Page 61 of That Secret Something

My silly little heart leapt at the plural, and I couldn’t fight the smile on my face. Rebecca must have noticed it because she mirrored the same one.

If younger Jess could see me now, she’d have a full-blown panic attack. Older Jess might too, if she thought about it too much. I breathed in, reminding myself to be present in the moment. Because looking at her now, with her hair a mess and my heart in her hands, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

Twenty-One

Like most weddings, the closer we got to the date, the more stressful it became. My living room was currently a crime scene for disassembled centrepieces, with peach flowers, leaves, and candles strewn about the floor. I enjoyed getting creative; in my free time, it was a way to release stress from the day. However, when creativity was paired with work and flimsy material, instead of the pressure easing, it magnified, making getting creative counterproductive quickly.

There was a knock at the door—probably my late-night order of biodegradable paper flowers. They were a bugger to shape without tearing.

I groaned, trying to remove my fingers from the arrangement I was working on without ripping off my skin. I was only half-successful. I cursed my decision to offer my centrepiece-making skills to Lily instead of hiring someone to do it. They could afford it, after all. But recently I’d been dutifully playing the role of wedding planner. The circle of guilt feeding stress feeding guilt probably had a little something to do with it too.

There was another knock on the door as I tried to untangle myself from a roll of ribbon. I caught the time on the clock. Maybe Rebecca had finished work early? Spending so much of our free time together recently had been a godsend, and she’d been right about the relationship bonus of stress relief. That woman knew what she was doing in that department.

After detaching myself from a ball of string, I made it to the door, almost tripping over my shoes in my haste.

“Finally. What the hell were you doing in there?” Lily stood on my front step, her arms crossed over her chest.

What are you doing here, more like? “I–uh–was just making the centrepieces.”

“Ooh, lovely!” She eyed a patch of sticky tape stuck to my shoulder. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” I stepped aside, trying to calm my racing heart. I closed the door behind her, immediately doing a quick check for any of Rebecca’s things that might be lying around.

Shit.

I spotted Rebecca’s orange hockey shirt lying on the floor by the chair in the corner. My eyes immediately jumped back to Lily, who, thankfully, was much more interested in the centrepieces to notice.

I angled my body to block off the view. Heat flushed my cheeks.

Be cool, Jess. Be cool…aloof.

“Are you alright?” Lily asked, inspecting my face.

“Yeah, sorry, I–uh…I was just in the zone. You know, crafting.”

“Did you forget about me coming around?”

It tickled a memory from my brain. I must not have written it in my diary. Damn it.

“Maybe a little bit.” I grimaced. Lily had stressed multiple times how important these last two weeks were. I was one of the main enforcers of that statement, too, and now I’d gone and forgotten she was coming over.

That could have been really, really bad. I fought the urge to look at Rebecca’s hockey shirt behind me. What if there was something else lying around?

“Jess!” Lily scolded, shooting me her best unimpressed look—one that Rebecca had been on the receiving end of many a time. “I need you to be on the ball. You’re the only one I can count on at the moment.”

“I am on the ball. We’re on track. I can vouch for that…being the wedding planner.”

“Good.” She smiled, and the tightness in my chest loosened just a little. “You’re so cute with your little nerdy stuff. I love what you’ve done with these.”

“Thanks. It’s a little fiddly, but it’s coming together.”

Lily nodded, the smile slipping from her face. She thumbed over some of the petals, letting out a big sigh.

“Everything alright?” I asked.

Her head tipped forward, brown hair obscuring her face. “I don’t know really. I just…” She exhaled, shaking her head. “Never mind.”

“Come on. You can talk to me, Lilz. You want a drink first? Tea?”

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