She's With Stupid Read online

  Kate shoved Emilie’s hand away. “Yeah, so run along now and oomph—” She was again silenced by Emilie’s hand, this time jabbing forcefully in her side. Kate looked at Emilie in disbelief. “Ow!”

  Emilie gave Kate her tried and true Death-To-All-Who-Defy-Me look, which had caused many an eighth grader to wilt in fear, before again turning to the sales lady. “We’ll let you know if we need anything, but we’re fine now, ma’am.”

  Though the sales lady looked as if she wanted to disagree with her, she grudgingly nodded and left them alone again.

  Kate instantly turned her attention back to Lana. “You had sex with Brian Connelly? We are talking about the same high school loser with the disturbing Jim Morrison complex, right?”

  At Lana’s reluctant nod, Kate and Emilie threw up their hands in unison. “Are you nuts?” demanded Kate. “That guy was a royal ass and he cheated on you!”

  Lana was feeling slightly green around the gills. She had not actually intended to blurt out her secret like that, but Kate and Emilie were always nagging each other and Lana had been feeling left out. This was possibly not the best way to bring the focus back to her, but it had certainly worked.

  Shrugging helplessly, Lana frowned at her two best friends, who continued to stare at her like she was an escapee from a mental institution. “That was a long time ago, Kate! Besides, I didn’t plan it. It just sort of happened.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Emilie. “But how, exactly, do you have accidental sex with someone? Did Brian weave a spell over you that made your good sense fly out the window? Were you having an out of body experience? Did your panties magically disappear?”

  “No, Emilie, that sort of thing only happens to you.” Lana looked pointedly at Emilie, who blushed deeply.

  “Hey! That was one time on Halloween after I drank way too many Long Island Iced Teas. And there was no sex, accidental or otherwise, involved.”

  Kate held up her hand in a call for silence. “Okay, a) Emilie, I will be insisting on full disclosure about this disappearing panty incident at a later date, and b) Lana, what the heck were you thinking, having sex of any kind with that sleaze?”

  “He’s not a sleaze!” insisted Lana. “Or at least, he’s not anymore. He’s sincere and sweet now, and even though our reunion may have been kind of…unconventional…we’re having fun. You remember fun, right?”

  Kate glared, but Emilie put a restraining hand on her shoulder to quiet her. “The reunion doesn’t sound all that unconventional to me,” said Emilie. “Lots of people have break-up sex. You just waited ten years to do it.”

  “Eight years,” said Kate. “Remember she already did this with him two Christmases ago. This is more like a relapse.”

  “It was not break-up sex!” Lana threw up her hands in exasperation. “And it was not a relapse! It was accidental, but ultimately worthwhile and amazing, make-up sex.”

  “Wait, what do you mean, you’re having fun?” Emilie’s voice became suspicious. “Are you saying that this wasn’t a one time bout of insanity? You can’t be saying you’re seeing him on a regular basis now because that would be—”

  “Craziness,” finished Kate.

  “Look, I know you’re worried about me, and I appreciate it,” Lana said patiently, trying desperately to keep her cool and not remind them that they had been at each other’s throats not five minutes ago, sniping about their own respective love lives. “But Brian is a different person now. He regrets hurting me and he wants to try again. I want to try again, too.”

  “Wow.” Kate shook her head at Lana’s idiocy. “You are never allowed to lecture me on the wisdom of my decision-making skills again.”

  Emilie nudged Kate into silence, looking thoughtful and even a little understanding. “Lana.” Emilie chewed on her lower lip for a moment before taking a deep breath. “It has always been our collective opinion that once a guy has proven himself Stupid, he will always be Stupid—”

  “Exactly,” interjected Kate.

  “However,” Emilie said over Kate. “We could have been wrong. I hope we were wrong.”

  “What?!” If Kate’s mouth fell any more open, it would drag on the floor.

  Ignoring Kate’s sputtering, and not willing to give Emilie the chance to change her mind, Lana reached out and pulled Emilie into a hug. “Thanks, Em. I kind of hoped you’d get it.”

  Emilie gave her a reluctant smirk in return.

  “Get what, exactly?” Kate looked both annoyed and genuinely confused by the sudden turn their conversation had taken.

