by Lila Monroe
“No,” I gulp. “Up until the other night when Brad told his little story, all I knew was that I came by the next day, and my letter was pinned up on the bulletin board like a joke.”
Will blinks. “You couldn’t have thought that I would—”
“You were standing right there.” My throat still tightens at the memory. “You were reading it out loud, laughing at all the things I’d written. What else was I supposed to think?”
Will looks frustrated. “It was funny someone would have written about Brad that way, especially when he didn’t have a clue who it could be. I didn’t know you were going to overhear that. I didn’t know it was you who’d written it!” he exclaims. “You really believed I was capable of being that much of a jerk if I had known? You could have at least talked to me to find out what was going on.”
Is he really trying to make this all my fault? “It looked pretty cut and dried from where I was standing,” I say icily. “And in case you don’t remember, you were kind of a jerk to me when we first met. It’s not like you made much effort to stay friends. I never heard from you again. It seemed pretty clear you were done with me.”
“You blocked me on everything,” Will protests.
“So? You knew most of my class schedule. You knew where I lived. You could have tracked me down if you’d wanted to even ask me what was wrong.” My voice catches, and it all feels fresh and raw—like it was yesterday.
But Will just looks stubborn. “I wasn’t into stalking. And you were the one who cut me off. I figured our friendship couldn’t have been as close as I’d thought. I wasn’t going to go chasing after you.”
“That’s right,” I say, still feeling bitter. “The great Will Cassidy doesn’t chase anything. He just waits for women to fall into his lap.”
Will flinches. “That’s not fair.”
“You’re right,” I say, exhaling. “I’m sorry. It’s just … I spent a long time thinking that you hurt me. That you laughed at my feelings. It’s hard to just forget the past.”
“So what about the present?” Will asks, searching my face. “How do you feel about that?”
I pause. The million dollar question. I don’t even know where to begin.
“I’ve … been having a really good time, the last couple days,” I finally manage. “No, wait, excuse me—a great time. A wonderful time.”
A hint of a smile curves Will’s lips, but his eyes still look serious as they study my face. “So have I.”
And? I want to shout at him. Do you have anything to add to that? He just found out that I’ve already bared my heart to him once before. The least he could do is throw me a bone. Even if it’s just to confirm, And this is all it’s going to be.
“And finding out about the letter doesn’t change anything for you?” I say, as casually as I can manage.
He shrugs. “If it doesn’t for you, then I don’t see why it should for me.”
Maggie’s footsteps come tapping up the path behind us. “Hey, Ruby,” she said, a little hesitant. “Sorry to interrupt, but the van for the bachelorette party is here. We’re supposed to be heading out.”
I nod, relieved. “I better go,” I tell him.
“Will I see you later?” Will asks. “For … star-gazing?”
My chest feels tight, but I nod. A casual fling, that’s what I wanted—and that’s exactly what Will is delivering.
No less, and definitely not any more.
“Sure. Why not?”
He smiles. “Enjoy yourselves, ladies.”
“Oh, we will,” Maggie says with a smirk. She links her arm around mine to drag me away. “Trevor told Brooke he spilled the beans,” she mutters by my ear. “She’s really sorry. She only explained the situation to him so he could come up with an excuse to make sure Brad didn’t include that line in his speech.”
“It’s fine.” I swallow back the hurt. “It’s done now. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Let’s party!”
All us wedding guests between the ages of twenty-one and forty pile into the “party van,” which is basically a half-sized party bus. The playlist I sent on before leaving LA starts up, and blue lights flash through the space as the engine kicks into gear.
Brooke groans, sinking back in her seat. “What have you got planned?”
“You’ll see.” I grab a beer from the ice-filled bucket at the back and take a long gulp. Putting Will out of my mind is going to be much easier with a buzz. I sit down beside Brooke on one of the long cushioned seats, catch Maggie’s eye, and tap my purse. She nods with a grin and nudges Lulu, who passes the unspoken message down the line.
