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Delaney Kingston, aka a bridesmaid who will do anything for her best friend, no matter how terrible it is
Ah,smell that?
That salty, fresh breeze with a hint of passion fruit and a golden sunset layered over the ocean surf?
That’s the scent ofhappily ever after.
After years and years andyearsof my best friend waiting for her boyfriend to pop the question, thenanotherforever of planning, we arefinallyhere.
Their wedding week.
Emma’s getting her dream destination wedding, and I haven’t stopped smiling—no,beamingsince my plane touched down in Hawaii two hours ago.
Everything is love. The gentle wind softening the humid air. The fragrant flowers. The giant coconut trees. The gecko watching me from the shorter tropical palm tree. Emma’s shampoo as she hugs me outside the entrance to the Midnight Orchid Club Resort barely a minute after I texted her that my driver was pulling into the parking lot.
“Laney! You’re here!”
“Happy wedding week, you beautiful bride, you.” I hug her back like we weren’t watching the January snow fall while we had coffee together at Bean & Nugget Café back home in Snaggletooth Creek four days ago. “Are you nervous? Are you eating enough? Did you have dinner?”
She laughs as she pulls back, but it’s higher-pitched than it should be. “Hawaiian feast. You saw the schedule, right? Of course you saw it. You live by schedules.”
Her stomach grumbles like she did not, in fact, partake in the Hawaiian feast.
It’s an instinctive reaction to reach into my purse and whip out a protein bar for her. “Em? Everything okay?”
Her eyes go impossibly wider and she shake-nods her head too fast and insistently. “Of course.”
For the first time since I boarded the plane to catch up to the rest of the wedding party after having to delay a day for an unfortunate work emergency, I’m not smiling. “Talk to me. What’s up?”
She has three inches on me, so I have to look up to study her. Her blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Her sharp cheekbones are undeniably sharper. And I don’t think the tinge of hysteria in her brown eyes is a trick of the fading evening light.
“Wedding stress. That’s all. This is normal. How was your flight? Are you exhausted? Here. I have your, erm, room key. We checked in the whole wedding party yesterday. Come on. Everyone’s at the pool. Here. Leave your luggage.” She turns her Emma charm on the bellhop, a young man with brown skin and a bright Hawaiian shirt. “Can you please get my friend’s luggage taken to the Plumeria Bungalow?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“Thank you so much!” she says too brightly as she slips him a tip.
She grabs me by the elbow and tugs me inside the lobby of the resort entrance, past the unmanned check-in desk and dying potted tropical plants and large beach landscape paintings. At the open-air atrium where three paths split off, she pauses for just a second.
“This way!” she says, even brighter still.
Emma’s a happy person.
But this istoohappy. Even for her.
And there it is.
The nibble on her thumbnail as we head down the tiki-torch-lit walkway on the left.
She has the protein bar in the same hand. She’s practically shoving the wrapper up her nose to nibble on her nail.
“Em?” I say.
She jerks her hand down and once again treats me to a smile, but this one feels so fake that I have to blink to make sure travel fatigue isn’t making me see things.
“This way,” she repeats.
