One and Only(24)

Wendy clapped once, hard, as if in triumph. “Spill it.”

Jane lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m kind of using him to get out of my bridesmaid duties.” Wendy narrowed her eyes—the hardened lawyer could smell the lie of omission, no doubt—so Jane kept talking. “As far as I can tell, being a bridesmaid is kind of like being a lobster slowly boiled in a pot. It all sort of creeps up on you, and suddenly you’re shoving white felt into a blender.” There. Hopefully that would be enough to put her bloodhound of a BFF off the scent.

Wendy let loose another one of her signature cackles and rolled off the bed. “You’re not wrong there. Come on. We have to cover this condo in plastic dicks because that is, apparently, how our bullshit society says you are supposed to celebrate the impending end of singlehood. And you’re not getting out of this one.”





Jay says no stripper.



Cam’s text arrived while Jane was perched in a pedicure chair, an hour into the “getting ready” part of the festivities. Never mind that “getting ready” for Jane generally meant deciding which flats to wear and slapping her hair into a ponytail, and she could be counted on to do that in all of ten seconds. If “getting ready” for the bachelorette party was this elaborate a process, she hated to think what the primping before the actual wedding would entail.

But I can’t guarantee that because there are a couple dudes here who keep trying to change his mind.



Jane hated to be “that person” who texted while getting a pedicure—could you get any more entitled?—but she sat back and replied.

Where are you guys? What’s the plan?

We’re at Jay’s playing video games. Then off to Finnegan’s Wake. As far as I can tell, the plan seems to be: drink.

Oh, man, I envy you. I am getting toenails that no one is ever going to see painted. Then I’m going for pre-pre-drinks. Then actual pre-drinks at Wendy’s. Then dinner. Then we’re crashing some kind of gay club. Because that’s what everyone at a gay club wants: a bunch of drunk straight girls invading. And I’ve ALREADY spent an hour decorating Wendy’s place with fake penises. And piping frosting onto cupcakes to look like penises. Etcetera, etcetera.

YOU are complaining about fake penises?



She laughed out loud, drawing Gia’s attention.

“What are you doing?” Gia lunged for the phone. Jane tried to keep it out of her reach, but her pedicurist was in the middle of applying the glittery emerald-green polish Jane had chosen, so she couldn’t really move. She tried not to whimper as Gia captured her prize.

“Oh my God, is this Jay’s brother you’re texting with?”

Jane wanted to die. She wanted the Earth to open up and swallow her, pedicure throne and all. She could only comfort herself that Wendy and Elise were getting their fingers done across the salon and therefore hadn’t heard Gia’s outburst.

“I, ah, asked him to let us know if there was going to be a stripper,” she offered feebly, knowing there was no way Gia would accept that explanation.

“Yeah,” she said, scrolling on Jane’s phone. “And you covered that waaaay back here. You know, before the part where you start talking about penises.” She tapped the phone a couple times. “I’m going to answer him.”

“No!” Jane’s shriek was so loud that it did draw Wendy and Elise’s attention from across the salon, as well as that of most of the other customers. “Sorry!” she chirped, waving at everyone. Then she hissed at Gia, “If you don’t give me back that phone, so help me…”

Gia handed the phone back silently, all the mirth gone from her face. “Oh, sweetie.”

“What?” Jane had no idea what was going on, but she didn’t like the way Gia was looking at her.

“You like him.”

“I don’t like him.”

“You do.” She heaved a huge sigh. Then she perked up. “Well, we know you’re not gay, Xena!”

“What’s wrong with liking Cameron?” Jane protested, but then quickly added, “Theoretically, I mean. Because I don’t.”

“He’s trouble, that one.”

“Says Elise. But he’s actually kind of…”

“Kind of what?” When Jane didn’t answer, Gia said, “My concern is not what Elise says. You can tell by interacting with him for five seconds that he’s trouble.”

