Page 25 of June Bride
“Brandy, hon.” Cathy moved aside the gift bags. Some colored tissues attempted to fly away in the sea breeze, but Cathy stuffed them down beneath boxes of Fiestaware and the brand-new cappuccino maker. “There’s one last little present we have for you before dessert.” She cleared her throat. “It’s a bachelorette party, after all.”
Half the smiles at the table disappeared. “Uh…” Brandelyn said. “Don’t tell me you hired a stripper.” Cathy? Hiringstrippers?Even for her lesbian daughter, that was impossible. Brandy would only believe it when she saw it, and even then…
“Astripper?” Cathy overcompensated her awkward laughter. Was it supposed to assuage Brandelyn’s fears that her mother had personally hired sex workers to descend upon this humble bachelorette party? Because it’s wasn’t working. It was only making everyone in the room look at her as if she really had hired strippers.
Lots and lots of strippers, based upon that laughter.
“You’re hilarious, dear.” Cathy finished her second mimosa and smacked her lips in glee. “Ooooh, a stripper! We couldn’t make your sisterthatjealous that you’re getting so much special treatment.”
“Mom!” Lizzie snapped.
Cathy ignored her. “You have a special present in the private dining room. Go on. Ask the hostess up front about it… oh, there she is!”
The woman in jeans and a black blouse approached Brandy with a blindfold in her hands. “No,” she whispered to the bride. “It’s not a stripper. We wouldn’t allow that on these premises.”
Brandelyn wasn’t sure how relieved she was.Not at all, really.That only meant something crazier was afoot. If she couldn’t anticipate her own mother’s actions? She might as well throw herself off the patio and land face first in the salty sands of Oregon’s coast.
“If you have to be blindfolded,” Monica said, while perusing Instagram on her phone, “then it’s naughty, whatever it is!”
“It’s not naughty!” Cathy insisted. “What kind of pervert do you all think I am? Look at this lunch. Isn’t it classy?”
“Tell you what.” Brandelyn stood, accepting the blindfold from the hostess’s hand. “I’ll put this thing on if you get my mother another mimosa. She’s not driving, anyway.”
Brandy couldn’t tell who hooted and who cheered her on to go “get that surprise you deserve.” She was too busy being blinded to the world.I have to admit, this is a little exciting…Everyone insisted it wasn’t a stripper, but for it to be forherimplied it was more than a little special. Besides, if itwerea stripper, odds were good her mother got her a male one, because Heaven forbid she and Brandy stay on the same page of these things.
The hostess tested the knot Brandelyn tied behind her head.I can still see a few things… plenty of light around here.That would change as soon as she was led inside, where a few of the other diners choked on their food and drink to see a woman wearing a T-shirt that said BRIDE walking blindfolded into another room.
“Have a seat right here, Miss.” The hostess guided Brandelyn to a chair by a window. She felt the draft and heard the ocean waves on the other side of the glass. Perfect combination to enjoy the afternoon by herself. If that’s what she were there to do, anyway. This was a blindfolded woman, after all. “Enjoy your party.”
She was gone within a minute. Brandy pressed her hand against the window and sighed.Maybe my gift is getting some peace and quiet.Yet too much peace meant thinking about her predicament with sunny. Not really much of a gift, now was it?
Someone placed a hand on her shoulder.
Brandelyn almost knocked her whole body against the window. The gasp of fright overcoming her was only mitigated by the familiar scent of a woman she knew better than she knew herself.
“Huh?” Brandy ripped her blindfold off, as if that had been part of the plan all along. Before her stood Sunny, wearing nothing slinkier than a pair of denim shorts and a peachy tank top that showed off her gardeners’ biceps. Yet it was the apologetic look on her face, tipped with pink lips and a pair of tender brown eyes, that almost made Brandy come undone. “Sunny? What are you doing here? Are you my surprise?” Brandy thought about it for two more seconds. “Wait. What did my mother have to do with this?”
Sunny held up her hands to get Brandy to stop talking. “I called your mother on Sunday. Told her that I really need to make up what happened to you in some way. She told me that your bachelorette party was happening today and that I might come by to say hello… like you came by mine to say hello.”
Don’t I seriously regret it, too.Brandelyn could be living in blissful ignorance right now as she prepared to marry the supposed love of her life. “Everyone in town is talking about me like I’m some…” She bit back the rest of her words. She couldn’t bear to repeat what she had heard.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Sunny clutched her hands before her, as if she were about to get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness. She didn’t. Her fists merely pressed against her chest, facing the fact that she would not yet get to touch Brandelyn. “I also know that me saying I’m sorry doesn’t change the fact that I made a real mess of things.”
“Why would you eversaysomething like that if you didn’t think it was true?”
Sunny looked up from the floor, her big, bright eyes so clear that Brandy nearly gasped.I don’t care how beautiful she looks right now. She should be ugly crying and groveling on the floor!Oh, she thought that, yet the truth was that Brandelyn could look into those glistening brown eyes for the rest of her life. Wasn’t that one of the many reasons she wanted to marry this woman?
“I don’t think it’s true. You’re a great lover, Bran. I wouldn’t be fooling around with you after all this time if it weren’t true!”
“But you said those things… and it’s not like we really do it much anymore anyway…” Brandelyn chomped down on her bottom lip before it began to wibble. “I know we don’t have to make a lot of love for us to have a great relationship, but when you tell the whole town I’m like a wet fish, I can’t help but think it’s true!”
“You know why I said that?” Sunny lowered her hands, palms open and fingers spread. “Because I thought of the meanest thing I could say when I was drunk. I was still raw from how I felt after our last fallout. Then Anita dragged me into the bathroom to knock some sense into me, and then you showed up, and…” She sighed. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. I can’t take it back, I can’t change what people are doing and saying… but I can apologize. I can tell you that I’m deeply sorry for what I said. And that I love you, Bran.”
Brandelyn had been prepared to rip a new asshole into her fiancée’s tush. Honestly, she should have! Sunny was right. She couldn’t change what she had done or what effect it had on the town. Brandy didn’t care if it would blow over within a couple of weeks and everyone moved on to some new scandal. It still hurt, like a weight pulling down her heart through her ribcage.
“You want to marry me after all that?” Brandy asked. “Do you still want to marry me after I’ve made you wear clothes you don’t want and completely took over all the planning? You still want to be with me although I’m not any good in bed?”
“Brandy!” Sunny was supposed to be a special gift. Yet her presence only ripped a hole open between them, one bigger and more menacing than before.Why does it have to hurt so much to look at my own fiancée?Sunny didn’t get rumors about her. Nobody looked at her and thought she was totally a control-freak who made a great doctor but a terrible girlfriend.Everyoneloved Sunny! They wouldn’t believe a rumor like that about her for a single second, but about Brandy?
