Page 85 of The Wedding

“Yes, dear, we’re quite aware. We took our clothes off in the woods and couldn’t be bothered to put them back on.” Luna shrugged. Her breasts heaved up and down with her movements. “We’re nudists now. Have been for a while. Might as well get used to it!”

They shuffled by, greeting Jenny on their way back into thehouse. Jamie continued to stare in utter disbelief. Jenny muttered awowbefore bending down to pick up her tablet in its shatter-protection case. Beatrice let out a string of Spanish that Jamie couldn’t understand. Barbarossa rolled onto her back, sunning on the warm bricks.

“Your parents, huh?” Jenny shoved her tablet in her knapsack. “Make sure they wear clothes to your wedding. Your guests wouldn’t approve otherwise.”

Jamie was too dumbfounded to promise either way.

Chapter 26

If Jamie was hopeless at croquet, then she was half decent at badminton. Which didn’t say much, because being one of the best players at her high school was like saying she was one of the best deep-sea divers as well.

She performed decently at the downtown sports center when she went the next day. It helped that she had Gwenyth on her side, who was apparently a sporty girl who loved nothing more than pummeling her opponents into the ground.

Too bad the women on the other side of the net were out for blood.

“Two to seven!” Eve called, slamming the birdie across the net. Gwenyth dove and volleyed it back, her grunt of total annihilation echoing in the room as the birdie went straight for Kathleen’s head on the other side of the net.

“Fuck!” Kathleen spiked her racket on the ground, right next to the birdie she missed.

Jamie stayed close to the net but didn’t say anything. Kathleen had been near-rabid through the whole match, growling, baring her teeth, looking like a fucking lunatic every time she served or smacked the birdie back to Jamie and Gwenyth. “What is wrong with me today?” True. She wasn’thitting many volleys. She was more likely to run out of bounds or completely miss the birdie until it was hitting her in the face.

Eve went to her, wrapping a supportive arm around her friend’s shoulder and taking her to the corner for a pep talk. The two of them were tall enough to peer over the net, but they huddled, the one hissing at the other as Jamie was pretty sure she heard some tears.

“Wow,” Gwenyth said. “Someone is PMSing.”

Jamie wouldn’t speculate. “Damn,” she muttered. “Rich girls are competitive, huh?”

“You really have no idea.” Gwenyth twirled her racket in her hand. “Especially those two. Got a lot to prove. Pressure sucks.”

The two blondes came back to the game, and the birdie was tossed over the net for Jamie to serve. When she smacked it over the net, she dove to hit, since Eve did a bang-up job smacking it before it was barely on her side.

The longest volley in the sports club’s history commenced. Gwenyth hit, Eve hit, Jamie hit, Kathleen hit. That poor white birdie was abused to near-death as four women raced around the court with their rackets halfway up in the air.

“Get it!” Eve shouted, the birdie going over her head.

“Mine!” Sure enough, Kathleen whacked it with such strength that it flew over the net.

Right into Jamie’s face.

“Ow!” This was worse than Kathleen taking it in the forehead. That was a bop compared to this. Jamie staggered around the court before finally sinking to her knees, since that’s when the pain exploded against her nose. Blood flowed down her face.

“Aw, fuck.” Eve ducked beneath the net with Kathleen following. “Look what you did. Fell the one brunette in the bunch. Isn’t that some sort of discrimination?”

“Er,” Kathleen said. “Sorry.”

Gwenyth saw the blood and instantly backed away, citing how ill even a nosebleed made her feel. Jamie, meanwhile, gasped with her hand over her mouth, bracing against the waves of pain that kept overtaking her face.

“It ain’t broken, is it?” Eve knelt in front of Jamie and pried her hand away. “Ew! Well, I don’t think it’s broken. Just a bit busted.”

“Thanks,” Jamie said through the pain.

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.” Eve helped Jamie stand up, brushing off some dirt from her sports top and leading her to the ladies’ locker rooms. “No, no, I got this. Besides, Ms. Jamie and I need to have a little chat, anyway.”

There wasn’t another soul there that weekday afternoon. Jamie dropped onto the nearest bench while Eve pulled a complimentary first aid kit from a nearby bin.

“Nasty, but don’t worry. It looks messy. Painful. Don’t think it’s broken, though. Yikes.”

“Don’t say that,” Jamie said with a whiny voice. Her nose hurt with her hand on it, but it hurt even more when she moved her hand away. She didn’t know what that meant. I’ve never broken my nose before. Granted, she was pretty sure it wasn’t broken now… just mad. Still, Jamie couldn’t exactly say that she was used to abusing her nose.