CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | CASSIDY
POP!
The cork sprang free from the bottle and a fountain of shimmering, milky white bubbles cascaded down the wrist of Vanessa Bailey. She squealed and tilted the bottle towards me, pouring a stream of foamy, fizzy champagne into my glass.
“A little bubby for the beautiful bride!” she winked up at me, “...and for the best bridesmaids in the world,” she added, tilting the bottle towards the other two girls in our circle: Aubrey and Nyah.
The four of us were squeezed together around a curved tufted white sofa in the private dressing room of Something Blue, a chic bridal boutique that looked like it had fallen straight out of Pinterest heaven and landed in the center of downtown Hartford.
The whitewashed brick walls were draped with gauzy white lace curtains. The soft carpet was a cheerful shade of robin egg blue. A kitschy white chandelier hung directly over a pedestal surrounded by ornately decorated antique full-length mirrors, and next to the pedestal there was a rose gold dress rack filled with wedding gowns that a shop attendant had picked for me to try on.
A nervous flutter filled my stomach when I looked at the rack of gowns, and I took a sip of champagne to calm my nerves.
“Not yet!” Vanessa scolded me playfully. “We have to say a toast first!”
“Oops,” Aubrey giggled, not-so-subtly swallowing the sip she had already taken from her own glass.
“Ooh, can I say the toast?” Nyah asked.
“I think we should all say something,” Vanessa replied. She emptied the last bit of champagne into her own glass, then she sat back on the sofa. “This is a special occasion! I can’t even remember the last time all four of us were together!”
I couldn’t remember, either. Aubrey, Nyah, Vanessa and I had all been best friends since high school. We had bonded over the pains of growing up: bad dates, heartbreak, acne, trips to the mall, diets, school dances, failed classes, secret crushes…
For four years, the four of us were inseparable. But after graduation, life had taken us all in separate directions. We had slowly drifted apart. We saw each other less and less, and then the phone calls and text messages became less frequent, too.
When Mom got sick, I guess I retreated even more.
Even though we had grown apart over the years, I knew that I couldn’t plan a wedding without asking them to be my bridesmaids. I also knew I couldn’t lie to them.
I had planned on telling them the truth about everything… but by the time I called them up, they had already received the ‘Save the Date’ cards that my mother had mailed out. I expected them to be confused, shocked, or even hurt… but instead, they greeted me with squeals of excitement.
Once I heard how genuinely happy and excited they were for me, I knew that I couldn’t tell them the truth.
“I’ll go first!” Aubrey said, clearing her throat and sitting up on the sofa. She raised her glass towards me: “I’d like to propose a toast to Cassidy Laurent; the girl who once swore that she would never get married!”
“Oh God,” I groaned, sinking down into the sofa and burying my face in the palm of my hand. “I didn’t really say that, did I?”
“You sure did!” Vanessa squeezed my shoulder, “Among other things…”
“Like that one time in senior year, when that asshole guy from the swim team asked you out on a date and then stood you up… and you decided that you were going to swear off men completely!” Nyah recalled fondly.
“I think it lasted for, like, all of three weeks,” Aubrey rolled her eyes playfully. “And then we went to see some movie with… what was that actor’s name?”
“Henry Cavill,” I mumbled, still shielding my face behind my hand.
“That’s it!” Aubrey nodded enthusiastically. “So, we were watching this movie and, halfway through it, Cass leans over and whispers: ‘I guess men aren’t so bad, after all…’”
Nyah fell back onto the sofa laughing, and champagne sloshed from her glass. “At least you’ve always had good taste in men!”
“I don’t know about that,” I mumbled, grimacing as I raised my glass and took a sip. The champagne tickled my tongue, then the back of my throat. “In fact, I’m pretty sure there was a reason I swore off men in the first place…”
“True,” Nyah conceded with a sigh. “You had to kiss a few frogs… but now you’ve found your prince!”
“And,” Aubrey said, clinking the rim of her glass against mine. “Brady kinda looks like Henry Cavill, too!”
“Oh my God, you’re right!” Vanessa squealed. “He totally does!”
“And who would have thought that your prince was right next door, all along!” Nyah added.
I hid my face again, this time to conceal that fact that my cheeks had darkened by several shades of pink.
“My turn!” Vanessa announced, raising her glass. I had forgotten all about the toasts, but I obediently raised my glass and listened.
“Cassidy,” she sighed thoughtfully, “I’ve known you for a long time… and I’ve never once seen you sparkle the way you do now. I know I haven’t met Brady yet, but I feel like I already know everything I need to know about him, just by looking at your face. If a guy can make you radiate happiness like that, then he must be a pretty good guy…”
“Yes!” Nyah agreed enthusiastically, raising her glass. “I’ll have what she’s having!”
