The Wedding Wager (McMaster the Disaster) (14 page)

I stumbled outside for some fresh air, thinking the chill outside might help with the headache.

“Do not drive anywhere,” Jen yelled on my way out.

“I won’t,” I assured her.

I focused intently, blinking slowly and making sure I was extra safe crossing the street, trying to counter the affect of the alcohol, and headed to the park.

But this time, my bench was occupied.

By Andrea.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s a nice girl like you doing on a park bench like this?”

She smiled, humoring me. “I could ask the same of you,” she said, as I sat down.

I tilted my head, conceding.

Andrea flicked her cigarette into the sand under our bench and crushed it with her foot.

“I didn’t know you were a smoker.”

“I’m not really. Just sneak one every now and then when I’m over-stressed. Like a few times a month at the most.”

I nodded. “So what’s got you all stressed out?”

She shrugged. “I just found out rent’s going up… again. Third time in a year.” She sighed. “I’m just trying to figure out a way to keep up with it, you know?”

“Actually, I do. I mean, I know it’s ridiculous to have money troubles when I’m about to marry a millionaire, but I just hate relying on that, you know?”

“I get that,” she said, and it seemed like she actually did.

I groaned, and it had less to do with the headache than it did guilt spilling out.

“What?” Andrea asked.

I sighed. “I’m just such an ass. Here I am sitting here complaining about money with you when I just had the most financially huge day of my life yesterday.”

Now that got her attention.

“Really?” she asked. “Is it something scoop worthy?”

My eyes lit up. “Hey, this could actually help you, couldn’t it?”

“Um, yeah. In a very big way.”

I smiled. “Well it’s not like it’s going to be a secret for long. The contract is already signed.”

“Ooh, contract,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Sounds intriguing. Prenup?”

I giggled. And then hiccupped. That champagne was really swirling around my head now. “No, I have no idea what we’re doing about prenups yet, but I did sign a different contract yesterday.”

Andrea leaned in.

“It has to do with my career.”

Andrea cocked her head to the side like she had no idea what I could possibly be talking about.

I sighed. “My career as a writer,” I said, slightly annoyed.

“Oh,” she said, leaning back again. “I didn’t know you were into writing.”

I raised my hands to the heavens and let them flop back down again. Which actually kind of hurt, considering the bench was a super solid wood. “Why does nobody know this about me for Pete’s sake? I was a copywriter before I was in the Bridesmaid Lotto. I have been writing all my life!” My mini-rant may have come out slightly louder than I had anticipated and Andrea gave an uneasy look in the direction of her colleagues still hanging out under the awning of my building, no doubt imagining her scoop drifting away as fast as it had drifted to her.

“Sorry, sorry, I remember that now. I just didn’t know it was something you were interested in pursuing.”

“I majored in English in college for God’s sake!”

“You went to college?” Andrea asked, seemingly shocked.

Thankfully, she turned out to be joking or I may have kicked her right off that bench.

Like, literally.

“Har, har,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“So then, what was the contract? It sounds like it must be awesome.”

I nodded. “It was so awesome you wouldn’t even believe it. We had all the major publishing houses beating down our door to buy my book. The negotiating was unbelievable. It was like a tennis match, except between more players. Back and forth, back and forth about eight million times. Advance dollars going up, print runs going up, every time I turned around, my agent was calling me with an even sweeter deal.”

Andrea had a sparkle in her eye like I’d never seen. Or perhaps it was dollar signs of her own twinkling away in there. She looked like a kid in a candy store, and I got to be the one that put that look on her face. “So,” she said, practically bouncing. “What’s the book? I had no idea you were writing anything.”

“Actually,” I said, conspiratorially, “you did.”

Now she really looked confused, which to my pickled brain, was immensely hilarious. I began to giggle.

And giggle.

And, you guessed it, giggle even more. I nearly fell off the bench I was giggling so hard, loving—just a little—that I had an ace up my sleeve and could reveal it if and when I wanted.

“They bought the Disaster Diary, didn’t they?” she whispered, leaning in close so no one could hear.

