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  She’s With Stupid

  By

  Amanda Dennis

  Text copyright © 2013 by A. R. Hobbs

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without the prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  Chapter 1

  “You’re marrying that cretin? Have you recently been hit over the head with a sharp, insanity-inducing object?”

  The shrill voice pierced the din of the small coffee shop, causing several heads to turn and stare at the women sitting in the corner table by the window of the Perfect Perk. The curvy girl currently slinking down into her seat flushed guiltily as an older man at a nearby table shushed her. Her light brown eyes flicked to her two friends, who were alternately laughing and scowling at her, and the red of her cheeks flamed brighter, rivaling the deep auburn of her hair.

  The laughing woman with the spiky magenta hair giggled uncontrollably as she patted her friend’s hand in a consoling way while the scowling blonde awkwardly displayed a ring on her left hand. The redhead glared at the ring and pulled a face before straightening her spine. She looked thoroughly disgusted, though she was clearly trying to be less vocal about it than she had been a moment before.

  As the usual buzz of the Perfect Perk resumed, the motley crew put their heads together again and resumed their fervent conversation. More than a few ears remained tilted in their direction as the redhead lightly swatted the blonde with a napkin and deftly avoided a kick from their smiling companion.

  Emilie tossed a lock of impossibly bright hair over her shoulder and mentally counted to ten to prevent her hands from acting of their own accord and wringing her friends’ necks — Kate’s for making such an important announcement so nonchalantly and Lana’s for finding the impending nuptials amusing rather than horrifying. Which they absolutely were. She couldn’t believe Kate was planning to marry the allegedly human male she had been living with for the past four months. It seemed impossible that Emilie could have been so unaware of the severity of Kate’s attachment to a guy they had collectively dubbed “Stupid Will.”

  Still, as she looked into Kate’s pleading eyes, plainly begging her to accept this turn of events with grace, and Lana’s questioning gaze, plainly curious about her dramatic reaction to Kate’s engagement, Emilie grudgingly sighed and reached into her bag for a pen and a notebook. Someone was going to have to plan this shindig, and Emilie knew from years of experience that the task was going to fall on her.

  Lana quietly sipped her vanilla frappe while her two best friends began making plans for what was evidently going to be the wedding of the century. She smiled with fondness at Emilie, who had already taken up the reins of planning the entire bash. Since no event planner could possibly hope to keep up with Emilie, Kate was smiling and nodding and wisely agreeing to do whatever Emilie said she should do. Girly stuff involving cakes and flowers had never been Kate’s thing, so she was obviously more than happy to let Emilie make all the decisions.

  As their voices babbled on, Lana recalled with fondness the day she’d met Emilie and Kate. It had been their first day of kindergarten at New Bern Academy, a small private school located in the equally small town of New Bern, Ohio. On that fateful September day, Lana Tate had shyly offered Emilie Thatcher a can of peaches in exchange for her peanut butter cookies and Kate Drake had not-so-subtly hinted that she would be happy to finish up whatever food the other two chose not to consume. They’d been friends ever since.

  “I’ve told you a thousand times that your spray tan is very clearly sprayed on,” Emilie’s exasperated voice interrupted Lana’s musings. “You have got to stop the madness if you don’t want to look like an Oompa Loompa on vacation at the Jersey Shore!”

  “So says the palest chick in town,” Kate muttered. “You could easily pass for a vampire were it not for your total aversion to fun.”

  “I have fun!”

  “Reading does not count as fun, Emilie. Henry James is never going to keep you warm at night.”

  “Maybe not, but at least Henry won’t give me mono.”

  Her friends amiable bickering caused Lana to sigh wistfully. Being home again, even for a visit, was helping to mend the strange disconnect she had been feeling lately, even from these women she had always felt were more sisters than friends. Lana knew that her sense of detachment was partly her fault, seeing as how she’d done everything in her power to get away from New Bern and its cookie-cutter setting. The small town, with its old-fashioned gaslights and large, shady trees lining the quiet streets, perfectly suited traditionalists like Emilie and Kate. Nearly every home looked like an elaborate gingerbread house, complete with turrets, gabled roofs, and stained glass windows above the doors.

  There was even a village square in the center of New Bern, decked out with a large fountain on the green and surrounded by cutesy boutiques, a fully restored and operational movie theater from the 1920’s, a turn of the century pink and white ice cream parlor, and the cozy Perfect Perk coffee shop they were sitting in right now to complete the postcard-ready picture. The whole town looked like it had been modeled after a freakin’ Jimmy Stewart film.

  Emilie had always adored it. Though she took full advantage of her father’s bank account and traveled to exotic locales whenever the opportunity presented itself, there had never been any doubt that she would stay in New Bern. Kate was a homebody as well, and she’d never had the slightest urge to leave the town in which she was born. Lana envied them sometimes. Unfortunately for her, what had always seemed charming and safe to her friends felt narrow-minded and restrictive to Lana, who’d high-tailed it out of Ohio two days after high school graduation and resolved to never look back.

