The Lucky Dress Page 9

  “I am not jealous of Greta.” The disbelieving laugh I’ve been trying to stifle surrounds the words I’m using as my defense. Which makes me sound completely disrespectful. Although, in this particular situation, who would be married to respectful at this point? I mean, come on, I’m in trouble because a grown woman decided to get wasted when she knew she was working. How is this my fault? Babysitting a full grown woman most definitely isn’t in my job description.

  “It’s funny now?” Aron throws his hands in the air.

  “No. Not funny, just… crazy! You can’t be serious about this? She’s an adult. I can’t make her not drink. I suggested it, but she wouldn’t listen. In fact, she’s been talking down to me all night long. What did you expect me to do?”

  Jack squeezes my hand. Probably as a signal that I should shut up and not make the situation even worse, but I can’t seem to go down without at least defending myself.

  “I’ll have you know that this entire situation has been utterly humiliating for me. If you’re now upset because she’s turned into this…” I point over at her. Her mascara is running down her face and her skin is now a pale shade of green.

  The retching noise she makes as she leans over to throw up on her father’s shoes turns all the heads that weren’t already turned in our direction.

  “Ohh… That’s never good,” Morgan says behind me.

  Aron momentarily closes his eyes with a giant heaving sigh. “I’m sorry, Emi. I’ll need you to pack up your things. Unfortunately, I’ll have to let you go.”

  “You’re firing me?!” I yell. “For what?!”

  “For letting Greta become wasted at what was supposed to be our company Christmas Greeting recording and party. I expected you to be able to handle anything thrown at you in this job. This entire situation is hardly professional, and I think you and I both know it.” He directs his statement at both Morgan and me.

  “You’re right,” I shout. “The entire night has been completely unprofessional. Your precious daughter is the most conniving, manipulative person I have ever met, and I’ve only known her for an hour. She didn’t need a commercial director, what she needed was an AA meeting. The fact that you are punishing the only person who tried to keep things professional is a testament to her manipulating even her own father. Good luck keeping your company afloat with her as the face of the business.” The grip I have on Jack’s hand is probably injuring him.

  Holy Sweet Moses, I’ve snapped. A drunk, nude model has caused me to have a complete breakdown, and I’m standing in the middle of a party screaming at my boss.

  “You can excuse yourselves now.” With a wave of his hand, Aron expects us to be gone for doing absolutely nothing wrong. “You though,” he points at Jack, “you will apologize to my Greta for making her feel badly about herself.”

  “I don’t think so! If anything, she should be apologizing to everyone in the room for her out of line behavior towards a guest.” Jack looks between Greta and Aron for a moment. He finally rolls his eyes skyward and nods towards the door with an irritated laugh. “Let’s go.”

  Jack and Morgan work quickly, grabbing his equipment and bags. “This is insane,” I bark at them as I grab my bag. “I’m taking these.” I pile the three heaped plates of food on top of one another and quickly shove the full bottle of wine chilling in an ice bucket in the center of our table, into my bag. I did all the work, so I should at least taste the food.

  My heels clack across the floor as I follow Jack and Morgan through the room. The eyes of my co-workers are following my every step. If I was really evil, I’d post whatever video Morgan got on the internet as soon as possible. But I can’t. I may have just had an epic meltdown in front of hundreds of people, but I can’t ruin anyone. Not even Greta.

  *

  “I don’t even know what just happened?” I look up at Jack when I catch up with him.

  “Me neither.” Jack’s face is netted with confusion. “That was… insane,” he shakes his head.

  We’ve all made it to the front of the building and now stand staring at each other in disbelief before all bursting out into laughter at the ridiculousness of the entire thing. This definitely was not the Christmas party experience I was expecting this evening.

  “I stole our plates… and this.” I pull the bottle of wine from my bag and watch both Jack and Morgan break out into more laughter.

  “Wow… You’re a fighter and a thief. I’m learning all kind of things about you tonight.” Morgan takes a plate from the pile of three in my right hand. “Want me to upload this video? I got the whole thing.”

