If I survived the coconut onslaught to come.
I peeled myself off the bathroom floor before Lindsey rampaged through the door. The mirror revealed everything I tried to hide. My hair was limp. My eyes were still wide in that perpetual Oh-Dear-God-It’s-Positive shock. Maybe no one would notice?
Nate would.
He hadn’t stopped staring at me since I arrived. But…at least it made me feel beautiful.
I returned to our table. Bryce’s brother only just arrived—late, but as he was still in scrubs and transcribing his notes from the day’s cardiovascular rounds, Lindsey forgave him. This time.
Rick looked identical to his younger brother. Both men played linebacker at college though Rick focused more on his studies and went pre-med. They were both handsome, and their skin coffee dark. Bryce got more of his mom’s patience. Rick inherited his father’s uncanny ability to speak without thinking.
He took the seat next to me. “You look like hell.”
I made a face. “You smell worse.”
“I’m fresh off an eighteen hour shift.” He gobbled up his slice of cake. Mom smacked his wrist and told him to wait for his score card. “What’s your excuse?”
I casually scooped my cake onto Rick’s plate and avoided Nate’s questioning glance. “Only eighteen hours? I’ve been on bridesmaid duty for the past three months.”
“She still kicking your butt?”
“Yeah, and skinning it, tanning it, and turning it into a belt to beat me with.”
“Well, if you need to get her a new heart, I might be able to sneak one home from the hospital…” Rick frowned at the cake criteria sheet. “Linds, what the hell is this? It looks like my MCATs.”
Bryce answered for her, either to avoid conflict with his brother or to score points with the bride-to-be. She still refused to talk to him after the Spiderman cufflink situation a day ago.
“We’re judging cakes,” he said. “We want to be sure we pick the right flavor for our special day.”
Nate snorted into his beer. Lindsey heard. That wasn’t good.
“Excuse me for being methodical.” She crushed her pencil against the score card. “And I hate this one. I don’t want chocolate. It’s cliché and trite and—”
“It’s delicious.” Rick said. “Go with this one.”
Oh God, he was here for less than a minute and already he’d damn us all. I tugged on my best friend’s sleeve, but Rick always did like pissing with Lindsey.
“Take it back, take it back, take it back,” I whispered. “Eat the cake and shut up.”
“Rick, I’m looking for a little more consideration than saying it’s good,” Lindsey said.
“It’s…chocolatey.” Nate grinned.
Someone was going to die today. I peeked at Rick’s score card and copied the answers he scrawled onto the sheet. Lindsey stomped her feet.
“If you can’t take this seriously, how can I trust you’ll make my wedding a joyous fucking occasion?”
Rick apologized. “It’s just a cake. I don’t even remember what flavor mine was at my wedding.”
“Oh yeah? Maybe that’s why you’re divorced before thirty!”
Low blow.
“Me-ow,” Nate laughed.
Rick rolled with it. “Single life is feeling pretty damn good right now, huh, Nate?”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Lindsey’s hands coiled at her sides. “You apologize right now or so help me God...”
I edged away from the ruckus, collecting the plates and passing out the next round with Mom. She stilled with the plate in her hand, looked at me, and gave a tiny whisper.
“Maybe a half-bite for you on the rest of these, sweetheart.” She broke a tine off the plastic fork. “We want to be able to see the bride at the altar.”
I gritted my teeth and plopped a plate in front of Bryce. He stayed quiet, simply tasting the cake with a sigh and charting his reaction to it. Lindsey squeezed his shoulder.
“I’m not over-reacting, am I?” She gripped him harder, and Bryce flinched. “Am I?”
“Of course not.” He jingled his empty bottle of beer at Nate—the third lined up before him. “Can I get another?”
“See?” My sister glared at Rick. “If you can’t handle me at my worst…”
I muttered to myself. “Then get the hell out of the wedding party.”
“What was that, Mandy?”
I smiled. “Nothing. I’m admiring your bridal boot camp. The red velvet cake is dry.”
“Write it down. Only nineteen more samples to go.”
