Page 1 of Always the Bridesmaid

1

SARAH

‘Oh yeah, God that’s good,’ I groan.

‘I told you I’d find the spot.’

‘You have. You really have.’

I’m suspended from a reclaimed teak frame in Izzy’s recently renovated dance studio. What used to be a stage for her ‘Salsa Yourself Fit’ classes has been replaced by an aerial yoga set-up.

As I shift to see myself in the wall of mirrors that line one side of the studio, I can see the effect hanging upside-down is having on my body: tomato-red face, long brown locks escaping the knot I had tied on the top of my head, the flesh of my cheeks sagging with gravity. It defies logic that Izzy makes this look immensely glamorous on TikTok.

My unsightly appearance aside, Izzy has found the exact spot on my lower back that has been playing up recently from too many hours spent lifting boxes of files and paper at work.

Drew – lawyer, boss and one of my best friends – has taken a case defending his longstanding client, vehicle-manufacturing giant Rolando. As his legal secretary of more than a decade, Drew trusts me more than any paralegal or junior associate at the firm. And so I have spent the last twelve days straight trawling through box after box of paperwork disclosed by the other side – a minority shareholder in Rolando – looking for one tiny receipt. The smoking gun that will prove that the applicant couldn’t have been where he said he was at the precise moment the applicant’s entire case hinges on.

I lugged those boxes up and down from tabletops and carried the heavy files home to keep going through the night, meaning I had to abandon my near-daily yoga practice and tweaked my back.

‘Breathe through it,’ Izzy says as she stands behind me, holding onto my thighs and leaning into my hips, getting straight to that sweet spot around my spine.

‘I’m having a head rush,’ I tell her, my voice sounding peculiar in my ears, as if I’m speaking in a fish bowl.

‘Whoa!’

The shout follows my other friend (and Drew’s fiancée) Becky crashing to the soft floor beneath her as her silk ropes have somehow twisted, turned, and flipped her out onto the surface.

‘Ouch,’ she says, lying in the exaggerated position that a cartoon character who has been knocked over by a truck might lie in.

‘What on earth!’ Izzy says, as she ditches me and moves to collect her fellow Brit and friend from floor. ‘What were you doing?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Becky says, coming up to sit with Izzy’s help. ‘I think maybe that’s part of the problem.’

I can’t help but laugh. I laugh so hard my own gangly legs somehow unravel from their holstered position and I too fall into a heap on the ground.

Glancing sideways to Becky, I reach out to take hold of her hand and laugh harder.

‘What a calamity you both are,’ Izzy says, trying to maintain professionalism for the benefit of the other five women attending her class, each of whom looks remarkably more chic than Becky and me.

‘Is this what you meant by being transformed into a butterfly from our cocoons?’ I ask.

Despite her efforts, Izzy’s voice breaks and the corners of her lips defy her, turning upward right before she too folds over and we are all laughing together – the very definition of lasting friendship.

I’m sitting on a stool at the food bar in the gym, flanked by Becky and Izzy, where a large coconut-milk latte and a slice of French toast with berries and maple syrup have been placed in front of me. Izzy has just been handed a green detox smoothie.

‘Sorry, Izzy,’ I say, digging the side of a fork into my French toast. ‘I was willing to rouse from my hard-earned slumber and make the trek to Brooklyn for a nine-fifteen class on a Sunday morning, but I draw the line at having a vegetable-packed smoothie for breakfast.’

Below where we are sitting, we can see men and women swimming laps of the gym pool. The Williamsburg franchise is the latest addition to the Brooks Adams gym empire.

Despite Brooks’s insistence that he pay for the legal advice and the discount that Drew gave, I happen to know that it actually cost the firm money. But Drew is a partner in the firm, he has the power to do that, and I fully endorse him supporting Brooks, who has been his best friend since kindergarten and one of my best friends for almost as long as I have known Drew.

What pleases me more is that I genuinely love Becky and Izzy. Both Brooks and Drew have previously had relationships that I did not approve of, ones which I knew were doomed from the start, and which were ultimately only about the bedroom. It’s not as if I have the final say, or any say really, in who my friends date, but I more than encouraged them both to find their happily ever afters with Becky and Izzy.

I suppose you could say that is one of my things – matchmaking. In particular, matchmaking for my friends. And the next two weeks are further proof of just how skilled I am in coupling people up.

‘I’m so excited for the wedding,’ I say, untying my hair from my knot and letting it fall down my back, tickling my shoulders, which are exposed in my workout vest. ‘I can’t wait to see Jess in her bridal gown.’

Jess is marrying Drew’s younger brother Jake next weekend and I credit myself with ultimately having nudged the couple from friends with benefits to life partners – or I at least played a significant role in helping them get their acts together.

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