Page 63 of The Plus One Professional
She nodded and showed me her screen, which had both Olivia’s and Trevor’s names on it. “Olivia and Trevor want real-time updates.”
“Well, if that’s the case, we could do a lot more damage than Julia did,” Billie commented.
“I don’t want to do any damage.”
Birdie and Billie exchanged looks. My threshold for putting up with ‘knowing glances’ had reached its limit. I was sick of it. Olivia and Trevor, Billie and Birdie—everyone just needed to stop treating me with kid gloves and say what was clearly on their minds.
I stopped on the path and turned toward my sisters. “What? Just say it.”
“You’re still in love with him, and we don’t think it’s healthy that you’re here,” Billie stated plainly.
In Billie’s eyes, I saw a look of determination, and in Birdie’s, I saw deep wells of concern. That was a lethal combination when it came to my sisters. They were absolutely not going to let this go. Unless…
“I hooked up with Cole last night,” I confessed.
“You did?!” Birdie seemed surprised.
“You did.” Billie did not. My older sister’s two-word acknowledgment was born of approval and not of shock. “Never mind. I think that you areexactlywhere you need to be.”
“It wasn’t anything…it doesn’t mean anything. It just happened.”
Birdie wagged her brows. “I thought there might be something going on after that kiss I spied with my little eye last night.”
I’d thought both my sisters had already left when that happened, but apparently not. That kiss had taken me by complete surprise in the best way. My lips tingled just thinking about it.
“Good morning, Bees!” Devin’s high-pitched voice traveled across the garden. I turned and saw her waving her arms in the air as she stood in the doorway of the spa, which was about a hundred yards away.
I wasn’t sure who had told her about me and my sisters’ nickname, but it sounded strange coming from her. I was used to people who were close to us using it. We’d been given that nickname when Birdie started kindergarten, and we all attended the same elementary school. The Bees. It had stuck through adulthood. We’d always talked about all three of us getting a bee tattoo but had yet to do so.
“We’ve been spotted.” I smiled and waved back.
“She’s soyoungandperky,” Billie commented, as if both were negative traits.
As we headed toward the young and perky bride-to-be, under my breath, I warned, “Play nice.”
The caution was aimed at my older sister, Billie. Birdie didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She was the kindest, most loving soul I’d ever met. Unlike Billie, Olivia, Trevor, and my Grandma Betty, when she was alive, Birdie had never said a bad word against Simon. She’d definitely encouraged me to move on, meet other people, and not drop everything whenever he came to town, but her nudging was always about what was best for me; it wasn’t against him.
Billie, on the other hand, did not have a filter. If she thought it, she said it. The subtlety between being rude and honest was lost on her. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she knew exactly how she was perceived and just didn’t care. Either way, I didn’t want her to do or say anything that would upset Devin.
My history with Simon didn’t change the fact that this was Devin’s wedding weekend, and she deserved it to be everything she’d ever dreamed of.
“I’m just saying, what could Simon possibly have in common with her?” Billie spoke quietly without moving her lips. It was a gift she’d always possessed. She would have killed in vaudeville as a ventriloquist. “She’s a child.”
“Nice,” I repeated with emphasis.
“Thisisme being nice.”
Billie had a point. She could have been a lot worse. I knew she had it in her.
In high school, my sister brought more than one person to tears. Usually, it was a boy who was behaving inappropriately. But during Billie’s freshman year, she also famously caused Mrs. Hannigan to break down and flee to the bathroom after a particularly biting comment. She’d always had the ability to cut a person down and make them feel about an inch tall in a sentence or less.
She’d always considered her gift of verbal assassination to be a superpower.
When we walked into the spa lobby, Devin, her bridesmaids, and her mother were gathered with mimosas. Wearing my wedding coordinator hat, which was difficult to take off, I did a quick headcount and realized someone was missing. I glanced around and noted that the missing person was Mrs. Prescott. I wondered if she had a migraine. She’d suffered from cluster headaches for as long as I’d known her.
I was pulling out my phone to message her and see if she was okay when a six-foot-tall blonde in black scrubs, who looked like she should be a Bond girl, walked in and got everyone’s attention. She introduced herself as Helga, welcomed us to the spa, and instructed everyone to follow her to the dressing rooms.
Out of habit, I waited for everyone to go in front of me. Even though, technically, I was a guest here, I still felt responsible for the experience.