  “You were filming that?” I ask, surprised I didn’t even notice.

  I shove the unopened bottle of wine back into my bag before handing Jack a plate of food.

  “Well… I thought it might be useful for the impending lawsuit,” Morgan winks.

  “It’s tempting,” I look over at Jack who shakes his head with a small smile. “But my lawyer says it’s not a good idea.”

  “I know. If you ever change your mind, though, I’ll save it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly bad about what just happened. “I’m so sorry about tonight.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Morgan shrugs his shoulders. “They’re assholes.”

  “I hope you find another playboy bunny. Maybe one that isn’t quite as insane?” I try not to scrunch my face in disgust as I say it, but I can tell my face isn’t co-operating.

  Morgan laughs with a wink. “No worries there, I’ve got a whole stack of `em.”

  “Ew,” I say as he makes his way across the road to the Max Train Platform to wait for his train.

  Jack’s phone pings in his pocket.

  “Oh no, is it work?” Could this night get any worse?

  His face suddenly tenses as he looks at his phone before handing it over to me.

  Jack, I have connections. You’ll be hearing from me. Greta.

  “What the fuck?” I yell, nearly dropping my plate on the ground and startling an older woman walking past us with a bag of groceries. “She could barely speak a straight sentence five minutes ago. Now she’s suddenly become Nancy Drew? How on earth did she get your number so fast?”

  “She’s going to be a real pain in the ass,” Jack growls in irritation. I watch as he hits Delete and shoves his phone into his pocket. “Don’t worry about it, though, I want nothing to do with that woman.” He gives me a peck on the cheek and nods in the direction of the waterfront park trail not far from us. “Dinner on the street as we walk to our car, there’s a date we’ve not had yet.”

  “True. A walk in the freezing moonlight could be romantic?” I suggest before he drapes his jacket around me. He takes my hand in his with a squeeze, “Everything will work itself out for the best, you’ll see.” As if reading my mind Jack sends his usual positive vibe into the atmosphere exactly when I need it most.

  Seven

  The Bridal Shower

  Present Day

  West Hills, Portland, Oregon

  “What happened to you last night?” Lily asks. She, Hannah, Josh, and Evan are all sitting around the dining table with me the next morning, coffee in hand, all awaiting my answer.

  I never intended to hang out at Old Tex until final call chatting, with a virtual stranger about the mess that is my life. But Liam was very easy to talk to and really not judgmental. Which was nice for a change. Talking to him also made me realize that I guess now is as good a time as any to spill all the secrets I’ve held back about the last day Jack and I were together. As I rattled it all off to Liam last night I felt kind of bad that I was telling it detail for detail to a complete stranger before I told even my own brother and soon to be sister-in-law.

  “There are some things you guys don’t know.” I glance at everyone except Lily and Josh, who already know too much and have been sworn to secrecy. “Greta and I have a bit of a history.”

  “How?” Evan asks.

  I know that
supposedly Greta and Jack haven’t been a couple for long but it makes me wonder just how much he’s told them about her, or us even.

  “Remember when I worked at Mayfair Homes?”

  “Oh yeah… I forgot about that. You quit right after you and Jack got engaged, right?”

  I shake my head. “Not exactly,” I purse my lips together. I hate it when I lie and then get caught and need to explain it later. Right now, I honestly feel like I’m twelve years old. “I didn’t quit, I got fired.”

  “How did you get fired?” Hannah’s voice is high pitched and unbelieving. I can’t blame her; I’m not the girl who normally gets fired, and even she knows it.

  “Greta,” I sigh. “She was supposed to be the face of a commercial we were shooting, but she got wasted, took a liking to Jack, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was accused of being jealous, not keeping a close enough eye on her, not keeping her sober, and being irresponsible. So, her dad fired me.”

  “WHAT?” Evan and Hannah say in unison.