“So, Brooke.” I lean my shoulder against my bestie’s. “You made me promise no strippers, and first off I want you to know that I kept that promise.”
Brooke eyes me warily. “Why do I have the feeling there’s a ‘but’ about to follow.”
“Oh, there will be many butts,” I reply gleefully. “Because there’s absolutely no way you’re having a bachelorette without being showered with a whole lot of naked men.”
We all toss up the handfuls of paper we readied. Playgirl clippings, raunchy post cards, and internet printouts flutter down over Brooke. I told everyone to aim for a variety, and it looks like we succeeded: modern spreads and vintage hotties, some totally steamy and others of the goofy variety. I even managed to include a couple of Star Trek cast members in the lot.
“Oh my God,” Brooke says, pawing through them. “Ruby!” Then she cracks up, so hard that in a few seconds she’s wiping tears from her eyes. A little knot of tension in my stomach releases.
She’s okay. She’s happy. There’s nothing to worry about here.
“And, there’s more!” We tie on our Brooke’s Buds neon pink sashes, and I help Brooke position hers, which says, Brooke the Bride, so the tiny attached veil hangs down her back.
“I love it!” she laughs, stroking the cheap fabric. “I wonder if Trevor’s getting the same treatment for his bachelors.”
“I hope not,” Maggie cracks. “Pink’s not his color.”
When we reach the club, I do two shots before I’ve gotten ten feet onto the dance floor. The place is full of gyrating bodies. Soon we’re just more of them, forming a protective circle around Brooke as we sway and spin and cheer her on. We tramp up to the karaoke room where Brooke and I sing a duet that I suspect it’s better I don’t remember. After a full group rendition of “Wannabe,” we charge back downstairs for another round of drinks and dancing.
By the time we pile back into the van, all my memories of the day’s events have been softened by the hum of alcohol in my bloodstream. We dance on the seats to my party music until someone shouts out, “Marry, Fuck, Kill!” We sit Brooke down and grab spreads of the nudie photos still scattered across the floor for her to choose from.
“Um, kill them all?” she says with a laugh, looking at Fabio in a haughty pose, a bearded dude in a coonskin cap, and a guy who looks like Yanni but I’m guessing isn’t.
“Not allowed!” Lulu declares.
“Okay, okay … Marry hat guy, fuck Fabio, and kill Yanni.”
I hand her Brad Pitt, Jude Law, and Michael Fassbender. She groans. “This is impossible for the complete opposite reason! Can’t I just have a harem of all three? Um … Marry Jude, Fuck Michael, Kill Brad.”
“You can’t kill Brad,” Maggie says.
“I just did!” Brooke declares defiantly, and we all burst out laughing.
The game winds down as the van’s tires start to bump along the dirt road that’s the last stretch before the resort. Brooke wraps her hand around my arm and rests her head against mine.
“You’re the best friend ever, Ruby,” she murmurs. “The bestest friend. Don’t forget that, all right?”
“I have to disagree,” I inform her. “Clearly you are the bestest best friend.”
“I’m sorry about Trevor, and the letter—telling Will—”
“Don’t be silly,” I say. “It’s fine. I’m glad he knows now.
”
“Yeah,” she says with a sloppy nod. “Of course.”
Then “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” comes on over the speakers. Maggie plops down at Brooke’s other side.
“Come on, cuz, we’ve got to sing along with this one!”
We all escort Brooke back to the bridal suite. I almost trip over her open suitcase beside the couch. Maggie, Lulu, and I are all crashing in here for the night—sleepover!—but I remember as I catch my balance that we can’t skip an important tradition that wouldn’t have fit well on the bus.
“Presents!” I call out. “Everyone go get yours and be back here in ten.”
I dash down the hall to my room and take a moment remembering where I stashed the gift bag. For good measure, I chug a glass of water to reduce the impact of tomorrow’s hangover. Thank God for Advil.
