Authors: A. Gardner
"Patrick, what are you doing?" I asked him.
"Come on. Can't an old friend ask for a favor?"
I looked up into his deep hazel eyes and saw the old Patrick smiling back at me. The boy from down the street who once told me he could outrun a coyote any day. Patrick's dirty blond hair was wavy and combed back like the mountain air had styled it for him during his run down the slopes this morning.
"
Are
we friends?" I replied. My voice sounded like it was quivering at first, but I quickly corrected myself.
"I'm sorry I called you Gwenessa, but in all fairness you haven't kept in touch."
"The door swings both ways,
Bama.
" I took some pleasure in watching his wide smile curl when I called him the name he'd been branded with when he first moved to Bison Creek from a small town in Alabama. I was pretty sure by the shocked look on his face that no one had called him that in a very long time.
"Okay." He chuckled, twirling me again. "I promise not to call you ‘Gwenessa’ if you promise not to call me ‘Bama.’”
"Promise," I agreed. I followed Patrick's lead while he swayed from side to side, gradually dancing slower and slower, his attention focusing intently on the curves of my cheekbones.
"I hope you don't mind me saying but--"
"Enough of this, babe." Lila rolled her eyes. "We need to go over the wedding details, pronto." Her assistant, a short but sharply dressed man, brought her a glass of water. I smiled when I noticed that his choice of vessel was a
wine
glass. The kitchen staff would have handed him a traditional-style cup first. Her assistant either requested the wine glass or he'd rinsed out the residue of Lila's morning glass of white.
"Lila isn't as over the top as she seems," Patrick whispered, letting go of my hand. "She obviously thinks you can fit into the dress. Please say you'll be in the wedding. I don't want her to feel too overwhelmed on our big day."
"But I've never been a bridesmaid before and--"
"Come on," he pleaded. He glanced over at his fiancée and beamed, holding up my hand. "Here you go, babe. She'll make the perfect bridesmaid."
"What?" I murmured.
"Just play along," he said through his teeth.
"Fine," Lila agreed. She turned towards her assistant and resumed texting on her phone.
"Great," Joy added, "I will print another itinerary." Joy tilted her head towards the exit while clenching her jaw, as if to tell me to leave before I did something stupid.
"I guess I'll be seeing more of you, Essie. It'll be nice to have an old friend around." Patrick nodded, placing his hands in his pockets. It was the same nod he used to flash me from down the street when the two of us got home from school at the same time.
"I guess so," I quietly replied.
My eyes darted to the nearest exit as Lila exhaled loudly, her assistant reassuring her that everything was going according to plan. I quickly pushed open the door leading to the employee lounge and ran to change for my first training appointment. I had the feeling that I would be running low on sanity before the weekend was over, just like I was running low on cake-flavored protein powder.
* * *
"I bet he's excellent in the sack," Mrs. Millbreck commented as she warmed up on her treadmill. The resort's private training room had windows facing the Rocky Mountains and the parking lot. The resort sat slightly above the town with a pristine view of Canyon Street. From far away the quiet shops along the road looked like the ideal place for a leisurely walk and Sunday brunch.
"Mrs. Millbreck," my co-worker Taryn gasped. "You're the
mayor’s
wife. You can't say things like that."
"Honey, when you're my age you can say whatever you want. Patrick's wedding should be the talk of the town. But the media bombarded his poor fiancée at her latest movie premiere so
I
have to keep my mouth shut. Whoever heard of a
secret
celebrity wedding anyway? I say the more cameras the merrier." Martha Millbreck is practically president of the outspoken women's club. Being the Mayor's wife, she knows every scandal that passes through town.
Martha was a small, petite woman with light brown hair that fell to her shoulders and an addiction to Botox. Though she denied it, I noticed the miniscule bumps across her forehead every six months that looked like bee tracks. Martha had been my first client every Friday morning for the past two years.
"Maybe they want a little privacy?" Taryn suggested. She continued setting up her Pilates equipment for her next appointment.
