The One Left Behind (The One Series) (44 page)

About fifteen minutes later there’s a knock on the door followed by loud bickering. Colby opens it and we hear Morgan say, “Well if you’d put your pants on faster we wouldn’t be late!”

Everyone freezes and looks at them. Did we hear that right? And why were Jeremy’s pants off? I look at Jeremy and raise my eyebrow at him when he looks at me. “I fell asleep on my couch and she starts banging on my door. I got dressed in literally two minutes, but apparently that wasn’t fast enough for princess over there.” I see Morgan rolling her eyes at Jeremy from over his shoulder.

Eventually, Addison brings out the board games and cards. We all agree to play a game of Taboo. It can be quite tricky to get your partner to guess the word without saying any of the buzz words on the card. I find that Charlotte and I are actually pretty good at this game. We communicate to each other almost flawlessly. As expected, Morgan and Jeremy are the worst. Not only do they give awful clues, but they get mad at the other person for not being a mind reader too. It’s their turn again and I can’t wait to hear what they say now.

Colby tells them, “Ready, set, go,” and flips the hourglass timer. Addison is standing over Jeremy’s shoulder with the buzzer making sure he doesn’t say any of the buzz words.

“Okay,” Jeremy begins, “it’s a thing.” He gives her a look like she should know it by now.

“Okay…”

“It’s in.”

“What? I don’t know, uh—“

“Oh come on Morgan! You know, when something is in?” He moves his hand in a gesture that says ‘come on, put it together.’

“I have no clue what the hell you’re talking about. Give me more clues!”

“I can’t! They’re all on the damn card!”

This continues on until Colby finally shouts, “TIME!!”

“What was the word?” Morgan says.

“Fad. Really, Morgan? How did you not get that?” Jeremy drops his hands into his lap in frustration.

“Maybe you should have said something else like trendy, not something that is in, idiot.”

That’s about how the night went. At another point, Jeremy was giving her clues like “This animal has a long neck.” Morgan said, “Giraffe.” Jeremy got so excited that they got one and finally had a point until Addison told him that wasn’t the word on the card. Apparently he was supposed to have her guess the word graffiti. Not giraffe. Needless to say, they came in last place.

It’s the last round and it all boils down to this card. At this point, it’s between Charlotte and I and Pierce and Addison since Jeremy and Morgan are out of the running because they suck. If I can get Charlotte to guess this clue, we win. I look at the word, and a smile immediately spread across my face because I know we have it in the bag.

“It’s where we go to work when we’re not in our office.”

“The courtroom,” Charlotte says.

“Yep!”

Charlotte yells out, “Bam! We win!” Everyone laughs at her.

“Next time I’m on your team,” Jeremy grumbles to her. Morgan smacks him in the head.

“I don’t know. You did kind of suck. You can’t blame Morgan for all that.” She unscrews the cap on her water and takes a sip.

Damon shouts out, “Buuurn!” earning another round of laughter from everyone, even Jeremy who was previously sulking.

Maybe I’d invite her to more functions like this so I didn’t feel so out of place. She definitely helped make things less awkward. She was attentive to me in making sure I was doing okay. But she didn’t lay it on thick where it looked like an attempt to make Addison jealous. Not that she would be since she doesn’t remember enough to be jealous. It was nice though to have a good friend there that helped get me through this. Turns out, I didn’t really think about how weird this all was once we started playing Taboo. It was a great evening and I’m glad I got to spend it with all of my friends.

IT’S BEEN TWO months since I found my dress. In those two months not much has been happening. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately though, mostly about my friendship with Colin. It was really nice hanging out with him at my house and it didn’t feel weird at all. I think when I started planning this wedding I was a little worried my memory would suddenly resurface and then I would be left in a bigger mess than I was in the beginning. Now that so much time has passed since the accident though, I’m fairly confident I don’t have to worry about that anymore and I can enjoy planning the rest of my wedding.

