CHAPTER TWO | VANESSA
“What would you like to drink, miss?” the bartender asked as he slipped a black cocktail napkin across the bar towards me.
The tallest glass of Cabernet you’ve ever poured, I wanted to say. Or better yet…just give me the bottle and a really long straw.
Before I could come up with a more dignified answer for the bartender, a pair of hands wrapped around my ass from behind and shifted me away from the bar.
My eyes flung up as a tall, dark stranger strode into view and took my place at the bar. He looked like a dollar-store version of Patrick Dempsey in an expensive tux.
“Nice to meet you,” he said with a cocky smile, sticking out a hand to greet me. “I’m Christopher.”
I reached for his outstretched hand but, instead of shaking it, I shoved it back towards his chest.
“Christopher,” I plastered on my best ‘I’ll-kill-you-if-you-touch-me-again’ grin, “I’d appreciate it if you kept your hands to yourself.”
“You’re feisty,” a slimey, unperturbed smile stretched across his cheeks. “I like it. Let me buy you a drink.”
“It’s an open bar.”
“Even better.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back to the bartender, who just offered me a sympathetic shrug.
“I’ll just take two of these,” I told the bartender, nodding towards the pre-poured flutes of champagne that were arranged like bowling pins at the edge of the bar.
I plucked up two glasses and then, before Knock-Off McDreamy could get another word in, I headed back across the reception area towards my table.
“That guy at the bar was totally hot!” Summer Adams hissed as I sank into my seat beside her. “Why did you blow him off?!”
“Umm, that guy was totally creepy,” I grimaced as I passed her one of the champagne flutes. “Didn’t you see him grab my ass?”
“That was not an ass grab!” she protested. “It’s only an ass grab if he gets a cheek.”
To clarify, she curled her fingers into a claw and demonstrated her version of an ‘ass grab’ on the air.
“You can call it a whatever-you-want-grab,” I rolled my eyes. “It was still totally creepy.”
“And besides,” I added after a sip of champagne, “He was wearing a wedding ring. The asshole was married!”
“Ok, eww,” Summer wrinkled her nose and sighed in defeat. “Fine, you win. That guy was a creep.”
“But,” she added. “I still think you should give guys a chance sometimes. They’re not all creeps. You push away a lot of decent guys, too…”
That earned another eyeroll. Summer treated life like it was one big romantic comedy. She was hopelessly in love with the idea of love. The quest for her own personal Prince Charming had begun long before she met me and, even though she hadn’t found him yet, she wasn’t any less hopeful that he was out there, somewhere, waiting for her.
I had first met Summer Adams the summer after I graduated from cosmetology school. We were both newly licensed, broke as a joke, and desperate for any work we could find. And that’s how we both ended up giving $12 bowlcuts to snot-nosed rugrats at the Westfarms Mall in West Hartford.
That summer job didn’t last long, but my friendship with Summer did. We stayed in touch over the years as we both continued to work our way up the beauty industry ladder. Eventually, our hard work paid off: I was working at a high-end salon in Hartford, and Summer was the head makeup artist for a local morning talk show.
Even though we had both found success, we were still left wanting more. Then, one fateful weekend, we decided to attend a Ouidad workshop together. We had a little bit too much to drink, and we had one of those deep, drunken, “what the hell are we doing with our lives?!” conversations. And that’s when we decided to quit our jobs and start our own business: Fairy Godmother Beauty.
True to its name, Fairy Godmother Beauty was an on-call operation that specialized in performing hair miracles and makeup magic for our Cinderella clients. We handled all occasions, from black-tie charity balls to white-laced weddings. Our first year was tough, but by the second year our business was booming. And once we had built a steady repertoire of clients in Hartford, we set our sights on expansion.
More specifically, we set our sights on New York City.
And here we are, I thought as I gazed around the Terrace Room at The Plaza Hotel. New York City…the Upper East Side.
My eyes scanned the room until I found our Cinderella of the ball: the bride.
Summer and I had spent five hours perfecting every last detail of her hair and makeup -- from her coiffed updo, to her mink eyelash extensions. The results were worth every second of hard work: she was a vision.
The bride had been so over the moon that she had insisted that Summer and I stick around for the wedding. Probably for the best: I had a backup stash of eyelashes and waterproof mascara in my purse, just in case...
“She’s gorgeous,” Summer whispered, reading my mind. Then she clinked her champagne flute against mine and added: “Cheers. To a job well done!”
“To a job well done,” I smiled, taking a sip of champagne.
This wedding wasn’t just another job for Summer and I. This was a major milestone, and if we played our cards right, this wedding could open a lot of doors for us as we continued to establish a client list in New York City.