She did a good job too, since I barely even heard her.

I did hear enough, however, to bring my giggles to a stop. “How did you know?”

“Well, since you’ve given me several minutes with your little giggle fit, I, being the oh-so-intelligent person that I am, deduced that since I was supposed to know about whatever it was you’d written, and the only thing anyone knows you’ve written is your diary, the pieces really weren’t all that hard to piece together.”

“Oh,” I said, my cleverness crushed into the ground like her cigarette butt.

“But,” she said, her eyes twinkling again. “The point is, I am the only one who knows about it and, unless somebody famous dies, you have just given me at least the scoop of the week in newspaper land.”

“I have?” I asked, happy again. Andrea really was a very nice girl. And I really was happy to help.

“So, what about your cut?” she asked.

“My cut?”

“Yeah, what do you want me to do with your part of the money, you know, for being the source.”

I made a face. I was going for something that said, ‘are you nuts?’ but it may not have been exactly spot on. Especially since a tiny belch escaped at the exact same time I was trying to make it.

Andrea actually giggled at me. “Do I take that as an, ‘I’m so rich now, I don’t need your stinkin’ newspaper money?’”

I laughed. “Yes, you may take it as that.”

“Cool. And Josie… seriously, thanks. You’ve totally saved my butt, at least for a while.” She leaned back into the bench and looked up at the stars, content for the moment. “So, what are you going to do with the money? I mean, it’s not like you’re going to need it in three months or anything.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll find something to do with it. Jen and the baby could definitely use some of it, but the important thing is, at least now I know I have something to fall back on… a real career, you know?” I asked, looking over at her.

She was white as a ghost and her eyes were wider than the full moon above us. A surge of adrenaline pulsed through me, sure there must be a mugger or something lurking in the shadows behind me.

I slowly turned to look, certain I would come face to face with a blade or maybe even a gun barrel pointing down at me. But nothing was there. I turned back to Andrea, my brain struggling through the champagne haze to make head or tails of what was going on.

“Baby?” she whispered. “Oh my God, is Jen pregnant?”

My stomach plummeted from its normal spot to somewhere about three miles below our feet.

Oh my God, what had I done?

CHAPTER 15

“Oh shit, Andrea, you can not let that out.”

Her mouth was still hanging open.

“Seriously, the world cannot know about that yet,” I said, my brain scrambling for a way to make it better.

I had done some supremely stupid things in my life, but never something this horrible. Jen’s life was never going to be the same because of me.

“Josie, I…” Andrea was shaking her head, like she was trying to reconcile her job with our newfound friendship.

That was the thing though. The friendship was new. And shaky at best, considering Andrea’s chosen profession.

“Seriously Andrea, you can’t. You just can’t. I’ll be ruined. Jen will be ruined.”

Andrea crinkled her brow. “She won’t be ruined. It’s obviously going to come out eventually. Oh my God, how far along is she? It’s David Miller’s, isn’t it?”

The wheels were turning way too fast in Andrea’s head. But I had to find a way to reach her.

“Look, I promise I’ll give you every scoop I’ll ever have about my personal life… please, just don’t drag Jen into this.”

She glanced up at me. “Is she definitely keeping it?”

“Look you can’t report about this okay? If you do, I’ll…” I sighed. “I guess I’ll have to sue you or something.”

“Sue me?” she asked, hurt.

I nodded, then whispered, “Please keep her out of it.”

Andrea stared.

“Just, report on the Disaster Diary scoop. It will get you the money you need for now, right?”

“I guess,” she said, obviously still unsure.

I wanted to cry. God, how could I have gotten so comfortable with a freakin’ gossip reporter that I just started blabbing away every secret I had? I should have known never to leave the apartment after I’d had so many drinks. I was a disaster to begin with, but put a few drinks in me and it was like the whole world started crumbling down.

~ ~ ~

I ran to the newsstand the next day, scanning the dozens of covers. “Oh my God, she kept it quiet,” I said aloud, and rather animatedly too, much to the surprise of the business lady standing beside me.

