She's With Stupid Read online

  Emilie scrunched up her face in protest, but she leaned against the back of the couch and grudgingly took the phone. “What now?”

  Lana sidled up next to her so she could hear Kate’s side of the conversation.

  “I was calling to make sure you got home in one piece. Leo didn’t bore you to death with another frog story?”

  “Don’t!” Emilie warned, unable to keep the tightly bottled anger out of her voice. “How could you do that, Kate? The entire ride home he peppered me with questions about Ethan, wanting to know details about our ‘relationship.’ I could kill you.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line before Kate sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said without a hint of remorse. Before Emilie could point out her obvious insincerity, Kate quickly added in a slightly more penitent tone, “I really didn’t mean to upset you, Em! You know I didn’t…but you have to admit that Leo wasn’t exactly a gem tonight. When you and I weren’t talking, the silence at that table was deafening. He basically ignored you all night.”

  “Okay, so he ignored me,” Emilie conceded through gritted teeth. “He can be a total jerk sometimes. You win. But I honestly don’t see how Leo ignoring me is in any way different from the behavior of that idiot you keep throwing in my face.”

  Kate made a noise, but Emilie growled —seriously growled, like a pissed off mountain lion— and Kate immediately hushed up.

  “If you’ll recall,” Emilie continued, “Ethan was pretty ruthless when he stopped bothering to pretend he gave a damn about me, Kate. He cut me off without a backward glance, and I haven’t heard from him since. I’d say over a decade of silence is a pretty pointed way of ignoring someone. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Emilie,” Kate started, but she was quickly cut off.

  “No, Kate!” Emilie said in an increasingly desperate voice that had Lana’s expression quickly turning from shock to concern. “I don’t want to hear another defense of Ethan. It doesn’t matter anymore. I understand that he’s your cousin, but you have got to stop this. Whatever Ethan and I may have had ended a lifetime ago. It can’t be fixed with the power of positive thinking.” Emilie’s voice cracked, and Lana pulled her into a hug.

  “You have to stop pretending that Ethan and I are bound for some epic fairy tale ending,” Emilie whispered. “Please. It hurts too much.”

  Kate remained silent on the other end of the phone, for once in her life apparently at a genuine loss for words.

  Chapter 4

  “What about this one?”

  Lana threw a conspiratorial glance over her shoulder at Emilie. Since Lana happened to be holding up the most hideous dress ever created and Kate merely shrugged and murmured a vague, “It’s nice,” Emilie and Lana burst into a fit of giggles that led the shopkeeper to give them a tolerant, if slightly suspicious, shake of the head.

  Kate looked up from her intense examination of her nail polish, confused by the hilarity. “What’s so funny?”

  “The fact that you agreed to try this on,” said Lana. She held up the muffin-like concoction of lace, tulle, and sequins all sprinkled in a slap-dash fashion about the bodice. The gown had huge puffed sleeves worthy of Princess Diana and a skirt that, if the large red stripe that edged the bottom was any indication, had once been a circus tent.

  Kate’s eyes widened in horror, her attention now firmly focused on the dress. “I am NOT,” she shouted before being halted by Lana and Emilie’s chorus of “shh’s and shushes.”

  “I am not,” Kate said in a slightly lowered voice, “trying that on!”

  “But Kate, you said it was nice.” Emilie smirked at Kate’s horrified expression. “Weren’t you paying attention?”

  The bride-to-be shot them a half-hearted glare and moved towards the back of the dress shop. This was the third store they had been in and nothing had caught her eye yet. She was also getting sick of all the prissy, pencil thin sales ladies asking to measure her hips. They could mind their own business, thank you very much.

  The whole process of purchasing a wedding gown seemed totally pointless to Kate. It was just a dress — a frilly, uncomfortable, unflatteringly white dress that she was expected to spend a small fortune on, only to wear once and then stuff into the back of her closet. What idiot came up with that tradition? Every store seemed to have gowns that looked identical, and none of them had blown her proverbial skirt up. In fact, she was pretty unenthused by the selections here, too.

