Love Connection (A Feel Good Romantic Comedy) Page 15

  I know, hold that thought for tomorrow

  I’m just really tired tonight

  I’m also a backstabbing, lying bitch. Because all I want to do tonight is log onto the internet and stalk my ex and his wife, who I met today and who made me cry over how much I hate and envy her. And I don’t want to be with Richard because I know the moment he sees my face he’ll be able to tell something’s wrong. And I don’t want to talk about it, not anymore, especially not with him.

  All right babe

  I’ll leave you to your beauty sleep

  Thanks I’ll make it up to you tomorrow

  I count on it

  :)

  Love you

  That feels like another stab at my guilty heart.

  Me too

  Goodnight :*

  Night :*

  Twenty-three

  Save the Date

  ♥♥♥

  Monday, March 5—London

  The moment Sharon walks out of the building, I call Amelia and ask her to have lunch with me. We do a complete post-mortem of my meeting with Sharon and she agrees I need to tell Jake immediately. So that night I walk home a bit wary. When I get there, I find Jake already home. He’s passed out on the couch and Lucky’s nestling on top of his chest. My two boys. I brush the hair off Jake’s forehead and kiss him there. Then I scratch Lucky’s head. They both look at me from under the lid of one eye.

  “Hi.” Jake smiles, stretching his arms.

  “Hello, sleepyhead. How was your day?” I give him another kiss.

  “Exhausting, yours?”

  “Mmm, interesting.” Why am I so nervous about telling him I met Sharon and that she’s married? I have an irrational fear he’s going to get jealous or something.

  “Interesting, how?”

  “I saw Sharon.”

  “Sharon as in…?” Jake furrows his brows.

  “Your ex wife-to-be? Yes.” I sit on the couch next to them, level with Jake’s chest. “I had a settlement case with a California-based company; she was on the opposing counseling team. I never knew she was a lawyer.”

  Jake sits up moving Lucky onto his lap and shifts to sit by my side.

  “Did you talk?”

  “Yes, I finally apologized.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She-she sort of forgave me.”

  “She did?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “I am a little. So, was she okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s married. Eloped to Vegas with a colleague a month ago. She said she didn’t want any more crazy-ex-girlfriends hazards.”

  “Sharon was making jokes about you crashing the wedding?”

  “She was. She said not marrying you was the best thing that ever happened to her. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “She said my little stunt probably saved you two from a painful divorce. She also told me how humiliated and heartbroken she was, and how much she used to hate me. But apparently, I’m her husband’s hero for breaking you two apart.” I smirk a little. “He’d been secretly in love with her for a long while.”

  “I think I know the dude.”

  Is he jealous?

  “So how does this make you feel?” I ask.

  “Is this a trick question where I can’t possibly give a right answer?”

  I laugh. “No, no tricks. I swear. I just want to know how you feel about Sharon being married.”

  “Glad, I suppose.”

  “No sting?”

  “No, definitely not. Sharon’s a good person. I’m glad she found her happiness with someone else. I can only wish for them to be as happy as we are.”

  “That’s such a perfect answer you should write a boyfriend manual.”

  “Hem-hem. Fiancé manual, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You most definitely aren’t.” I kiss him.

  He pulls me closer and Lucky protests at being disturbed during his nap.

  “Speaking of weddings,” Jake says when we finally pull apart, “my mom’s pestering me for us to set a date.”

  “I should keep the mother-in-law happy.” I get up to detach a calendar from the kitchen wall. “After all, I owe her a wedding. Did you have any preferences?”

  “For the date? No. End of summer?”

  I sit back on the couch and leaf through the calendar’s pages. “The first of September’s a Saturday. It’s in six months so we would have enough time to sort everything. How does that sound?”

  “First of September. It sounds great!”

  “We have a date,” I squeal, throwing my arms around his neck, much to Lucky’s displeasure. He jumps off the couch, throwing us a resentful evil-kitty glare, and settles himself on the empty armchair in the corner. “Aw, don’t be such a sourpuss,” I call after him. “We have to celebrate.”

  “Let me text Mom so she can get off my back.”

  Jake taps away in his phone and sets it on the coffee table where it starts vibrating at once.

  “Does Mrs. Wilder have any other requests?”

  “Apparently she wants to know if we’ve any idea whether we’re having the wedding here or at home.”

  “Okay, this is just an idea, and if you don’t like it you can say no. But I was talking to Amelia the other day…”

  “Is this where I should get worried?”

  “No, don’t worry. I’m not going Bridezilla on you. But we were talking, and she suggested we did the wedding at home where it all started, and I immediately knew where I wanted it to be…”

  “Well?”

  “How’d you feel if we got married at your parents’ cabin?”

  “I couldn’t think of a better place,” Jake says in a low voice. His eyes pierce deep within my soul. We’re both thinking about our first night together. And in the dark of his irises, I can see the reflection of all my love for him and his for me. It’s so intense I’m overwhelmed for a second.

  I break the eye contact. “Do you think it’ll be a problem for your parents?”

  “We can find out.”

