“Hello?” I said, pressing the call button that allowed the new call to come through. I didn’t even look at the caller ID. I was getting so many calls it was hard to keep track of them all, and I was now in the habit of just answering the phone no matter what.
“Katy?” said a familiar voice on the other end of the line.
“Yeah?” I said. “I’m sorry, but who is it? You sound really familiar, but it’s been a long day and my brain’s not working well right now.”
“Katy, it’s Sara.”
My heart began to beat faster. I felt my face grow red and hot. Anger was bubbling up inside of me. Not just anger, but rage. Pure rage. I almost slammed the phone closed. I wanted to hang up on her.
“Sara!” I practically yelled into the phone. “How dare you call me…after what you did to me. And I called you. I called you plenty of times. You never even sent me a text message, let alone return my calls.”
“I know, Katy. I know. Trust me, I know,” said Sara.
I felt myself growing too angry for my own good. Like most of my problems, I had been trying to push the problem with Sara far to the back of my mind. I had done the same thing with my Father’s death…I had barely thought about him or my Mother since meeting Colton. For better or for worse, that was my way of dealing with things…probably for worse, I realize now. Because once the problem finally confronted me, all that rage that I had bottled up started to release itself on its own accord. “I’m going to hang up now,” I said, sternly, with anger in my voice. It was the best I could do in that situation. I knew that if I stayed on the phone longer, I was bound to yell and scream, and at least I had the foresight to realize that that level of anger was going to hurt me as much as it hurt Sara.
“Katy. Wait,” said Sara, in a muffled voice. Her voice sounded strange and far away.
“Are you crying?” I said.
“Yes,” said Sara, clearly choking back tears.
“What’s going on, Sara?” I said. Despite my anger, I remembered our friendship. I felt our friendship deep in my bones. I felt bad for her. Why was she crying?
“Look, Katy,” said Sara. It sounded like she was crying even harder than before. “I know I’ve been terrible to you. I know I’ve been an awful friend. It’s just…I’ve been in a terrible relationship.”
“You were dating?” I said. My curiosity was getting the best of me. I was no longer having to fight my desire to hang up the phone. Now I wanted to know what was going on. After all, it had been so uncharacteristic of my sweet best friend to turn around and sue me like that…maybe there was something more going on that I needed to know about.
“Yeah,” said Sara. “I didn’t want to tell you about it, Katy. I guess I knew that things weren’t going well. I knew something was wrong with him right from the start. But I was so lonely. I just wanted to be with someone, no matter what.”
“You never even told me you were dating,” I said, merely repeating what Sara was telling me. But I couldn’t help it. It was just so astounding. At this point, most of my anger was dissipating. I still had a little knot of it somewhere down in my stomach, though. I was hanging onto this little last piece of anger.
“I know,” said Sara. “I know, Katy. And I’m sorry. If I had told you, this whole thing would have never happened. You would have told me that he was a manipulative jerk and I would have dumped him. But that’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. I was so lonely that I wanted to stay with him no matter what. And he…he convinced me to sue you. He said I wasn’t being treated fairly.”
“We were making the same amount of money!” I said, nearly screaming into the cell phone.
“I know, Katy. I know. Just listen to me for a moment.” Sara had stopped crying as much as she had been, and now her voice was a little bit more intelligible. “But he got inside my head. I knew you were my best friend…but...he was threatening me. He was telling me that if I didn’t sue you it was an act against him. He said we needed the money….”
“Wait what happened?” I said in a quiet voice. “Why are you calling me now to tell me all this. What changed your mind? I suppose you have changed your mind, since you are calling me?”
“Yes,” said Sara, hastily. “Of course, Katy. Of course I’ve changed my mind. I called my lawyer this morning. I told him to drop the whole suit. I owe him a whole bunch of money in legal fees...I don’t care though. That’s not important now.”
“Wow,” I said. “So it’s all over?”
“Yeah,” said Sara. “Thank God. I’m so sorry, Katy. I know it was a nightmare for me. It must have been ever worse for you…”
“Maybe it was,” I said slowly. “All though it sounds pretty bad on your end.” I was surprised that my anger was fading away…. But, after all, she had been my friend for so long. How could I stay mad at her?
“It was terrible….” Said Sara, beginning to sob again. “I can’t believe I did that to you.”
“Listen,” I said. “What’s done is done. Don’t worry about it. Tell you what, why don’t you come over? It’d be good to see you again. The office is closed. But you know where I live. I’m working on a new project now, and I could use your help on it.”
“You’re planning a wedding?” said Sara. I could hear the excitement in her voice. We had both always loved planning weddings together. After all, we used to do it together for fun when we were younger.”
I explained a little bit about dating Colton, and about the wedding I was planning.
“So we’re planning your own wedding?” said Sara, sounding very excited. “Katy! That’s fabulous. We’ve been waiting for this ever since we were little girls. This is amazing.”
“Well, it’s not exactly my wedding…” I said, not quite knowing what to say, or how to explain it.
“What do you mean, it’s not your wedding?” said Sara, sounding concerned, her excitement partially draining from her voice.