Taryn is the first person I hired when I was given the position of Lead Fitness Trainer. For years, the entire fitness studio consisted of only me. I got to the point where I had to turn down new guests to accommodate my regulars. I met Taryn while running a half marathon in Denver. She wasn't looking for a full-time job that would take her away from the city, but I sold her on the idea by mentioning that a free ski pass would be part of her employee compensation package. Now, I manage the gym equipment and take care of high profile clients like Martha Millbreck. If you'd call her high profile.
"Oh please." Martha laughed. "Privacy doesn't exist when you're famous like that. I mean, just yesterday the
BC Gazette
contacted me wanting to know what kind of pie I served Herald for Sunday brunch. Nosey paparazzi."
"Isn't that for the
day in the life
article they're writing for the Mayor's birthday?" Taryn wasn't born and raised in Bison Creek which meant she had no problem telling the locals what she thought.
"Possibly." Martha lifted her chin and focused on pumping her arms back and forth. For as long as I've known her, the only time she avoided confrontation was when she knew she was wrong.
"Five more minutes,” I reminded her as I folded my arms and glanced down to admire my new turquoise running shoes. My mind had been on nothing else but the wedding since I'd changed into my black workout pants and fitted warm-up jacket with the resort's logo on it.
The studio door opened and Joy stepped inside, smiling politely when she saw Mrs. Millbreck. She handed me a folder and opened it up to the first page. She pointed to the first heading marked
Friday.
"Here is your itinerary," she said. "Tonight is the bridal shower and you
have
to be there."
"Listen, Joy, I don't know if this is such a good idea--"
"Do not spoil this for me," she interrupted, breaking her professional composure. She stopped herself when Martha casually glanced over her shoulder. "I promise I will . . . do your laundry for a month. I will give you a year's worth of spa vouchers. I will have your car detailed.
Please
, do this for me. Please. Please. Please."
"Fine," I replied quietly. "But after this, no more bringing up that time I went with you and your softball team to the ice caves."
Joy leaned in closer. "If I hadn't have grabbed your hand when you started to slip, you might have died."
"I know," I responded. "But you can't keep bringing that up every time you need a favor. We were teenagers."
"Okay." She exhaled. "My lips are sealed from now on."
"And
I want the spa vouchers."
She nodded in agreement.
"
And
," I quickly added before she left the room, "No more digging through my closet when I'm out for a run."
"Anything else?" Joy asked with a forced smile on her face.
I could have asked for a whole lot more, but I shook my head. As Joy quietly left the fitness studio, I flipped through the pages of my weekend schedule. I instantly frowned when I realized that the actual wedding was on Sunday. No amount of favors or spa vouchers would keep me from having to watch Patrick take Lila's hand and say “I do.” Seeing him again, even for a few minutes, made me feel like I was still that chunky little girl who had knitted her own mittens to match her prom dress.
"What have you got there?" Martha asked. As soon as her five minutes were up, she bounced off her treadmill and immediately peered over my shoulder. "Oh my," she gasped. "Don't tell me that
you're
part of the wedding party?"
Taryn looked up from her yoga mat and stared at us.
"Not officially."
"Honey," Martha didn't hesitate as she snatched my itinerary and began looking through it. "This looks pretty official to me. Well, how about that? After all these years, our dear Patrick is putting one of his little childhood friends in his wedding. Oh, what a sweetheart."
"That's not exactly what happened," I said quietly.
"Oh, Essie," she said, sizing me up and down. "You shouldn't even be here right now. You have a
million
things to do. You need a gift for tonight, and a dress. You have a fitting this afternoon. You have a dress rehearsal tomorrow. This is so exciting!"
There were butterflies in the pit of my stomach, but it wasn't from the excitement. I was more nervous than ever to see Patrick again. Just thinking about the way he'd grabbed my hand made me wish I was too tall and too fat to wear that extra bridesmaid dress. I hadn’t known what to do or say when Patrick stood there watching me. He had a way of making me so nervous that the room around me started spinning.
"I guess." I gulped.
"You look like you could use some help. Do you even know what to bring to the bridal shower?"
"Not really." I shook my head. "My cousin had one the night before her wedding, but it was more of a wild girls' night than a fancy shower."
