‘Ella!’
It’s Jess, the group’s scout, perched on a table by the doorway, looking out into the hall at everyone who might walk by. The three of them are looking surprisingly fresh after last night’s festivities, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for myself. ‘Have you seen Lauren?’ she asks as I draw near. ‘We were supposed to be meeting at twelve for lunch, and she hasn’t shown up.’
‘We were?’ I say. ‘I don’t remember you guys mentioning anything.’
Jess blushes red. ‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ she says. ‘We didn’t know if you’d want to come. We figured you might want to… sleep in.’
‘Both of you,’ Danielle sniggers.
Oh, so that’s how it is. I wasn’t being shut out; the three of them – four, if Lauren had anything to do with it, which knowing her she almost certainly did – were giving me space to get up to whatever I wanted.
‘I’m sure she’ll be around in a bit,’ I say, checking my watch; it’s a little after half past, but even that is unusual for Lauren. She’s usually punctual to a fault. ‘Have you tried calling her?’
Paige nods. ‘Busy signal,’ she says. ‘Three times.’
Weird.
Jess pats the table, gesturing for me to join them. ‘So?’ she says. ‘Are you going to tell us?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘You know what. You and Jack. We heard him come up to your room. What’s going on there?’
‘Nothing,’ I say.
Three sets of eyebrows shoot up in unison, and Danielle leans in with a salacious smile. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said. ‘Spill. What happened with you and your jazzman?’
I give the other two girls a look – Come on, guys… you don’t really want to hear it, do you? – but Jessica is busy nodding in agreement, and even sweet and innocent Paige looks as though she’s eager to hear the story.
Is it wrong that I’m almost glad to be the centre of attention for once? To have people waiting to hear about my romantic dalliances with strange, wonderful, talented men? Well, man, anyway. Singular.
I shrug. ‘No details,’ I say. ‘Nothing to tell. It is what it is and it was what it was.’
Danielle groans, and flops back into her chair, wounded. ‘Oh, come on, Ellie,’ she says. ‘You’re the only one of us who even got close to getting lucky last night. You’re telling me that you pick you a cute jazz musician at a bar and we don’t get a single detail?’
‘It’s just unfair,’ Jessica agrees.
You’re telling me, I think. ‘He was a perfect gentleman,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t have asked for anything more.’
Danielle scoffs. ‘Fuck that noise,’ she says. ‘He walked you home after saving you from an armed robbery.’ I don’t correct her; there doesn’t seem to be much point. ‘What’s the point in the whole knight-in-shining-armour shtick if it doesn’t get you laid?’
‘Maybe he’s just nice,’ I say.
Nice, nice, nice. Maybe he would have done that for anyone. Probably. Because he’s nice.
Suddenly, I feel like a prize asshole for hitting on him so hard. What the hell must he think of me, throwing myself at him? And besides, if the pounding in my head is anything to go by, I can’t have been a particularly enticing prospect. I’m surprised he didn’t run a mile.
‘No one’s just nice,’ Danielle says. ‘Something must have happened. I mean, no offence.’
Bitch, I think.
Before I can say anything in response, there’s a sudden squeak from the other side of the table. ‘Lauren!’ Jess exclaims, and then covers her mouth. ‘Sorry.’
As the bride-to-be walks into the restaurant, it’s easy to see why. She’s holding her cell phone to her ear, and has a face like a storm cloud. ‘Are you kidding me?’ she says into the phone. ‘Are you kidding me?’
Whoever Lauren is talking to, she’s not a happy bunny. The restaurant is pretty much empty but for the four of us, but we fall pretty much immediately silent; the conversation doesn’t seem like it’s one she should be having in public, but it definitely doesn’t feel like one I want to interrupt.
Is it Drew? I think. Who else could it be?
There’s more wittering down the line, words that I can’t make out.
‘Well, fine,’ Lauren says in a way that makes it sound as though things are anything but. ‘Screw you, then. Thanks for nothing.’
