Authors: Marie Coulson
“Don’t worry about it, Charlene. Paris isn’t going anywhere. We could go this summer. Right, Vanessa?”
Dana glared at her and realizing her mistake, Ness quickly relented.
“Oh, of course. Paris shmaris, right? We can have just as much fun seeing in the New Year here.”
I rolled my eyes as Dana began to tease out the knot I’d created by rolling around the bed with half a can of hairspray on it.
“Oh yeah, that sounds like
so
much fun. Excuse me while I tie some concrete to my feet and hurl myself off the London Bridge. What could be better than getting drunk in the apartment and waiting for my ex-fiancé to turn up and collect his stuff? Awesome.”
Ness huffed and stood with her hand on her hip. “Are you going to sit on that pity pot for the rest of your life?”
Dana’s mouth fell open, and she snapped back at her sharply. “Ness! She just had her wedding called off less than six hours ago! Have some common courtesy.” She was beginning to get riled up. The way she was pointing her curling iron at Ness made me uncomfortable. But then again, it was right next to my head.
“I’m just saying she can’t mope forever. Hell, Charlene, you should be counting your blessings that the shit streak is out of your life for good. He really was no good for you. We tried to warn you.”
Now,
I
was getting angry. I loved my friends, but Ness had a tendency to let her mouth run away from her.
“Okay, Vanessa. I get it. You all hated him. Can you drop it now? It’s hard enough as it is.”
She inhaled deeply and opened her mouth to speak, but a knock on the door silenced her.
“Are you decent?” Adam’s voice came booming through the door.
“Never. But I’m clothed, if that’s what you mean,” I yelled back at him.
Opening the door, Adam stood with his phone in his hand and cleared his throat loudly. “Well, I cancelled your ticket to Ireland and got your money back.”
I gave him a grateful smile and mouthed a thank you as Dana began tugging at a rather painful knot in my hair. He shrugged and turned his attention to Ness, who was almost completely buried inside my wardrobe. Her slender hips and black kitten-heeled shoes were all that were visible.
“We could push her in, lock the door, and tell everyone she moved. One shove. That’s all it would take,” Adam joked.
“Any excuse to get your hands on my arse. Oh, Charlene! This is perfect!”
Backing her way out of my wardrobe, she held up a long, black, roll neck sweater dress. I shook my head fiercely as soon as my eyes landed on it. “No. Not going to happen. Take it out to the trash.”
The three of them gave me confused looks. Rolling my eyes, I exhaled loudly. “I got that for our honeymoon. Brad liked it. He liked that it didn’t show any skin. I hate it. Throw it out.”
“Skin? Honey, it’s like two degrees outside. You can wear it with some skinny jeans.”
Skinny jeans? Was she not paying attention? Squeezing into a pair of those would make me look like a sausage bursting out of its skin. I gave Adam a pleading look. It wasn’t that I hated the sweater for what it was; just what it represented—oppression from a man who had just dumped me. I glanced at my wardrobe where my stunning bridal gown was hanging. That’s right, vintage lace and ivory silk, we’re not meant to be it would seem. Brad has screwed us both and we’re left with the bill.
Walking over, Adam sat beside me on the bed, earning him a grunt of annoyance from Dana who was still untangling my mass of hair. He placed a hand on my leg and smiled. “Charlie, it really doesn’t matter what you wear. One, your mother will criticize whatever you choose. Two, you will tell yourself that even in a potato sack and belt, your sister-in-law looks better than you and three …” He pressed a kiss to my forehead and hooked his thumb beneath my chin, lifting it so that I was now looking right into his sweet, blue eyes. “… You look beautiful no matter what you wear. Now, get off of your arse and get dressed. You have to face your mother sometime.”
I rolled my eyes and groaned loudly. “Can’t I just run away?”
Ness shook her head violently at me. “Cliché and over dramatic, Charlene. You’re a jilted bride, and these days that doesn’t allow you to go crawling under a rock and crying yourself to sleep.”
I gave her a stern look and was about to respond, but Dana beat me to it. “And you’d know
what
about being a jilted bride? Or a bride. Hell, what would you know about being in a relationship?”
Fisting her hands on her hips, Ness glared back at Dana. “I know enough to know that I don’t need nor want one—too much hard work, heartache, fights, fucking, and trouble if you ask me. I’m happy just the way I am thank you.”
“Bitter, alone, and unsatisfied then?” Adam piped up.
Huffing, she threw one of my black pumps at him, barely missing his head. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I am perfectly satisfied with my sex life. I get as much as I need. No more. No less. Besides, you’re one to talk. When was the last time you had a girlfriend? Or even a friend with benefits?”
