June Bride (A Year in Paradse Book 7)

by Hildred Billings

  “Nope,” Anita said again. “It’s not the mayor.”

  “Who is…”

  The answer came with the parting of the crowd before them. Sunny had to rub her eyes before making out the familiar figure barging through the door and looking around. For her.

  Chapter 13

  BRANDELYN

  While this was certainly unconventional, Brandelyn couldn’t help but leave her family behind at the house and drive down to Paradise Lost, the place where she first beheld the beauty she was destined to marry.

  Sunny didn’t look quite as beautiful now, however. What the hell happened to her? She’s beyond drunk! Drunk and related to the town crypt keeper, apparently. Poor Sunny looked like she had been smacked with the ugly stick, that carried with it poor posture, sweaty brows, slovenly clothing, and an agape mouth that didn’t know how to close. Her usually put together fiancée had left her comb at home, and her eyes were so puffy that Brandelyn had flashbacks to her hay fever patients that usually descended around that time of year.

  “What in the…” Brandy was aware that everyone was staring at her. Well, yes. This was her fiancée’s bachelorette party, and Brandy was not supposed to impose. Yet when she decided to find Sunny and properly apologize for how things had been going in the lead up to their wedding, she knew she couldn’t wait. This fissure could no longer divide them. Not in such pivotal days. What if this week foretold the rest of their marriage? It had to be done now. Apologies laid out. A small heart to heart before Sunny got back to her partying. Surely, it wasn’t so late that Sunny was on her ass, yes?

  Apparently, it was.

  “Oh, my God. Is she okay?” Brandy asked Anita, the woman supposedly responsible for this mess. I’m not one to tell Sunny who to be friends with, but if it weren’t for Anita’s job as a teacher, I would seriously question her responsible nature. Like if she had one. Because although Anita dressed herself like a sensible woman, she was usually behind Sunny’s party days. Not to mention some of Sunny’s wilder ideas…

  “She’s a little drunk. Someone’s been enjoying her bachelorette party, that’s all.” Anita platonically ran her fingers through Sunny’s tangled hair, like a mother attempting to gussy up her unruly child. I can smell the stench of beer from here. How many did she have? Sunny could drink more than most assumed from looking at her. Brandy always considered herself a “medium weight,” thanks to a healthy dose of wine every day at dinner. When Sunny got to drinking, though? She reminded Brandy that some people could knock back three beers in a row and barely be tipsy. It wasn’t until she met the Crokers that she understood.

  Seeing Sunny like this? She must have drunk half the stock in Paradise Lost!

  “Brandy?” Did Sunny only now realize that her fiancée was here? Why were people staring at them like this? I have no idea what’s going on, and I don’t like it. One thing for people to gossip about Brandy crashing the bachelorette party. Quite another for them to assume the worst. “What… what are you doing here?”

  Brandelyn squared her shoulders. “Can we talk in private for a few minutes? There’s something I really want to say.”

  Anita looked between her drunken friend and the woman coming to abscond her. “I mean, sure,” Anita said, “but she’s pretty sloshed. She also might have… um…”

  A middle-aged woman with dyed orange hair and a blue sweater that screamed I bought this in the city, rushed up to them with a giant smile on her face. “Hi, Brandy! Remember me? It’s Jill, Sunny’s aunt!”

  Brandy was only slightly taken aback at this woman’s sudden presence. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to intrude upon the festivities, but there’s something I really need to talk to my fiancée about.”

  Both Jill and Anita looked to Sunny, who swayed in place and raised her eyebrows as if Brandy came to flirt.

  “She’s a bit inebriated, don’t you think?” Jill popped a gummy candy into her mouth. Brandy couldn’t help but notice that it was shaped like a pair of breasts. God help me if this is what my bachelorette party is like. Sunny could have all the inappropriate fun she wanted, as long as she kept her hands to herself, but it really wasn’t Brandelyn’s style. Instead of saying it was nature, however, she chalked it up to years of medical practice. After a while, it was hard to get excited about disembodied breasts.

  “Obviously, I can talk to her later, but I didn’t think she would be quite like this yet.”