  “Never mind, Kate, just get over here.” Emilie dragged a baffled Kate into the circle. The girls stood in a loose embrace for a few moments before Kate let out a longsuffering sigh and stepped back to give the gaping bodice of her dress a tug.

  “All right, all right. Enough mushy stuff. Do we like this dress or not?”

  Lana and Emilie grinned and turned to appraise the gown. Lana eyed it up and down, while Emilie walked around Kate a few times and surveyed the cut of the material. It fit Kate’s style: simple and unadorned, but not too plain. The color set off her skin tone nicely, and the lace at the bottom gave it just the right touch of elegance.

  After sharing a brief consulting glance with Lana, Emilie turned Kate towards the mirrors. “This is the one. It’s perfect.”

  Lana nodded in agreement. “It’s definitely you, Kate.”

  Looking at their reflections in the glass, they were each struck by the significance of the moment. Buying a wedding gown was an incredibly grown-up thing to do, which meant that, for better or for worse, they really were grown-up’s now.

  For some reason, that made them all a little sad.

  Ignoring their collective melancholy, Kate nodded her head decisively. “Okay. Let’s go put this baby on my mom’s credit card and get out of here.”

  Kate gave her friends a reassuring smile, and quickly turned away from the mirror.

  Later that evening, Emilie and Lana collapsed in a heap on the couch. Dress shopping was very tiring business and they were both worn out. Lana had cancelled her date with Brian due to said exhaustion — the things she and Brian did apparently required her to be at full strength.

  Emilie was free for the night too because Leo had to do something with his bowling league, or maybe it was his hockey league…she hadn’t really been paying attention. She was simply grateful to be off her feet right now, without having to worry about getting prettied up for a guy.

  With a sigh, Emilie picked up the remote and began flipping through the TV stations, pausing at a show featuring several Bridezilla’s swinging through the air on a trapeze in order to win money for their wedding. She absently wondered if Kate would do something like that. Somehow, Emilie didn’t think Kate would care to go to that kind of trouble.

  “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something—”

  Emilie interrupted Lana before she could finish. “Lana, I do not want to talk about Ethan Drake. In fact, if I have to say his name one more time today I may shave my head and get me to a nunnery just to save myself the aggravation of discussing that man.” She sent Lana an intimidating look to prove she meant it.

  “Actually, I wanted to talk about Kate.” Lana tried, and failed, to suppress a smile.

  Emilie’s face flamed under Lana’s knowing scrutiny. Trying to shrug off her telling slip, she turned off the TV to give Lana her full attention. “What about her?”

  Mercifully deciding to overlook Emilie’s obvious Ethan issues for the moment, Lana shrugged. “Do you think she’s okay? Marrying the stupidest guy on the planet and pretending that she’s happy about it isn’t exactly normal behavior.”

  “Hm…” Emilie thought about it for a minute, then heaved a weary sigh and shook her head. “I don’t know, Lan. She’s being so stubborn about this. Any other time, she would have dumped his sorry butt the second she got a whiff of limburger. It’s like she thinks Steamboat Willy is the best she can do, so she’s just given up on trying to find someth
ing better and settled for him. It’s kind of sad.”

  “You don’t think she’s, like, hopelessly in love with him, do you?”

  The very idea was absolutely appalling.

  Emilie scrunched up her face and made a gagging sound. “Eww. And no. I don’t think she even likes him all that much. If she did, I would suggest therapy or glasses or a lobotomy, but I really don’t believe that to be the case. Whenever I ask her how she feels about him, she just breezes over it and says she knows Will’s not perfect, but that it’s time for her to get married. It’s like she’s convinced herself that she’ll be happy once she gets a ring on her finger.”

  “Well, we have to stop her. Don’t we?”

  “How do you suggest we do that?” Emilie leaned back into the couch and waited for Lana’s big idea. Then she waited some more, as Lana continued to draw a blank.

  “Exactly,” Emilie sighed. “Short of kidnapping her and knocking some sense into her, I think we have to just, I don’t know, make sure she’s aware that we’re concerned about her. And that we would totally support her if she ditched the dweeb.”