Adam turned pink and gave me an embarrassed look. “I’m not interested in one-night stands, and if I did meet the right girl, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you about her.”
“Why not?” Ness demanded.
Groaning with frustration, he stood and towered over her. “Because you are so quick to give an opinion, piece of advice, or even a comment.”
She gasped with, what I assumed to be, insult. “I do not!”
A loud snort of laughter escaped Dana’s mouth behind me, and Ness was on her immediately, like a fly on jam. “What was that supposed to mean?”
Releasing my hair, Dana shook her head. “Oh come on, Vanessa. Tina, Gabriella, Hannah, and Tracy—they were all nice girls, and you had an opinion on all of them. You were obvious that you didn’t like them, too.”
Ness stared at me, hoping for my support, but Dana had a valid point. “Charlene? Back me up.”
I shook my head. “I have enough drama of my own. You three can scratch each other ‘til your bleeding. I’m purely an innocent bystander.”
Turning to face him, Ness squared up to Adam. “I do not have an opinion on the women you date.”
He laughed and began counting off the women on his fingers. “Tina, her head was too big.”
Dana giggled behind me as Ness defended herself. “The woman looked like one of those bobble heads you put in your car. I didn’t know whether to shake her hand in case her whole body moved, and her head wobbled around like a boat in water. Besides, she was sleeping with her ex.”
I nodded. “
That
is true. She called that one. Though, I don’t remember her head being overly large.”
“Okay, granted she was a cheater, but it wasn’t like I was going to marry her. Gabriella was perfectly nice, and you scared her away in one shopping trip!”
Now
I
laughed. Ness, Dana, and I had invited Gabriella for lunch and shopping one afternoon. She and Adam had been dating for almost a month and as his best friend, I felt it was my duty to ‘assess’ her suitability. Especially after what had happened with Tina. Everything had gone wonderfully until … we hit the stores. Naturally, Ness dragged us to every designer boutique in London. Dana and I were used to this and had, so far, been shopping with her countless times without buying a thing. Gabriella, on the other hand, was a learner. She oohed and ahhed over every dress, pair of heels, designer bag, and hat that she saw. It was at this point Ness asked a crucial—in her opinion it was crucial—question. “So, Gabriella, what do you do for a living?”
And then came the answer that would end her relationship with Adam forever. “I work for a bank. I chase credit card and loan debts. You know, missed payments, etc.” The horror on Vanessa’s face was
unmistakeable. You see, little did Gabriella know, Vanessa owed at least five thousand pounds on her credit card, and her payments were sporadic. She disliked the girl immediately and spent the rest of the day ‘giving Gabriella her self-worth and confidence back.’ What this meant was, she spent four hours telling the women she could do better than Adam, who was a mere med student with thousands of pounds worth of debt to his name. Not exactly husband material, she told her. She even went as far as to wind up the poor woman’s biological clock! “You’re not getting any younger, are you? And you look like the type to have lots of kids and settle down.”
It was a sad day for womankind and a worse one for Adam. Gabrielle promptly dumped him over dinner that evening. I spent the next three days trying to convince him not to kill Vanessa, and that he was, indeed, marriage material.
“Okay, I may have had ulterior motives with that one, but I saved you a life of penny-pinching and purse-tightening. You’ll thank me in the long run.”
Adam rolled his eyes at her. “Fine. Let’s say you’re right, but what about Hannah and Tracy?”
I raised my hand to speak, but with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand, Ness silenced me.
“I did that for you. Those two were bad news. Hannah was clearly after the money she thought you had, Mr. Doctor, and when she found out you had none she left. I simply pointed her in the right direction. And as for Tracy … I’m telling you, that was the biggest voice box I’ve ever seen. It was an Adams apple, and you know it. She had hands like Muhammad Ali! How you missed that, I have no idea.”
Dana fell back on the bed, laughing, and I had to bite my lip to hide my own amusement.
“Tracy was not a dude! I inspected every inch of that woman. She was just … bigger than most.”
Ness snorted a laugh. “Ha! Maybe she was an amazon in a previous life. Either way … your gene pool and hers were never made for mixing. I can see it now—huge, manly girls with glasses and braces. It’s just cruel and Mother Nature wouldn’t thank you for it.”
Adam scowled at her. “And what’s wrong with my teeth?”
Finally able to control my laughter, I interjected. “Hey! Guys, enough. Adam, your teeth are fine. Ness, give it a rest. No matter what you two say, you love one another and would hate to see the other hurt, so kiss and make up so we can get back to what’s important here. Me and my Goddamn miserable ex and the wedding I have to cancel.”