  “I’m right here, you know.” Sunny stood up straight, pulled up her sagging jeans, and did her best impression of Sober Sunny. “You wanna talk? All right. Let’s go talk outside. I need some fresh air, anyway.” She turned to Anita before putting one foot forward. “Could you grab me something to drink? Not beer.”

  “You want a Coke? They got the new ones with orange in them.”

  “Hell, yeah, that’s what I want. Have her put it on my tab.”

  Brandy led the way outside, where the cool night air greeted them. She had originally intended to take Sunny to the side of the building for their heart to heart, but she didn’t trust Sunny to not fall down the steps – or the handicap ramp, for that matter. So they stood to the side of the entrance, at the top of the ramp where Brandy hoped nobody would disturb them.

  “My God, Sun.” Brandy pinched her nose. “You reek.”

  “It’s a party, Bran. You know, people making merry and not giving a shit about their pit stank and booze clouds.”

  Based on the other kind of clouds wafting through the parking lot, Brandelyn had a feeling that booze wasn’t the only substance people partook in that night. While recent legalization laws made it easier for her to recommend marijuana to her patients, it meant Brandelyn suffered the smell every time she stepped outside. My nosy neighbors are the worst offenders. Their perpetual pot cloud kept Brandy coughing every time she went out to water her flowers in the evening.

  “My family is making plenty merry in my house right now. My mother discovered my wine stash, for crying out loud, and my stepfather got his sports app working on my TV. I haven’t had a damned thought to myself since they got here. Don’t get me started on the boys.” When they weren’t hounding the internet connection playing games on their phones, they were squealing in the yard or raising hell in the street. What noise pollution they didn’t contribute with their constant yelling was provided by honking cars. “Look, honey, I didn’t plan on coming by and interrupting your party at all tonight. But I don’t want us going into the next week on the wrong foot. I… I want to apologize. For everything.”

  Sunny sobered up faster than Brandy had ever seen before. Was that all it took? Or was the inebriation an excuse for her to act like she had? “Apologize? I don’t expect any apologies.”

  “I want to apologize. I’ve been a real tyrant in the wedding planning. Especially since… well, I know it’s your wedding, too.”

  Sunny didn’t say anything. Was that her silent way of agreeing that Brandelyn had been an ass for the past few months? Let alone the last few weeks of insanity!

  “I guess I got all caught up in it because, in my mind, I was the bride, you know? I’ve always want to be a ‘bride,’ and it didn’t matter if I was in a lesbian relationship. I grew up with these notions that the bride is the only one who cares about things. The groom, male or female, shows up to get it over with and then goes drinking with their buddies. Then we go off on our honeymoon, boom, the fantasy is over. Back to real life.” Brandelyn sighed. “When you first told me that you didn’t care about the wedding planning as much, I took that as my sign to be the big bride. When you told me I could do most of the planning because it stressed you out too much, I… I went overboard, I know. But I really crossed a line with the dress thing. I’m sorry I reacted the way I did the other day. You honestly surprised me. I swear I wasn’t trying to judge you or anything. I… you know I don’t like curve balls in my life.”

  Sunny managed a sloppy smile that gave Brandelyn hope this would soon be behind them. “I’m like a big curve ball, though!”
<
br />   “Sometimes, yeah.” Brandelyn didn’t mention that being a “big curve ball” meant they weren’t too compatible. Sunny was the right mix of spontaneity and reliability, though. She was as reliable as Brandy needed, while bringing that huge dose of much-needed spontaneity. Because I’m not doing it for myself, that’s for sure. “That’s what I like about you, though. You keep life from being boring. You always keep me guessing.”

  “Yeah, I… I do stuff like that sometimes…” Sunny scratched the top of her head like she had something to hide. It’s okay, hon, I forgive you for being roaring drunk at your party. Not that anyone had asked for Brandy’s forgiveness. I love doling it out, though. She was somewhat inspired by these festivities. Perhaps she might go home and join her family in the raiding of the wine cellar.

