He was right. It was lingerie today, but tomorrow it might be pedicures and champagne. Soon, I’d be carrying her purse while she was scanning shit for her bridal registry.This has to stop. Now. Instead of responding with words to my friend, I simply sent a middle finger emoji and opened the other text thread. I took a minute to skim the messages, but the last one caught my eye.
Dallas:Demi is headed your way, Duke.
My thumb hovered over my phone. Demi rarely visited Atlanta without telling me, so it caught me off guard to find out she was coming to town and hadn’t reached out.
Me:Why?
Then, my phone rang. I accepted the call. “You could’ve answered the question in the text thread,” I told Dallas.
“Maybe I wanted to hear your voice,” she said. “Your niece misses you.”
After a dramatic pregnancy, my sister had given birth to my beautiful niece, Dominique. The last time I saw her, she slept, pooped, burped, and slept some more. “She can’t even say ‘Ma’ yet,” I pointed out.
“She called Preston ‘Da’ the other day. I was pissed. All those labor pains and shit. I still have nightmares about my waddle.”
I chuckled. “You were definitely over-the-top.” She wasn’t the only one either. When Bliss was pregnant with Naija, she’d turned into a whiner. I gave her a pass because she’d already been through so much with her baby daddy.
“Shut up,” Dallas said. “Anyway, Demi is meeting a client there. And, you can’t say anything, but she’s having dinner or drinks with Tristan.”
My relationship with my brother was pretty much non-existent. Tristan could’ve lived in Atlanta, and I’d never know. That’s how bad it was. “He’s in town too, huh?”
“I guess so.”
Unfortunately, his relationship with the rest of my family wasn’t much better. He’d made a habit of popping up at random times and then disappearing for long stretches. “I hope he doesn’t stand her up again,” I murmured.
Demi and Tristan had been circling each other for over a decade. Thewill-they,won’t-theyof it all got on my nerves because I knew it was never going to happen. For one, Tristan wasn’t emotionally capable of commitment. And Demi wasn’t willing to see Tristan for the flawed human being he was.
“This one is nice,” Skye said from the dressing room. “I’m coming out.”
“Okay, DD,” I said. “I gotta go.” After I hung up the phone, I sent Demi a text telling her to call me when she got in.
Skye returned to the waiting area. “I need a break from all the wedding planning.” She shoved me lightly. “Are you okay?”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“I asked if you were good.” She did a quick turn in the full mirror. This time she wore a sheer white kimono. Thankfully, she’d had enough sense to wear something under it to cover the parts that were none of my business. Skye peered at me over her shoulder. “You look like you just got bad news.”
Waving her off, I said, “I’m good. Why do you need a break from planning? You love this shit.”
She shrugged. “It’s not fun if my girls aren’t here. Rissa is back in LA, your sisters are in Michigan, and Zara is being Super Agent and Super Mom.”
It wasn’t that long ago when Xavier realized Zara wasn’tjustthe girl next door. After they realized they were better together than apart, Xavier and Zara procreated—at my birthday party actually—and then married. Our families—the Youngs, the Starks, and the Reids—had spent a lifetime as friends. My father and Jax Starks, X’s father, were like brothers. And we met Zara and her family when they moved into the house next door to the Starks. For a brief time, we’d even lived in the same Brentwood, Los Angeles neighborhood.Damn, those were good times. Lazy summers in Xavier’s backyard doing shit we shouldn’t have been doing, group vacations to popular and obscure locations, Christmas parties, and everything in between.
Skye perched herself on the arm of my chair and picked at her nail. “I want a perfect day,” she said, her voice low. “I want Garrett to be so enamored, so captivated by me that he won’t have time to regret anything.”
Skye had built her public relations business by protecting her celebrity clientele from themselves. She was confident, talented, and knowledgeable. Yet, this side of her—the vulnerable Skye, the overthinker, the anxious woman afraid to fail, the sometimes-self-sabotaging Skye—had been carefully hidden beneath her take-no-shit exterior.
I gripped her hand. “I told you to stop doing this to yourself. You know I’d tell you if Garrett was full of shit. He’s not. That man has loved you for as long as I’ve known him.”
Tears filled Skye’s eyes. “I love him too.”
“I know you do.”
She shot me a wobbly smile. “I’m so ready to be his wife.”
“I’m ready for you to be his wife too,” I grumbled.
“Stop.” She smacked my shoulder. “Weddings are stressful.”
