Bridesmaid Lotto (26 page)

“Yeah, I think so. At least he was three years ago when we worked together.”

“That’s good,” I said.

I leaned back into the seat and sighed. What a night, and it wasn’t even over yet. I could never have imagined, in my wildest dreams, how wonderful this experience would be. Oh geez, I thought. Mother. She is so going to take credit for all of this and never let me forget it.

Oh well, I supposed I was actually in debt to her already for entering me in the lotto. And she was going to be paying for my trip. Maybe she was smarter than I gave her credit for.

“What are you thinking about?” Jake asked. “You have this cute little smile on your face.”

“Do I?” I said. “I was actually thinking about my mother, if you can believe it.”

“Oh, and here I thought you might be thinking about me.”

“Well, I was, sort of. I was thinking about how I was really lucky that my mother entered me in the lotto and how weird it was that everything worked out the way it did.”

“I guess I’m in debt to your mother then too,” Jake said. “If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

He leaned down and kissed me again. I couldn’t get enough of Jake kissing me. A few seconds later, Gary discreetly closed the dividing window between him and us.

The car came to a stop a few minutes later and Jake and I came up for air.

“It looks like we’re here,” I said, smoothing my hair.

Jake looked around. “Oh, yeah.” He tried to straighten his tie, but ended up making it worse. He finally just took it off all together.

We got out of the car and Gary was dutifully waiting for us outside. “Here we are Miss McMaster,” he said.

“Thank you Gary,” I said and moved toward my door.

I looked around and was happy to see absolutely no reporters.

“Great job getting rid of the press,” Jake said.

“Thank you sir. Will you be needing a ride home? I’d be happy to take you if you like,” Gary said.

“Um… No. No thanks. I can grab a cab later,” Jake said. He looked at me with the weirdest expression on his face. I think he was waiting to make sure I wasn’t offended.

I smiled and held out my hand to let him know I definitely wanted him to come up.

“Have a good evening then,” Gary said with a single nod and got back into the car.

He waited to make sure we got into the building okay and I gave him a quick wave before he drove off.

Jake started nuzzling my neck as we were still walking up the stairs.

“Is your roommate home?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I think she might have gone to her parent’s place in Jersey or something,” I said. “I haven’t seen her in a couple days.”

“Good,” he whispered in my ear, grazing it with his lips.

I dropped my keys. I fumbled for a few minutes trying to get into the door with Jake kissing me the whole time. Finally we made it in and we barely got the door closed before we attacked each other.

~ 19 ~

The morning found Jake and I sprawled on my living room couch.

Dear God, I definitely hope Calla went to her parent’s house, I thought as I looked around and saw the mess that Jake and I had made the night before.

“Good morning,” Jake said as soon as he saw me stir.

I smiled and stretched. “Good morning.” More like best morning ever, I thought, but kept that to myself. “How long have you been up?”

“Not long,” he said. “I think I actually woke you up when I started moving around.”

The buzzer sounded.

“What the hell?” I said. “Everybody knows that I was at the wedding last night. The least they could do is let me sleep in a little.” I walked over to the buzzer covered in the cozy blanket we kept on the couch. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Mattie.”

“Come on up,” I said and hit the door button.

I ran to my room to grab my robe. When I got back, Jake was wearing his wedding pants from the night before. I giggled.

“What?”

“Nothing, you just remind me of that one stripper guy from the Virgin Islands when you’re wearing those pants and no shirt.”

“Oh gee, thanks.”

I went over and gave him a good morning kiss.

There was a tiny knock on the door.

“Come in!” I yelled.

The door opened and Mattie was standing there, looking pale and worried.

“Mattie!” I said rushing over to him. “What’s wrong?”

“Hi,” Mattie said and gave Jake a little wave. He turned to me. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

I looked back at Jake. “I’ll just be a second.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Mattie shut the door behind us.

“Mattie. You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

He stared at me in silence. Finally he took a deep breath and handed me the weekend edition of the newspaper.

Dear Disaster Diary
the headline said.

I cocked my head to the side. That’s funny, I thought. They have the same headline as the entries in my diary. I continued reading.

Bridesmaid’s Deepest Confessions and Embarrassing Secrets Revealed.

My eyes grew wide and I started to feel like I was going to barf.

“But… no. How?”

“I think it was Calla,” Mattie said quietly.

I looked up at Mattie. He jumped back a little, shocked at the anger that flashed in my eyes.

“Why would you say that?” I practically yelled.

“The article says that the source was your roommate.”

My mouth dropped open. “It can’t be. Why would she…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I started to scan the article. It looked like they had printed nearly everything.

“I’m sorry Josie,” he said quietly.

I shook my head. “Why would Calla…
hate
me so much?”

“I don’t know. We’ve been talking a lot lately about how you’re never around and stuff.”

“But I explained all that to her,” I said. “She knows why I’m so busy. And after today, it was all going to get better.”

Mattie nodded. “Or I think it could be about Jake.”

“Jake? She barely even knows Jake.”

He shrugged. “I know. But there was something about the way she talked about him. It was really weird.”