  So she was understandably surprised to realize that, lately, she was missing New Bern almost as much as she was missing Kate and Emilie. Though she had tried to ignore her sudden, disconcerting longing for home, it had only grown more pronounced in the last few months. The fact that her life currently sucked may have had something to do with this.

  What had seemed like a dream come true when she first moved to sunny California had quickly turned into a less than sunny nightmare. The band that Lana had so optimistically believed would hit it big was about as ineffectual as it was humanly possible to be, and sharing one small apartment with four smelly band mates who were under the false impression that anyone who shaved their legs and wore a bra was really a free cleaning lady in disguise was doing nothing for her sense of humor.

  “What do you think, Lan?”

  Lana flushed at the sharp look in Emilie’s sparkling eyes. She hadn’t been paying attention, and Lana would bet her nose rings that Emilie knew it.

  Still, Lana took a shot and tentatively nodded. “I think that sounds…g
reat?”

  Emilie haughtily raised her eyebrow, but the effect was ruined by the smile she couldn’t quite contain. “Really,” she said dryly. “I never took you for a fan of acid green ruffles and neon pink ribbons, but, hey, if that’s what you want the bridesmaids to wear, then that’s what we’ll wear.”

  She gave Lana what could only be termed as an evil genius grin — the kind she always flashed when she knew she had gotten the better of someone. Lana felt her eyes widen in alarm before she glanced at Kate, who was failing to hide a smirk of her own.

  Shaking her head at both of them, Lana gritted her teeth. Since she had moved away, they apparently felt the need to tease her mercilessly whenever she was around in order to make up for lost time.

  “No to the ruffles and the ribbons,” she said firmly. “I refuse to wear anything that makes me look like a heffalump or a whoozle.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Kate mused in a contemplative tone. “I always thought whoozle’s were kind of cute.”

  The dead serious expression on Kate’s face led all three of them to burst into a fit of girlish giggles that caused the staid patrons of Perfect Perk to give them several more dirty looks, which only caused the giggles to escalate into full blown belly-laughs. Five minutes of hyperventilating and a rather regrettable incident involving a large gulp of peppermint latte shooting out of Kate’s left nostril later, and the girls were finally able to calm themselves.

  “Okay, okay, let’s focus.” Emilie held up her hand and called for order while she tried to catch her breath. “Kate, if you’re really serious about doing this in May we only have seven months till this ill-fated wedding and that does not leave us any time for nonsense.” Ignoring Kate’s scowl, Emilie shrugged. “Well? Are you sure you want to get married on Memorial Day weekend? Because everything’s going to be way more expensive than if you waited another week.”

  Emilie let that sink in, absently twirling the straw in her cup before giving Kate a measured glance and saying bluntly, “Or let’s be honest, you could just not do it at all and save yourself the time and money it’s going to cost when you get a divorce in two years or less.” She smiled sweetly at Kate, whose face had taken on a distinctly mulish expression, and Lana chewed on her straw to disguise her amusement.

  “Memorial Day is both Will’s and my birthday! We think it’ll be cute to do it then — it’s the whole point of hurrying up the wedding.” With that dubious pronouncement, Kate threw her hands in the air as if that was the most logical reason on earth to hurry up your wedding to a complete numskull.

  Emilie narrowed her eyes at Kate, clearly trying to ascertain the level of sincerity in her ridiculous statement. Strangely, Kate had said it without even a whiff of irony. She looked to Lana for help.

  Lana obligingly winced and leaned towards Kate. “What happens if you two ever, you know, break up? Won’t that be kind of awkward every time your birthday rolls around?”

  “Not to mention the fact that, prior to your break-up, Stupid Willy will inevitably try to lump your birthday and anniversary presents into one gift, thereby cutting your chances of getting anything good out of this relationship in half,” Emilie said with a smug smile.

  Kate picked up two packs of sugar and promptly hurled them at their heads. “Don’t be rude! We are not going to break up, so that won’t be a problem. And I don’t care about presents — being with him is enough.”

  Lana and Emilie began gagging at the mushiness falling from usually sensible Kate’s lips.

  “Well, it is!” Kate said over their laughter. After a moment, Kate grudgingly cracked a smile. “But Em, uh, you might want to make a note to remind me to give Will a detailed lecture about separate birthday and anniversary gifts.” At Emilie’s smug look and Lana’s amused one, Kate shook her head sheepishly. “Okay! So maybe being with him isn’t enough to totally rule out the value of presents.”

  “Whatever, it’s your annulment.” Emilie sighed and obligingly made a note in her small blue notebook. “Now let’s get back to work. After I’ve compiled a list of everything we’re going to need to purchase and everything else we’re going to need to do, I’ll break it down and print up a copy for you guys, okay?”

  Kate and Lana rolled their eyes in unison. Sometimes Emilie took herself way too seriously.

