Beauty and the Bridesmaid

Chapter Five

Lela is out looking for balloons and ribbons that come in aubergine. I know this because she calls me before I’ve even finished work to ask me to join her in her shopping quest. Of course, I tell her I’m at work, which isn’t a lie. I just don’t bother to elaborate that I’ll be finishing in ten minutes. She’ll be able to get one of her minions to accompany her in comparing packets of purple balloons.

Knowing that she won’t be home does make me think of what Damien said about Ash last night though. Maybe I should go talk to him and get everything out in the open about our old feelings and then I’ll finally be happy for Lela and be able to participate in her wedding.

So here I am outside the house Ash shares with Lela, hoping that he’ll be in and will want to talk to me. As soon as he opens the door, I know I can’t hide from what I have to say. I do seriously consider diving into the hedge but I know he’s already seen me.

“Jade?” He squints as though he’s not sure it’s really me.

Maybe I could still get away with a hedge-dive. But I put my hand up in a limp wave. “Hiya Ash.”

He scratches his head. “Lela’s not here.”

“I know. She called me.”

“Oh,” he says. He doesn’t ask why I’m here or invite me in.

“I met your friends last night and I was talking to Damien.”

Ash smiles briefly. “Good to know you two are getting along.”

I lean awkwardly against the doorframe, hoping that he’s going to let me in. “He told me you met at uni.”

“Okay Jade,” he says assertively, folding his arms across his broad chest, “what’s this about?”

“Are you going to let me come in?”

Ash takes a small step backwards and I move into the space he’s created.

In the living room, things aren’t any less uncomfortable. There’s a photograph of him and Lela, all smiles for the camera as they share an ice-cream, set in a silver frame on the mantelpiece.  

“Well?” Ash demands.

“Damien just said that he knew who I was because you used to talk about me a lot back then.” I bite my lip nervously, but then shrug as though it’s nothing. I don’t want Ash to think I’m here to beg him to marry me instead.

“Things were very different when I first moved to Reading. You and I had only just split up.”

“And now we haven’t spoken to each other for five years and you’re marrying my best friend.”

“Well when you put it like that…” he trails off and turns to take a seat on the cream sofa, resting his head against his palms. “I’ve made such a mess of things, Jade. I don’t want to do that with Lela. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“It just would have been nice if someone had told me about you two, rather than Lela casually dropping it into the conversation when she asked me to be a bridesmaid. No, head bridesmaid.”

“I know,” he agrees, sitting up and playing with his hands. “But I didn’t know what to do. What would you have thought if I’d contacted you out of the blue and told you I was going to ask Lela to marry me?”

“I’d have thought you were crazy,” I answer honestly. “You never even liked Lela when we were together. How did you go from that to proposing to her?”

I’ve heard their engagement story enough times now. Apparently it’s absolutely imperative to have a story. Something funny like how you didn’t even notice the ring floating in your glass of champagne, or something classically romantic like how you sat in an exclusive part of the restaurant and he got down on one knee. Ash and Lela’s story is the latter. He took her out for a lavish meal and she just knew that he was going to give her the ring and say those four words Lela’s been waiting to hear since she was about fifteen.

“She got in touch with me,” Ash explains. “Didn’t she tell you? She messaged me on Facebook actually and things just went from there.”

No, she did not bloody tell me. All this time I’d just assumed they’d bumped into each other somewhere and, after a few drinks and chats about me and old times, they’d decided to meet up again and things had moved fast between them. Now I find out that Lela actually went out of her way to contact Ash. Maybe on purpose. Maybe she’d picked him out as a potential groom years ago.

There’s a delicate little knock on the door and Ash instantly looks at me as though he’s considering where to hide me. Eventually, he decides he can explain my presence if he has to and goes to answer the door with me still lingering not far behind him.

Lela’s double act minions are standing outside, their eyes sharply on me. I thought at least one of them wouldn’t have been able to pass on balloon shopping.

Kerry glares at me, narrowing her eyes fiercely. “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing as you probably,” I reply nonchalantly, desperately trying to think of a wedding-related reason for me to be visiting Ash.

“We’ve come to collect Lela’s wedding scrapbook,” says Steph. “I doubt that you’ve had that idea.”

“The scrapbook.” I nod once as though I know exactly what she’s talking about.

“Here it is,” Ash says, retrieving a paper book decorated in magazine cuttings. He holds it between the three of us.

Steph looks at me expectantly and I reach up with a shaking hand to take the book. “Thanks Ash,” I mumble, following the other two bridesmaids out.

“So what exactly do you plan on doing with that?” Kerry points at the scrapbook tucked under my left arm.

“Erm…the…dress,” I say, eyeing the picture on the front cover of a bride in a big white dress with red details.

“What dress?” Steph asks.

“The wedding dress!”

Kerry rolls her eyes. “But Lela’s already got her wedding dress.”

“It’s not right!” I insist, trying to recall what Lela’s told me about her dress. As far as I can remember, it’s a virgin-white puffy affair with a full skirt. “Look!” I tap the picture on the scrapbook. “This is what Lela really wants. Something a bit different. You know, a bit of colour.”

“This isn’t Don’t Tell the Bride.” Steph snatches the book from me.

“God knows why she picked you as head bridesmaid,” Kerry huffs as they both run ahead of me to gush over pictures of wedding cakes.

I don’t know why Lela picked me either but I’m really starting to wish that she hadn’t.