Walking over, they both wrapped their arms around me tightly. “I’m sorry, Charlie. God, I wanna strangle and torture that arsehole for doing this to you.” Adam had always been protective, but I always felt, deep down, that he really didn’t think much of Brad. Though he never said anything, I was pretty sure that was to keep the peace and make me happy. Ness, on the other hand, had made it clear from the start how she felt.
“You’re better off with that slug as far away from you as possible. He’s a creep, and someone needs to throw salt on him and watch him sizzle away into a slimy puddle.”
She always did have a way with words. “I know you hated him. I know you didn’t like that I was marrying him, but I loved him. I was going to walk down the aisle, say I do, and live happily ever after. Well, as happy as you can be, I suppose.”
Releasing me, the two of them gave me a sympathetic look. Dana’s arms slid around my middle as she hugged me from behind. “And that’s the reason you shouldn’t have been marrying him in the first place, sweetie.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I gave her a puzzled look.
“Happily ever after should mean
just
that. That they make you so happy that you can’t imagine ever being happy without them. They should make you walk on air, glide on air currents, and turn you inside out. You are worth far more than ‘as happy as you can be.’ You, Charlene Winters, are destined for an epic love story. You deserve one.”
Tears filled my eyes as I gazed at my friend. Dana was a sweetheart. There was no doubt about it. Silence fell, and it was the most awkward of silences we had ever endured. Picking up my sweater dress, Ness held it out to me and gave me a weak smile.
“Come on, trust me. What have you got to lose?”
At that point … not a whole hell of a lot.
The drive to my mother’s house felt like an eternity, as I sat rigidly and wrung my hands together constantly. Adam placed a reassuring hand on my knee, which was jerking up and down like it was on springs.
“Hey, it’ll be okay. I’ll be right there with you. How are you feeling?”
I shook my head weakly. “My heart is broken, I’m exhausted from crying, and I’m wearing a sweater dress that was intended for my honeymoon. Also, let’s not forget we are currently hurtling toward my overbearing and dramatic mother, who will no doubt blame it all on me and my ‘career girl’ desires. Can’t wait.”
He gave me a half smile. “You know what to expect from her at least. So, you can be prepared. Thick skin, baby girl, and for the record, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a career. I love that you’re independent, self-sufficient, and successful. She is too. Deep down. Like, really deep down. Your heart will mend. You know he wasn’t right for you, right Charlie? I mean, the guy was a complete dick.”
I exhaled noisily. “But he was my dick. I wasted four years on that man. Four years of washing, cooking, cleaning, and having sex with one man. If you can even call it sex. My bed was so clean after every session you could have performed surgery in there! It was probably more sanitised than your operating theatre!”
He winced. “Please don’t talk about sex with him. It creeps me out. Not you having sex … just with him. He’s so flat, plain, and stiff all the time. He was never the type you usually go for.”
I gave him a confused look and raised an eyebrow, curiously. “I have a type?”
He chuckled and nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. “Yep. Tall, successful, party boys. Work all day and party all night. They were all immature idiots, though. None of them were good enough for you. But, admittedly, I don’t think there is a man out there that’s good enough for you, Charlie.”
Scooting over, I wrapped my hands around his bicep and rested my head on his shoulder as he drove. “I love you, Adam. I don’t know what I would do without you. You’re the best friend I never asked for and the one that’s been there for me since.”
He pressed a kiss on the top of my head and leaned his cheek against it. “I know. It’ll be okay. Just give it time. I promise, I’m not going anywhere.”
As we pulled up outside my mother’s bungalow, I stared out the window at her impeccable little front garden. Rose bushes lined the edges, and her lawn was perfectly green even in the middle of winter. She always had been good at keeping a home—something I was reminded of every time she waltzed into my apartment and ‘tidied up.’ Something Jacob particularly disliked. He and my mother had a very strained relationship. He clearly considered her moving his little cat bed, food dish, and toys a grave injustice. After all, he’d spent over a year training me to leave his things exactly where they were. I had the scratches of honour to prove it.
The second the engine halted, my stomach churned loudly. I was sure Adam heard it, but if he did, he said nothing. Giving me a sympathetic look and a nod, he opened his door and got out. I gripped the handle on my side tightly, but I was certainly not willing to open it yet. It was safe in the car. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, I was still happily engaged and
about to get hitched. And by rest of the world, I meant my mother. If you wanted anything to be spread around like a hooker’s sexually transmitted disease, you told Cynthia Winters. My mother was the local gossip, motor mouth, oracle, and know it all. Her curtains twitched more than my knickers did when Ian Somerhalder was on the TV. Say what you will about that man, but I was an addict of that smouldering man candy. But that’s beside the point; the point is, my mother has a big mouth.
