had loosened me up enough not to remember what I was so panicked about.

  Until we opened the door and music started playing with the lights dimmed, and two women stood in the middle of the floor wearing next to nothing.

  Oh, shit.

  “What the fuck is this?” Carter asked, his eyes on me as if he knew it was my doing.

  “Let me handle it,” I said. I pushed the boys out of the room and closed the door. The women came to me, touching me, rubbing their bodies against me. I struggled to think through the alcohol and my body being stimulated in all the right ways. There was so much skin, it made my mind swim.

  I shook my head and turned the lights too bright. I switched off the music.

  The women stopped grinding and looked at me. Neither of them seemed to be too worried that they were very naked. Only their nipples were covered, and a tiny triangle hit the V between their legs.

  “I’m sorry, ladies, there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said. “I canceled for tonight.”

  “We need twenty-four hours in advance,” one of them said.

  I closed my eyes. The room spun slowly around me.

  “What do you need to get out of here?” I asked.

  “Cash,” the other one said.

  “I already paid.”

  “We have a cancelation fee.”

  I took out my wallet. I would pay whatever it took. They seemed to know this and took advantage of it, but I didn’t care. I wanted them to fuck off. I ended up paying double their rates before they finally slipped into trench coats that suddenly made them look professional. They left the room, walking past Carter who looked fuming and too sober for this conversation to be blamed on alcohol.

  “Do you want to tell me what the fuck that was?” he asked me.

  I could lie to him and tell him it was the hotel when they’d learned it was a bachelor renting the room. But I had to come clean about it because I felt like shit.

  “I booked them when I wanted to ruin everything. But that was before. I tried to cancel.”

  Tony and Jack glanced at each other and disappeared. They weren’t willing to get involved.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? I lost Jenna, and now I’m never allowed to be happy again? Was the accident my fucking fault, Grayson?”

  I shook my head. “I’m ashamed, Carter. You must know that, but I took care of it. I made them go away. This is still your night.”

  Carter shook his head. “Suddenly, I don’t want this shit anymore. The upside is I’m so pissed off at you, I’m beautifully sober again so I can call Abigail. Which I am going to do right now, and she won’t be worried because I won’t sound like the fucked-up asshole you tried to turn me into.”

  Carter pushed past me and slammed his door in my face. I stood in the hallway alone. I had messed up. I’d hoped I could fix it, and I’d managed to do some chaos control, but it still all blew up in my face.

  I was a rotten friend.

  Chapter 21

  CALLIE

  IT WAS THE day of the wedding for my most stressful clients, and I was up at five. On wedding days like this, I tried to get going as early as possible. The ceremony started at four that afternoon, officia
lly, but I had a hell of a lot to do before then.

  I showered, changed, blew out my hair and put on one of my wedding dress suits that I kept for these occasions. I made sure I looked professional enough that everyone knew who I was without having to guess, but I looked festive enough to blend into the wedding crowd.

  Isaiah met me at the office at seven so we could drive together.

  “You look great, doll,” he said. “More radiant than usual.”

  “Really?” I asked, looking down at my clothes. “You’ve seen me in this a hundred times.”

  Isaiah shook his head. “There’s something about you.”

  “Well, you look great too,” I said. Isaiah had chosen to put on a plum-colored collared shirt with a tie the same color and black suit pants. It was a very Isaiah outfit, but I had learned to roll with what he chose to wore to distinguish himself from the others. I chose professional elegance. Then again, I wasn’t always sure what he wanted the others to distinguish him as, a wedding coordinator or something else.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We stopped by at the mother of the bride’s house at seven thirty. She was already up and dressed in an elegant navy dress suit — as per my recommendation for photos — and she had adorned herself with pearls and rings that showed off her wealth. She was the one throwing all the money at me to make this wedding one of the best the town has ever seen.

  “The girls are still sleeping, but they’re up for breakfast at nine, and we start hair and make-up at ten.”

  I glanced at my wristwatch, counting the hours they had left until they had to be ready.

  “I don’t want any girls doing hair and make-up later than one. The photographer is coming to you at two to start the photos, but she wants to get shots of the girls helping the bride into her dress.”

  “I’ll be sure of it. You sent me your list.”

  We left the house and headed to the venue.

  “The bride never looked that excited about the wedding,” Isaiah said, reflecting on the older woman’s joy.