“Forty-five minutes?” Maya repeats, sounding panicked. “Gracie, these women are one high kick away from a head injury.”
I close my eyes as frustration with Brooke tangles with dread. I’m a wedding planner, not a bouncer! But Maya’s asking for help and I’m the one who sent this group to her.But I’m not there. Immediately, I think of texting Sofia, but she’s hosting a KILN event tonight. I’d call Calvin to pick up his pregnant wife-to-be, but he’s in Boston for his own bachelor party. There’s only one person left who makes sense.
Every conceivable need, Gracie.
At the memory of his words from last weekend, my face goes hot. I somehow doubt breaking up drunken bachelorette parties was how he imagined taking care of me, but the simple fact is, I need his help.
“I’m going to call a friend in Providence and ask him to come right away,” I tell Maya. “Just hang on tight.”
“Thank you, Gracie—please justhurry.”
“I’m on my way.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting when I finally pull up to the popular bar and dance studio that Maya and her wife, Eve, run together. Women in bridal party sashes and handcuffs? Flames licking out of the windows? I hope I’m only catastrophizing, but when I rush through the front door, somehow, it’s just as bad as I’ve feared.
My eyes lock onto what everyone in this loud, crowded bar is staring at: a blond woman wearing four-inch heels and aMAID OF DISHONORsash, wobbling on top of the bar with her eyes closed in rapture. She’s holding a plastic fork like a microphone and singing along to that song fromDirty Dancing—“(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life”—seemingly unaware that everyone is shouting at her to get down.
When a maraschino cherry is pelted at her head and she doesn’t even register it, one voice rises above the rest.
“Kaylie. It’s time to getoffthe bar.”
With a spike of mortification, my gaze lands on Jude, who’s standing just below the woman, hands lifted for her to grab onto. But instead of taking them as an offer of help, she only stretches out a dramatic hand to him like she’s reaching across time and space for her long-lost love (while diligently avoiding actual contact). Staring passionately into his eyes, Kaylie belts out a particularly flat note that makes every surrounding spectator wince, myself included. Jude, however, stands his ground.
“Kaylie, it’s time,” he reiterates over her song.
It’s the wrong thing to say.
She nods fervently, and as the music approaches its famous crescendo, Kaylie’s eyes go wide. “I’m going to jump!”
There’s a chaotic mix of shouted no’s and people scrambling to get out of the way. I see Jude mouth the wordfuck, but he also solidifies his stance.
A second later, Kaylie and her plastic fork are flying, her swan’s song on her lips as she leaps from the bar. It’s clear from her peaceful expression that she has complete faith in Jude’s ability to gracefully catch and lift her above his head, just like the movie scene. But there’s nothing graceful about this. I watch in horror as her boob makes first impact with Jude’s face in seeming slow motion. The surrounding crowd makes a collective “oof” as the rest of her collides against him in a loud thud.
He’s knocked back a step, but a moment later, a cheer goes up as Jude sets her down and extricates himself from her grip. Hair a mess and still looking winded, he puts his hands on Kaylie’sshoulders and begins firmly guiding her toward the back of the bar, where the dance studio is connected. Pushing my way through the crowd, I try to follow, but they’ve gone through the door before I can reach them.
When I finally make it to the closed door, I brace myself for what I’m about to walk into, nervously adjusting Kit on my shoulder. But when I step inside, everything is calm, even if the room is a total disaster. At least two broken glasses are swimming in spilled cocktails on the floor, one of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors has a huge crack in it, and the big costume cabinet in the corner looks like it’s vomited sequins and feathers across the entire room. Something that looks likeactualvomit sits in an ominous puddle in another corner.
Maya is walking around, passing out water glasses to the eight women sprawled across chairs and the floor, one of whom is blatantly unconscious. Jude is still guiding Kaylie, urging her to sit down next to a friend.
“Gracie!”
I turn and see Brooke, calling from where she’s seated on a bedazzled throne I’m pretty sure is used for teaching lap dances. She has an ice pack on her head and attempts to stand, but Maya is already putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Just sit,” she says in the hollow voice of a burned-out kindergarten teacher.
Brooke, with herBRIDEtiara askew and something orange splashed down the front of her white athletic wear, looks dangerously close to tears as I approach. When I pass Jude, I exchange a look that I hope communicates my eternal gratitude. I have no idea what Saturday night plans he’d been in the middle of, but the fact that he dropped everything to help me with this disaster is justgreatfor keeping my feelings for him in check.
Kneeling to get on eye level with Brooke (who, I forcibly remind myself, is still a client and therefore beyond reproach), I say, “Brooke, what happened? Are you okay?”
Maybe it’s the gentleness of my tone, but she breaks down completely. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs, letting the ice pack drop to reveal asizeable lump at the top of her forehead. “We were all having the loveliest time, but Marina kept sneaking in shots—I wasn’t drinking, of course,” she adds, rubbing her still-flat stomach, “but then Katherine lost a shoe and broke the mirror, and then Charlotte and Jessie got into a fight, and—and I tried breaking it up, but I couldn’tstopthem.”
From a corner of the room comes a loud, guttural snore, and we both look at where Kaylie is now passed out against a wall, legs splayed on the floor. I turn back to Brooke, who looks horrified.
“Don’t worry about them, it’s all going to be okay,” I say, trying to calm her down. “Would you like any Tylenol for your head? A granola bar?”
She nods, suddenly childlike. “Cal was right. You take care ofeverything.”
Happy not to feel the stab of pain this definitely would have given me a mere month ago, I open Kit and find what she needs. “Take these. In the morning, we’ll assess the damages and—”