With a poke of her finger so fierce I think for a second that she’s in danger of driving it straight through the screen, Lauren hangs up the phone. I wonder if she’s about to throw the damn thing across the restaurant, but there are no fireworks, no tantrums. Instead, deflated, she sits down at the table and buries her head in her hands, running them down her cheeks like she’s trying to wipe away every last trace of that phone call.
No such luck.
‘It’s fucked,’ she says at last. ‘It’s all fucked. Everything.’
From the look on her face, that can only mean one thing.
The wedding is off.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I don’t like Drew.
There it is, out in the open. I don’t like the guy. Well, no… that’s not entirely fair. I’m sure he’s an OK guy, in his own little bubble. He’s just… not right for Lauren. Not even close. Not even in the same league. For God’s sake, three years ago the guy was living in his parents’ basement. He never went to college, barely graduated high school from what I’ve been told. Every penny he makes – which, by the way, isn’t many – went into his ridiculous comic book collection. Sure, he always claimed that he was going to do something with them one day, and with Lauren’s help he managed to scrape together a loan to set up his own store – but honestly, is that really all that great? A grown man selling comic books to other grown men? It’s not exactly a life goal, is it? I don’t even understand where it came from. His parents are your typical WASP-y success story – mother a doctor, father a higher-up in some accounting firm – and even his baby sister Paige seems to have her shit well and truly together. It’s just Drew.
Childish Drew. Easygoing Drew. Ever-so-slightly-lame Drew.
Is it wrong of me to think that she can do better? To hope that whatever she sees in him, it’s just a phase before she actually walks down the aisle?
Probably. I mean, she seems happy – and if she’s happy, I should be happy too. That’s how supporting your friends works, right?
Maybe I’ve gone past supportive. Maybe I’m just a bitch. Maybe, if I took the time to get to know him properly, I’d find out just what it is that makes her heart skip a beat whenever he walks into the room.
And yet when Lauren says that everything is fucked, all of a sudden the only thing I want to do is grab him and push him against a wall hard enough to shake some sense into him. Whatever he did, he’s an idiot – as if there was any more proof needed. How could he possibly have risked losing a girl like Lauren? Whatever he did – because I’m sure he’s done something, he must have done something – it’s a bad one. It has to be, to get her to react like that.
None of the rest of the girls say anything, so it looks like it’s down to me. Oh, the joys of being the Maid of Honour…
‘Lauren?’ I ask. ‘Everything OK?’
Stupid question, but what can you do?
‘No,’ she says. ‘No, everything’s not OK.’
‘What happened?’ What did he do?
‘The flowers were supposed to be here by this afternoon, so we could get them all set up in the church.’
‘And?’
‘And they’re not.’
Well, thank fuck for that.
I can’t stop the smile from spreading across my face; it’s everything I can do to keep down a bleat of hysterical laughter. This isn’t an earth-shattering relationship crisis. No one has ever died because a flower delivery arrived a little late. Well, not that I know of, anyway.
‘Lauren, honey… it’s OK. The wedding isn’t for another day. They’ve got plenty of time to –’
> ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not that they’re not ready. They’re not here. They’re not anywhere. The florist doesn’t have any record of the order.’
‘Have you got the receipt?’
Lauren waves a scrap of paper under my nose. ‘Of course I’ve got the receipt.’
‘And what did they say to that?’
‘Oh, they were real apologetic. Said they were sorry and offered me my money back. But what the hell use is that to me the day before I get married?’
Shit. My immediate lawyer reaction is to march down there and insist they fulfil their side of the contract – but Lauren’s right. What good would it do? They can’t just magic us up some flowers, no matter how sorry they might be, and anything else is a problem for later.
‘Well, what about other florists?’ I say. ‘We’ve still got time before the wedding. Maybe one of them has some… I don’t know. Surplus stock. Or a cancellation.’
‘Surplus stock?’
‘We can go and check them out,’ I say, doing my best to keep my voice calm and soothing. ‘Call around, maybe. There’s got to be something we can do.’
