Page 20 of A Complicated Bride

“So you weren’t kidding about settling down?” Julie said. Her voice sounded high to me. Her nervous voice verging on Minnie Mouse. She and Jack truly cared about Brad.

Brad nodded and then shook his head.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” He flashed an apology at me as I handed him a glass with bourbon neat, half filled.

“Except for Lily. I know I’m enjoying getting to know Lily.” He took my hand and pulled me down in the seat next to him after I barely poured another two drinks without spilling a drop. I hadn’t had a chance to pour my own yet, so I lifted his and took a healthy sip.

“Wait a minute there, bub,” Julie said. “We’ve already been around that merry-go-round before and it didn’t work out with Tammy.”

Brad’s sad smile stayed in place and I handed the glass back to him.

“It’s not like that. Not this time. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but I am sure I’m done with what I was doing. I can’t go back.”

“What is it, Brad? What happened?” Jack asked.

Brad shrugged and I couldn’t tell for sure, but he might have been embarrassed. I almost spoke up again, but I swear it was as if he’d read my mind and he squeezed my hand to stop me, to reassure me he had this.

“Nothing special. Everything piled up. The endless parade of meaningless relationships, of always trying to impress people I could care less about, of people who could care less about me trying to impress me, sell me something, pretend they’re something they’re not.”

“I’m so sorry, Brad.” Julie reached across the table, leaning forward, and touched his hand.

Jack blew out a breath.

“I can’t say I blame you. Can’t say I’m surprised that scene finally got to you.”

“You’re the only one I know who would say that, know that about me.” He looked down and added. “Because you’re about my only real friend.”

“That can’t be true,” Julie said. “What about your partner or manager or whatever he is?”

“He’s too jaded to think I’m anything but the role I’ve been playing. He’s a good man.” He shrugged again and I knew he was trying to hide the hurt.

“Well, who cares if you have any other friends. You have us, don’t you?” I raised a glass.

Julie gave me a question in her uneasy eyes, but smiled and raised her glass.

“I agree whole-heartedly with Lily.” Jack raised his glass.

“Thank you. All of you.” Brad looked at each of us and when he turned to me, he leaned in like he was going to kiss me. I could feel his breath, smell that exotic spicy scent of him. Whatever else was going on at the dinner table vanished. The only thing I heard was my own pulse pounding. I wanted to lean in, to meet him, to feel his lips on mine, but I was frozen, unsure and suddenly feeling the fact that we’d been strangers until that morning.

In the next instant, he straightened, smiled and took a drink, looking away. I could swear he had a sixth sense that read my emotions as if I’d been flashing a stop sign.

“Enough about my early mid-life crash and burn. I’ll figure something out. I’ve been trying to get together a coffee table book forever. Maybe it’s time for that. It’s time to take pictures of something else besides models and stars.”

“I got a couple of babies you can photograph,” Jack said.

Brad pointed at him and said, “You’re on. I’m not leaving until I fill your album—as old-fashioned as baby albums may be, I can see you and Julie enjoying one.”

“You would be one hundred percent right,” Julie said. “Now let’s eat the rest of this food before we all get drunk.”

Jack said, “Brad and Lily can get as skunked as they want. They don’t have two babies to wake them in the middle of their sleep.”

I watched Jack stare at Julie as if she were a star and he were star-struck, as if they were strangers falling in love for the first time, and I wished above everything else that I might have that with someone special some day. The tug of Brad next to me with his sexual energy and his special aura of understanding or whatever it was, made me turn my head. I came eye to eye with him and his Cary Grant dimples.

The fluttering started back up in ernest.

I heard a buzzing and he slipped a phone from his pocket and gave it a glance.

“Trouble?” I said.