Even though I hated to tell her all that was going on with Colton and his fake marriage, I still found it…enjoyable, I guess. It was just like we were old friends again. The lawsuit was already long behind us, and we were chatting just like we always had. I told her all about Cambridge Whitehead and how I had offered to plan the wedding for Colton and the young country singer.
“I think I’ve heard of her,” said Sara. “Maybe I saw a music video of hers on TV or something.”
“I still don’t know who she is,” I said. “But she’s supposedly quite famous, or else there wouldn’t be any advantage to Colton’s career, I suppose.”
“Well,” said Sara. “I don’t like the sound of it, Katy. I don’t like the sound of it one bit. But if you’re sure it’s the right thing for your man, then I’m with you 100%. And I’d love to help you plan the wedding.
Sara drove over immediately after getting off the phone with me. We hugged and cried and laughed. Then we lost no more time and got down to business.
It was amazing how much easier it was planning a wedding with a second person. And I was planning the wedding with Sara, nonetheless. Sara and I had equal experience in the field, but there were many things that I simply wasn’t good at…where to place the flowers, for instance…I just didn’t have a knack for certain things the way Sara did. Of course, and Sara would be the first person to tell you this, there were plenty of things that I was better at than Sara. All in all, we fit together well. We made a good team.
27. COLTON
The wedding was all planned.
Colton had woken up that morning at Katy’s house early. She’d helped him put on his white suit jacket and his new cowboy hat. He still wore the same belt that he’d had for years. And he still used the same cologne that Katy remembered the smell of so well. And, of course, he was still wearing his somewhat worse-for-wear tight blue jeans.
“Don’t you think you should wear a full suit?” said Katy. “It’s for the press after all, right? Isn’t the whole point to look good in the papers and tabloids?”
“Yeah,” said
Colton. “But Cambridge gave me the go ahead on this outfit…he’s crazy, I had to run practically everything by him.”
“I know. Me, too,” said Katy, sighing. It was true. After planning the wedding down to the last detail, she and Sara had sent the plans over to Cambridge Whitehead. He’d said everything looked good, but had been quite demanding about the small changes that he wanted made. But Katy had to assume he knew what he was doing… Plus, she would do almost anything for Colton at this point.
“Sorry you had to run everything through him,” said Colton. “I know he can be a bit of a pain…a bit detail oriented you might say. But I figure he knows what he’s doing…. Anyway, he said the jeans and belt and hat would be good for my image actually. It gets that bad boy cowboy look that we’re going for with my public image.”
“That’s already your image,” said Katy, chuckling a little to herself. “You just want to wear the same stuff as always.”
Colton smiled. “Maybe so,” he said. “Thanks again, Katy. I couldn’t have done this with out you.” He continued adjusting his bolo tie as he kissed Katy on the lips.
“I love you,” said Katy, looking him right in the eyes.
“Love you too, baby,” said Colton, before dashing out the door.
Then he came back. Standing in the doorway, he said, “I look OK, right?”
“You look great, baby,” said Katy. “You’re going to be a huge star.”
Katy watched as Colton rushed out the front door of her apartment… She didn’t know exactly how to feel. Watching her man ‘marry’ another woman, even if it was all for show, was going to be hard. But at least she had Sara to be by her side now…Sara would be there with her through the whole thing. And that night, she would have Colton back again. He would be all hers.
As Colton walked to his car, he had a feeling of dread come over him. Was this just the regular pre-wedding nerves? Could one get pre-wedding nerves even for a fake wedding? Colton supposed you could, since his stomach felt like a ball of lead that threatened to drop right into his boots.
“Colton, wait,” said Katy, running after him. “We might as well go to the wedding together, right? I have to be there just as early as you, right?”
“I don’t know,” said Colton, hesitating. “We’re not supposed to see each other for like a day before the wedding, right?”
“We’re not getting married to each other,” said Katy, letting out a little bit of a laugh.
“Oh yeah,” said Colton, somewhat stupidly.
“Come on,” said Katy. “Let’s go. We don’t want to be late. We both have a lot to do once we get there.” She opened the door to Colton’s truck and got into the passenger side. The truck was finally back from the shop, looking as beat up as ever. In the truck bed in the back, Colton’s Triumph motorcycle shone. He had just waxed it.
Colton got in and held Katy’s hand as he held down the clutch and started the engine.
28. KATY
Sara and I spent the entire morning at the wedding doing all the little last minute chores that always needed to be done. As long as we had been doing weddings, we had never managed to get the system down to where it ran perfectly: there were always little things that cropped up at the last minute. Over the years, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that there would always be more to do on the morning of the wedding.
Colton was in a back room with his groomsmen, supposedly putting the final touches on his outfit and hairstyle. But as I knew very well, he was most likely sharing a glass or two of fine whiskey with the groomsmen. The groomsmen were just a couple buddies from the rodeo. His best friend, as I understood it, lived out of state, and Colton didn’t want to bother him with a trip just for a fake wedding. It made me feel a bit of relief, I have to say, to hear Colton’ say it was a fake wedding…he had told me that on the drive to the wedding this morning in his truck. Because while I knew very well the wedding was supposed to be fake, it felt very real. The preparations that Sara and I were doing, for instance, felt real enough.