‘I don’t have time,’ she says. ‘I’ve got Drew and his parents and his groomsmen flying down literally as we speak. They’re supposed to be here in an hour. Then there’s picking up the dress, delivering the place cards and decorations and everything else to the reception hall – everything except the goddamn flowers, that is, because I have no clue what I’m going to do about that – and there’s the rehearsal dinner to get ready for, and… and…’
I watch her ball up her hands into tight little fists, like a toddler about to throw a tantrum. I’ve never seen her like this before. Sure, Lauren has always had a tendency to be – and I say this with all the love in the world – a bit of a flake, but she always manages to pull it together in the end. She’s a doctor, for God’s sake. She must deal with things more stressful than this on a daily – hourly, minutely – basis.
But that’s what I’m here for. That’s why she has me.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘OK, we’ve got this. Lauren, where’s the name of the shop where the dress is?’
‘Angelica’s Bridal. It’s over on Royal.’
‘Does it need anything doing to it? Any adjustments?’
She shakes her head. ‘All sorted. It just needs picking up and signing for.’
‘Good. Jess?’
She’s already gathering her things from the table. ‘I’m on it,’ she says.
‘Great. Grab the place cards and take them to the reception hall when you’re on your way back?’
She shoots me a mock salute. ‘Sure thing, boss,’ she says, and in that moment – seeing the relief on Lauren’s face – I could just about marry her myself.
As soon as she’s out of the door, I turn back to Lauren. ‘Keys,’ I say.
‘Keys?’
‘Your car keys. You drove out here, right? You were going to pick up Drew and his side of the wedding from the airport?’
‘Oh. Yeah.’ She fishes mutely in her purse and comes out a second or two later with a small black box: the clicker for the minivan that she – inexplicably, to my mind – drives by choice. ‘Here you go.’ I take it and immediately pass it over to Danielle.
‘You’re on the airport run,’ I say. ‘Think you can handle that?’
Danielle shakes her head, almost smiling as she does passes it right back. ‘No can do,’ she says. ‘I don’t drive.’
‘You don’t, or you can’t?’
‘Can’t. I never learned.’ She shrugs, as if it’s just one of those things. ‘I’m from New York. There was never any need.’
Well, that explains it. It doesn’t help me, but it explains so much.
‘OK, in that case I’ll…’
‘I can do it,’ Paige says. ‘I’ll go and pick them up. He’s my brother, after all. I’m used to him and his dumbass friends.’
‘Can you do it all in one trip?’
She shrugs. ‘If I can, I will. If not, I’ll sort it out. I’ll pack my parents into a cab or something.’ She grabs the keys out of my hands and gives Lauren a kiss on the cheek before she goes, forcing herself onto her tiptoes just to reach. ‘Relax,’ she says. ‘I’ve got this. It’ll all be fine.’ Then she turns to me. ‘Look after her?’
I nod. With my life.
‘What about me?’ Lauren asks. ‘What do I need to do?’
‘You need to get yourself a mimosa and try to relax, for a start,’ I say. ‘Then you need to sit down with Danielle and make a list of the flowers you wanted, as best you can remember them. Preferably any alternates you’d be happy with. Just give me something to work from. Think you can handle that?’
She shrugs. ‘Why? What’s the point? It doesn’t matter what I want, because we’re not going to be able to find any of it at this short notice. It’s impossible.’
Poor Lauren. It’s like she barely knows me at all sometimes.
‘Oh, I know,’ I say. ‘Absolutely impossible, I’m sure. And we’re going to do it anyway – because your wedding deserves to be perfect, and you’ve got Ella Mossberg in your corner. Have you ever known me promise anything I couldn’t deliver?’
She sniffs. ‘No. I guess not.’
‘Good. Then just leave it up to me, OK?’
Forget the partying, forget the rehearsal dinner. If there’s one thing I can do to make this wedding weekend as special as possible for my best friend, it’s to organise this. I owe it to her.
