I slip out of the car and leave it running for him. I cross the parking lot to go to the entrance. As I step inside, I text Thom and ask for their room number. My phone buzzes with a text when he sends it seconds later. I take the elevator and follow the room numbers to get to theirs. A Do Not Disturb! sign hangs on the doorknob. I knock anyway.
Marlee answers the door with her toothbrush hanging out of her mouth. I feel like I’ve walked in on a dorm room.
“Hi, Susie!” she says cheerily. “Come on in!”
I step inside. My dorm room assumption wasn’t far from the truth—they’ve got one room complete with twin beds. Both their bags are open, stuff splayed out on the floor and on the beds.
“Still unpacking?” I ask.
“It’s a process,” Thom says defensively, waving the mess off. He’s ready to go, at least, dressed in white slacks and a smart cable-knit sweater. His eyes flicker over me and catch on the jacket. “Nice look.”
I beam. “Braxton’s waiting downstairs, so.”
Marlee rinses out her mouth before she comes back in and dives into her bag. “Almost ready!”
I rub my hand over the back of my pants and wince when I feel a sting there. Truthfully, I have an ulterior motive for coming upstairs.
“Thom.” I tilt my head to the bathroom. “Can I borrow you for a second?”
“Certainly.” Thom gets up and follows me into the bathroom.
“Do you have tweezers?” I ask him.
He scoffs a laugh. “Darling. Who do you think I am? Of course I have tweezers. What do you need?”
“I have a splinter. But it’s kind of. Well. Hard to reach.”
“All right. Show me.”
I grimace. “Well…it’s kind of…” Thom lifts his eyebrows and makes a hurry up motion with his hand. “On my butt.”
“For heaven’s sakes, Susie.” Thom sighs. “I will never understand how you get yourself into these messes. Turn around.”
I do and unbutton my pants, dropping them. “It’s a funny story, really,” I tell him as I brace myself on the sink.
Thom goes into his vanity kit, pulls out a pair of tweezers, and positions himself behind me. I pull down the side of my underwear just enough to expose the offending cheek.
“Do tell,” Thom says.
“Well…” I’m leaning over the sink with my ass in the air. I don’t have a lot of secrets I can keep from Thom now. I blurt out, “I had sex with Braxton.”
I feel a pinch on my rear, and I let out a quick yelp of pain.
“Ow,” I say and glance over my shoulder. “Did you get it?”
Thom stands there with the splinter trapped between his tweezers. “Yes. Pull your trousers up, please. You’re as pasty as a ghost—have you thought about tanning?”
I pull my pants back up. “Thank you.”
“Susie, what are you doing?” Thom asks. There’s an accusatory tone to his voice.
“I just figured you wouldn’t mind…”
“This, I can do all day. We’re friends. What frightens me is the fact that you’re apparently sleeping around with groomsmen now.”
“Not all the groomsmen, just one… It happened before I knew who he is and…it’s complicated.”
Thom’s lips are pressed in a thin line. He’s unimpressed. “I have to tell Letty,” he says.
Bolts of panic shoot through my chest. “No! Thom, you can’t tell Letty. Please,” I beg him. “The wedding is too important to me.”
“The assignment, you mean,” Thom says skeptically. “You’re part of the planning crew, not part of the family. Don’t forget that.”
“I’ve got it under control,” I tell him firmly. “I promise.”
He doesn’t seem entirely convinced, but he lets out a deep sigh. “Let’s hope so.” With that, he opens the bathroom door and calls out to Marlee. “Muffin! Time to go!”
11
Braxton
I stall in the truck and keep it warm. I waste time on my phone, catching up on emails and making sure everything is in working order. It’s fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before Susie and the rest of her crew come back downstairs and hop into the car.
“Took you long enough,” I say.
“Urgent wedding business, I’m afraid.” Thom clicks his seat belt in place. “Nothing you would understand. Do we know where we’re going?”
“Marlee?” Susie asks hopefully.
The pigtailed girl looks down at her phone and scrolls through it. “There are a couple antique and thrift stores in the area. I’ll direct.”
Susie burns gas as we drive around, following Marlee’s directions. I grip the side of the truck as Susie gets a little trigger-happy on her turns and make a mental note to claim the driver’s seat on the way back. The first set of directions takes us to a quaint little antique shop, but Susie shakes her head and drives past. She also turns down the second shop, windows filled with porcelain.
Finally, Susie finds something she likes. She pulls into the parking lot of a general thrift store. We hop out and I feel the corners of my mouth tug downward.
“Are you sure this is the place you want?” I ask.
It’s a dump. The thrift store itself is a one-story warehouse. It looks like half of their items are outside, however, the back and front lawn scattered with bits and pieces. Everything from a bathtub to tires to lawn flamingos.
“It’s perfect,” Susie says as she stands beside me.
“You have to get out of the habit of saying this is perfect every time you see a garbage heap,” I tell her.
I feel Susie’s eyes on me as though she’s inspecting me. “In case no one has ever told you before—” Susie takes my chin in her fingers, “—you’re perfect, Braxton West.”
“Stop,” I tell her and pull away sharply. Telling her to stop is easier than telling her to keep going.
Thom and Marlee catch up to us. “Let’s bloody do this,” Thom says and cracks his knuckles.
Admittedly, I’m impressed. The three of them clearly have some kind of method to their madness as they begin picking through the entire store. They work in tandem—Thom picks up what looks like a mangled bike spoke, Susie hands over a candleholder, and just like that, they’ve created a centerpiece.
It all looks like trash to me. The only thing I manage to lift up is a small piggybank designed to look like a monkey. Its face is warped—the handmade thing didn’t hold up over the years—and when I show it to Marlee, she screams.
Like I said. I’m not good at this kind of thing.
“Braxton!” I turn at the sound of my name and spot Susie. She’s in the yard—if you could call it that; it’s more like sprouts of weeds patched into dry dirt. She hangs on to a wire contraption that forms an upside-down U over her. It looks like something that someone, once upon a time, thought could be a good entranceway outside of their house until they got bored of it and lit it on fire, leaving nothing but the steel frame behind.
“What do you think?” she asks, leaning on the wires.