How To Tango With Tom Collins

Chapter Two

“Wait…he said what about her?” asked a whispered voice.

A pair of gentle green eyes stared up from over the edge of Sophie’s toes. Cecilee Ford was a little pixie of a thing – a teeny 5’2 frame, covered with flawless porcelain-coloured skin and topped with a short mop of gorgeous jet-black curls. At only 27, she was the youngest of the group, but undoubtedly the most successful in her own right. The hottest young fashion designer to come out of the UK in the last five years, Cecilee was undeniably talented, remarkably humble, and frighteningly naïve.

“He said she was ‘getting too thick’,” said Sophie, taking a generous sip of her double G&T and gesturing towards her own, naturally svelte mid-section. “And that if she didn’t ‘cut the crap’ no one was going to want to see her in a wedding dress. That was her breaking point.”

Cecilee stared. Wide-eyed. Obviously appalled.

“But I don’t get it…why would he say that?” She continued to whisper, this time a little louder than before. Clearly the three sips of her drink were going to straight to the miniscule woman’s head. “I think she looks fabulous!” She gestured semi-wildly with the nail polish wand she was using to carefully apply a shocking tangerine colour to Sophie’s toes.  She knew her friend was just trying to be sweet, but in reality, what Morgan needed right now was the shocking realism and cynicism that only she and their other best friend Kat could offer.

“Ces, really? Nobody likes to be sugar-coated at a time like this,” said Sophie, tipping her drink in the other woman’s direction and flipping her dark locks off of her shoulder.

“What?” she asked, in a completely obliviously tone. Poor thing, Sophie thought, she really is just too sweet for her own good. A bad man would eat her up and swallow her whole, and Sophie was bound and determined to make sure that never happened. The two were polar opposites in reality; Sophie had grown up amongst the hustle and bustle of NYC, while Cecilee was home schooled in a small town in Southeast England. Sophie was the life of every party, while Cecilee didn’t even attend her own astonishing debut at Fashion Week last year. Sophie had been with the same man for more than fifteen years, Cecilee had never been with a man at all.

See? Polar. Opposites.

But something about the younger woman brought out the instinctively protective side of Sophie, which was funny because she wasn’t even a ‘motherly’ kind of person. More and more she was beginning to wonder if she would actually wanted children of her own. How could someone as selfish as her actually be expected to raise a child? To put someone else’s needs before her own? It just seemed, well, unfathomable, right now. 

The thought of babies made her think of Jake. Sweet, sweet Jake. Her rock, her soul, the love of her life. The man who would make any woman the luckiest alive. The man who made her feel like the luckiest woman alive. And yet, she just didn’t know how to give him what he wanted most. A family.

Ugh. Snap out of it, Sophie, she thought to herself. You are 29 years old, you do not have to figure this all out right this very second. To squash her ongoing inner monologue she decided to prove her point to dear, innocent Cecilee.

“Hey Morg!” Sophie hollered into the kitchen, where her friend had disappeared to watch Kat whip up another batch of her famous toxic gin-infused beverages. “Ces thinks you look F-A-A-A-A-A-BULOUS!”