How to Be a Rock Star's Ex-Girlfriend (9 page)

Cara told me a story once about a guy she was seeing. After a few nice dinners and a couple heavy make out sessions, they progressed to the bedroom. Everything was going smoothly, until the guy suddenly turned into a crazy maniac.

He started grabbing at her, pushing her down on the bed, and setting a frantic pace. Cara tried to slow things down, letting her body show him what she liked. Instead of taking the gentle hint, he actually said to her “Come on, you know you like it! All the girls do! Come on baby, you know you want it like this!”

Needless to say, Cara never saw him again. She barely made it through his version of sex without informing him that she, for one, did not like or want it like that. When he had a problem with her ending things and continued to follow her around, she informed him that he was lousy in bed and out of it!

Braden and I seemed to skip over those silent, awkward moments, where you want to say something, but don’t. It was so

easy to tell him stuff that I just flat out told him that I didn’t like having sex on my side, and he responded by saying that he hated having his ears kissed or licked. And with that we bypassed months of doing things we didn’t enjoy just to ensure we didn’t hurt the other person’s feelings. What a relief. I tried to remember if I had kissed his ears at all, but not being a big ear fanatic, I hadn’t committed that mistake.

I know I should have been worried. And normally, I would have been. If things seem too perfect, then they probably are, right? Every couple should have issues or problems or weird things they hide from their friends. But we didn’t. We were approaching a dangerous area called annoying couple-dom. We all know that place. Sophie and Mark had been residing there for quite some time. I just never thought I would be buying a house next door! But, I was too caught up in the wonder and beauty that was Braden O’ Neill.

CHAPTER 8
 

Back At One
by Brian McKnight

We had a mandatory bridesmaid meeting at noon on Wednesday. Cara and I received a message demanding our presence at a luncheon held at Mark and Sophie’s house. Luckily, I had that afternoon free and Cara was able to skip an accounting class, we didn’t want to anger the bride this soon into the engagement!

As soon as we arrived, we were greeted by Sophie’s mother. Gwen McAllister was an extremely intimidating woman. She had made a career out of looking fabulous and spending her husband’s money. She and Sophie were relatively close, considering that Gwen had wanted Sophie to stay at home and work at catching a husband instead of moving out and getting a job at the bank. I think that was the only time that Sophie had gone against her mother’s wishes.

“Hello, ladies. So nice of you to come.” Even her voice sounded polished.

Cara muttered “As if we had a choice.” under her breathe. But we smiled and followed her into the dining room where a light lunch was laid out for us.

“I’m sure you both can understand the need to get started right away. Sophie has informed me that they want to have this wedding as soon as possible, leaving us with very little time to pull this together.”

“Oh, have they picked a date yet?” I was surprised that Sophie wanted to do things quickly. I would have thought that she would hold out for a wedding with all the trimmings.

“Yes, Mark and Sophie have decided to get married on June tenth of next year. Can you imagine all that must get done?”

Okay, that made much more sense. A year and three months seemed like plenty of time to plan any kind of wedding. I was thinking they wanted the wedding to happen in June of this year or something. That was a quickie wedding to me! I knew better then to disagree with Gwen, though.

“That is soon. But I’m sure that if anyone can pull this off, you can.” Cara rolled her eyes at me behind Gwen’s back and mouthed “Suck up.” I just smiled and batted my eyelashes at her. I knew how to handle women like her. I had to deal with them at the store all the time! Smile and nod, give them what they want, and everyone ends up a lot happier.

The rest of the afternoon was spent looking through bridal magazines, writing down ideas for the big day, and choosing fabric for our dresses. I was happy to see that none of Sophie’s choices had matching hats or elbow length gloves. Every dress she liked was elegant and beautiful, a perfect foil for her delicate features. And luckily for us, sequins, bows, and ruffles did not go with the theme that Sophie and her mom had chosen. The bridesmaid dresses were floor length, pale yellow, strapless and with empire waists. They would look great on both Cara and me, not easy to do considering our different coloring and style.