Adam clicked the handle up and tried to pull the door open, but I had a death grip on the handle.
“Charlie, what are you doing? Come, on. You have to do this sometime.”
I shook my head and pulled on the door, trying to keep it firmly closed. “No, I don’t. I could run away. Come with me; we’ll run away together, and everyone can assume I dumped Brad to elope with you. It’s foolproof.”
He laughed as he gave the door a hard yank, pulling me with it and hurtling out of the car. Adam caught me in his arms and gripped me around the waist.
“That would be a very good plan, except no one would believe it. We’ve been friends for far too long for people to believe you suddenly fell madly in love with me and ran off to get hitched. It’ll be okay. I’m right here with you.”
I gave him a disgruntled look. Spoil sport. Dr. Fitz always had been the sensible, level-headed, and rational one in our relationship. Most of the time it was refreshing, but right now, I hated it. I wanted to forget my problems, run, and hide under my duvet for a few months, burying my head in the pillow ‘til it all just faded away. But clearly, this wasn’t an option. Lifting me from the ground, Adam closed the car door and headed for the house. My feet were inches from the ground as I groaned and complained.
We hadn’t even knocked when the door swung open and my mother flung her arms around us both. “Charlene! Adam! What a lovely surprise.”
I gave her a confused look. “Hardly, Mother. You went on and on for weeks about me coming for Christmas dinner. We both knew I would end up coming.”
She rolled her eyes and ushered us inside, gripping Adam by the elbow as he ducked his head to fit through my mother’s tiny front door. “Adam, darling, it’s so wonderful to see you. You look more and more handsome every time I see you. How is work? Charlene tells me nothing these days. I feel like a stranger to you both, and I practically raised you alongside one another.”
Giving Adam a slight smirk, I dropped myself onto the large, plush, brown sofa. He ran his fingers through his hair and slid his thick black glasses up his nose with his middle finger. “Uh, it’s fine. Busy, but fine. The house looks great as always, Mrs W. And dinner smells amazing.”
She patted him on the arm and gestured toward the lounge, where I was now deeply engrossed in the latest edition of
The Cotswolds Weekly
. My mother and her dreams of a country cottage were clearly still in full swing. The woman had Harrods taste and a purse full of mothballs, but she had held onto that dream for years. It was probably the reason she had gone through so many husbands. I’d had two stepfathers growing up. The first was the man I called Daddy. Henry was my world. A city banker, he met my mother through a mutual friend, and they married when I was three. I adored him. We were as close as any normal father and daughter could be, and I was smitten. When he was diagnosed with cancer, I was devastated. I watched as my mother ignored the problem one moment and then wailed and howled the next. I attended countless family therapy sessions at the hospice and Dad had even sat me down to talk about what to expect. We made a plan, and together we composed a memory book filled with pictures, stories he wrote about us, and mementos from places we’d been. But nothing prepared me for losing him. He died the following spring, just after my twelfth birthday, but my mother soon got over her loss and married his brother. Uncle Tony had been a great comfort to her while she cashed in my father’s life insurance. The holiday in the Bahamas probably didn’t do much harm either.
Unfortunately, Uncle Tony decided that the merry widow of his dead brother was bringing him a lot of unwanted attention, and he was open to gossip wherever he went. The pressure of his celebrity status in our small town became too much to bear, and he soon divorced my mother and moved to London. Last I heard, he had re-married and had a couple of kids. I still got a Christmas card every year, and this year’s was a simple message:
Happy Holidays. Best Wishes. Tony
. It was brief and not what you would expect from someone who had raised me through my teenage years, but it was perfectly acceptable for the two of us. We weren’t close, and we certainly weren’t family in my eyes.
Slumping down at the other end of the sofa, Adam gave me a knowing look as I rested my feet in his lap. He nodded toward the kitchen where my mother was busying herself with every tray, pot, and pan in the house by the sound of the clanging echoing through.
“You need to tell her. Better to do it now than when your brother and his wife get here.”
I groaned and threw the magazine on the floor. “I don’t want to do this. If I tell her, that makes it real, and I like being in denial right now. Denial is safe, and it doesn’t hurt like a dagger through my chest.”