  She told Emilie as much and was met by a stoic stare that let Kate know what Emilie thought of her lack of enthusiasm.

  “It seems to me you’re pretty unenthused about your wedding in general,” Emilie said on a sigh. “You look about as excited as a puppy waiting to be spayed.”

  “Excellent use of metaphor, Em,” said Lana approvingly.

  “Thanks, I’ve been waiting to use it all morning.”

  Emilie slyly winked at Lana, Kate noted bitterly. The two of them had been whispering all day, and then pointing at Kate as if she was an animal in a zoo.

  “If you two are finished being mean, I am excited to find a dress. I just haven’t found it. They all look the same to me.” Kate whimpered pitifully and began batting her eyelashes at Emilie. “I bet you can tell the difference, Emmy. I bet you could pick me out a dress in no time at all. You’re so elegant and tasteful; I know you would pick the perfect gown.”

  Lana couldn’t help but laugh, both at Kate’s blatant sucking up and at Emilie’s blatantly flattered expression.

  “I don’t know, Kate,” said Emilie. “It is your wedding dress, and it’s something you should really be choosing for yourself.”

  Emilie’s reluctance would have been more convincing were she not already briskly flipping through the racks of dresses, pulling out a few as she worked her way down the aisles. Kate gave Lana a look of relief, and slid down the wall to wait patiently for Emilie to do all the work.

  Lana slid down beside her. “What’s going on with you, Kate? Isn’t the wedding gown something the bride should pick out?”

  Kate shrugged. “Why put myself through all the hassle? Emilie has good taste, she knows what I’ll look good in, and she obviously likes all this wedding crap more than I do.”

  “But it’s your wedding!” Lana said for at least the tenth time today.

  “Why does everyone feel the need to keep pointing that out to me?” Kate asked with an exasperated groan. “I’m getting married. That doesn’t mean that I’ve turned into the type of person who knows the difference between Vera Wang and Vera Bradley. That’s what we have Em for.”

  Kate smiled serenely at Emilie, who was already working through the fifth row of dresses with an unholy gleam of determination in her eye. After obligingly grinning at Emilie’s fervor, Lana turned her attention back to Kate.

  “Come off it, Kate,” Lana instructed. “I know you’re not into fashion, but in over twenty years of friendship I have never known you to allow anyone —not even Emilie— to pick out your clothes for you. It reminds you too much of your mom.”

  “This is different!” Kate insisted. “A wedding dress is a big deal, and I don’t want to look like a complete moron in front of all those people…or worse, in all those pictures. Emilie is much better at stuff like this and I’m happy to let her work her magic. As long as she doesn’t put me in anything too poufy or sparkly,” she amended.

  Kate cast a slightly worried look Emilie’s way. Then she brightened. “Besides, Em already picked out the bridesmaid dresses, the photographer, and the reception site. She’s on a roll, so why stop her now?”

  “You didn’t even pick out the reception venue?” Lana shook her head, clearly perplexed by Kate’s total lack of interest in her own wedding. “I don’t understand how a person could be so blasé about the seemingly endless numbers, pictures, instructions, and receipts that Emilie keeps piling into her notebook.”

  “Nah,” Kate said with a wave of her hand. “If Em wants to have it in a ballroom at Music Hall, then we’ll have it in
a ballroom at Music Hall.”

  She shrugged again and happily watched as Emilie continued to work her way through the racks of dresses with speed and efficiency.

  Lana raised her eyebrows at Kate’s attitude, but before she could re-voice her concern, Emilie hurried back down the aisle loaded down with about ten dresses.

  “Wow, Em. How’d you get so many so fast?” asked a suitably impressed Kate.

  Emilie gave her a slightly bored look. “Because I’m me.”

  “See,” Kate turned to Lana and smugly said, “I told you so.”

  When Kate disappeared into the dressing room five minutes later with the first dress, Lana nudged Emilie. “Do you think she’s all right?”

