“Can I help you?” I finally find my voice. Holding the door open, I look down to see a suitcase on the step behind her.
“I’m looking for my friend.” Her eyes bounce between me, just to my right where the house numbers are on the siding, and down to her phone. “I think I might be at the wrong house. Did she text the wrong address?”
“Who's she?” I ask. “Maybe I can point you in the right direction.”
“That'd be me.” Again, like the magical fairy I swear she is sometimes, Beth appears and pushes me out of the way to hug the mystery woman. “Oh, how I’ve missed you. I’m so happy you’re here.”
“I missed you too, B,” the woman replies with a sigh. A content, happy smile fills her face as her eyes close and she soaks in my sister’s embrace. I wonder if she’d look that happy in my arms? If I could only be so lucky.
Once they finally pull apart, Beth loops their arms together and turns so they are both facing me.
“Alyssa, I’d like you to meet my big brother Bode.” Alyssa. What beautiful name for such an enchanting woman. “Bode, this is my best friend and maid-of-honor, Alyssa Montgomery. She’ll be staying with us until after the wedding.”
Staying with us? In our house?
Put a spell on me . . . I’m bewitched.
CHAPTER THREE
ALYSSA
“Are you really sure it’s okay for me to be here?” I ask Beth for the twentieth time in the last half hour.
“Yes,” I can hear Beth roll her eyes from where she is changing in her walk-in closet. “Stop fussing about nothing and just enjoy the party. It will be fun, I promise.”
About this party . . . I wish she had told me about it before I got here, so I could have either come a little better dressed, or even waited for tomorrow to arrive. It’s not that the three hour drive was long, but I came in my comfy clothes, jogging shorts and a razor tank, not appropriate attire for a four-year-old’s birthday party.
“Why didn’t you tell me your niece’s birthday is today? I could have come tomorrow or later next week so I don’t crash your get-together.”
“Oh poppycock.” Beth blows a raspberry at me as she walks back into the bedroom. “Having you here isn’t a burden, Alyssa. You’re practically family anyway.”
I slip on a pair of flip flops then tug down the edge of my flowy tank top, smoothing out the wrinkles as best I can. “I may have met your parents a few times, and seen pics of Hazel on your Instagram, but that doesn’t mean I’m family.” Plopping my butt on the edge of her bed, I give her an overexaggerated pouty lip. She knows I don’t mean anything bad by what I said, but I still like to give her crap.
Beth and I have been best friends since freshman year of college. We were randomly assigned as dorm roommates and lived together all four years until graduation. When she left Milwaukee and moved back home to Galena, I was crushed, but I never will tell her that. Best friends or not, I would never lay my sadness on her. Growing up like I did, up until living with her, I had never had a consistent person to come home to every day, and I missed it. I still miss it, which is why I knew calling her was the right thing to do.
“You are family whether you like it or not.” Beth lightly slaps her hands down on my shoulders and leans in to kiss my forehead. When she pushes back, she has an evil smirk on her face and I’m a little scared of what trick she has hidden up her sleeve. Beth is like that . . . she is the sweetest and kindest and funniest person I know, but once she gets an idea in her mind, watch out! You never know what is going to happen next.
“I don’t like that look.” I push her arms away and stand up so I’m taller than her.
“Don’t you be squinting at me like that, Alyssa Jo,” Beth sasses back. “I just have an idea and want you to listen to everything I have to say before you say no.”
My squinting doesn’t stop. I cross my arms, pop my hip to the side, and wait for whatever craziness she is going to throw my way. “Throw it at me,sister.”
“Sit, sit.” She shoos me back, so I take my original spot on the bed as she leans back against her vanity dresser. “So now that you’re single and jobless and staying here until the wedding next month, how are you going to pay your bills?”
“Okaaaay,” I drawl out because the reasoning for her question stumps me and I need a second to get my brain gears moving in the right direction again. “Not what I thought you were going to ask, but okay.”
“What?” she replies with a shrug. “It’s a simple question. I know you have bills, we all do, and you no longer have a job. Not that I’m complaining, because I’m not, but I never liked Christopheranyway, so good riddance that he is gone and out of the picture forever.”
“You didn’t like him?” I’m stunned. “You never said that before. I was with him for four years and not one peep outta you about not liking him. What the hell, Beth?”
Beth shrugs again. “Just because I didn’t like him, doesn’t mean you didn’t. I know you loved him, and I didn’t want to pop your happy bubble. You deserved to be happy, and you still do. I’d never want to take away your happiness just because he wasn’t my type.”
“Never do that to me again.” And that’s why she is my best friend. “If you’d told me you didn’t like him, I could have avoid wasting the last four years of my life with him. I could have found someone else, someone better to be with. Someone who didn’t cheat on me with my friend.”
“I can’t believe she did that!” Beth marches toward the bed and jumps up next to me. She grabs one of her many decorative pillows and squeezes it tight, like she’s imagining it’s Felicia’s neck instead of just a square shaped bundle of fluff. “I know you were closer to Felicia than I was, and you knew her longer, but I still considered her a friend. Heck, I even invited her to the wedding . . . with a plus one! Do you think it’s bad manners to uninvite her? I don’t want that sleazy witch at my big day.”
Taking hold of the pillow, I slowly pry it from her angry grip, then set it out of her reach. “You can do whatever you want, hun. If you don’t want her to come, that’s totally your decision.”