Maggie lets me back into the room. As the other girls turn up, I direct them into a circle around the chair that will be the bridal seat. Only when everyone’s turned up, it’s still empty. I glance around, my head hazy. “Where’s Brooke?”
“I thought she was with you,” Maggie frowns.
“We’ve lost the bride!” Lulu cries, totally wasted.
I go over to the bathroom. The door’s ajar. My gaze darts across the room—and sticks.
There’s nothing on the counters or the bathtub ledges except the complimentary toiletries. No cosmetics bag, none of Brooke’s assorted creams and lotions. Frowning, I step back out into the main room. Why would she have packed that stuff up when she’ll just have to pull it out of her suitcase again tomorrow … ?
Her suitcase is missing too. The spot where I nearly tripped by the couch is now empty. I jerk my head around in one last survey of the room, but my heart is already plummeting.
Brooke is gone. And not just for a quick walk. She’s taken all her things with her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I grab Maggie and drag her aside. The others are chattering—I don’t think they’ve caught on that anything is wrong yet. Better to keep it that way if we can.
“She’s gone,” I whisper. “I mean, Runaway Bride Julia Roberts kind of gone.”
“What?” She takes in the room. Her eyes widen. “Shit. Where the hell could she be?”
“I don’t know! We’ve got to find her.” My gut twists. I have no idea what could have provoked Brooke to jet out of here, but I can’t imagine it’s anything short of horrible.
“I’ll get Lulu looking for her too,” Maggie says. “We can cover ground faster that way.”
“Just tell her not to mention it to anyone else.” If it turns out somehow we’re panicking over nothing, Brooke is not going to thank me for freaking out the rest of her family and friends.
You’re the best friend ever, Ruby, she was saying to me less than an hour ago. Don’t forget that, all right? I thought that was just drunken sentimentality, but maybe she’d already known she was about to totally freak me out.
My earlier buzz has died in the wash of adrenaline. Maggie and Lulu head for the elevators, making plans to check the beach and the recreation areas. I hurry back to my room just to make sure Brooke didn’t come looking for me. Then I head down to the main floor too.
The bar is empty other than an elderly couple. Beyond the back windows, the pool lights glow eerily through the still water. No one moves on the deck.
I duck out front where the van picked us up. One of the hotel’s black courtesy cars has just pulled up to the left of the entrance. With a lurch of my heart, I see my bestie hauling her luggage over to meet it, her head low to hide from view.
“Brooke!” I call as she grasps the door handle. Her head snaps up, and her grip on her suitcase tightens. I run up to her. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
She bites her lip. “I can’t do this, Ruby.”
“What—get married? What’s going on, Brooke?”
“It isn’t fair to Trevor,” she says miserably. “I can’t just—I’m too confused. I should be sure.”
Oh, my poor honorable-to-a-fault best friend. I rub her arm. “I’m pretty sure having doubts just means you’re a human being. Come on, you’ve got to at least talk to me before you press the eject button. As maid of honor I’m owed first dibs on all emotional crises.”
She manages to laugh, even if it comes out a little choked. She glances back at the car. The driver raises his hand. “I can return the car to the garage. You can request it again if you need it.”
Brooke drags in a shaky breath. “It’s going to sound so stupid.”
“Not possible,” I promise her. “And even if it does, I want to hear it anyway. Let’s just take a little walk, and you tell me what’s bothering you. Then we can figure out what to do about it. If it sounds like you really shouldn’t go through with tomorrow, I promise I’ll be honest.”
“Okay,” she says reluctantly. “Okay.”
We leave her luggage by the front desk and meander out onto the interlacing paths through the resort grounds. Brooke stays silent for the first few minutes. I clamp down on all my questions, giving her space to decide what she wants to say first.
“Do you remember Aaron?” she says finally.
“Sure.” I heard bits and pieces about him when Brooke and I talked during college. He was a friend, then a crush, then a budding relationship cut short when he’d gotten offered a placement in London too good to turn down. But she hasn’t mentioned him since. “What about him?”