I haven’t had any more run-ins with Samantha, thank god for that. After the two encounters I had with her, I knew she wasn’t over Pierce. It doesn’t worry me because Pierce doesn’t talk to her. She burned him too bad for him to have even a platonic friendship with her.

We’re headed to Vegas later tonight for our bachelor and bachelorette parties. Colby and Garrick coordinated them so we can go the same week. We wanted to be able to spend some time there to hang out and sight see. Luckily, everyone was able to make it.

We check into the Venetian once our flight lands and go up to our rooms. I’m shocked when Pierce scoops me up and sweeps me over the threshold. “Still trying to carry me around everywhere, Charming?” I’ve never been really big on pet names, but every since I started calling him that to tease him, it just kind of stuck.

“Well, I have to get plenty of practice in since the big day is almost here,” he says as he presses his lips against mine with a grin on his face. “Why don’t you relax and shower and I will hang up our stuff?”

“Why don’t you take a shower with me and we can hang up our stuff when we’re done?” I say as I stand on my tip toes and bite his bottom lip gently.

“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Pierce smacks my ass and I make an eek noise before running to the shower with Pierce following closely behind me.

After we make love, we get ready to wash ourselves. In our haste to get in the shower together, we forgot all of our toiletries so Pierce has to run out and grab them. When he comes back, we enjoy the opportunity to wash each other’s bodies. Once we’re out of the shower and dried off, it hits me how exhausted I am from traveling.

I put my hand over my mouth as I yawn when Pierce says, “Come on lets go to bed. We have all week to do other things.”

I crawl into bed and cuddle up next to him. He likes to sleep naked and I like having his warm body wrapped around me when I sleep.

“Goodnight, beautiful, sweet dreams,” he whispers and kisses my lips.

“Goodnight.” I drift off to sleep almost immediately.

The next morning we wake to pounding on the door. I groan in protest rolling over in bed and putting a pillow over my head. “They have to go away eventually, right?” I whine to Pierce.

“I hope so because I’m still exhausted,” he replies.

Bang, Bang, Bang.

“Ugh, I guess not. I’ll get it,” Pierce says as he pulls a pair of sweats on. He walks over to the door that is still being pounded on and opens it.

“Good Morning!” Colby sings in an overly cheery voice. I sit up in bed to get a good look at her and give her the evil eye for waking me up when the rest of our friends come in behind her. “We have been calling you guys for an hour now. You have the rest of your lives to sleep in. We’re in Vegas so get up. We’re going to the pool to lay out and drink!”

I look at the clock and see it is twelve thirty. I can’t believe we slept that long. I go to check my phone to see if I missed anyone else’s calls and notice it is turned off. I forgot Pierce turned off our phones last night saying we were on vacation and shouldn’t have to wake up to ringing phones. I didn’t think anything of it then, but I’m glad Pierce did because I needed the extra sleep. I get up and shower quickly and throw on my bikini.

When we get down to the pool, we see Garrick who waves us over. He has reserved a cabana for us and has drinks waiting. He hands Pierce and me a drink.

“So I’m assuming you had a late night boss? It’s unlike you to sleep in,” Garrick says with a knowing smile.

“You’re lucky you’re my best friend, G.,” Pierce says with an arched brow and a bemused look on his face.

I pull my hair into a pony tail and throw my sunglass on. I sit between Pierce’s legs on a lounge chair and lean back against his chest as we all make small talk for a while. The pool has a DJ and they have great music playing. As the alcohol kicks, we get louder and dance more. We play a couple rounds of chicken in the pool. Everyone says that Pierce and I cheat because no one can knock me down. We just laugh and shake our heads. The rest of the day is spent doing more of the same. We wanted to stay low key since tomorrow night is the big party and will get crazy.

The next day I spend the afternoon getting ready. The guys picked Pierce up early and hauled him off. He was able to give me a quick kiss as the guys were dragging him away. I was barely able to tell him to have a good time before the door slammed shut. I laughed and shook my head. Men, I swear.