Nate and Bryce opened their fourth beers. Lucky bastards.
It took two hours to finish, but I only needed to throw up once. Fortunately, it was right when Nate and Rick doodled something obscene on their score cards prompting Lindsey to kick them out of the wedding. They were reinstated by the time I made it back to the table, and my sister decided on a winning flavor.
She chose a three tiered castle of a cake—the bottom layer classic almond, middle a white filled with a strawberry puree, and the top a cream cheese infused fig and blueberry that Lindsey thought would look fantastic on Instagram.
Unless the whole thing was frosted in Pepto Bismol, I’d never eat another piece of cake again.
Mom gathered the leftovers from our end of the table.
“Save some for the wedding.” She snatched a plate away from me. “Honest to goodness, it’s like you don’t even care about finding a husband of your own.”
“I—”
“Mandy, why don’t you smile more?” She tisked her tongue. “You’d be prettier if you smiled like your sister.”
Every straw was the last one. I walked away before I popped an aneurysm. Somehow confronting Nate about the baby was easier than dealing with my Mom about anything.
I gathered the few beer bottles on the tables and handed them to Nate as he tidied the already pristine bar.
“Sure I can’t get you something to drink?” He grinned. “You’re taking a beating out there, and not the good kind.”
“There’s a good kind?”
I didn’t trust his wink. “Would you like a demonstration?”
“Oh, Lord. Someone ought to sit you in time-out.”
“Sometimes it’s fun being bad. You should try it.”
Oh, if he only knew how bad we were. I lowered my voice. “Think we can go somewhere and…talk?”
His smirk grew. I was sure he’d replaced the word talk with something far more exciting and rewarding. It wasn’t fair to blindside him like this. Did I have a choice?
I closed the door to his office before any frosting freak-out or cake-related calamity interrupted us. Nate offered me a seat at his desk, though I wasn’t going near the rat’s nest of receipts, notebooks, folders, files, and general disarray. It was a bookkeeper’s torture.
“So…I take it you spend most of your time brewing the beer?” I parsed through the papers.
“I’m a man of many talents.”
“Humble too.”
“Why should a man be humble? What’s in it for me?”
“Ah, and selfless.”
“You want me to start listing your faults?” he asked.
He’d never find any my mother hadn’t already discovered, cataloged, and posted on Facebook to the family.
I shrugged. “Name one.”
“You’re scared.”
“Of what?”
Those green eyes glittered with mischief. “Me.”
Technically, I wasn’t afraid of him…more like of what he made. I said nothing, daring him to elaborate with an arched eyebrow.
“You know we had something good,” he said. “Why are you so afraid of spending a second night with me?”
“Do you think it’s crazy that a woman wouldn’t want to sleep with you again?”
“It’s inconceivable.”
“Oh…I wouldn’t say that.”
“Don’t pretend you aren’t attracted to me.”
I wouldn’t even try to lie. Nate only got sexier the more I tried to avoid him. I still imagined the ripple of muscle beneath his clothes, the feel of his hands against my hips, the heat of his breath slipping down, down, down to the crest between my legs.
He wasn’t just attractive. Nate dripped testosterone. He charmed, he hunted, and he owned the naïve women who fell for the wolf behind his smile.
One word, and panties would drop. Sexts would send. Hell, whenever he walked into a room, every woman’s uterus lit up like a damn pinball machine, pinging and clinking and blinking fertilize me!
It was a miracle he hadn’t gotten any of his past girls in trouble.
Or was it my luck that my womb happened to be particularly…sticky?
“So…” I cleared my throat. “That…night we spent together?”
I had no idea what was bigger—Nate’s cock or his ego. He grinned.
“I knew you wanted another night. You don’t even have to ask, baby.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“Can I get any head from you?”
“For the love of God, Nate, would you fucking listen to me?”
He laughed. “I’m teasing. You know what I want. You know I’d do it right. Why are you acting like this is such a big deal?”
“Because sex is a big deal. It comes with responsibilities and consequences…and not just for our relationship.”