I wanted to run through the streets shouting to the heavens that my life was not over after all. I figured that might rouse suspicion as to what I was so relieved about though, so I decided to buy a copy of the paper Andrea sold her story to instead. I’d never been so happy to see my mug plastered on the front cover of a tabloid in my life.

Disaster Strikes: Josephine McMaster, Author was the headline.

I quite liked the sound of that, I decided. Author. I’d wanted the title for so long, it almost didn’t feel real. I tucked my copy under my arm, grabbed a couple coffees and headed back to the apartment.

“I did not expect you to be so chipper this morning after all that champagne.”

Suddenly, I realized I did feel a little queasy. I’d been so focused on the papers, I hadn’t even given myself time to notice if I was hung over.

And I definitely was. I mean, not the worst of my life, but it certainly wasn’t the most healthful morning ever.

And then the phone started ringing.

Silly me, here I thought it would be my friends and family calling to congratulate me and say how proud of me they are and everything, but no.

The first call was from my mother, checking in to make sure the date of the wedding had not changed, and was definitely not going to change.

“Geez mother, I told you, it has to be then because Jake is doing a movie right after. Why? What’s the panic?”

“Well, I just put down a huge deposit on a venue for the day and I would just about die if things were moved. It’s very expensive.”

“Mother! You booked a venue without me even seeing it?”

She cleared her throat. “Well somebody has to get this going. You certainly don’t seem interested in planning this wedding. And do you have any idea how long it took me just to find a place that was available? My God, three months is not nearly enough time to plan a whole wedding,” she babbled. “The place is quite large, much bigger than we’ll ever need, but we’re just going to have to set up false walls or something.”

She kept droning on and on about the sound quality and the decorating and a bunch of other stuff, but I couldn’t really pay much attention, what with my stomach churning the way it was. The sides of my mouth watered with that telltale pre-vomit feeling.

I had to tell her. She’d have to cancel the venue. I mean, I didn’t know for sure she wouldn’t be the one planning the wedding, but I certainly didn’t know for sure that she was.

But the words never came. Something did though… I was barely able to set down the phone before I flew to the bathroom to empty the final results of last night’s celebration.

Jen was nice enough to say goodbye to my mother for me.

As I lay there, my head cooling on the porcelain, my cell buzzed what seemed like several dozen times.

I let them all go to voicemail.

A while later—it could have been an hour, or it could have been six—I snuck a peek at my texts. There were about a million from Mattie, and I had the feeling that if I checked my voicemail, a good portion of those would be from him too.

They started out friendly enough, asking about the wedding cake, wanting me to confirm which one I’d decided on. But they got progressively less friendly with quite a few ‘where are you?’ messages to freaking-out ones asking if I was dead until the next one: ‘okay, I just talked to Jen and found out you’re alive. That’s great. But there are deadlines here Josie, DEADLINES!!!’ He even used the triple exclamation points and everything.

Finally, his texts calmed down a little, but did not get any easier on me. ‘Okay, I’m just going to book this. If I don’t, we won’t have a cake for the wedding. I figure the risk of the wrong cake is better than no cake at all. Call me if you even care which one I ordered.’

I sighed, dropping the phone. Why did all of this happen today, of all days? It was supposed to be my walking on top of the world day. But all I got was a giant mess I was going to have to somehow clean up.

You know, later, after I felt a bit more like myself.

I hauled myself into bed, thinking everything would be rosy once I just got a little sleep.

I could not have been more wrong.

~ ~ ~

A light tap sounded at my door, waking me from my slumber.

“Hey,” Jake said, crawling into bed with me.

“Hey,” I said back, still half asleep, though not too asleep to wonder if I’d remembered to brush my teeth after the earlier vomit session.

Luckily, I had, so I just rolled back over and waited for him to put his arm around me.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

“I missed you too,” I whispered back, kind of wishing I could keep sleeping forever.

Especially with Jake all warm and snuggled in behind me.

“So what were you celebrating?” he asked.