I could never have guessed that there was so much to planning a wedding. There were the typical things that everyone thinks of, like dresses, flowers, pictures, and the church. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg. There’s still the catering, the favors for your guests, centerpieces, and the music. And speaking of the music, you have to decide what you want played as a prelude, the song you want to walk in to, if you want someone to sing, and more. It made me dizzy just thinking about it. All of a sudden I understood why Gwen

was worried about our time table. It was a bit overwhelming to a simple girl like me. It was a good thing that we had her to lead us in the right direction. With that and Sophie’s trusty wedding planner, a gift from me and Cara, purchased at my store, she should be able to pull off her dream wedding!

When Cara and I left, Sophie was still trying to talk Gwen into a chocolate cake. Good luck with that! Gwen was really set on having a very traditional wedding with all the trimmings. I can’t imagine her allowing Sophie to have anything but a beautiful white cake with white roses, doves, and hearts.

“It would serve Gwen right if Sophie and Mark just eloped. She’s really taking over, isn’t she?” Cara shook her head. “Or she could pull a
Runaway Bride
and just ditch the whole ceremony before they even make it to the alter. I mean, honestly, let her have chocolate cake and a flowered head piece! Who’s getting married here?”

“Well, I guess Sophie’s just happy that her mom approves of Mark and wants to help. Plus, you know that with Gwen helping everything will end up perfect. But I do agree with you, give the girl the cake she wants!”

I couldn’t imagine letting anyone plan my big day for me. Not that I was expecting to try the knot any time soon, but I still thought it was the bride’s choices that should be final. Would it really hurt to have chocolate cake or wear flowers instead of a tiara and a veil? I honestly thought that Sophie would look beautiful with her hair down crowned by small white roses, rather then overwhelmed by a long, old fashioned veil. But I guess we’d leave it to Sophie and Gwen to fight it out.

Later that night, I filled Braden in on all the details. “We sat there for hours, just agreeing with anything that Gwen said! Anytime any of us disagreed, she would give us a look and ignore whatever we said. It was too funny!”

“How could you talk about wedding stuff for five hours? Is there really that much to do?”

“Typical man, has no idea what actually goes into planning a wedding! We could have probably talked about it for another five hours, but Sophie and her mom were in a dead lock about the cake. I almost thought they were going to start yelling at each other! And Gwen does not raise her voice.”

“Did all that talk get you thinking about your own wedding?”

“I don’t think people who have been dating for about a month should talk about weddings of any kind!” It was easy to see that Braden was just joking around, so I followed suit. Any time someone you know gets engaged, you go through the “I would have this, I would do this, this would be our first song”, phase. I think it’s perfectly natural. But I wasn’t going to tell my very new boyfriend that I was picturing my dress in my head and had already decided that if I were to get married, I would want to dance the first dance to
(I’ve had) The Time of my Life
from
Dirty Dancing.
It was my favorite movie after all! I just didn’t want to freak Braden out. Guys aren’t usually ready for the wedding talk, well, ever!

“I thought that all girls had their weddings planned out since they were five! I mean, I dated this one girl for three months, and she started saying stuff like ‘When we get married …’ and ‘at our wedding, I want It was crazy!”

“So, how long did you guys date after that? Did she scare you off?” I was curious to see what he would say about it. Did he ditch her right after that? Or maybe he wasn’t really bothered by it that much.

“There were a lot of other things going on with her. We broke up about two weeks after she started with all that shit, but it really wasn’t because of that. It’s not like I’m against marriage altogether. She was just a crazy girl; I thought I had a stalker on my hands.”

I nodded in agreement. I knew a few girls that were so sure that the next guy they met would be the one that they acted like maniacs. They ended up dooming the relationship before it even really got off the ground.

In some ways, Cara was like one of those girls. She thought each guy she dated was it, but at least she didn’t hang on with all she had and lose sight of herself! We’d talked about it a few times. At least I had tried to talk to her about it. She didn’t really see it as a problem; she claimed she was being terminally optimistic! I loved her enough to let it go, knowing that if she did get hurt by her actions, I’d be around to help her through it.