  Emilie, distracted by the sea of organza and satin she was trying to organize, looked up in confusion. “Why? Do you think I need to go in there with her? Because you know how weird she is about people seeing her in her underwear—”

  “I do not have a problem with people seeing me in my underwear!” Kate called from the dressing room. “I have a problem with Emilie seeing me in my underwear.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” asked an indignant Emilie.

  “You always have something negative to say about them!”

  “Well if you would buy a new pair every decade or so I wouldn’t have to point out all the holes and bleach stains on them, now would I?”

  Concern about Kate and her upcoming nuptials forgotten for the moment, Lana was overtaken by a memory that had her chortling with glee. “Do you remember when she refused to wear the sports bra her mom brought her at that softball tournament and her boobs were bouncing up and down like rubber balls as she ran the bases?”

  Emilie paused from fussing with the dresses to bend over with laughter. “How could anyone forget that? It was classic!”

  Emilie and Lana were hiccupping with merriment when Kate threw the dressing room door open in a huff and tossed a shoe at their heads. “That was not funny! My boobs were bruised for a week after that game, every boy in school teased me about it for months, and it has nothing to do with me finding a wedding dress!”

  “Jeez, Kate, calm down. We were only kidding,” soothed Lana.

  Emilie, meanwhile, had calmed down enough to survey the unzipped dress with disapproval. “Nope, this one isn’t right. Try another one.”

  She pushed a disgruntled but obedient Kate back into the tiny room and directed an amused glance at Lana when Kate launched the dress she had been wearing seconds before over the door. Emilie caught it without saying a word and began trying to get it back on the hanger.

  Lana grabbed the end of the dress to help her, realizing with a start that this was the first time they had all spent quality time together since Lana had moved back home. Though they lived in the same apartment, Emilie had been spending a lot of time with Leo, and Lana had been spending a lot of time with Brian. Because of their hectic schedules, Lana still hadn’t gotten around to telling her friends about that whole Brian thing.

  Maybe she had been avoiding the conversation a little bit, too. When Lana and Brian had broken up in high school, Kate had gotten the entire girl’s softball team to pour hot glue and feathers all over his Mustang, and Emilie had somehow managed to convince the cheer-whore Brian had been sleeping with on the side that it was a stupendous idea to broadcast over the loud speakers that he had herpes and a pinkie-sized penis. The school administration had been less than pleased, but Emilie had serenely assured the principal that it was a very critical public service announcement all the girls of New Bern Christian needed to hear.

  Neither of her friends had been impressed when Lana slipped up two years ago by sleeping with him and, given the vitriolic nature of their opinions on all past Stupid’s, Lana was hesitant to admit that she was now semi-seriously seeing one of them. Lana chewed on her bottom lip as she worried over her predicament. She’d hoped that Emilie might be sympathetic about Brian since she was ostensibly in the process of falling in love and was thus more apt to look on the sunny side of life.

  However, Emilie seemed increasingly more irritated than charmed whenever Leo called lately, and she also still turned a suspicious shade of red any time Kate brought up Ethan’s name, which was becoming an increasingly common occurrence in spite of Emilie’s plea for a cease and desist. After a brief lull in Ethan-centered chatter, Kate seemed to have redoubled her efforts to pepper conversations with his name any chance she could find. When Lana had quizzed Kate about her present tack, Kate had firmly declared that, in this case, she knew what was best for Emilie far better than Emilie herself did. Thus far Emilie had not called Kate on it, which made Lana wonder if Kate was, by some miracle, actually right.

  Her musings were put on pause when Kate stepped out of the dressing room, only to have Emilie grimly shake her head and immediately send her back to try again. “Put on the strapless one with the alençon lace at the bottom,” Emilie ordered before returning to her task of sorting and re-hanging the discarded gowns.

  Determined not to be distracted by Kate, who was now hopping around in the dressing room like a kitten on crack, whining about “stupid whale boning,” Lana decided to just bite the bullet. After moving the dresses in the No pile out of her way, she sat on a step-stool and stared thoughtfully at Emilie.

  “So, how goes it with your love life, Emmy?”

  At the question, Emilie dropped a hanger and stared at Lana…warily. Interesting.