  “Oh my God, Ems.” Hannah stares at me, a frown on her face. “I’m so sorry. If I’d had any idea at all about this, I never would have even invited her to the wedding.”

  “She’s invited?” I assumed she would probably be going as Jack’s plus one but somewhere inside me, I hoped she wasn’t.

  “Everyone got a plus one so I couldn’t possibly tell Jack, no. Although with his response when you left yesterday I can’t say he’d be all hard up if I did.”

  “What response is that?” I ask. I knew I saw the Jack I once knew when I was trying to escape. He was more worried about what was happening with me, than even with Greta. Something just doesn’t make sense.

  “No, Hannah, just let it be,” Evan says to her with a shake of his head.

  Hannah purses her lips together, a sign that she’d rather explode than keep a secret.

  “You know what you need?” Lily interrupts the awkward silence. “A date for the wedding. A plus one. It’s only fair to make things even. Don’t you think?”

  “And how exactly is she going to find a plus one in just a few days…” Evan asks all smug.

  “Actually,” I think back to chatting with Liam last night. He might not be romantically interested in me, and that’s totally fine, but he might be himself just heartbroken enough to help me make sure I get the final say in my own heartbreak. “I may just have the perfect person. I met him last night.”

  “My God,” Evan shakes his head as if I’m a complete whore. I’m not sure why he still feels as if he’s got to protect me when I’m in my thirties.

  “It’s not like that, you perv. It was innocent. We just talked. He owns a bar up the street. He agreed that my entire situation this week is more than rough, so maybe he’d help me out?”

  “Do you have his number?” Lily asks.

  “No,” I shake my head. “But I know where he works.”

  “Well, you don’t have time to go there and proposition him this morning. We have my bridal shower in an hour.” Hannah smiles through clenched teeth. She knew I was hoping they would have had this bridal shower before I got here. Mingling with my ex-fiance’s mother is not something I’m looking forward to.

  “I’ll go by there afterwards. I’m sorry if this whole thing is becoming weird,” I say, even though I don’t think it’s entirely my fault.

  “Don’t apologize, I only wish I’d known all this earlier.” Hannah frowns, obviously upset that she isn’t in on all of my secrets. But it’s not like I intentionally kept all this from her. Until yesterday, I didn’t even know Greta was back in the picture.

  “I’m sorry. I was… I am humiliated.” I sigh deeply, knowing the only way for me to feel better about everything is to tell the rest of my secret to Hannah right now before she finds out on her own and hates me forever. “There might be something else between Greta and me…”

  “There’s more?”

  I nod. “Yeah, it gets worse. I could have lived with the Christmas party thing. But…” I pause, trying to find a delicate way to say this next part. How do you tell someone their cheating brother was somehow in cahoots with Greta the bitch the entire time? “The day I caught Jack… you know. With Lily’s advice, I went over later that day to talk to him but, it didn’t go as planned.”

  “How did it go?” Evan asks, much more interested in the story than I expected him to be. He’s never been one to be interested in every detail of my drama, but right now, he appears to be all ears.

  “When the elevator doors opened, I heard Jack’s voice so I peered around the corner before leaving the elevator, you know, so he wouldn’t see me, and I saw…” I have to stop and take a breath to keep myself from becoming emotional. It happens every time I relive this part of the story. “I saw her, at our front door, telling him she heard he was newly single, and kissing his cheek. I’d know her blonde hair and voice anywhere. And then… he invited her in.”

  “WHAT?! He did? No way!” Hannah’s voice is high and whiney, almost like she’s having a hard time believing that this girlfriend of Jack’s could do something so brazen. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I never spoke to him again. I just couldn’t unsee what I saw and I can’t see how it could all happen the way it did, if he wasn’t at least a little bit guilty. Now they’re a couple, so what does that tell you?”

  “I am so sorry, Ems.” Evan reaches across the table and pats my hand. “I had no idea. I can kick his ass if you want?”

  I smile. Part of me wants to take him up on that but that’s not the adult part of me even a little bit.