Taking my right foot, he began to massage it gently. “Denial is not safe. It’s dangerous, and if you stay there too long, you’ll drown in that river. Get your arse in there and tell her. What are you going to do? Wait ‘til you’re at the church in three weeks and happen to mention it? Hey, Mum, guess what? Brad isn’t coming. Do it now, Charlie. I know it hurts, but it’s just like mending a dislocated arm. A quick and painful shove in the right direction, and it’s done.”
I winced at the thought. The sound of bones crunching and visions of limp limbs being shoved into a socket filled my mind. Yuck. Adam always did have a stomach for the gruesome. I was pretty sure it was one of the reasons he became a surgeon. Blood and guts were an afternoon treat for him. For me, they were a horror movie that would leave me keeping every light in my apartment turned on all night.
The last horror flick we’d seen had been particularly disturbing. Poltergeists and crazed murderers in masks were not my idea of an evening in. It was hell. We’d turned the lights out, snuggled under a blanket and watched the two-hour long blood fest. By the time it was done, I was adequately terrified of the dark; I was also on red alert. The slightest sound made my breathing quicken, my heart race, and my survival instinct was in full swing. So, as you can imagine, when I got up in the middle of the night to fetch a glass of water, I had every possible light on in the apartment. It would have been fine had Jacob not suddenly meowed at me from between my feet. The sound along with the sensation of his fluffy tail on my leg sent me hurtling across the kitchen and climbing on top of the fridge. I sat there for a good half an hour glaring at him as he stared up at me from the floor. He had a particularly satisfied look on his furry little face, and it irked me. I didn’t come down again ‘til Brad came home from his ‘boys’ night out.’ I should have realised, even back then, that he was being unfaithful. Men didn’t like Brad. He didn’t really have friends. He had colleagues. He was probably with her that night and every night that he claimed was for business or dining a client.
I shook my head as I thought about all the signs I had missed or chosen to ignore. I knew they said you could be blinded by love, but I had clearly been knocked unconscious by it. I wasn’t blinded—I was comatose.
Adam nudged my leg. “Hey, daydreamer, come back to Earth. There’s a very real issue you need to address, and I think you need to do it before—“
The doorbell broke his lecture, and I flung my arm over my eyes and groaned. My mother quickly rushed out of the kitchen and practically bounced to the door. Opening it, she squealed with happiness and excitement.
“Gareth! My darling boy. Oh, how I’ve missed you. Come, give Mummy a kiss.”
My brother was a large man. Six foot three in height and built like a brick house pumped full of steroids. I wasn’t overly convinced he wasn’t pumped full of steroids. Going from matchsticks dangling from his shorts to huge, thick tree trunks in only three months was a little far fetched in my opinion.
I peeked out from beneath the seclusion and safety of my arm. Adam was staring at me with his ‘I told you so’ expression. I mentally cursed myself for not seizing the opportunity to tell my mother in private when I’d had the chance. Because now, I had an audience and that included …
“Nadine! Oh, you get more and more stunning every time I see you. I love your new haircut. And this dress is gorgeous. You always did have the best taste. Charlene, Charlene, doesn’t Nadine look wonderful?”
I raised my arm in the air and gave her a thumbs up. I’d have preferred to give Miss Perfect a different digit from the same hand, but it would only have given me more trouble and I had enough problems already. Adam quickly caught my eye and shook his head.
“It’s not worth it,” he mouthed. How the hell did he always know what I was thinking? I sometimes wondered if we were too close for our own good.
“Charlene! Come and say hello to your brother and sister-in-law. You are so rude.” My mother gave me a hard stare before turning her attention back to Nadine. Huffing, I clambered off of the sofa and walked over to the door. I stood in front of my brother who towered over me.
“Hey,” I offered.
“Hey,” he replied. And that was pretty much our entire greeting. We didn’t feel the need for long, warm, drawn out hellos. It wasn’t our style, and we lacked the relationship. Gareth was my mother’s stepson. He was Henry’s son, and you might think it would have made us close, but it didn’t. Gareth had always been jealous of the bond I had with his father, and he made no secret of it. When Henry died, Gareth didn’t speak to me for almost a year. You see, my father had left me a considerable inheritance, and Gareth’s was not quite as large. Though mine did come with conditions. I had to use it for university. Gareth was already a senior at the local university, so giving him that sort of cash was pointless. Besides, he’d only have blown it on fast cars and faster girls. Which brought me right back to his wife, who was dragging her eyes up and down my body.
“Nadine, how’ve you been?” I was being polite, but every muscle in my body tensed as the words left my lips. I hated this bitch. Nadine Langley was the most superficial, fake, boring, gold digger you could ever meet. Her long, golden hair, designer clothes and so much make up, she could have been repainting the house with it, was simply masking her ugly personality. This women was Satan.