  “You can wear whatever you want.” Brandy took her fiancée’s hand and gave it a tight squeeze. “Suit, dress… well, keep it formal, I suppose. If I’m walking down the aisle with an expensive dress to die for, it’s only fair that you keep up with me. In fact, your Bridezilla commands it.”

  Sunny grinned. “You mean that? Because, you know, maybe I’ll wear the tux to the ceremony and change into the dress for the reception! Wouldn’t that be a good compromise?”

  Brandelyn had to admit it played right into the most important aspect of her plans. The optics of her tux and my dress as we stand at the altar is everything I wanted. The photographers would be locked and ready to go as they said their cherished vows and exchanged rings. Sunny could spring into the reception wearing boxer shorts and a tank top and Brandy wouldn’t give a shit. As long as she was gorgeous for the ceremonial photos!

  “No…” she eventually said. “You should only do that if it’s what you want. I want you to feel as good as you look when we get married, baby.” Brandelyn Meyer was not a “baby” person. That word only naturally came out when she was really in the mood, and looking into Sunny’s drunken doe-eyes brought out the babies. “I want us riding off into the sunset that is our honeymoon while we feel so good we can’t come down from our high until our twenty-fifth anniversary.”

  “Why stop there?” Sunny asked. “Let’s go for fifty!”

  “I’ll be in my nineties by then!”

  “So? Doesn’t mean we won’t still be kicking some ass around this town!”

  They gazed into each other’s eyes, on the verge of leaning in for a kiss. Brandy didn’t care that her fiancée’s lips smelled terrible, or that kissing Sunny in her current, inebriated state might be technically illegal. Yet she would take those hands, nuzzle her nose against Sunny’s, and think of more words to say.

  Too bad she took a little too long to think of something.

  “Goes to show that everyone settles, I guess.” Two women stepped out of the bar, one lighting up a cigarette the moment the door closed behind her. The other woman grabbed onto the handrail before she splat her face onto the parking lot. “Some people give up good sex, others give up their everyday sanity…”

  The other woman laughed so loudly that she had to be drunk. “If you’re Sunny Croker, you give up both, apparently!”

  “Are you surprised? Dr. Meyer has always come across as a stuck-up bitch. I’m glad I started seeing that other doctor, even if she’s half an hour away. It means I don’t have to put up with being told my diet sucks. Like, I know that! Who cares? Besides, do I want to discuss my sexual health with someone whose idea of a good time is being a pillow princess? Like, there are hot pillow princesses who make you want to work for it, and then there’s Dr. Meyer, who…”

  They both paused. Blood began to boil in Brandy’s ringing ears.

  “Wet fish!” both women exclaimed at once. They doubled-over in laughter, feet scrambling down the steps while cigarette smoke danced in the late spring night.

  Brandy stood back from Sunny, who hung her head and grumbled something her fiancée couldn’t hear.

  “What were those women saying about…” Brandelyn didn’t have to ask. She had two perfectly working ears. Those words were in English. From the way Sunny blushed and looked as if she would rather be anywhere than here, she knew something about this. “Why are they commenting on our sex life?”

  “It’s my bachelorette party,” Sunny explained a little too quickly. “People make up shit because they’re jealous.”

  Brandelyn opened her mouth to demand something else. Yet the bar door slammed open, revealing Anita as she reached for Sunny. The implication that it was time to go was raw on her face.

  “The natives are growing restless in here,” Anita said with way too big of a grin. “It’s time for the big girl to make her reappearance for the rest of her presents and some games. Maybe it’s time for you to go, Brandy. Assuming you’ve said everything that…”

  Brandy rounded on Anita. “Why are people commenting about our sex life?”

  Anita snapped back like she had been slapped in the face. Oh, that wasn’t shock. That was “oh shit!” Caught!

  “I may have said something really, really stupid,” Sunny fessed up. “I’m sorry, Bran.”

  “Did this something have to do with me being a wet fish?”

  “Ah, well…”

  Anita not-so-subtly motioned for Sunny to get back in the bar. A small group of women, most of whom Brandelyn barely recognized when her eyes glazed over in the red of anger, pushed by with unsolicited judgments on their lips.