  “Um, well, it’s…um…” Emilie stopped sputtering and closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again she appeared to have regained her calm. “Things are great. Really great.” Emilie flashed Lana a wan smile and concentrated on a bow at the back of one of the dresses.

  There was a loud “harrumph” from Kate’s dressing room that both Lana and Emilie chose to ignore.

  “That’s good,” Lana said cautiously. “You know, I can see why you’re attracted to Leo. He’s all broody and serious — just your type.” When Emilie did not respond, Lana furrowed her brow and tried again. “And he’s cute, too. Every time he comes over he watches you like he’s just waiting for the chance to grab you and kiss you.”

  Apparently no longer able to keep her opinions to herself, Kate exited the dressing room in a very pretty white dress with just the slightest touch of lace along the hem. “If you ask me—”

  “I didn’t actually,” said Emilie in a falsely sweet voice that warned Kate to back off.

  Kate, of course, disregarded the warning. “If you ask me, you are only attracted to this guy because he’s moody and boring and wrong for you.”

  “Excuse me? You don’t even know him. And he is not wrong for me.”

  Great, thought Lana. Just perfect. She tried to talk about her problems, and it turned into The Kate and Emilie Show.

  “I have met him on two occasions,” replied an impervious Kate. “Once when I brought you lunch back in September and he was sniffing around your desk like a hungry golden retriever, and again on that stupid double date last week. Based on those two blessedly brief meetings, I know all I need to know and can tell you without a doubt in my mind that he is most definitely wrong for you. Not to mention bad for you.”

  Emilie was now muttering under her breath about meddling friends in glass houses. Lana, however, was interested to hear more of Kate’s opinion of Leo —Emilie was curiously mum on the subject of Leo’s personality. “Why do you think he’s bad for her?” she asked Kate. “Did he do something I don’t know about?”

  Happy to have found a potential ally, Kate eagerly turned to Lana. “He didn’t do or say much of anything besides make a few surly cracks about Emilie’s frog fear. He practically ignored her all through dinner, and then, just when it appeared that Emilie might be getting annoyed with him, he would reach out and squeeze her hand to placate her. It’s obvious that he is a complete stick in the mud who’s taking advantage of Emilie’s unfortunate soft spot for losers.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about!�
�� Emilie placed her hand on her hip, a sure sign of her ire, and glared at Kate. “Fine, Leo doesn’t talk much. I didn’t see Stupid Will adding anything terribly enlightening to the conversation. In fact, if memory serves, he rarely adds anything to any conversation that doesn’t revolve around Wii or cheese balls!”

  Kate stamped her foot. “That is not the point! You’re just trying to change the subject because you know I’m right. We are talking about you and Stupid Leo, who is clearly not right for you, and—”

  “Forgive me if I find your sudden pickiness over the men I date somewhat confusing given how intent you seem to be on throwing Idiot Ethan in my face every five seconds! And, by the way, how could you possibly think it was okay not to tell me he might be in the wedding?”

  “Now who’s touchy? I am simply trying to point out to you that, until Ethan’s balls dropped and he started thinking he had to act like a total guy to prove he was a man, you two seemed pretty cozy. You were practically joined at the hip for years, and I know he still means something to you whether you want to own up to it or not! And I also cannot fail to notice the strange similarities between Ethan’s idiotic teenage behavior and Stupid Leo’s adult behavior, so excuse me if—”

  “I accidentally had sex with Brian Connelly three weeks ago!” Lana bellowed over the din of Kate and Emilie’s argument.

  Her proclamation brought the two of them up short, and the abrupt silence after the shrill noises of a moment before caused the very nervous sales lady, who had been hovering nearby for the past half an hour hoping that the three crazies would leave her quiet little shop, to peek timidly around the corner of the dressing room area. “Is e-everything okay in here ladies? Can I get you any different sizes?”

  “Do we look like we are discussing dress sizes you old—” Kate was interrupted mid-rant by the hand Emilie was using to cover her mouth.

  “No thanks. We’re good right now,” Emilie said in what passed for a composed voice.