  “That’s it?” Lana stared at Emilie with dismay. “Why can’t we flat out tell her she’s acting like a dummy and that she needs to end this thing now before it’s too late?”

  Emilie rested her fist against her temple. “I’m afraid that might push her farther away,” she said gloomily. “And we need to be here for her when she finally wakes up and realizes that she’s making a ginormous mistake.”

  There was a long pause as they both ruminated on that thought.

  Eventually, Emilie broke the silence with another sigh. “So you don’t think she’s really serious about asking Ethan to be in the wedding, do you?”

  Chapter 5

  Thinking that her friend was in the living room grading papers, Lana tiptoed down the hall towards Emilie’s bedroom hoping to borrow/steal some of her ludicrously expensive French perfume to wear to Kate’s engagement party later. However, when Lana opened the bedroom door to find a pale, harried redhead surrounded by a small mountain of clothes, all thoughts of friendly perfume filching instantly left her head.

  The normally tidy room looked like it had been hit by a windstorm. Clothes and shoes were strewn haphazardly across the floor and bed, and Lana could barely make out the reading chair in the corner of the room because it, too, was covered with discarded articles of clothing. Emilie stood in the middle of it all, looking hopelessly lost.

  “Uh, Emmy,” Lana said as she stepped tentatively into the room. “Is everything okay?”

  Emilie spun around to face Lana so fast that her hair whipped around her face in a bright cloud. “Lana!” The panicked hitch in Emilie’s voice did nothing to dispel Lana’s concern. “You have to help me figure out what to wear to this party,” Emilie said in a hushed tone. “Everything I own makes me look fat.”

  Lana’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. Emilie was always impeccably dressed and perfectly coifed and there was nothing fat about her admittedly curvy frame, which Emilie well-knew. Since Emilie was not in the habit of succumbing to bouts of insecurity that led to apparent nervous breakdowns, something strange was definitely afoot.

  Glancing down at Emilie’s twisting hands, Lana saw that she was clutching some kind of stone, absently rubbing it between her fingers in an apparent effort to calm herself. It took a moment for Lana to recognize it as a rose quartz Ethan had given Emilie on her thirteenth birthday. Odd, since Lana could have sworn Emilie had tossed that stone into Lake Michigan when she was sixteen during a very elaborate We Hate Boys, Especially Ones Named Ethan ritual organized by Kate.

  Shaking off her mild confusion, Lana slowly and calmly said, “You know I’ll help you, Em. Um, but can I ask why the sudden fashion meltdown?”

  Emilie promptly burst into tears.

  Alarmed, Lana rushed forward to give Emilie a hug and steer her over to the bed. “Hey! It’s okay. Just breathe.”

  After taking a few deep breaths, Emilie raised her head from between her knees and gave Lana a plaintive look, the freckles sprinkled faintly across her nose standing out against the pallor of her skin. “He’s going to be there tonight,” Emilie whispered. “He’s going to be there, and I hate myself for being so freaked out about it. But every time I think about coming face to face with him, I start shaking.” Her dark eyes widened in distress as she tightly clutched Lana’s hand. “How do I make it stop?”

  Lana furrowed her brows, trying to decide who they were talking about. “Leo?” she guessed. “It’s just an engagement party, Em. I think even Leo can handle it.”

  Emilie groaned in frustration and stood. She was soon pacing around the room, absently kicking aside garments as she went. “Not Leo!” Emilie huffed. “Him.”

  “Okay…” Lana said cautiously.

  Emilie heaved a clearly exasperated sigh. “Kate asked him to be in the wedding, so he’s obviously invited to the engagement party. How am I supposed to avoid him for the rest of my life if I have to give him instructions and pose for pictures with him for stupid Kate’s stupid wedding?”

  A belated light bulb went off in Lana’s brain, and her eyes widened with pity. “You’re worried about seeing Ethan again.”

  At Emilie’s annoyed glare, Lana went to stand beside her friend, feeling vaguely amazed. Though she’d been well-aware that Emilie was harboring long-buried feelings for Ethan, Lana had never dreamed the mere idea of seeing him again could make her so distraught.