  “Better get back in there, Sunny!” one of them shouted. “Someone started taking off her clothes! It might be your last chance to see a pair that’s not telling you what to do!”

  Everyone turned around to laugh. Unfortunately for them, that meant they saw Brandelyn glaring at them from the darkness.

  “Oh, shit!” From the way those tipsy women scattered, they must have been Brandy’s patients. That was the extra kick to the teeth – knowing she would be seeing them soon, and they would definitely remember her.

  “Somebody gets a little mouthy when she’s drunk, huh?” That was directed at Sunny, who scuffed her shoes against the concrete and looked like she was about to vomit her liquid dinner. “Well, sorry I crashed the party.” Brandelyn collected her bearings – what were left of them, anyway – and kept her head up as she turned to the ramp. “I’ll leave you be. Have fun.”

  “Brandy, wait…” Sunny grabbed the railing, but didn’t make it much farther than the first part of the slope. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”

  Brandelyn didn’t stop to hear whatever apology she felt like spewing with her beer. She kept walking, ignoring the cajoles of drunken women who apparently now knew quite a bit about her personal life, as filtered through a jilted, drunken woman at her bachelorette party. It was one thing for a woman like Anita to hear a few unsavory things in private confidence. Quite another for half of Paradise Valley’s gossip mongers to pick up the half-truths and spread them around like summer wildfire.

  She made it all the way to her car, where she sat down, plopped her purse into the passenger seat, and banged her forehead against the steering wheel. Her first, loudest sob drowned out the monotonous honking that raised the ire of more than one person in the street.

  Brandy had half a mind to run them over.

  Chapter 14

  SUNNY

  “I can’t believe I said that.” Sunny held back another noxious burp that carried with it the remnants of her drunken mistakes. The sun was so bright that she swore her brain was about to explode and dribble out her ears. Every time she opened her eyes, she saw the searing sight of Brandelyn, her ire as powerful as the blazing sunlight threatening to pull Sunny’s ocular orbs out of her head. Look at me, super hungover and still remembering words like “ocular.” It was instinct. Pure, literary instinct. She couldn’t tell a soul what the hell “ocular” meant, but by God, she remembered that was the word to use.

  Anita wasn’t hungover, but she might as well have been from how she looked. Perhaps that was pity swarming her face. The same kind of pity she offered students when they f
ailed yet another English test. “I know you try your hardest, Sunny,” Ms. Tichenor would say to her biggest flop of a student, “but I can’t help you if you reach this point and still don’t know the difference between ‘you’ and ‘you’re.”

  “I’m still reeling from the secondhand embarrassment you passed out like booby candy last night.” Anita shook her head. “When you decided to have that sixth beer, I knew things were going to get bad.”

  “You could’ve stopped that sixth beer, you know,” Sunny spat. “Told you to get a Coke.”

  “I did get you a Coke! You were the one who dragged your own ass up to the bar and got ‘one more beer, because my fiancée looked at me like I’m Charles Manson.’”

  “I did not say that.”

  “You totally did, and it almost worked getting people to stop parroting that ‘wet fish’ bullshit. Seriously, Sun, you had to go with fish? Wet fish?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. You should be apologizing to Brandy. Now everyone in town thinks she’s terrible in bed and will tease you two relentlessly about it for the next twenty years. Rumors like those do not die down, especially when it helps every mediocre woman around feel better about their own lackluster love lives.”

  Sunny snorted. Ow. That hurts my head. “You would know something about that, huh?”

  “You’re talking to the woman who got caught fingering her girlfriend at the drive-in. Remember the drive-in? Remember that?”

  “Don’t deflect. I remember drive-ins and everyone twiddling their fingers at you every time you entered a room.”

  “For the record, we only got caught because Bonnie has a very intense O face.”

  That was the last thing Sunny wanted ponder as she stewed in how badly she messed up the night before. Brandy must be so embarrassed. She won’t talk to me. To think, Brandelyn had come all that way to personally apologize and make a few of Sunny’s dreams come true. That was how she was repaid? With rumors about her O face spread around town?” It’s all my fault. Jesus. What kind of monster am I?