“Having fun?” I ask her casually.
Mandy lets out a breath of a laugh. “Yeah. It’s great.”
I might be tipsy, but I’m not so tipsy that to ignore the warning signs. Most of the bridesmaids are drinking to celebrate. Mandy? She’s drinking to get drunk. There’s a faraway look in her eyes as she stares morosely down the bar.
Time to do some recon. I slide up beside her. “It must be crazy,” I say. “Watching your childhood friend get married…I mean, that has to be full circle, right?”
“Is that what they’re calling it?” Her tone is blade-sharp, and she tucks her thick, curly hair over her shoulders.
“What would you call it?” I ask.
Mandy sighs. Finally, she confesses, “We dated once, you know.”
No surprise there. I nod sympathetically. “You and Ray?”
“Yeah.” The bartender sets her drink down on the bar, and she takes a sip from it. “It was…a long time ago. We were just kids…we were each other’s first kiss, first you-know-what. All that cheesy stuff.”
She’s vague about it, but I’m willing to bet she has a very distinct memory of each and every time Ray Dalton kissed her. Love can be crazy that way, always burning the best and worst memories in the backs of our skulls. “Do you love him?” I ask bluntly.
Mandy lets out a quiet laugh and then sidesteps my question. “It’s just hard. You spend your life thinking one way…that you’ll eventually get back together, get married, have kids, and it’s all a done deal. And then…something knocks you sideways.”
I let out a puff of a breath. “I can relate,” I tell her. “But listen…in a couple days, this will all be over. Maybe it’s just the closure you need.”
“Yeah,” Mandy says, “if he goes through with it.”
My eyebrows knit. “Did he say he wouldn’t?”
Mandy shrugs. “No. But if someone objected at the wedding…”
My heart sinks. Oh no. I’ve already got Braxton ripping this wedding apart at the seams; I don’t need Mandy dropping a bombshell in the middle of the ceremony.
“Mandy,” I say urgently. “You can’t. Not if you really care about Ray.”
Mandy gives my shoulder a pat. “Don’t worry about it. Those things only happen in movies, right? Hey! You hear that?” Mandy draws a smile. “I love this song.”
Before I can grab her, she ducks out and moves toward the band. Crap. I’ve got a sinking feeling that drops straight down to the pit of my stomach.
Braxton now seems like a molehill compared to the Mountain Mandy. Warning bells, not wedding bells, are going off in my head. There’s nothing more dangerous than a woman in love.
“What’s a pretty lady like you doing in a dump like this?”
I glance around and sigh. “Great. Trouble Number Two.”
“Well, not quite the welcome I was hoping for.” Braxton lifts a finger to motion to the bartender. Why is it everyone can get the bartender’s attention except for me? He’s in a black Ralph Lauren peacoat, and he looks a step above everyone around him. “What are you drinking?”
“I don’t know, something blue… Listen, you can’t just crash the bachelorette party. There are rules to this kind of thing. Protocols.”
“If you don’t want me here, just say that.”
Braxton’s eyes meet mine. His irises have gone dark again, and now I feel bad for taking it out on him. “No, I don’t want you to leave. Stay.”
My forearm brushes against his when I lean against the bar beside him. Braxton doesn’t budge.
“You texted me,” he says. “It seemed like you needed a distraction.”
Bingo. That’s it. Mandy needs a distraction. After all, what better way to get over heartbreak than to rebound?
It worked for me. Didn’t it? Get over Ace by getting under Braxton?
I look over at Braxton. He’s not unlike the first night I saw him, stormy eyes, that hair that constantly begs for fingers raked through it. Not that you can. His posture is too stiff, detached, as though he’d be doing you a favor to let you touch his flat, washboard abs.
Braxton orders me a cocktail, club soda and lime for himself. When my drink comes, I chew on the straw. “What’d you do today?” I ask.
“We all bought suits for the wedding.”
“How was that?”
“Great,” Braxton says at first. When I stare at him dubiously, he ultimately shrugs and confesses, “I wanted to blow my brains out.”
“I have something that will cheer you up,” I say casually.
“I’m listening.”
I stir my straw in between the ice cubes. “Well. It’s sort of a favor.”
“Forget it. I’m not helping you stitch this wedding back together.”
“You’ll like this favor, though. It’s about your plus one.”
Now Braxton’s eyebrows lift. His eyes flicker through the crowd until they find the curly redhead, and he tilts his head in her direction. “Ray’s Mandy?”
“That’s the one.” I sip from my straw and give myself a second to mull over my next words. “You remember when we first met…at the hotel? I told you about how I lost my mind after Ace broke off our wedding, and you told me that you’d fix it with your penis?”
“I hardly think those are the exact words I used.”
“Well, Mandy thinks she’s in love with Ray. She’s going to throw the wedding over it.” I twist my straw in my multicolored drink. “I need you to fix it.”
I feel Braxton’s stare like ice on my flesh. “What?”
“You know…” I wave my hand in a vague gesture. “Do that…thing you do.”
When I look at Braxton, I wish I hadn’t. His dark eyes look like coal, burning fiercely. “You want me to sleep with her,” he clarifies.
I shrug. “Well…if the inspiration hits.”
He takes a swallow from his glass, reaches into his back pocket, and pulls out his wallet. He drops a twenty on the bar counter and then says to me, “You’re right. This was a mistake. I’ll leave you to your bachelorette party.”
“Brax—”
He doesn’t acknowledge me; he simply gets up off the stool and exits as swiftly as he came.
Crap. I rush out to follow him, squeezing through the crowd to get to the door. Outside, the crisp fall weather is such a distinct contrast to the stifling heat inside that I can nearly taste the sharpness in the air.
On the porch outside, I see Braxton walking determinedly through the gravel parking lot below.
“Braxton!” Braxton has his hands stuffed deep in his black peacoat. For a second, I think he’ll keep walking, but then he stops. When he turns to me, the streetlight illuminates his deep frown.
“Go back inside, Susie.”
“Like hell. You can’t boss me around like one of your minions.”
“Boss you around?” He laughs—a short, cutting bark. “You’re the one who’s been puppeteering this whole farce. I’m not going to be your gigolo.”
“No. Gigolos get paid. I’m asking you to be you.”