Page 93 of The Wedding

“Naturally.” Jamie checked her messages. It was from Jenny. Could be a life-or-death emergency.Who knew?

“Have you picked out your third bridesmaid yet? I’m going nuts here trying to figure out how to do two without having it look so terrible! Help me out! PICK SOMEONE!!”

Jamie looked up from her phone. “Do you want to be my bridesmaid?”

It was the coarsest way she could ask this woman she barely knew – and who happened to be her fiancée’s ex-girlfriend. As expected, Adele jerked her head up, gobsmacked. “I… well, that’s quite the honor you foisted upon me.”

A heavy breath eased its way past Jamie’s lips. “I know how much you mean to Etta.”

“Yes.” Adele cut her off faster than if they were in traffic. “Which is probably why she already asked me to be her best man. Er, woman.”

Jamie’s phone slipped right out of her hand. “What?”

“Oh, I was shocked too. She did it last week. Took me out to lunch for seemingly no other reason. I have to admit, it felt like a date the way she was courting me for an hour.” Adele leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms in a huff. “Reminiscing about Yale… the years we dated… well, I’ll spare you the details. I was almost afraid she was saying she was getting cold feet with you and wanted to have an affair with me. I’m serious! It was the strangest thing until she finally dropped the bomb. She said she couldn’t imagine anyone else having such an important distinction at her wedding. I felt bad for her. The woman doesn’t have any other friends close enough to ask! Her only best friend turned out to be the biggest creep around. Who am I? A woman who came back from nowhere because she heard Etta was looking for a business partner.”

Jamie’s jaw dropped. “So you… said yes?”

“Of course I did. How could I tell that poor woman no? So…” Adele drank her water in the sloppiest way possible. So much for manners. “I can’t be your bridesmaid, sorry. I’m already engaged elsewhere in your wedding party.”

“Oh… well. That’s unexpected.” Jamie sighed. “Things are so crazy right now. Everything is coming together except for my personal shit. I can’t even find a dress.” Ever since her flop of a trip to New York, Jamie realized she didn’t actually like any of the dresses in her magazines. They were fine. They were beautiful. But they weren’ther. They didn’t make her feel like the beautiful, regal bride Etta deserved. “I don’t have enough friends who can be my bridesmaids. We’ve barely looked at cakes. It’s amazing we’ve picked out a color! I dunno, maybe I’m too wound up. This is coming down to the wire way too quickly. I’m getting married in two months! I thought I had over a year to plan these things. Then the paper…”

“Then the paper suggested that she and I were getting married instead.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s not fair to you.” Adele stood, plucking her purse out of its basket. “Unfortunately, I have a teleconference at two that I need to prepare for. I hope things work out for you… and I’ll see you at the luncheon tomorrow.”

Adele never stuck around to converse much with Jamie. It didn’t bother her. Not really. There were a lot worse ways for Adele to behave. She was a businesswoman at Etta’s level. It made sense that she would be a bit high-strung and always on the go, especially since she was now the “face” of Thompson-Coleman.

Still, that didn’t save Jamie from any of her predicaments. She looked at Jenny’s text and shook her head, unsure of what to do. Her only recourse was to call one of the first numbers in her phone and hope for the best.

“Hey, girl,” Nala said on the other end of the line. “What’s up? Hope you know it’s only almost eleven here. Feel lucky that I had class and am bumming around campus this early.”

This early?Did people on the West Coast really sleep in until noon all the time, like Jamie sometimes heard? Or was Nala the quintessential 21-year-old college student who stayed up until seven in the morning playing co-op video games?Yeah, that. Yet she managed to bag one of the hottest tech savants in the Pacific Northwest. Jamie couldn’t fault that.

“I’ll take that into consideration in the future,” said Jamie, who was rarely out of bed later than nine. “I’m calling because I need a favor. A big favor.”

“Who do I have to kill? I’m a frightening secret agent now, you know.”

“No kidding.” Jamie pushed herself up against the table in front of her. “I’m asking you to be my bridesmaid at my wedding.”

“What! I barely know you!”

“I know, I know… but I can’t find anyone else to be my third bridesmaid, and if I don’t find one soon, I am in so much hot water that…”

“You’re asking me to fly out there at the end of June – right after I finish school for the semester, mind you – to be a bridesmaid in some big fat wedding that I don’t know anyone at. What’s in it for me?”

“Well, uh…” Jamie’s voice became meeker by the second. “Bachelorette party?”

“I’ll think about it. Not like I wasn’t going to go anyway, but…”

“I know, I know. Being a bridesmaid carries a bit of responsibility.”

“I’ve done a great job staying out of the news. You’re having a high-profile wedding, right?”

“Probably.” Jamie fielded the photography requests to Jenny, who was better at vetting which magazine spreads would be the best fit for the Colemans. “I know you and your girlfriend aren’t into popularity of any kind.” Jamie was jealous. In her neck of the woods, that wasn’t an option. “I’d appreciate it, though.”

“Like I said, I’ll think it over. I’ve gotta get to class now, though. Talk to you later. Good luck with the wedding stuff. Let’s game sometime soon. Your girlfriend against mine.”