3. Bailey

"Amazing job, as always."My bestie Olivia rested her hand on her growing belly as she lifted a champagne flute of apple juice into the air.

After an eventful day filled with pop-up emergencies that I'd struck like a whack-a-mole game, the reception was finally winding down. Billie was in the kitchen organizing the leftovers to be delivered to a shelter, and I had a moment to breathe. Today's wedding had been one for the books. I'd been running around, putting out fire after fire of near catastrophes behind the scenes. This was the first chance I'd had to mingle.

I clinked my invisible glass of champagne to hers. "You too; we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for your matchmaking skills."

Olivia had actually set up the bride and groom, Holly and Marcel, through the matchmaking service that her husband inherited from his grandmother.

I never imagined that my infamous divorce attorney and relationship-resistant, blissfully child-free bestie Olivia Bradshaw would hang up her law degree and refuse a partnership at her firm to run a matchmaking business owned by her husband while pregnant with twins, but honestly, I'd never seen her happier.

"We are the best in the game." Trevor Harrison, who had been her assistant in the law firm and was now her business partner in Ever After Matchmaking, lifted his flute of champagne and clinked it with my imaginary glass and Olivia's actual glass. He took a sip, then asked, "When are you going to let us set you up?"

Trevor and Olivia had been campaigning for me to use their services since they'd taken over the reins of Ever After. But I might not need to be set up if my conversation with Simon went the way I was hoping it would. I knew that it was na?ve of me to think that after all these years, he was finally going to commit, to tell me that I was the one, that I'd always been the one, that he was madly in love with me, and that he wanted to marry me and be the father of my babies, but the hopeless romantic in me was also wildly optimistic.

Olivia's eyes narrowed. "Oh, no."

"What?" Trevor's gaze ping-ponged between us. "What am I missing?"

"He's back," Olivia stated with as much resigned trepidation as Carol Ann in Poltergeist 2.

"Who's back?" Trevor directed the question to both of us.

"Simon Beaumont Matthew Prescott, IV," Olivia said his name with the same disdain one would use when speaking of scum on the bottom of their shoe.

"He sounds fancy." Trevor grinned.

"Not fancy, pretentious," Olivia corrected.

Trevor and Olivia had known one another for more than a decade, but I'd only grown close to him in the past year or so since they took over the matchmaking firm. In that time, Simon hadn't been in the picture, so the Simon subject hadn't come up.

"Okay, give me his rap sheet," he demanded as he took another sip of champagne.

"Rap sheet?" I repeated.

"Yes, the record of crimes he's committed against you."

"He's been stringing Bailey along since we were fourteen," Olivia offered.

Trevor's teeth clenched as he sucked air through them, making a hissing sound. "Fourteen? That's a long time."

"He doesn't string me alo?—".

"Stop." Olivia cut me off. "He is the Gaslight King. He gives you just enough to keep you wanting more, but not enough to actually have any real responsibility to you."

"He's a friend." I defended him from muscle memory. It wasn't even a conscious thought. I did it automatically.

Olivia's phone rang, and from the look on her face, I knew exactly who it was. Her husband, Ben. He played in the NFL and was away at training camp.

"I'm going to go take this." She headed out to the hallway with a twitterpated smile on her face.

Trevor tilted his glass toward me. "Okay, so…"

"So…what?"

"So tell me everything about this friend of yours, Simon Something Something Prescott the IV."

"Beaumont Matthew," I smiled as I filled in the something somethings.

"Oh, lord. It's worse than I thought."

"What is?"

"That silly grin on your face at the mere mention of the man's name. Tsk, tsk, tsk." He shook his head as he tsked me.

"It's not…" I shook my head, then launched into the Cliff Notes version of our relationship-turned-situationship. "I met him the summer before both his senior year and my freshman year of high school. After he graduated, he went abroad and…I guess we broke up."

"You guess you broke up?"

"Well, we never actually, officially, broke up. But when he came home that Christmas, he had a girl with him."

Trevor recoiled in horror.

"Anyway, we stayed friends. We email, mostly." I'd saved all his emails and planned on making a book out of them and presenting it to him on our wedding night.

"So, you've just been friends for the past twenty years?" Trevor lifted his brow as if he didn't believe that for a second.

"Since he graduated from college, he's lived in eight different countries, and then, for the past year, he's been in New York. But whenever he comes back to visit his parents, we, you know…"

"Hookup!" Trevor filled in the blank.

"Yes, but it's more than that. It's like we pick up right where we left off."

His brow lifted again. "But then he leaves again."

"Yes, but he's moving back here. He called and said that we needed to talk."

"Hmm."

"What?" I asked.

"I just don't think you should settle for being a D-C."

"A D-C?" I parroted.

"Dust collector."