I was told not to buy a dress because Morgan, Colby, and Lexi had gotten me one. I won’t lie, I am a little nervous to see what they got me. I hope it’s not too risqué. I leave my hair down but put curls in it instead of keeping it straight. I give myself a grey smoky eye with a neutral lip for my makeup. Since I don’t know what I will be wearing, I figured a smoky eye would go with anything. I can’t accessorize until I know what I’m wearing, so it doesn’t take me that long to get ready. I hear a knock on my door and I open it.

“Happy bachelorette party!” The girls yell. They all shuffle in one by one carrying bags.

Colby hands me the first bag. “Here, go put this on.” I take the bag into the bathroom and pull out a dress. It is actually really cute. It’s fun and flashy. The dress is strapless and is fully encrusted with chunky stones. The short skirt of the dress has strips of chiffon that are attached to the waistline giving the dress its flowy look. Happy with the dress they picked out, I slip it on and check myself out in the mirror. I can’t help but think that it’s a shame Pierce didn’t see me in this before he left; he would have loved it. I’ll have to take a picture and send it to him. I look at the bottom of the bag and see a tiara. I take it out and put it on top of my head. I put in hoop earrings and silver bangle bracelets and make my way out. The girls start whistling so I do a little twirl. I grab my phone so I can take a picture.

“Hey, would one of you mind taking a picture. Pierce is going to be so mad he missed me in this dress,” I say with a grin.

“I’ll do it,” Morgan says as she takes my phone. I pose for the picture and hear the shutter noise go off.

“Thanks Morgan.” I look at the picture and send it to Pierce.

Me: So this is my dress for the evening. I’m kind of sad you’re not going to get to see me in it. :-(

Charming: I will be having thoughts of taking that dress off you all night. You look beautiful. Love you.

Me: Love you too. Have fun, but not too much. ;-)

Morgan comes up with a bag in her hand and pulls out a sash that says “Bachelorette” across it. She puts it on me and takes a step back. She looks me over and says. “Perfect, but there’s one problem,” she says as she squints her eyes as if she’s in deep thought.

“What?” I say looking at myself thinking I had something on my dress already.

“These.” Lexi says pointing to my earrings.

“What’s wrong with them?” I ask confused. I think they look cute with the dress.

Lexi reaches in her bag and takes out a box. “Ah, these will work much better.” She hands me the box with a mischievous look on her face. She’s definitely up to something.

I open the box and my body immediately quakes with laughter. “Light up penis earrings, really? I am not wearing these.” I hand them back to Lexi.

We thought you might say that,” Colby says not looking up from her phone as she’s typing away.

Next thing I know, my phone alerts me of a new text.

Charming: Just wear the penis earrings. You only get one bachelorette party. Live a little. Love you.

Me: Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who has to walk around with blinking penises hanging from your ears and smacking you in the cheeks.

Charming: Wear your hair down and it will cover them. Miss you.

Me: I didn’t think of that, but hair is already down. Miss you too.

“Okay, give them to me,” I say with a sigh. “I will wear them, but I am leaving my hair down. I already styled it so if my hair covers them I don’t want to hear any bitching from any of you,” I say as I point my finger at each of them.

“I love that brother of yours,” Morgan says to Lexi.

I put my earrings in and we head out the hotel. There is a limo waiting for us and when I get in it I see a bag sitting in there. Colby hands me the bag and says I have to use what is inside all night. I open the bag and pull out a martini glass. The martini glass has a penis for the stem that lights up. I am beyond embarrassed.

“I can’t drink out of this! Are you guys nuts?!” I protest.

“Oh, don’t be such a pain in the ass, Addy. You would be utterly shocked by the other choices the store had. They were much, much worse,” Lexi says.

“Couldn’t you guys have settled on a penis straw? Geez.” I complain. I’m really not comfortable drinking out of this cup. The sash, tiara, and earrings are going to draw enough attention as it is.