After my conversation with Braden, I did feel a little better about the situation. I was sure that guys didn’t really see Cara’s actions the same way I did. She never talked about the future, with them anyway, she got bored easily, and she was always on the lookout for the latest and greatest. It was only with me, and sometimes Sophie, that she would let out all the “he’s the one” craziness. Every guy fell short of her dream man expectations, so she left. Deep down she probably wasn’t ready for that big of a commitment, so ending things was the nice thing to do.

But who was I to judge? I wasn’t that great with relationships either. My track record with guys was spotty at best and the one major boyfriend that I’d had ended because I wasn’t willing to be what he wanted. Maybe Cara had the right idea. Just blow through guys while you look for the one that will stick. She was never overly upset when things ended, while the other girls we knew cried their eyes out while eating massive amounts of chocolate and were generally miserable when a relationship was over.

But lately I had been feeling more optimistic. I think that was why I was so relieved to hear that Braden wasn’t totally against marriage. I wasn’t keen on the idea myself, but who knows how I would feel in the future. Plus, it showed that he wasn’t against commitment in general, and that was always a major hurdle in relationships.

Maybe I had lucked out and found that rare guy, the one everyone seems to be searching for…. Mr. Right!

CHAPTER 9
 

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but by the beginning of May, Cara and Braden had switched addresses. Cara had slowly moved all her belonging to Dylan’s place, and it seemed silly to have Braden stay there as well.

Cara and Dylan had actually broken up in early April, but that didn’t seem to matter to them. They loved living together and were the best of friends. They had found that while their relationship was doomed to fail, they had a lot of things in common. Cara was a huge fan of the band’s music so the practices never bothered her, they both loved movies with a lot of toilet humor, and of course, they were both into casual sex. I suspected that every once in awhile there was still a little hanky panky, but I also knew that Cara didn’t hesitate to bring other guys over if the mood struck her!

It was an interesting arrangement that I didn’t question, since I was in a position to benefit from it as well. With Cara happily dwelling at Dylan’s house, I had a free bedroom in my apartment. Braden and I never officially decided to live together, but with his place becoming a little crowded, he stayed with me more and more.

Finally, he just asked if he could bring the rest of his stuff over. I was a little concerned at first since I had lived with girls for such a long time. The last males I had lived with were my dad and little brother, not exactly the same as living with your boyfriend! I could get my mom to run interference if there were problems at home, but somehow I didn’t think that would work here.

There was a little adjustment period, after all Braden had never lived with a girl. His mom was the only woman he had ever shared a house with, and it wasn’t as if they had really used the same space. He had his own rooms in the basement of the house, including a TV room and a bathroom. Even when he was in college, he had paid extra so that he could have a single dorm room. Living at Dylan’s had given him is first taste of cohabitation, unfortunately, that was not a good thing. Two guys staying in the same house was not my idea of practice for living with your girlfriend.

First of all, I had real dishes and silverware! There would be no more eating off paper plates and then throwing them out. Braden may even have to take a turn doing the dishes. Secondly, we would not be ordering pizza or grabbing burgers every night. I couldn’t even imagine what that kind of diet would do to my body. I’m short and curvy under normal circumstances, I wasn’t about to let myself balloon up. Now I’m not a great cook by any means, but even I can make a few decent meals. And last but not least, I could not handle the piles of dirty clothes and used towels that were always covering the floor at Dylan’s. I mean, give me a break. They only did laundry when they ran out of clean underwear. I knew that cleanliness was just one other thing we’d have to work on.

Braden did his best to make the transition easy on both of us. He tried to remember to rinse off his dishes and put them in the dish washer. Once he even hand washed the pots and pans. My concern about food turned out to be a non-issue. Braden was sick of the fast food diet and missed eating food that didn’t come out of a box or a plastic wrapper. He even made dinner for us a few times. He called his grandma, and she gave him recipes for a couple meals that she made him when he was young. It was really nice to come home to Braden and dinner on the table. It was so cute to see how pleased he was that I liked what he made.