I knew Colton appreciated that I was preparing the wedding for him, that I had organized everything, and completely for free. He was only paying the flat rate for things, and I was making no profit…I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. But what I would have liked is if Colton could have said a few more times that he appreciated me doing this. I knew he had other things on his mind, like whether the ruse would work with the press (Cambridge was sure it would, so I was sure too). I could understand that he was nervous about it. It was the start of his new career as a celebrity after all, but…
“Hey, Katy,” whispered Sara, nudging me. “The ceremony’s starting.”
I don’t know where I had been. I had been daydreaming or something…
It was true, the ceremony was starting.
Colton had already walked down the aisle…somehow I had missed the whole walk. He was standing up at the front.
The wedding was outdoors, with a canopy in case it started to rain. But the chances of that were remote.
I instantly shifted back into wedding planner mode. I scanned everything, the guests the caterers, the sky (for rain)…. I saw that Sara was doing the same thing. We had done this hundreds if not thousands of times and we knew exactly what to look for.
But everything was in place.
Everything looked perfect.
Everything was perfect, except that Colton was about to marry another woman.
Next thing I knew, the bride was walking down the aisle.
She was young. She was hot. Her wedding dress looked gorgeous. That was the one thing about this wedding that I hadn’t had anything to do with. And it was fitting, since if I had been planning an ideal wedding for Colton, the bride wouldn’t have been some other woman in a wedding dress. It would have been me in a wedding dress. To tell the truth, I already knew the wedding dress I would wear. I had picked it out long ago, long before meeting Colton.
I was always a believer that wedding dresses should somehow fit the personality of not only the bride, but the groom as well. And somehow, probably not by chance, the wedding dress I had picked out in my younger years fit Colton’s personality perfectly. I would have been hard pressed to try to explain what it was about a wedding dress that made it compatible with a certain male personality…especially one like Colton’s. I had called Colton something of a bad boy in my mind…a bad boy Cowboy sports star…but now his personality had seemed to complexify for me. That was what happened, I supposed, when you met someone and then got to know them. The subtler parts of their personality really began to shine through, and it was hard to describe those parts to someone else…
I looked at the bride again.
I felt a little jealous. My stomach still felt like lead.
But I was resolved to do this for Colton, to plan the wedding. I knew that I was Colton’s woman…hopefully in another year we could have our own wedding.
The bride looked familiar…vaguely familiar. I couldn’t quite place her. It was possible I had seen her in some magazine or on TV. After all, she was supposedly quite famous.
But then it hit me!
I knew where I had met her before.
She was one of those hot girls at the western bar where Colton and I had danced. She had given me a look that night that said, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to take your man from you. He’s going to be mine.’
I had forgotten all about her that night.
But now she was here, about to marry Colton.
The bride caught my eye, and I caught hers.
We stared at each other for a moment.
I’m not sure what my expression was, but it must have been something like complete shock.
The bride, on the other hand, looked completely composed. She didn’t miss a single beat, a single step down the aisle, when she saw me and our gazes connected.
She gave me that look…that same look she had given me in the bar that night.
But her look had changed just slightly…I kn
ew no one else would notice it.
But I saw it. I saw it as clear as the sun in the sky.
That night in the bar there had been a bit of hurt to her arrogant look. Now, that hurt was replaced with complete triumph. She knew she had won. She knew that Colton would really be hers. I knew that for her this was no innocent fake wedding. For her, this was going to be the real thing. She was going to do whatever in her power to take Colton, to really make him hers.
The non-denominational religious figure at the front was muttering words that I wasn’t listening to.
Colton and Sheila were standing there up at the front. There wasn’t an alter. Instead there was a huge bouquet of flowers that seemed to be growing as we watched…that’s how wild it looked.
“You OK, Katy?” whispered Sara to me.
I didn’t say anything.
I was trying to listen now…trying to listen to what the religious figure was saying. He might have been a Christian or Buddhist. I had no idea. It didn’t matter to me in the slightest. I had been to so many weddings that some of the details had started to run together in my memory. But I knew the speech they said by heart. Sure, they might modify it a little for their particular religion or non-religion, but the gist of it was the same.
And no matter what, there was always that critical part that went ‘if anyone has any objections…’
I was waiting for that moment. I was waiting, my ears perked for the key words, like a starving dog waits for his dinner.
He was staring. I heard him like I had never heard anything before.
“If anyone has any…” he started to say.
“I do,” I said, practically screaming the words.
“What?” he said, startled, thrown off kilter from the words he was reciting from memory.
The world started going strange for me… Everything seemed frozen, and moving quickly at the same time. My heart was beating as if I was running an Olympic sprint. My blood was cold. My head was on fire. My heart was aching.
Aching for Colton.
Wild Ride: A Bad Boy Romance Page 14
