Page 88 of The Suite Life
I smile, caught off guard by her words, but touched that she would raise a toast to me on her wedding day. Then I look over at Donnie, to find his eyes already on me, as he raises a glass inmy direction. He looks so happy, so at home here with us all. I wonder what his deal is, and if what it is could be so bad that we might be over before we even get started.
With a gap between key wedding moments, I decide to nip to the loo, while I can, because I know how jam-packed the day is, and if I don’t go now, I’ll be holding it in until after the first dance, which I know is imminent.
There is a small building, next to the wedding marquee, which I’m assuming is purpose-built for outdoor events like today, because it houses a fully stocked bar and toilets, to save guests from trailing back to the hotel if they want or need something.
I step into the ladies’ and the first thing I do is check my dress in the mirror. Lucy had these beautiful long but lightweight yellow bridesmaid dresses made, so that we wouldn’t be too warm, but ensured that we still looked like bridesmaids. Yellow is not a colour I would usually go for but Lucy was right, it works. It’s such a flattering fit too, somehow knowing where to cling, and where to hang loose. This dress is doing a lot of legwork today, that’s for sure. I wonder if I can get other clothes made by the designer who made the dresses, so that I always feel this comfortable in my skin.
I take a step back, as the cubicle door opens, to let whoever it is pass me to get to the sink, only to find myself face to face with Sunshine.
There is a heavy awkwardness in the air as she passes me to wash her hands. She doesn’t say a word, and I don’t know what to say to her, so I head for the cubicle.
‘Wait,’ she says, stopping me before I can close the door.
I stop in my tracks. I’m surprised to see Sunshine’s expression soften. She even smiles – dare I say genuinely.
‘Do you have a minute?’ she says. ‘Can we have a quick chat?’
‘Sure,’ I reply – well, what can I say?
Her gaze drops for a moment to her feet as she seemingly examines her shoes, as though she’s struggling to spit out what she wants to say.
‘I wanted to say sorry,’ she tells, her eyes meeting mine. ‘For anything I might have done to hurt you.’
I can see something in her eyes, in her body language, and I can hear it in her voice too, something I don’t think I’ve seen before – I think it’s sincerity.
I’m taken aback by the unexpected apology. I was expecting her to make some kind of bitchy remark, or humblebrag, or even be angry with me.
‘Sunshine, you don’t have to?—’
‘No, I do,’ she interrupts me firmly. ‘I really do. And, I swear to you, I didn’t know Nathan was still with you when we first got together. When I found out last night, genuinely, it hit me hard. I do love him, so I’m going to try to forgive him, and make things work, but if I feel like this then I can’t even imagine how you must be feeling.’
Now I really am surprised. I’ve certainly never known her show any kind of sympathy, or consider how anyone else might be feeling in a situation. She’s usually the kind of person who, when a celebrity dies, posts an anecdote about the time she met them on a plane and they told her she was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, or similar.
‘Nathan and I were over, we just needed one of us to be brave enough to end things,’ I tell her. ‘And what he did wasn’t right. But I’m past it now. I just want to get on with my life, and I’m sure he just wants to get on with his and, even though he betrayed me, I’d never known of him doing anything like that before so…’
My voice trails off. I know it seems crazy for me to defend him, but we all make mistakes. I’m sure I would feel very differently if he were the love of my life, but now that I know thathe wasn’t, it changes things. It’s hard to miss something, when you realise you didn’t want it in the first place. As ridiculous as it seems, I feel more disappointed by the fact that Donnie is keeping a secret from me than I do by finding out that Nathan cheated on me when were together.
‘Thank you, Gigi,’ she says with a heavy sigh. ‘You don’t know how much better I feel for hearing that.’
I smile, making a move for the cubicle, but Sunshine stops me again.
She takes a deep breath, preparing herself to say something else. I should have known I wasn’t getting off this easy.
‘Gigi, I owe you another apology,’ she tells me.
Oh, God, what now? There’s more than that? I don’t think I can take anything else.
I raise an eyebrow, puzzled but curious nonetheless.
‘Another apology?’ I repeat back to her. ‘What for?’
She looks down at the tiles, then up at the ceiling, almost as though she’s embarrassed.
‘For not being nice to you,’ she finally admits. ‘I… I felt threatened.’
Oh… I don’t know what I was expecting her to say but definitely not that. Sunshine Greene –theSunshine Greene – threatened by me? With her hundreds of thousands of followers, and her perfect everything, and she was the one who ended up with Nathan so…
‘Threatened? By me?’ I blurt. ‘Sunshine, that’s… sorry, I don’t understand.’