Goodbye, Hartford…hello, Big Apple!
Summer sighed wistfully as she continued to gaze at the head table. The blushing bride had located her groom, and he had swept her off of her feet into a romantic kiss.
“They’re so in love,” Summer dabbed a tear that had bubbled at the edge of her lash line.
I stifled a groan and tucked back another sip of champagne.
“Everyone starts out in love,” I reminded her. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to stay that way.”
Summer crossed her arms and pouted.
“Don’t you ever get tired of being so damn cynical all the time?” she asked.
“I’m not being cynical. I’m being realistic.”
Unlike my business partner, I wasn’t consumed by delusions of knights in shining armor or gallant prince charmings. I had stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago.
I was nine years old when my parents got divorced. The term ‘divorce’ suggests that their separation was something simple, legal, procedural, methodical…but it wasn’t any of those things. It was pure agony. I remember; I was trapped in the middle of it.
I wasn’t old enough to understand what was happening. All I knew was that they were fighting constantly. Mom would try to distract me; she’d stuff me into my bedroom and stick a VHS tape into the pink Minnie Mouse TV on top of my dresser. She thought that watching The Little Mermaid or Sleeping Beauty could drown out the sound of them fighting in the next room. But it couldn’t. The walls were paper thin, and their voices echoed straight into my bedroom.
I’d stare at the TV screen, watching Prince Charming battle dragons and break spells with true love’s kiss…all to the soundtrack of my parents screaming in the next room over.
For a while, I would lay awake in bed and wonder why we couldn’t all just live happily ever after. By the time my dad finally packed his bags and walked out for good, I had figured it out: people don’t live ‘happily ever after.’ They just live ‘happily until…’
And in my parents’ case, they had lived ‘happily until…my father decided that he’d be happier with his secretary.’
After watching my parents get divorced, I stopped believing in love stories and happy endings. You can chalk it up to ‘daddy issues’ or call me a walking cliché, but one thing was for damn sure: I never wanted to be broken the way that Mom was after my dad walked out.
That didn’t mean I had sworn off of men completely. I still went on the occasional date…but there were always boundaries. I never let it get too far.
“So you’re telling me that’s not real love?” Summer asked, snapping me out of my thoughts as she pointed across the reception area. The newlyweds had moved their public display of infatuation to the dancefloor, where they were slow-dancing out of rhythm to the lively jazz music that was blaring from the stage.
“Maybe it’s real right now,” I shrugged. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to last.”
Then I motioned towards the bar and added, “I’m sure that Mr. Ass-grab looked blissfully in love on his wedding day, too. And now look at him.”
We both glanced back towards the bar, just in time to see ‘Christopher’ hovering towards another unsuspecting patron.
“One jerk at a bar isn’t representative of the entire dating pool,” Summer reasoned. “How many weddings have we been hired for?”
“Maybe a hundred?” I guessed. “Give or take?”
“So you’re telling me that after witnessing a hundred weddings -- a hundred success stories -- you’ve never once thought about getting married, or wondered what it would be like to be the bride?”
“Sure, I’ve wondered,” I admitted. It was true: I had wondered. Summer had a point; it was impossible to witness so many beautiful, happy love stories and not occasionally wonder if I was missing out on something real.
But every time I found myself wondering, I always came to the same conclusion: I didn’t want to be the damsel in distress, waiting for prince charming to sweep me off of my feet. I was content playing the fairy godmother.
“Marriage isn’t just a big party with a tiered cake and a white dress,” I continued. “People change. Feelings fade. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, you know…”
“And fifty percent don’t,” Summer countered.
“If fifty percent of flights landed in a fiery crash, do you think people would still get onto airplanes?”
Summer rolled her eyes and downed the remainder of her champagne.
“What about Cassidy?” she asked. “You want her to marry that firefighter guy, don’t you?”
“That’s different,” I sighed.
“How?” Summer demanded.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. While my parents’ divorce had made a strong case against the notion of marriage, I had to admit that Cassidy Laurent’s engagement to Brady Hudson had made a strong case for it. I had never seen two people more in love than Cass and Brady. And after witnessing a hundred weddings, that was saying something.
My own cynical outlook aside, I did genuinely believe that Cass and Brady belonged together. And I was also genuinely excited to see them tie the knot in a few days. So why couldn’t I believe that the same happy ending was possible for me?
“Are we going to keep talking about this all night?” I asked. “Because if we are, I’m going to need about fifty more glasses of champagne…”
“Fine, I’ll drop it,” Summer rolled her eyes and smiled. Then she nodded towards the dance floor and added, in a playful tone: “If you’re my date tonight, then I think you owe me a dance.”
I smiled back.
“Now that I can do!”