The Paid Bridesmaid(10)

The warm fuzzies intensified, preening at his praise. Feeling a tad embarrassed about my reaction, I said, “I might have my moments.”

“I get the feeling you have a lot of moments.”

“So what was the second moment?” I asked. “When I surprised you?”

“That would be when you took a picture of me.”

Those warm fuzzies fled as icy shock gripped my spine. I instantly felt both foolish and like I’d been exposed. I thought I’d been so nonchalant and careful. How in the world had he seen me?

There was no way I could admit to it. I would look so, so stupid if I did and I didn’t have an explanation that would make sense as far as my mother was concerned.

“Vain much?” I countered.

“I saw you,” he said in a low voice that made my skin flush.

“You have a great imagination.”

“Let me see your phone, then.”

I grabbed my phone tightly. “No.”

He had a self-satisfied look on his face. “That means you did take a picture of me.”

“You coming to a conclusion doesn’t mean you’re right.”

Camden shrugged. “You could easily disprove it right now.”

“Not going to happen.”

“You seem like the kind of woman who enjoys being right.”

This had nothing to do with being right because I obviously wasn’t. “I like my privacy.”

“Me too,” he agreed. “I noticed you don’t have any social media.”

I had two immediate reactions to this information. The first was a giddy, “Yay! He looked me up!” and the other was its polar opposite—a sinking sensation in my stomach of “Oh no, he looked me up.”

Camden’s phone rang again. He glanced at the screen. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to take this.”

He again excused himself and walked away from our table, despite the fact that we’d been in a pretty intense back-and-forth. If some girlish part of me had hoped he was interested, he’d just laid out where I stood in priority to his phone. My mom had told me to win him over with my wit and beauty and it looked like that wasn’t happening.

Wit and beauty—zero; technology—one.

You don’t care, I reminded myself. It didn’t matter.

Except it did.

Which was annoying.

Sadie had just finished filming a segment and I remembered that she’d said she needed to talk to me. I walked over to her to see if she had a minute.

“Rachel!” she exclaimed, hugging me again. I wasn’t really a hug type of person, but with Sadie I never minded.

“How are you?” I asked. “You probably have so much to deal with. There’s a ton of people here.”

She grimaced. “Dan and I would have preferred something small and intimate. Just us and our immediate families. But the sponsors wanted a bigger gathering. And not everyone’s even here yet. There’s some people who are coming just for the wedding and reception.”

“Speaking of immediate families,” I said, “I checked on your mom and she was a little . . .”

“Drunker than a frat boy on New Year’s Eve? Not surprising.” She let out a big sigh. “Part of me wishes she hadn’t come. That’s awful, isn’t it?”

I didn’t have a parent who, if not a full-blown alcoholic, was at least an understudy for the role, so I didn’t know. “I have often wished that my own mom would disappear for a little while. Not permanently, but I’d love it if she could go to the magical land of Don’t Bug Your Daughter About Grandkids and have a long, extended vacation there.”

This seemed to reassure her, as her smile was only slightly still sad. “I know I’ve probably made her sound horrible, but once you get to know her she’s . . . even worse. I mean, she’s in Hawaii for her only daughter’s wedding, and she’s drunk in her hotel room instead of being here to support me. I’ve never asked her for anything and she can’t even do this?”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. I’d have to talk to Krista about redoubling our efforts to make sure that Brandy was relatively sober and started coming to the events.

“No, don’t listen to my whining. I’m marrying the man of my dreams in paradise. Everything else is just a nuisance.”

“That’s a good attitude. Focus on what matters.”

“Or . . . I could distract myself. By asking how things are going with Camden. Are you two hitting it off? I told Troy to seat you two together tonight.”

I did not sigh. Even though I really, really wanted to. “It’s fine. But you need to be careful what you say about me to him.”

“Why?”

“You forgot to tell me that you were poor growing up.”

She visibly swallowed, her lower lip trembling for a moment. “It’s not something I like to think about. Why does it matter?”

“Because our backstory is that we met at summer camp. Something that’s typically expensive and in a different state than the one you grew up in.”

“Oh.” She blinked slowly, her mouth twisting to one side. “Don’t they have like, scholarships or something?”

“I mean, we can say that if we’re specifically asked, but the more we elaborate, the more unbelievable the lie becomes. Especially with someone like Camden, who seems to notice everything.”