Jane supposed Gia was right. She was the world-weary, jet-setting model, after all. She had tons of horror stories of being harassed on the job, and just as many of, uh, enjoying herself in her travels. She knew stuff, was the point. Certainly more than Jane, whose last relationship with something not made out of silicone had ended five years ago.

“Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his uses,” Gia said, cocking her head and tapping a finger against her pursed lips as she regarded Jane. “He is gorgeous.”

“Yeah, if you’re into the whole testosterone overdose thing,” Jane said.

“And really, who isn’t?” Gia said with a grin. “At least temporarily.” But then her face grew grave. “Seriously, though, Jane, have some fun if you want, but don’t get your heart broken.”

“Whoa. Why would you think I’m going to get my heart broken?”

“What were you going to say before? You said, ‘he’s actually kind of…’ And then you didn’t finish. You were going to say he has qualities that no one else sees, right? That under all that womanizing and bluster, he’s actually a misunderstood teddy bear?”

Jane didn’t answer, but she feared her face betrayed her, because Gia shook her head, looking at her like she was an innocent child who didn’t know the ways of the world. “You know that Maya Angelou quote?” she asked. “It goes something like, when people tell you who they are, believe them.”

Jane’s first impulse was to correct her, because the quote was actually “When people show you who they are, believe them.” And showing was something quite apart from telling. And that was the thing about Cameron: what he told her about himself was different from what he showed her. But then she thought better of it, because probably that was too fine a distinction. Cameron had stood before her and said, “All the shit people say about me is true.” He’d calmly informed her that he physically attacked his commanding officer, for heaven’s sake.

“Gia,” she said, her voice catching, which pretty much confirmed that she was an innocent child who didn’t know the ways of the world. She could feel herself flush with embarrassment.

“Aww, sweetie.” Gia laid a hand on her forearm, which was weird because although she was their resident extrovert and party girl, Gia was usually the least demonstrative of their group.

“You won’t tell anyone?”

“What? That you like fake penises?”

“No. About…this whole conversation.”

Gia mimed zipping her lip and throwing away the key. Then she mimed crossing her heart, and Jane’s own was suddenly full of affection for her friend. Gia was a lot of things, but foremost among them was loyal.

Jane slumped in her chair, a bit off kilter as a result of the uncharacteristically frank exchange with Gia and preemptively exhausted when she considered the night ahead.

“But by all means,” Gia said, the forearm pat turning into an aggressive poke. “Do the dude. Break the Felix spell already!”

“There is no Felix spell!” Jane protested, laughing at the exaggerated skeptical face Gia made.

But the truth was, she was starting to fear there was a Felix spell. And she wanted to break it. Crap. She wanted to break it with Cameron.





Chapter Eleven



Cam felt like a double agent, texting Jane updates as the bachelor party wore on. Most of them consisted of variations on “Still no strippers,” but he kept sending them anyway, mostly because she always replied with pithy, amusing reports on what she was up to.

He could see why she was such a successful writer. She managed to retain a kind of critical distance from her surroundings that allowed her to comment on them objectively. It’s like she was at the party but not at the party. Which was pretty much how Jane operated all the time, he realized. Which, in turn, was actually kind of sad. She was a bit of an outsider, a position he identified with, but it was no way to live all the time.

Maybe that’s why she’d been so gorgeous and exhilarated at the CN Tower and at the falls—she’d been utterly immersed, so fully present that she wasn’t able to stand outside the experience in order to comment on it. Maybe that’s what the “goddess mode” phrase that had popped into his head to describe her in those scenarios had meant.

The thing was, he liked her both ways. He liked the goddess; he liked the wry commentator. But he needed to shut that shit down because whoever she was, she deserved better than him.

She’d even sent him a picture of her painted toes along with a frowny face emoticon. “You’re the only person who’s ever going to see these besides the girls,” she’d texted. When he’d asked why, she’d replied, “The wedding shoes are close-toed, as are all of my own. Elise would never allow green for the ceremony, anyway, so they’re gonna be short-lived.”