  Emilie, perfectly aware of the direction of their thoughts, just sipped her iced tea and rolled her own eyes. “I’m not kidding. Unless Kate wants to get married in a burlap sack on her Grandpa’s old Kentucky home, then we have to start making plans and booking venues, and don’t even get me started on the importance of ordering the dress several months in advance. Hold on a sec, I need to make another list.”

  As Emilie was rooting through her purse, which could more appropriately be termed an attractive piece of carry-on luggage considering the amount of gear she managed to haul around with her, Kate and Lana sat back and enjoyed the sense of rightness that invaded both of their senses.

  “Got it!” declared a triumphant Emilie as she pulled what appeared to be a three subject binder and a set of highlighters from the black hole that was her purse. “Now we can get started. Lana, I’m going to need to know which dates you can come back in town over the next few months. We’ll need you for the dress shopping — we should all be there for that. And then the fittings — it would suck to get a badly altered bridesmaid dress. And the cake tasting — you can’t miss that! And the showers — I think we should have a family one and a church one because that just means more presents for Kate, which is obviously the only reason she could possibly be marrying Stupid,” she muttered under her breath while she continued to speed write.

  Kate opened her mouth to protest, but Emilie didn’t give her a chance. “And of course you won’t want to miss the Bachelorette party, which I actually think you should plan because you’re way more fun than me. Then you’ll have to come back for the wedding. Well, obviously! So what dates are you thinking?”

  Emilie finished her mile-a-minute monologue with her pen poised and an expectant look on her face.

  A slightly bemused Lana looked at Kate, expecting to find a comrade in arms to tell Emilie to eat a brownie and lighten up. Instead, Kate was sitting back in her seat, calmly draining the last of her coffee with an inordinately content look on her face. Presumably, she had been counting on Emilie’s pathological need to plan when she had agreed to marry this Will person, whom Lana had yet to officially meet.

  “Um, that’s a lot of dates.” Lana’s voice trailed away as the potentially insane idea that had taken root in her mind at Kate’s announcement began to fully form. “So, I guess the simplest way to ensure that I am here to fulfill all of my co-maid of honor duties is to just move back here for a while.”

  There was stunned silence at the table for approximately four seconds before the squealing began.

  “What?! You’d move back to Ohio?” asked Emilie.

  “I thought you hated it here! You said it was the deepest pit of hell, and you wouldn’t live here again if the rest of the world burst into flames and New Bern was the only place left with a working fire hydrant,” Kate reminded her.

  “That’s a big decision to make on the spur of the moment, even for you,” said Emilie. “Is there another reason you want to come back here? And please, please, do not tell me it has something to do with Brian Connelly or I may have to slap some sense into you right here.”

  Lana’s eyes widened at Emilie’s unexpected comment. Of all the reasons she had for moving back to New Bern, Brian Connelly, erstwhile boyfriend and sometime booty call, had not even made the list. However, now that Emilie mentioned it, she made a mental note to look him up.

  At the sound of a pointed ahem, Lana jumped and looked up to find Emilie and Kate sharing a knowing glance before they turned their attention back to her. Lana squirmed at the frown Emilie was giving her — she really was way too shrewd for Lana’s own good.

  “You just read me a list the size of the Suspension Bridge telling me h
ow often I will be needed here,” Lana said, throwing her hands up in protest. “It’s not like my band is going to miss me. We haven’t booked a show in over a month. I’m getting sick of L.A., to tell you the truth, and my best friend is getting married. It seems like the perfect time to come home for a while and, I don’t know, review my options.”

  “Where will you stay?” asked Kate. “You can’t crash with Will and me because he freaks out when other people use our toilet. Sometimes he forgets to flush and I think he’s a little sensitive about it.” Kate heaved a regretful sigh while Lana gave her a disconcerted look.

  “Okay, let’s ignore the freakishly gross nature of your hubby-to-be for one second,” said Emilie. She cast a revolted glance in Kate’s direction before turning her attention back to Lana. “You can obviously stay with me for as long as you want to. There’s plenty of space as long as you don’t mind the old daybed in my spare room. We could always get a new mattress for it, and then it will be like new.”

  Lana released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and comforting warmth spread from her stomach to her chest as she looked at her two oldest friends, now grinning at her with glee. She would never tell Kate and Emmy that, of course. Potential rock stars did not get sappy over stuff like weddings and homecomings. It wasn’t dignified.

  “The daybed would be perfect,” she said instead. “I’ll get a job as soon as I can and help with rent. You’re sure you won’t feel crowded?”

  “Not at all,” Emilie waved Lana’s concern away. “It will be nice to have some company. It gets kind of lonely around there, to be honest. My place is way too big for just me.”

  “And who’s fault is that?” snorted Kate. “You wouldn’t be lonely if you would simply go out and find a new guy to replace all the other guys you’ve managed to ditch in the last three years. It’s not that hard, I found someone.”