A wedding full of flowers with twenty-four hours’ notice.
What’s so hard about that, right?
Chapter Twenty-Three
As it turns out, it’s a lot harder than it sounds.
I started out by making a list of the kinds of flowers I thought Lauren would be happy with, cutting down her list into something more workable. There was only a loose sort of colour scheme, so that freed me up to be a little creative… or it would have, if I’d known the first thing about what I was looking for. I was never really a hearts-and-flowers sort of girl, not the way Lauren was. She had worked in a florist’s when she was make her way through pre-med; I knew for a fact that every single flower on her list would have been picked out months in advance. It was no wonder she was so cut up about it all.
‘What’s the difference between a California lily and a calla lily?’ I asked Danielle when she slipped back into the dining room after I’d spent an hour flicking through Wikipedia, trying to find out what possible alternatives I might be able to get my hands on at short notice.
She shrugged. ‘Fucked if I know,’ she said, and then promptly waltzed back out to enjoy the festivities.
Thanks for nothing, buddy, I thought.
By the time Paige and the rest of Drew’s family make their way back to the hotel, I’m no closer to figuring it out than I was when I first agreed to take on the job. In amongst the kisses and greetings from Drew’s parents and managing to sidestep being hit on by his friends, I made my excuses and slipped away to do the real work of being Lauren’s Maid of Honour. By that point, I’d given up on trying to find shops who’d be able to match the rough wishlist I’d cobbled together; as it got to three in the afternoon, with a few scant business hours remaining, I’d taken instead to calling every florist I could find within a ten-mile radius to see what they had in stock. Perhaps if I can get a couple of them to hear me out, I thought, I might be able to scrape together something that looks decent. Maybe. I hope.
Yeah, no. No matter what price I offered – and God as my witness, I offered some obscene amounts of money: amounts large enough that I could feel my bank account preparing to commit hara-kiri – I was shot down, again and again.
No matter what I do, I can’t seem to figure out a solution.
I stop for a second, breathe deeply, bury my head in my hands. OK, I tell myself. Three o’clock. There’s still time. Plenty of time. You can do this, Ella. Just concentrate. Concentrate. Concen–
From the corner of the room, ove
r by the bar, something catches my eye: Danielle, trying very hard not to be seen as she takes a bottle of champagne from the bartender, no doubt to be enjoyed by the wedding party – a party that, it seems, doesn’t include me right now. Where’s the justice in that? I think. How is it fair that everyone else gets to have a good time, when I’m here sorting through the entirety of the New Orleans phonebook? Why am I not allowed to let my hair down a little bit?
And of course, I immediately feel like an asshole. It’s fair because it’s not about my good time at all. As much as I’m a guest at this wedding, I’m also part of the pit crew. Everything I’m doing right now is all for Lauren. If she’s having fun, that’s all that matters – because I know she’ll do the same for me when my time comes.
If your time comes, of course. That hateful little voice inside my head is working overtime today.
‘You guys having fun?’ I ask Danielle, a little more sarcastically than I had intended.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You’re still on the flower thing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought you said it would be fixed by now.’
‘Well, I guess I was wrong.’
Do I detect the faintest hint of a smile growing at the corner of her lips? No, it can’t be. Whatever problem Danielle has with me – and yeah, I’m sure she has some problem with me; even in her best moments, she’s significantly more frosty towards me than Paige and Jessica are, despite having known me for just about the same minuscule amount of time – she wouldn’t let it spill out onto Lauren’s wedding. No how, no way.
Would she?
I wrack my brains, trying to think of any other way out, but nothing comes to mind. I might not like it, but my options are distinctly limited.
She’s here, at least. That’s something.
I mean, she probably won’t be any use – might even be a liability – but maybe…
Well, it’s better to have her and need her than to need her and not have her, I suppose. Just as long as no one else finds out. As far as they’re concerned, everything is going fine.
Smooth: A New Love Romance Novel (Bad Boy Musicians) Page 13