“Well, I—I mean, there’s nothing going on,” she says quickly. “I haven’t seen him or talked to him since the end of junior year.” We reach the edge of the beach, and she slumps onto one of the lounge chairs, holding her face between her hands. “I hadn’t even thought about him in a long time.”
I sit down next to her. “So why are you thinking about him now?”
“It’s just … It always felt like we never really got a chance, you know? We got along so well—we just clicked, that way that hardly ever happens—and I was head over heels for him for so long, pretending not to be because he had his girlfriend. And then when they broke up, and he asked me out … It was like magic, those first few dates.”
“But then he left.”
“Yeah. And I don’t blame him.” Brooke rubs her eyes. “It was a great opportunity. We’d hardly been seeing each other a few weeks. Way too early for me to try to angle for some kind of cross-continental long-distance thing. I knew that wouldn’t make any sense. But I missed him so much all through senior year. It never totally stopped hurting until I met Trevor.”
I blink at her. “You never told me you were having that much trouble getting over him.”
“I didn’t want to sound pathetic,” she says sadly. “And it wasn’t like there was anything you could do about it.”
“I would have told you it wasn’t pathetic at all.” I comfort her. “Maybe that would have been useful. But you did meet Trevor. So why is this coming up now?”
Brooke hesitates. She looks down at her hands. “He’s back in the country. Aaron. I wasn’t keeping tabs, but I saw one of our mutual friends post about it about a year ago. His name comes up on my feed here and there. Not that it mattered to me,” she said quickly. “I really have been so happy with Trevor. It was just something I saw and then went on to thinking about other things. But then … the last few days …”
“The sand and surf stirred up memories of past loves?” I say, lightly teasing, when she doesn’t go on.
She lets out a little laugh. “No. Seeing you and Will made me wonder … if first love really is the right love.”
My body freezes. “What?”
“It’s not your fault,” Brooke says. “I’m so not implying that. But watching you two … seeing how crazy you obviously are about each other … I mean, you hadn’t seen each other in ages, and you thought he’d done something horrible, and you were still able to pick up the chemistry you had and run with it just like that.” She snaps her fingers. “You fit.”
“It’s
not that easy.” My stomach knots as I remember my last conversation with Will.
“There’s something extra special there,” Brooke argues. “And I can’t help thinking—what would have happened if I’d fought to keep some kind of relationship with Aaron? If I’d told him I wanted to be with him enough to at least try long distance. If we’d run into each other now that he’s back …” She looks torn. “I can’t stop wondering about that. I’m supposed to be getting married tomorrow, and half of my mental energy is going to thinking about some other guy. What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing’s wrong with you.” I wrap my arm around her. “I promise. Having those kinds of thoughts has got to be totally normal when you’re about to totally commit yourself to someone. You’ve just got to remember to focus on reality,” I remind her. “Sure, maybe you could have had some magical relationship with Aaron. But you hardly knew him as a boyfriend! It’s so much more likely some deal-breaker would have come up, or you two would have cooled off, or whatever … It’s a lot easier to imagine it’d have been perfect when it never actually happened, right?”
“But you and Will—”
“No.” I shake my head even as my throat tightens. “We’re not perfect either. Sure, it’s easy to have a quick fling while we’re off in paradise. But I know it’s not going anywhere. It’s not going to be anything more than that. We don’t have a future.” Because he never wanted one. I swallow thickly and go on. Maybe if I say it out loud, I’ll be able to convince myself of the lie again. “I’m just getting all that past attraction out of my system, having a little fun, like Maggie said, so I can move on. That’s all it is.”
Brooke peers at me. I’m not sure I was even convincing enough to persuade her.
“Don’t say that, Ruby.”
“It’s true!” I insist. “You can’t … You can’t look at some brief intense hook-up and judge your entire relationship in comparison. You love Trevor, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Brooke says softly.
“And you weren’t even thinking about Aaron until this week, were you?”