  “No, you can’t, because no one is going to mention this. He chose her even before we broke up, so, no matter how much any of this appears to bother me, he gets to keep her. He’s obviously not the Jack I once knew.”

  “Emi, I’m sorry,” Hannah hugs me. “I promise to keep a fair distance between you and Greta at the bridal shower.” A thin apologetic smile spreads across Hannah’s face before she stands from the table. “I hate to cut this short but we have to get ready. Is there anything else we should know?”

  I shake my head. “That’s it.” Thank God that’s it. “I’ll try and not let my emotions get the best of me the next couple of days.”

  It won’t be easy, and I definitely can’t make any promises, but for Hannah’s sake I’ll at least try and do my best and not over think the situation. No matter how much my head hurts over all this, Hannah and Evan deserve a stress free wedding.

  *

  “Emi!” Amelia greets me before even her own daughter when we walk through the door. “My dear girl, how I’ve missed you!” She surprises me by pulling me in for a hug so tight I think I might never get away.

  I kind of figured after I bailed on the huge wedding she was planning that she’d be more irritation, and less ‘missed me’.

  “You look…” She looks me over for a minute, probably trying to find another, less obvious, word for fat. “Fabulous.”

  I’ve noticed in life that when people tell you that you look ‘fabulous’ you really don’t. You look just slightly less great than they had expected, and ‘fabulous’ rolls of the tongue so quickly and easily in a tense situation.

  “Can you believe that we finally get to be family?” Amelia asks with a grin.

  “Well… Not me, but Evan.”

  “Pfft! That includes you. Who’d have ever thought that instead of you and Jack, we’d end up with Hannah and Evan getting married?” She smiles sweetly before putting her arm around my shoulder and walking me into her lavish living room. “Still such a shame about you and Jack, though.” She leans closer to me. “The man was heartbroken for ages. Even now, I sometimes wonder.”

  “What?” I force my face to not look stunned at what she’s just said. She still sometimes wonders if Jack is broken hearted over me? But he’s got a girlfriend?

  “Hannah mentioned you ran away from us for some type of internship? How did that go, dear?”

  “Internship?” I ask, wi
th a shake of my head.

  “Emi, I just remember something I need to talk to you about, urgently.” Hannah grabs my arm and pulls me away from Amelia and Lily, dragging me across the room and into the pantry. A pantry that’s bigger than my bedroom. “Shit,” Hannah hisses. It’s unlike her to use my favorite curse word.

  “What is it?”

  “There is something I forgot about. Please don’t hate me.”

  “Spit it out.” I should have known I wasn’t the only one with secrets this week.

  “When you and Jack broke up, he didn’t want to tell Mom what actually happened. So, we – He told her that you had an amazing opportunity with an ad agency in New York for an internship.”

  “WHAT?” I squeak, in a weird high pitched, trying not to make a scene from the pantry, voice. “Why would he tell her that?” Having said that, I’m not entirely sure why I’m surprised by this. Jack has refused to admit any wrongdoing even when he was pretty much caught red-handed. Why would I think his family would know the truth?

  “He thought he would win you back, Ems. It’s not even been a year. He didn’t want to break Mom’s heart by telling her why you actually broke up.”

  “So instead of telling the truth he lied to her and made our break up my fault?”

  “Well, no… He said it was a great opportunity for you and that you just didn’t feel right getting married without at least giving it a go. He said you two just grew apart and amicably broke up. She’s not mad at you. She’s more frustrated with Jack. I don’t know, actually. Things have been weird whenever you’re mentioned.” Hannah bites her freshly manicured nails nervously.

  “Hannah…” Her name leaves my lips tinged with irritation. I can’t be completely mad at her. It’s not like she made it up. She just went along with it. Plus, she did kind of just forgive me earlier when I told her a secret she knew nothing about. If I don’t just let this go, guess who will be the bigger bitch here? “Whatever, it’s fine,” I sigh through clenched teeth, annoyed at having to lie some more. “What do I need to say?”