“I’d like to say something, too,” I said. For some reason, my eyes were suddenly misting with tears and I felt a lump grow at the back of my throat. I swallowed it quickly and sniffed.
“I know we haven’t been that close lately,” I said, “But I’m so grateful that you ladies agreed to be part of my wedding. I couldn’t ask for better bridesmaids.”
Then I turned to Vanessa and added: “Or a better maid of honor.”
“Ugh can we please drink now, before I start crying?” Aubrey, dabbing her own eyes.
“Yes!” I said. We all clinked glasses, and then I gulped back my champagne. I knew I needed all the liquid courage that I could get, for the afternoon of dress shopping that lingered ahead of me…
“Anyways!” Nyah said, crossing her legs and reclining on the sofa. “I need to hear more about this mystery man!”
“Me too!” Aubrey agreed. “His last name is ‘Hudson,’ right?” She pulled out her cell phone and started tapping something on the touch screen.
“Are you Googling him?” I blushed. Aubrey just smirked.
“So, you met when you were kids?” Nyah said, jerking my attention back.
“Right,” I nodded. “We were next door neighbors.”
“Ok… so how did you start dating?”
“Umm…” I remembered the night by the pool… the white wine buzz, the trip to Brady’s kitchen… the informal proposal... “We just started bumping into each other, and I guess we both felt a spark…”
“Holy shit!” Aubrey said, her eyes widening as she stared down at her phone screen. “How could you not feel a spark?! Look at this guy!”
“That is a fine ass man,” Nyah clucked, shaking her head in admiration.
She held up her phone, and when I glanced down a sudden quiver of excitement pulsed through my body. I recognized the photograph on Aubrey’s phone screen right away; it was a shot that had appeared in a charity calendar a few years ago. Brady was the month of January, posing nonchalantly with a fire hose over his groin.
“Hello, January!” Nyah purred. “That’s one hell of a way to kick off the new year.”
“So, um… how’s his firehose?” Vanessa asked, nudging my shoulder and wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.
My eyes widened and my cheeks felt like they had been lit on fire. I took another sip of champagne to cool the heat that was working through my torso.
“I bet he’s got a great firehose,” Aubrey giggled. “I can always tell… I’ve got a six sense about that sort of thing.”
“You’ve got a sixth sense for approximating dick size?” Nyah asked skeptically.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Aubrey admitted. “But I’ve never been wrong!”
Nyah turned to me, still looking skeptical. “Any comment?”
I just shrugged: “I guess a picture is worth a thousand words.”
All sets of eyes flicked back down to the phone, and Aubrey pinched her fingers on the screen to zoom in on the length of hose that Brady was wrangling by his hip.
The hose looked massive… and I knew from experience that Brady’s member was just as big.
Vanessa gulped, then looked back up at me: “So how does he handle his hose?”
“Do you need to ask?” Nyah snorted, nodding down at the photo. “Cass just said a picture is worth a thousand words, and that picture is showing me a man who knows how to handle his hose.”
Vanessa glanced at me and I just shrugged, blushing furiously:
“He is a professional…”
Vanessa reached for one of the wedding magazines that was arranged on the coffee table in front of us, and she started fanning herself dramatically.
“Does he have any hot, single firefighter friends, by any chance?” she asked.
“He has a whole crew of them,” I smiled. “And they’ll all be at the wedding.”
“I need some more champagne,” Vanessa muttered, sinking lower into the sofa.
“Look at this one,” Aubrey tapped open another photo from the internet search results on her phone -- this time, it was a shot of Brady in his fireman uniform. I recognized it as the photo that had been on the front page of the newspaper.
“Could he be any more perfect?!” Aubrey asked, melting onto my shoulder and sighing.
“I ask myself the same thing sometimes,” I admitted, blinking down at the photo.
“So… I think the real question here is: why didn’t you date this guy sooner?!” Nyah asked.
“We never really thought of each other that way.”
“Girl,” Nyah rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe that for one second.”
“Ok,” I admitted. “Well I assumed that he never thought of me that way…”
“Obviously he did,” Vanessa nudged me. “Who made the first move?”
I blinked and bit down on my lip. My mind raced back to that night in my backyard… then dinner at that restaurant on the river… the way his hand had found my leg under the table, the first kiss we had shared… the way we’d undressed each other in his bed for the first time…
“It just sort of… happened,” I said thoughtfully, and even as I spoke the words, I realized that I was still processing the answer for myself. “Once we were together, I felt so drawn to him. I’ve never felt anything like that. Everything just felt so… right. Like being in his arms was where I was supposed to be, all along…”
My voice faded and I blinked a few times as the words sank in. I hadn’t realized that I had felt that way until I said it out loud, but now that it was out there… well, there was no denying how I felt anymore.