Page 6 of Bear's Midlife Bridesmaid
“Then there’s the etymology of how all the various marine terms got their names. It’s fascinating stuff.” Hugo scooted his chair back and stood. “Excuse me for now, but we’ll talk about that when I get back.”
“I look forward to it.” Jace happened to look down the table as he replied, and his eyes locked with Erin’s. He raised an eyebrow, communicating a lot with little more than a twitch of a muscle.
She turned her face down toward her plate to suppress her laugh. There wasn’t much she could do to rescue Jace from all of these ridiculous conversations, no more than she could save herself. It would be far too bold and obvious to take Hugo’s vacated seat and chat up the captain. Erin would have to wait it out for now, so she turned her attention toward the middle of the table.
“No, you didn’t!” Gretchen hooted.
Blaire nodded emphatically. “I did! I told her if she wasn’t going to give me the one on themannequin, I wasn’t buying anything at all! And get this: She tried to tell me that she would just sell me a dress off the rack, insisting it was the same size, so it would be fine!”
“But the pattern on the fabric wouldn’t be quite the same,” Hadley insisted.
“Exactly!” Blaire agreed. “It’s like, listen, lady, if the placement of a pinstripe doesn’t mean that much to you, maybe you shouldn’t be working here! As a matter of fact, I have photos of both dresses on my phone, but it’s charging in my room. I’ll go get it so I can show it to you.” Blaire slipped away from the table.
Erin turned her focus to her dinner, which was good even if most of the company wasn’t. It was odd that she should meet someone like Jace there. She’d barely even spoken to him, yet she’d felt a connection with him she hadn’t expected. Erin had always wanted to meet her true mate, and at forty years old, she’d been starting to believe it wouldn’t ever happen. In fact, she’d waited long enough that she usually didn’t dedicate much time to thinking about it at all. It just felt too late. People fell in love when they were young and full of energy, not when they were approaching midlife and stubbornly stuck in their ways.
Picking up her glass, Erin took a sip of wine and realized her body wasn’t interested in holding another drop of liquid. At least a full bladder was a good excuse to get away from this bunch for a little while. “Excuse me,” she said as she stood up. Most of the table didn’t even notice, except for Jace. He looked up as soon as she rose, and she could feel his gaze steady on her until she disappeared below deck.
She smiled to herself as she moved past the galley and into the passageway at the center of the yacht. Her hand ran along the wall in the narrow hallway. Even with the boat anchored, it still felt strange to walk around on top of the water. Once again, that made her mind drift back to Jace. Were his muscles a result of long hours at the gym or just hard work on boats? Maybe a fancy yacht like this wouldn’t make him sweat so much, but he’d mentioned sailboats…
As her mind drifted, she realized she was wandering. Everything down there looked the same, especially when all the doors were closed. Erin’s palm glided along until she found a handle. This seemed about right, so she twisted and pulled.
“Oh, yeah. That’s it.”
It wasn’t a bathroom. It was a storage closet, andthere was a lot more going on there than she’d expected. Hugo stood with his back to the doorway, his pants sagging around his hips. In front of him, Blaire was bent forward with her skirt flipped up. Her thong was a tangle of string around the straps of her designer sandals. She had her hands wrapped around the end of a shelf for balance as Hugo pounded behind her, their flesh slapping together as he sped up.
Erin shut the door just as quickly as she’d opened it and skittered away. She cringed, waiting for the door to slam open and for Hugo to see who had discovered them, but nothing happened. She slumped against the wall, frozen and uncertain. As her ears adjusted to the quietness around her, she could hear the deep vibration of Hugo’s voice as he continued to murmur about the goods he was getting.
Completely forgetting about her full bladder, Erin hurried back up to the dining table. She paused long enough to slow her breathing and run a hand over her hair. She hadn’t done anything. She hadn’t been the one getting it on in a storage closet, yet she felt everyone would know something was wrong when she returned. It was hard not to walk stiffly. She moved too slow or too fast across those few feetof space, and she pressed her hands between her thighs under the table so that no one would see them shaking.
“Hey.” Gretchen slid over into Blaire’s seat, then leaned even further to be right next to Erin. “You wanna know something?”
No. She didn’t. She already knew too much, and now she had to figure out what to do with that knowledge. But she smiled and hoped she didn’t look as nervous as she felt. “What’s that?”
“I amsoglad you’re here with me.” Her boozy breath wafted over Erin as she raised her glass of wine.
Playing along, Erin clinked her glass against Gretchen’s. At least her old friend was too drunk to know something was off. “Of course. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
“Well, but you might be,” Gretchen replied, tucking her chin into her neck in a rather unflattering way. “I know this isn’t your scene. We’re not the same people. We haven’t been for a really long time.”
“No, we haven’t,” Erin agreed. And what kind of friend was she now? She was here for Gretchen, but she wasn’t enjoying herself. And now she needed togive her oldest friend the worst news the night before her wedding. “Listen…”
“But you know, the thing is,” Gretchen went on, not listening at all, “there isn’t anyone else who understands me like you do. There are things you know about me that no one else knows.”
“That’s true,” Erin admitted, and it only made her hurt and confusion worse. “You were really there for me in those younger years. I didn’t think there was anyone else in the school like me.”
“But there was me!” Gretchen answered happily. “I’ll never forget the day Wade Boskey was picking on you. He had his whole little gang of hooligans ready to pound you into the concrete.”
Erin didn’t remember it as being quite that ominous, but those kids certainly had it out for her. “They kept calling me The Weird Girl. They just didn’t realize how weird I am.” Erin had always known she was an outsider. The school always claimed they taught diversity and acceptance, but that probably wouldn’t extend to someone who was both a shifter and a witch.
Gretchen laughed. “Then I got to show them how weird I am!” She wiggled her fingers in the air.
Despite all her nerves, Erin managed another smile. “They had me cornered, and you camerunning over. You told them if they didn’t leave me alone, you were going to blast them into pieces. It only took one little spark from the end of your finger to send them screaming, running for the teacher. Of course, she heard their little tale and knew they were making it all up.”
“But they had no idea!” Gretchen laughed again and then sighed. She furtively glanced around the table and lowered her voice another notch. “I’m pretty sure Wade pissed his pants that day. Do you know he never spoke to me again? He got a job at the corner store when we were in high school. I went in there to get something for my mom, and he had this look on his face like he’d seen the devil himself. When I went to the cash register, he’d had someone else take over for him.”
“I guess you really had an impact,” Erin noted. She put a hand on her friend’s arm. “I guess you and I have always had something in common, even while leading such different lives.”
“We sure do, girlie!” Gretchen clinked her glass against Erin’s again, only this time, Erin wasn’t holding hers. Erin’s glass tipped dangerously, and she caught it, but Gretchen didn’t seem to notice. “You want to know something else?”