  He taps a reply on his phone, which again vibrates back as soon as Jake drops it on the coffee table.

  “What does she say?”

  “Here, read for yourself.”

  I couldn’t be happier. I always knew that girl had some sense in her. Please tell Gemma I can help her as much as she wants with the planning. With her being there and me being here… but not in a pushy way, of course.

  “Be careful here,” Jake says. “If you give her an inch of control on the ceremony, she’s going to take over completely.”

  “Can I confess something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I sort of hoped she’d offer to help. I don’t care that much for wedding planning. Does that make me a horrible bride-to-be?”

  “It makes you the daughter-in-law of the year. She loves throwing parties.”

  “And she has impeccable taste.”

  “She does. Do you think your mom will get offended if we do it at our house and my mom does all the planning?”

  “No. She hates planning parties but adores going to them. And she’s going to be thrilled we’re going to be at home. Our families are a match made in heaven.”

  “We’re a match made in heaven.” Jake lifts my chin with a finger to kiss me.

  “You’re totally right and impossibly cheesy.”

  “And you’re an insolent little minx who needs a good seeing to.”

  He manhandles me from the couch, throwing my limp body over one of his broad shoulders, and gets both of us up. I punch him playfully in the back and scream in delight as he drags me toward the bedroom.

  Twenty-four

  September the First

  ♦♦♦

  Friday, March 9—London

  I help Amelia load the last of her boxes into Dylan’s car, hug her close, and send her off to her new life. I watch the car disappear aroun
d a corner, comforted by the warmth of Richard’s body towering behind me.

  Back inside my apartment, I take a moment to mentally process all the new empty spots. A vase missing here, a book missing there, nothing big… just all the small telltales of Amelia being gone from the house.

  I hug myself. “Feels a bit empty, doesn’t it?”

  Richard comes up behind me and massages my neck. “Are you sorry Amelia’s moved out?”

  “Well, yes. Of course. But I’m also happy she’s moving in with Dylan. She deserves to be happy after everything that happened to her last year. I’m glad she found him.”

  “He’s a good bloke. And now that you’re one roommate short, how’d you feel about taking in another one?”

  “No, the roommate I had before Amelia was a nightmare. I’d much rather be alone.”

  “I promise this roommate won’t be a nightmare; he gives the best massages.”

  I turn to face him. “Oh, you mean you! You want to move in together?”

  “We’re engaged, so why not?”

  “I thought you loved your apartment.”

  “Yes, I do. I hoped you’d want to move there with me?”

  The walls of the apartment seem to close in on us. Call it cabin fever. “I’d love to,” I lie. Too soon, way too soon. “But I just renewed the lease on this place; I’ve another nine months before it’s up.”

  “Can’t you sublet it?”

  “No, it’s in my contract,” I lie again. “But when the lease expires, we can discuss it again.”

  “I hope a little sooner than that.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’d always imagined myself actually living with my wife.”

  “W-wife? You mean you want to get married right away? Don’t engagements last years?”

  “They could, but why wait? I want you to become Mrs. Stratton as soon as possible…”

  Mrs. Stratton. It sounds so grown up.

  “I want to start a family with you, have children…”

  “C-children?” I swear the house is shrinking. The walls are imploding.

  “And I’m freaking you out big time.”

  “No, no.” I move away from him and go sit on the couch. “It’s just that it’s all happening so fast. Ten days ago we’d never even discussed getting married and now we’re having kids already.”

  “We’re not having kids.” Richard smiles at me and sits next to me. “I’m just saying I want them one day after we’re married. You want to have children, right?”

  “Yes, of course. As you said, one day. It’s a huge, scary change.”

  “It is. So, speaking of weddings, my mum asked me if we’d set a date yet. I told her we’d pick one soon. Want to have a look at the calendar?”

  “Sure,” I say with the enthusiasm of a zombie.

  “Would you prefer a summer or winter wedding?”

  “Summer, I guess.”

  “Me too. What do you say to early September?”

  September, next year. Eighteen months from now. A waiting time equal to two consecutive pregnancies should be enough for me to adjust to the idea. “I like September.”

  “The first’s a Saturday; don’t you think that’d be perfect?”

  “Wait, isn’t that this year’s calendar?”

  “Of course.”

  “You mean this September, as in six months?”

  “Yes. Why, don’t you?”

  Six months from now. Not even one full pregnancy. “Does that leave us enough time to organize everything?”

  “That could depend. Do you want a big wedding?”

  “No, absolutely not. The simpler, the better.”

  “Then it shouldn’t be a problem to get it running in six months.”

  I just scored the auto goal of the millennium. “No, I guess not.”

  “You want to do it here or back in the States?”

  “London. Organizing it in the States would be a nightmare.” I can’t marry Richard in the same town where I met Jake. Definitely not.

  “Do you ever miss home?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Ever thought of moving back?”

  “Maybe, eventually yeah. It could be a possibility. Would you hate it?”

  “Actually, no. I’ve always had this dream of living in New York, building a business that was mine.”

  “You want to start a marketing agency? You could do it here.”

