Dylan’s family.
Apparently, the bride’s bachelorette party had been last night, but I wasn’t invited. Not that I’d expected to be. I hadn’t met the bride, Jessa, yet, or any of her close girlfriends.
Until now, I was still kind of an outsider. Still that girl who was dating Ashley, but no one in this group had met.
It was kinda strange, since he and I were so close. We saw each other every day. We slept together every night.
But honestly, even if most of them hadn’t been away on tour, I might not have seen these people much anyway. The last six weeks had been a beautiful blur of getting to know Ashley, and we’d done everything from road trips to hikes to rock shows, to long, long days in bed.
We’d spent a lot of time alone together, in and out of bed.
This wedding was as good an opportunity as any to meet the rest of his friends all at once.
“Who do you want to meet first, babe?” he asked me.
“How about… the bride and groom?”
“Right. Damn, you’re so civilized,” he said, and I laughed. He took me by the hand and steered me over to a man who was just jogging down the steps from the house.
“Hey, Brody. Want you to meet Danica.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “Babe, this is Brody.”
“Hey, Danica,” Brody said, extending his hand to me in welcome, and I shook it. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“You, too. Thank you so much for having me.”
He looked at Ashley and smiled, lifting an eyebrow, which I took to be a look of approval. Brody was impressed with me.
Honestly, I was impressed with him. He was handsome as hell, with short brown hair and deep blue eyes that were set off by the short-sleeve button-down shirt, navy blue, that clung nicely to his toned body. He had a small tattoo of runes on his neck and a few on his arms. He could’ve been a rock star, to look at him, except that he was so neat and tidy. Though maybe that was just the wedding?
“Have you met my bride yet?” he asked me.
“I haven’t.”
He glanced past me and called, “Jessa! Come over here and meet Ash’s woman.”
I turned, to find an absolutely gorgeous woman with long, supermodel hair making her way toward us. She was dressed in white linen pants and a sleeveless blouse, and she was holding a baby.
She wasn’t even wearing her bridal dress yet and she was stunning.
“That’sJessa?” I said, nudging Ash, trying to keep the astonishment out of my voice. “Dirty’s songwriter?”
Brody chuckled.
“Yeah, she’s one of their songwriters,” Ashley said. “She’s also Jesse’s sister. You know, Jesse Mayes, Dirty’s lead guitarist.”
“Is that why she looks familiar?” I mused aloud. I thought maybe she just had that model look about her. But I’d seen Jesse Mayes, in pictures and videos and stuff. “She looks like her brother…”
“Yeah. She’s a model, too, so maybe you’ve seen pictures of her somewhere.”
“Oh…”
Jessa’s face brightened as she approached and her baby reached for his daddy. She didn’t hand him over, though, instead presenting him to Ashley. “Hey, Ash. Glad you could make it.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Ashley smoothed his fingers over the baby’s little tuft of hair. “This is Danica,” he told her. “Babe, this is Jessa and little Nick.”
A slow smile spread across Jessa’s face when she looked at me. “Hi.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand as she cradled the baby, who looked somewhere between six months and a year old? I didn’t exactly have a ton of experience with babies. He was crazy cute though. “He’s so cute,” I told her. “How old is he? You don’t look like you just had a baby.” Yes, that could’ve been interpreted as kissing butt. But in this woman’s case, it wasn’t a word of a lie.