“It was? I didn’t think it was weird,” I said.

He shook his head. “It probably wasn’t when she was talking to you. It was mostly when she was talking to me about you. And Jake. She kept getting this weird sort of far away look in her eye. And it was strange, she would never say your name. She always just called you ‘her’ or ‘she’ when she talked about you with him.”

“I can’t believe she would do this to me,” I said looking at the newspaper again. The tears began to well up in my eyes.

“Come on honey, let’s go inside. You need some time. We have to figure out what to do about all this.”

“How am I supposed to show my face in public after this kind of humiliation?” I said waving the newspaper.

“I think the first thing we should do is get your apartment locks changed,” he said. “If she’s willing to do something like this…” He pointed to the paper. “Then who knows what else she might be capable of?”

“Oh God, Jake. I can’t let him see this!”

“Josie, he’s going to see it sometime,” Mattie said.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. My voice had left me. I needed to sit.

“Let’s just go inside. If you don’t want him to see it right away, we won’t show it to him.”

“Okay,” I said.

Mattie took my elbow and guided me through the door.

“Oh, wait a sec, here she is,” Jake was saying over the phone.

Why is Jake on my phone, I wondered.

He beamed a smile at me. “It’s your mother,” he said reaching towards me with the receiver.

Oh God.

“I hope you don’t mind that I answered your phone. It was just kind of a reaction.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said and took the phone. “Hello mother.”

“Josephine! I’m freaking out. You wrote these things down? Why would you write things like that down? I can’t believe this. I will never be able to show my face around town again!”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” I said, on the verge of tears.

“I thought I raised you to be respectful. No self respecting person would ever write anything like this down,” she yelled.

“Look mom, I know this is bad.” I took a deep, shaky breath. “Don’t worry. I’ll just go on my trip right away. That way I’ll be gone, all this can settle down, and by the time I get back, hopefully everything will be back to normal.”

“Trip? Seriously? You think I’m going to give you a reward after you do this to me?”

My heart was being ripped out. “You’re taking the trip away from me?” I yelled. “Mother, you promised! That trip was the only thing I had left.”

I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. I’d lost my job, spent my travel money, and now all my dirty laundry, every embarrassing secret I had, was literally in the news, and I knew after Jake saw the article, he’d be history too. How in the hell could I have possibly gotten my life so messed up so fast?

I threw the phone down and ran to my room, slamming the door behind me.

I could hear Jake and Mattie calling my name, but I couldn’t face them right now. Especially Jake.

There were several knocks at the door over the following few minutes, but finally they stopped. I heard the front door close twice, a few minutes apart, so I knew they were both gone. I spent the rest of the day in bed crying and trying to ignore the constant wail of the phone.

About mid afternoon, I realized that I was even worse off than I thought I was. I was now roommate-less and would have to cover the rent by myself. Without a job. With hardly any savings left.

Eventually the phone started to ring less and night finally fell. Exhausted from crying and weak from not eating, I drifted into a restless sleep.

# # #

I woke up to the sound of the phone. Of course. All of yesterday’s humiliations came flooding back in an instant. I groaned and crawled back under my covers, burying my head under my pillow. But a few minutes later I decided it couldn’t possibly get any worse, plus my back was starting to hurt from lying there so long, so I crawled out of bed.

The apartment was quiet. Really quiet. No Calla. I was completely alone. I had never been so alone. A quick peek outside told me I was wrong though. Several reporters were still downstairs awaiting my first attempt at leaving the building.

I may have been able to finally crawl out of bed, but I was sure I wouldn’t be stepping foot outside my apartment anytime soon. There was a note on the table along with the newspaper containing my ultimate humiliation.

Josie,

I’m so sorry about all this. Please call me when you’re feeling better. I left the newspaper so that you know what you’re dealing with. I’ve also left some matches in the likely event that you’d like to burn it.

Hugs,

Mattie

I smiled for the first time in twenty-four hours. Thank goodness for Mattie. Especially now that the person who I
thought
had been my best friend, was suddenly out of my life. I shoved the newspaper away.

Ugh. I need a shower, I thought. I headed back down the hall, passing Calla’s closed door. It felt strange opening it.

It’s your apartment, you live here by yourself now, I said to myself. I turned the knob and poked the door. It started to open slowly.

The room was completely empty. All that was left were little marks in the carpet indicating where her bed and dresser once were.

I didn’t know when she had moved out. With all the distractions I hadn’t even noticed. God, I really was a bad friend. Though even I, in my state of self-loathing, still couldn’t understand how she could have betrayed me like that.

I took a tentative step into the room. Weird. She’d even cleaned. I couldn’t help but wonder why someone with such hatred for me would bother worrying about making the room spotless.

Something caught my eye on the windowsill. I walked over and picked up the pink sheet of paper.

I’m really sorry. They paid me a lot of money,
was all it said.

Money. All this for money.

I guess I’m not all that different, I thought. I did agree to be in the wedding thing just to get a trip out of it. Oh God, what a disaster these last few months had ended up being. How ironic.