"You mean one of those parties with candy shaped like man parts?" Martha commented nonchalantly. I looked in Taryn's direction just in time to see her roll her eyes.
"I would rather not say."
"Of course, dear." Mrs. Millbreck winked before she marched to her first exercise on the squat machine. "You have a lot to think about, and I have a ladies' lunch to attend after this so let's get started, shall we?"
CHAPTER TWO
My dress fitting went by too fast, and before I knew it was nearing dinner time. The hour had come for me to join Lila and her other bridesmaids at the Pinecliffe Mountain Resort Spa. I'd thought all day about the things Mrs. Millbreck had said. I needed a new dress. A gift. The poise to waltz alongside Patrick and his new bride on the dance floor. But instead of taking on my bridesmaid duties, I ended up browsing the cooking section at The Painted Deer Bookshop.
Drooling over pictures of desserts is one of my guilty pleasures, but it's probably more torturous than satisfying. I live on Canyon Street above the book store which wasn't the smartest idea on my part since the shop owner, Mrs. Tankle, is my Landlady.
I'd driven away from town and towards Pinecliffe Mountain with nothing to give Lila for her big day. I pulled up to the staff parking lot and noticed something out of the ordinary. There were extra cars parked in the visitor's lot. More so than usual. Most of the resort's guests opted to have their cars valeted when they came into town. Parking on sheets of ice could be uncomfortably tricky in the chilly winter months. January especially. The visitor's lot was normally only half full.
I stepped out of my car and grabbed my gym bag just as my path was blocked by a thin man in a navy blue ski jacket. His smile was way too white to be a wandering local from a neighboring town. He had to have come from the city. I clenched my fist out of habit as he smiled and nodded at me.
Adrenaline always pumps through my veins when strange men approach me, especially in the staff parking lot. I chalk it up to my naive college days when it seemed like a clever idea to go for a run through campus after sundown. The silence helped me clear my thoughts. The downside was a man in a hoodie standing behind a street lamp casually smoking a cigarette and staring in my direction. I nixed the late night jogs after I saw him along my running route on more than one occasion. He even tried talking to me once, blocking my path to get me to stop. It creeped me out.
"Hello," the man said.
"Can I help you?" Hotel management insisted that we be polite to all potential guests.
"Why yes, you can."
He followed me towards the staff entrance that led to the employee lounge. I stopped just outside the door, keeping my badge in my pocket. I waited as the man clasped his hands together and eyed my gym bag.
The only time I've ever been robbed was when Joy and I went to Vegas for an Aerosmith concert. And technically I was
almost
pick-pocketed, but I happened to turn around and face the culprit before he was able to pull anything out of my purse. I remember thinking how weird it was that some random stranger was standing so close to us. He'd stopped walking and quickly crossed the street just as I looked down and realized my purse had been unzipped.
If this man was aiming to steal my bag and its inexpensive contents then he was about to be disappointed. If he succeeded then he would have stolen a brand new lipstick, a borrowed cocktail dress, a
cashless
wallet, an employee polo shirt, my name tag, and two double fudge protein bars.
"If you are looking for accommodations our concierge will be more than happy to assist you inside," I replied.
"I already have a room booked," he answered.
"Then what is it you want?"
"I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions." The man eagerly studied my expression. When he noticed the way my jaw was clenched and how my feet were positioned in a defensive stance, he took a step back. "Please, I'm not looking for trouble. I am just trying to do my job."
"Which is?"
"Um.…"
He scratched his chin and casually rubbed the tip of his rounded nose. It was starting to turn pink from the cold. His ski jacket was zipped up to his neck and he was wearing ski gloves, but the pieces of material on the palms of the gloves weren't worn. They looked brand new. I glanced at the man's shoes. They were snow boots that also looked like they'd just been pulled from their package. This man wasn't only from out of town. He came here from out-of-state. And judging from the way he'd chosen to walk on the damp asphalt rather than the freshly fallen snow told me that he was from a warmer climate. It was better to make footprints in the snow than chance it with black ice. It was all over the parking lot this time of year.