Beauty and the Bridesmaid

Chapter One

A/N: This is my new story! I've taken to breezy girlie writing so this is another attempt at chicklit. I didn't expect to post anything new so soon after finishing my teen novel Bad Apple and chicklit novella Pear Shaped (which I am still going to do some more work on) but I have too many ideas. Please let me know what you think and vote if you like it!

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Anna should have called by now. But, as I stare down at my mobile phone lying silently on the table, I realise that reliability isn’t one of my flatmate’s strong points. Like when she promised to make dinner for once but forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer because she got distracted by Ben from work and one too many glasses of Sauvignon Blanc.

And then she suggested I ask out someone from work too. She’d read in one of her self-help books that plenty of dates make a healthy love life. Unlike Anna, I don’t do anything glamorous surrounded by hot men who I can freely ask on dates. I’m a nursery nurse, and the only male company I have comes from three-year-old boys and sometimes their happily married fathers.

Even if I did have a job that meant seeing Ryan Gosling types flex their muscles all day, it’s hardly in my nature to casually approach attractive men, ask them out, and then walk away with total nonchalance about whether they’re interested in me or not. I’m not shy or socially awkward or anything but I tend to avoid situations of potential embarrassment.

Anna doesn’t have a problem but I would never be able to face someone who’d rejected me. It would be total public humiliation, even if it didn’t technically happen in public. People still find these things out and laugh at you behind your back, don’t they?

So she decided she was going to set me up with someone instead. A blind date with Carl, someone she works with and described as ‘single and sexy’.  I should have known that if Anna hadn’t slept with Carl, there must be something wrong with him.

Carl works in the accounts department of the swanky modelling agency where Anna is the head of marketing, something she failed to mention. He loves numbers so much, he had mentally calculated how much my share of the bill was as soon as we had ordered. And then proceeded to bore me to death.

Before I left, Anna and I had made a deal that she was going to call me half an hour into the date so that, if it wasn’t going well, I could pretend it was someone calling from the hospital to tell me that my great aunt had broken her leg and then I could dash off. After handing over my £11.49 in exact change, of course.

I fiddle with the buttons on my phone, wondering if I’ve managed to accidently put it on silent. But I haven’t. Anna has probably just copped off with one of the sexy male models again, and left me with Mr Calculator.

Sod it, I’ll just send her a text. I don’t care how rude it is to text at the table, it’s not like I plan on seeing Carl again.

As my fingers get to work typing out a furious ‘call me now!’ message on my phone’s touchscreen, it lights up and my Carly Rae Jepson Call me Maybe ringtone suddenly seems appropriate.

“Hello?” I answer in a concerned tone.

“Jade!” the bright voice on the other end says.

I recognise the cheerfully high-pitched sing-song voice. But it’s not Anna. It’s Lela, my childhood best friend.

“Excuse me,” I say to Carl, putting my hand over the phone to muffle it. “I need to take this.”

“Lela?” I hiss as soon as I’ve left the table. The last time I heard from her she was living with a rich boyfriend somewhere in York.