"A dust collector?" I repeated, still not having any idea what he was talking about.

"You get put on a shelf, and whenever Simon wants to play with you, he takes you down and then puts you right back up when he's done."

Crap.That's basically the same thing that Billie had said. But they didn't understand that the timing just hadn't been right.

"Why would you settle for that when tall, dark, and delicious is clearly interested in getting a piece of your wedding cake?"

"Who?"

I turned and saw the man, who was my not work crush, staring at me. I'd been so busy today that I hadn't even realized he was here. I spun back to Trevor and whispered, "He's not interested in my wedding cake."

"Yes, he is," Trevor insisted.

"What did I miss?" Olivia asked as she joined us.

"He's here," I whispered to my bestie.

"Who's here?" she asked.

Trevor's eyes cut to the side. "Three o'clock. Navy suit. Zac Efron look-a-like."

Zac Efron. That's exactly what I'd thought.

I'd pointed him out to Olivia at a wedding we'd both been to a few months ago.

"This is the fifth wedding I've seen him at in the past three months. He's always with a different woman. Today, he's with Jenna, Holly's sister. But Holly said Jenna wasn't dating anyone."

"Oh, they're not together," Trevor stated confidently.

"How do you know?" I asked.

Trevor leaned in even closer to us. "I heard them talking in the parking lot. They were going over the ‘story' of how they met and how long they'd been together, fine-tuning details. I think he's a pro."

That was not what I was expecting Trevor to tell us. I figured he was going to say that, like Trevor, my not-work crush was attracted to men, not women. But then, Trevor had said he was interested in me, so that wouldn't have made sense.

My brain was playing catch-up as I asked, "What, like a prostitute?"

"No. A professional plus one."

They have those?

"They have those?" Olivia voiced the question I'd been thinking.

Trevor's head tilted to the side. "Honey, they have everything."

From the corner of my eye, I saw Billie walk into the room, and she didn't look happy. I excused myself and headed over toward her. As fun as that little gossip session had been, I was on the clock.

As I stepped beside my sister, she whispered under her breath as she scanned the room. "Today was a nightmare. But first dance, done. Speeches, done. Cake cutting, done. I think we're safe. No more big emergencies."

"Do not jinx this, please?"

Billie was practical to a fault. She might not believe in superstitions, but I did. And saying everything was going well was playing with fire. Fire I didn't want to extinguish.

No sooner had she made the declaration than there was a commotion in the corner of the room. Billie didn't acknowledge the obvious part she'd played in bringing on the upset. She just walked toward the disturbance as if she hadn't been the one who tempted fate.

When we reached the hubbub, I saw that the bride, Holly, was on the ground in the center of a group of people who had gathered around her. One hand was covering her ear, and the other was fanning out beneath the cake-cutting table. "I lost my earring. They are my grandmother's Tiffany diamond earrings."

Along with the wedding guests, Billie and I began to search the area when I remembered that Holly had been putting them on in the upstairs bathroom when the photographer came in to grab some candids of her getting ready. He'd knocked right after she'd slid one earring on, and she didn't remember her putting the other one on.

I touched Holly's arm. "I'll go check the upstairs bathroom."

The bride nodded, and I stood.

"Don't close the door," Billie reminded me.

I nodded, and as I walked away, I heard Trevor ask why I couldn't shut the door. My sister explained that the staff had informed us not to shut that door because it automatically locked from the inside. They had someone coming out tomorrow to fix it.

As I walked up the back steps to the second floor, I noticed the dark wood railings with ornate carvings and thought that this building was probably about the same age as Grandma Betty's house. I wondered if we were doing the right thing by just letting it sit there. She would not have wanted that.

She and my granddad were known for taking in ‘strays.' Whenever anyone needed a roof over their head and warm food in their stomach, they had both. Over the years, countless ‘boarders' who were never charged any rent had stayed in their spare rooms.

Grandma Betty would hate the thought of all five bedrooms sitting empty. But we didn't have a choice. It just wasn't safe for tenants.

I made myself a promise that once this wedding season was over, I'd figure out what we were going to do. If it meant selling my condo—that took ten years to save enough to cover the down payment—and moving into the house to fund renovations, then I would. Even if that meant I had to eat takeout every night because I didn't have a functional kitchen.

And maybe I wouldn't be doing it alone. I'd always envisioned me and Simon settling down there and raising a family. I checked my phone again. He still hadn't called back. But he would. I had a feeling that when he did, my entire life was going to change.

In these last two messages, there was something different in his voice. In all the years that I'd known him, he'd never preemptively called me to let me know he'd be back in town. He'd only ever called when he was in town and wanted to see me.

He was thinking of me. This was not just convenience or habit; it was premeditated. That had to mean something. It just had to.