“Cut Stella a break. She’s had to operate way beyond her job description in other ways today.” I pat my stomach and laugh as Jules gives me a questioning look. “She deserves hazard pay for helping me squeeze into this.”
Jules rolls her eyes as she pops the cork and pours the champagne into two flutes and holds one out to me as the bubbles race to the surface. “I’d like to propose a toast. To your marriage tomorrow. Welcome to the club!”
I press the glass to my lips. “I know! Me? A married woman . . . finally.”
“Thanks to my supreme matchmaking skills!” Jules pats herself on the back.
I clink my glass against Jules’. “How will I ever properly thank you?”
“You can start by naming your first child after me!” she teases.
“Maybe.” I run my finger around the rim of my flute, thinking of the night Max proposed, his voice breathless after I’d said yes, like he’d just sprinted at the end of one of his long runs.
I can’t wait to be a family, he’d whispered.
His olive-green eyes had brightened and then squinted as if he was picturing us with our arms wrapped around a baby. I knew Max would be a good dad—he had an instinct with children that didn’t come as naturally to me. I loved kids and wanted to be a mom, but I was always afraid of something happening to any child in my charge. Even Jules’ kids, Ellie and Evan, whom I considered my niece and nephew because Jules was like the sister I never had, would roll their eyes at me if I suggested taking them to the pool or for a bike ride. It was as if they could smell my apprehension. But they’d been calling Max Uncle M practically since the moment they’d met him, when he’d scooped them up, under each arm, and swung them in the air as if he’d done it a hundred times before. As they’d squealed in delight, Jules raised her eyebrows and pressed her lips together, her look saying, this could really be the guy for you.
I watch Jules smoothing a strand of her white-blond hair that has fallen from its effortless-looking sleek ponytail and I think about how it mimics the way she has always seemed to glide through life. She’d married her college sweetheart, Ben, almost ten years ago and had quickly produced Evan, then two years later, Ellie, both blond-haired, emerald-eyed replicas of her. And although she had no formal training, she’d always been able to whip up the richest masterpieces from the most basic of ingredients, quickly working her way up to her current position as the pastry chef for The Midnight Snack, one of West Hollywood’s hottest restaurants. She seemed to juggle motherhood, marriage, and a career with the precision of an air-traffic controller, not to mention the confidence of one. It was probably the reason why people had always been drawn to her the way a bee is pulled to a budding flower.
As Jules and I nearly drain our glasses, a familiar deep voice cuts through the air. “Is everyone decent in here?”
Jules giggles. “No, we’re hanging out in our lingerie even though the rehearsal dinner starts in fifteen minutes!”
Liam peaks his head out, his hazel eyes lighting up when he sees my arm wrapped around Jules’ waist. “Well you two may not be half naked, but this still looks like some fun I’d like to get in on.” He smiles and raises his eyebrows. As he ambles across the room, I notice his new charcoal-gray suit drapes perfectly over his tall, lanky body, smiling as I remember his moans after yet another jacket he’d tried on was too short for his arms, warning me that we’d better find something, anything soon because if he missed the Dodgers game there’d be hell to pay. He wraps a strong arm over each of our shoulders, the white pocket square the salesman talked him into grazing my cheek, me reaching up and touching his tousled light brown hair.
“Did you even bring a brush on this trip?” I tease.
“Haven’t you heard? The messy look is in,” he says with a laugh.
The three of us had been linked from the moment we’d traded deep sighs over our college professor for Economics 101, the insufferable Dr. Kinsey, whose jowled face, crusty demeanor, and steep grading curve gave us many sleepless nights that semester. Liam had nudged me at the end of the first day of class, flashing a crooked smile, his eyes narrowing from behind his dark-rimmed eyeglasses as he made a joke about how our curmudgeonly teacher needed to just get laid already. He wondered if possibly I was up to the task so I could save us all from our inevitable fate—dying of boredom before we were even twenty-one.