Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 59489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
“Unequivocally no,” I said. “I’m not here to meet anyone. I’m here to hang out, drink a beer or five, and watch you guys have fun.”
Carmela shrugged and headed to the floor, dragging Mark behind her. The rest of them followed suit, and soon, I was alone, standing on the edge of the dance floor with a drink in my hand as I watched my friends dance while I wished I was home on the ranch.
Eventually, they wandered back, and we collected around a table where most of them took a seat. I was about to put my drink down and wander away to the bar to order something for the group to eat when a gorgeous girl approached me, her eyes burning into mine and stopping my breath from escaping in one look. She strode right up to me confidently, and in a flash, took my face in both hands and crushed her lips into mine.
2
KRISTEN
He didn't resist. That would have made the whole ridiculous situation so much worse. It was already embarrassing enough walking up to a complete stranger in a bar and kissing him. If he had recoiled or pushed me away, I might not have been able to recover from the humiliation. I would have had to crawl into a hole somewhere and ride out the rest of time.
Fortunately, he seemed almost into it. He wasn't exactly kissing me back, but there was a bit of pressure coming back toward me, and when I pulled back from the kiss, he smiled at me.
That made the situation better. And at least he was hot. Brianne could have chosen any of the guys at the bar for me to kiss for the game of bridesmaid bingo we were in the midst of playing, so at least she had the decency to select one I would have chosen to kiss even without the dare attached. In fact, that is absolutely what I would have rather been doing.
To be completely honest, bridesmaid bingo wasn't something I was overly thrilled about participating in. I wasn't exactly known as a party girl and all the craziness of a bachelorette party just seemed over the top. Especially considering there wasn't a single one of us in the group under the age of thirty.
I wasn't the kind of woman who put a ton of emphasis on age, or who decided as a teenager I'd been stamped with an invisible expiration date that would render me no longer relevant after my mid-twenties. Getting older didn't particularly bother me, and I never really thought of it as holding me back from anything.
Right up until my best friend from childhood broke the news to me that even though I was the maid of honor for her wedding, her sister was insisting on throwing the bachelorette party. I told her I understood. Viv just wanted to be a special part of the celebrations leading up to the wedding, and I knew it would mean a lot to her to be able to plan and host this event.
Brianne said she was touched by how well I took it and how kind and understanding I was being giving up what was widely thought of as one of the most important, and most eagerly anticipated, responsibilities of being a maid of honor.
What she didn't know, and what I wasn't going to tell her, was that I had completely forgotten about the bachelorette party and had absolutely no plans for it. I also didn't really have any interest in putting one together. I was more than happy for Viv to do it. That was much more her scene. She would get to feel more involved, Brianne would have the pre-wedding celebration she'd always envisioned, and I wouldn't be tasked with sourcing things such as a Pin the Penis on the Groomsman game. It was a win all the way around.
That didn't mean I could skip the evening, though. I was expected to participate in all the revelry, no matter how over the top or potentially embarrassing it all was.
However, I was willing to do it for Brianne. She'd been dreaming about getting married since we were just little girls. As far back as I could remember, her eventual wedding was her favorite topic of conversation. No sleepover was complete without a long contemplation of wedding dress styles, which shades of purple and green wouldn't look like Mardi Gras together, and what kind of favors would be cutest.
We'd been through what felt like hundreds of different versions of her future wedding by the time she met Bryan and announced to me that he was officially, without a doubt, no question about it, The One. She was going to marry that boy, according to her exact words after her first date.
As it turned out, she was right. The wedding coming up in just a few days barely resembled the plans she'd come up with during all those late-night, popcorn and soda-fueled planning sessions, but I could have predicted that. When we were younger, the joy was in the fluff and dreaming. Now that she had found the man she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with, it was real. Planning this wedding was about creating the true celebration of the two of them.