  “Em,” Lana said in her most soothing voice. “It’s going to be a big party. You won’t have to be alone with him or anything. And even if you are, it’s been ages since all that…stuff…happened. Couldn’t you try to maybe forgive him just a little?”

  Emilie’s chin tilted stubbornly. “No, I really couldn’t.”

  “Okay,” Lana’s lips curved in a smile. “Then just treat him like you’d treat any other guy who pissed you off this much.”

  “No other guy has ever pissed me off this much,” Emilie said with a bewildered frown.

  Since it seemed counterproductive to calming Emilie down, Lana refrained from commenting on that and instead smiled. “Then just ignore Ethan tonight, show him you’ve moved on! It’s not worth making yourself sick over.”

  Emilie nodded sadly. “I know he’s not worth all of this, Lan. I know he isn’t even part of my life anymore.” A spark of determination entered her eyes. “But I still want to make his eyes pop out of his head with lust when he sees me.” She shrugged sheepishly. “Is that wrong?”

  Lana’s startled laugh broke the heaviness in the room. Emilie was kind of adorable, standing there in a rumpled old t-shirt and looking unmistakably guilty about caring in the slightest what Ethan thought of her. This was understandable since Emilie wasn’t usually the type to care about impressing a guy, least of all one whom she had once solemnly vowed to hate “until people in hell went ice fishing.”

  Still, if full blown lust was what she wished to inspire, who was Lana to judge?

  “It’s not wrong at all, Em,” Lana reassured as she looked at the clothes piled around the room. “And you know I’ve got your back, but we’d better hurry. Kate wanted us to be there in an hour and it might take a while to sift through all of this.”

  Emilie’s face brightened with a grin, and she threw her arms around Lana. “You’re the best.”

  Lana gave a rueful shake of her head. “Remember that the next time I do something you don’t approve of.”

  Thanks to Emilie’s brazen disregard for traffic laws, they reached the party only ten minutes late. As they exited the car, Lana gave her friend a critical once over. They had finally chosen a simple black dress that dipped in a deep-V down Emilie’s generous cleavage and flirted with the tops of her knees whenever she moved. Emilie’s poker-straight hair had been coaxed into soft red waves that fell to the middle of her back, and a touch of makeup had restored her complexion to its usual glow. Ruby red stilettos and a simple chain around her neck
that allowed an egg-shaped garnet to fall strategically into the V of her dress completed the look. She had, in Lana’s opinion, never looked sexier.

  Emilie bit her scarlet lips nervously as they stepped onto the porch of the colonial home that belonged to Kate’s mother, Evelyn. “Are you sure this outfit isn’t too va-va-voom?”

  Lana rolled her eyes. “I told you, that’s the general idea. You look drop dead gorgeous,” she assured her for the fifth time since they had left the apartment. “You’ll have all the boys eating out of your hand — Ethan included.”

  Emilie let out a nervous laugh. “At least your mom isn’t coming to the party. If she saw me in this dress, I think she’d brand me a Jezebel.”

  Lana grinned and nodded her head in agreement. As soon as her mother had discovered that Evelyn was committing the heinous crime of serving wine at this soiree, she had vowed to boycott. It was just as well, in Lana’s opinion. Unleashing her mother onto a secular party atmosphere was akin to asking a nun to spend some quality time in a brothel. If the shock of all the sins being committed right before her eyes didn’t kill her, the stress of being forced to bite her tongue about them surely would.

  Taking one more deep breath, Emilie opened the front door and slipped inside with Lana right behind her. Kate was halfway down the staircase when they entered, and she practically leapt down the remaining steps.

  “Oh, thank goodness you’re finally here.” She divested Emilie and Lana of their coats, absently tossing them into the closet beside the door. “My mother is riding my nerves like a pony asking why Will said he’d work on the night of his own engagement party. I tried to tell her I have no control over what he does, but she refuses to listen to me. I need you to reason with her,” she said in a rush to Emilie. “Your mom already tried, but to no avail.”

  Kate turned to say something to Lana, but she caught herself and did a double take of Emilie. “Wow.” Her voice took on an awed tone as she observed both the little black dress and the fidgety woman wearing it. “Is all this for Frog Boy? Because I guarantee a man like that won’t know what to do with it.”