  “I was thinking more an online magazine, a liberal place, a new voice…” He stares up at the ceiling with a dreamy expression. “Would you consider moving to New York?”

  “Why New York?”

  “It’d be the place to be.”

  “Is this a real conversation or a hypothetical one?”

  “Why, you don’t like the Big Apple?”

  “Uh. To me, it’s just a bigger, dirtier Chicago with less kind people.”

  We’re getting married, having kids, and moving to New York? I wonder if Richard is planning to drop any other bombshell on this relationship anytime soon.

  “Is everything okay? I’m not really being serious about New York. It’s just one of those ‘if-you-could-change-your-life-completely-what-would-you-do?’ fantasies. You look worried.”

  I search my brain for something to say to justify my funereal face. “Yes, it’s just that… don’t take this the wrong way, but I really don’t want to plan the wedding. I hate planning events, it stresses me out.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll keep it as basic as it gets.”

  “You mean you’re fine with not having mint-colored birdcages fly open to free a million butterflies as we cut the cake?”

  “Is that a thing?”

  “If you’re Amelia, yeah, it is.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t expect any volatiles. I only want you there.”

  He kisses me on the forehead and guilt creeps through me.

  “I’m calling my parents to tell them.”

  “Sure, I’ll do the same.” I use the excuse to take up my phone and walk into my bedroom. I close the door behind me, collapse on the bed, and suppress a frustrated scream by covering my mouth with a pillow.

  Six Months Later

  Twenty-five

  Home

  ♥♥♥

  Saturday, August 25—Chicago Area

  Nine days before the wedding, I fly to Chicago with Jake, Amelia, and Dylan. Amelia decided to come with us a week in advance to spend some time with her family and finally introduce Dylan to them. They’re staying at an inn in our hometown. As for me, I’m staying at my parents’ house in my old room, and Jake’s at his parents’ too. We’re just a block away and it’ll be fun to sneak out of the house and rediscover all our old meeting spots in the neighborhood.

  We land in Chicago early on Saturday morning and I don’t even have the time to take a shower before my mother and sister whisk me away to go shopping for a wedding dress. I know—with just a week to go before the wedding, it’s crazy not to have a dress. I’ll have to make do with whatever dresses the stores already have in stock, and a week’s barely enough time for the fitting. But I’m confident I’ll be able to find a wonderful dress in the whole of Chicago, and I want to choose it with both my mom and Kassandra. And given our complicated family geography, I had to do it here.

  So here we are. Amelia’s coming too—she put Dylan to bed then joined us at our house in time to leave—as is Mrs. Wilder, Jake’s mom. I suspect she put Jake to bed before coming too. And I could use a bit of sleep too after a sleepless night on the long flight from London, but I guess the wedding shopping adrenaline’s running strong in my blood because I don’t feel as exhausted as I should.

  Nonetheless, when the shopping assistant at the wedding store asks me if I’d like a glass of champagne while she shows us some options, I ask her for a double shot espresso instead.

  I choose six of the dresses she presents us and leave my audience comfortably
settled in plush settees to go change into the first one. The assistant helps me pull it on and pins it at the back to make it fit. When she’s done, she gently grabs me by the shoulders and turns me toward the mirror. I blink.

  For a second I’m overwhelmed. This is it. I’m getting married. Once the initial shock wears off, I stare at the dress more closely. It’s a romantic design made of tulle and Chantilly with a layered skirt. And the bateau neckline is decorated with gemstones. It looks good. But I don’t feel any special bonding with it.

  I go out to see what the others think.

  I’ve barely walked out and my mom’s already in tears. Everyone else seems close to joining her, and even Kassandra’s usual swagger is a bit subdued. The shop assistant seems to be the only one aware of my indecision; she squeezes my hand and asks me if I’d like to try some other options. I nod and follow her back to the fitting room.

  For the second dress, things go more or less the same: ooohs and aaaahs all around, tears from everyone but me, and a definitive no on my part.

  But the moment the shopping assistant pulls up the zip of the third dress, I know we’ve found a winner. Finally tears well up in my eyes too and I take a minute to stare at my reflection before going out to the others. The assistant gives me a knowing nod and leaves me alone in the fitting room to have a private moment with The One Dress.

  The gown’s in a plain white fabric, with no decorations, beads, or ruffles. It’s sleeveless with a bateau neckline and an A-line silhouette. The skirt has some volume and, I discover with delight, side pockets. I swirl to look at the back where a beautiful line of delicate buttons traces my spine. I wipe a few tears from my cheeks and walk out of the room, beaming.

  ***

  After the dress fitting, I’m still not free to go rest as I have to drive to the lake with Mrs. Wilder to oversee the final preparations for next week. Jake’s mom has kept me up to date on everything via Skype, but she wants me to approve the last details in person. She still has to give the final okay to the landscape artist for flowers and decorations, to the baker for the wedding cake, and to the guys bringing up the tent she ordered in case it should rain.

  Jake’s mom walks me around the property with a document holder in her hands, checking away items on her list as I give her my input.