Stone Cold Fox (54)
“You really think so?” She was laughing at me. “Perhaps.” That was cruel. Even for Gale. Her contempt for me was growing, which could be good in theory. Typically, the higher the emotion, the larger the room for error.
“What would you know about it? I noticed you didn’t have much on my lineage in your files.”
Her eyes shifted from her mother at the gift table back to me. “I could tell Collin about your thievery,” she hissed.
“Yes. You could, Gale.” I brushed the side of her arm with my hand, wanting to feel the electricity between us. “But then he’d know you have a whole record of private information about him. And his entire family. And everyone else in this little perverse sect of society. And that might be kind of a turnoff, among other things. The Cases can be litigious.” I pinched her full tricep, wanting her reaction to become more physical, but she didn’t recoil at all. I should have done it harder.
“Assault?” She laughed. “My goodness, Bea. Someone’s getting agitated. And it’s still early!” She flashed her teeth at me, confident. “Don’t talk to me about the Cases. You have no idea what people like us can do to women like you with a wave of our hand. One phone call. But you think you’re special, right? I suppose in some ways you are. For example, I couldn’t file away someone like you just like everybody else.”
She had to be bluffing. I’d seen the files. Everyone was there. Even people I’d never heard of and of course I checked my former aliases—I covered my tracks just in case! I could have screamed. Gale should have been falling weaker with each passing day as the wedding approached, yet she seemed to be growing even more assertive. This grandstanding of hers felt like a tell, but Gale and I were not cut from the same cloth. Was she acting out due to losing or was she actually gaining on me? I looked around for Syl, in need of some grounding.
“I’m ready for a refill,” I said to her, shaking my empty glass in Gale’s direction. I needed her out of my face. She was right, I was getting flustered, and then there was no telling what I might do. Within reason—I wasn’t my mother. I needed to keep my emotions in check. Always. Besides, Gale was the maid of honor. She was supposed to take care of me. At least in front of everyone at the party. She snatched the glass out of my hand with a smile and lumbered away, but I knew she wouldn’t return. Not unless it was poisoned.
I glanced around the garden at the largely middle-aged crowd. They were all so similar. Haven Case. Nora Wallace-Leicester. Their friends. The women all wore Chanel or Diane von Furstenberg or Carolina Herrera, adorned with plenty of diamonds and assorted jewels from their husbands or families, possessing the type of glowing mature skin that only money and microneedling could buy. When they smiled, the skin around their eyes hardly creased, true age only detected by their hands. They all floated down from their ivory towers to attend the bridal shower of the country bumpkin about to infiltrate their personal Mount Olympus by marriage. Ah, well, have another, old girls. Cheers! A handful are always bound to get through over the years. Maybe even one of them, years ago, not that I’d ever know.
Because once you were in, you were in.
Mother would have blown them all out of the water. She was always the most beautiful woman in the room.
I must have had an anxious look upon my face because Syl returned to my side with a bubbly beverage and a sweet burrow into my shoulder. A concerned friend. “Are you overwhelmed?” Syl asked me, stroking my arm softly.
“A little bit. It is pretty ridiculous, right? All of these people are here to celebrate me just because I’m getting married. They don’t even know who I am.”
“But you’re not just getting married, Bea,” she said. “You’re getting married to Collin Case, perhaps the country’s most eligible bachelor.”
“How very Tatler of you, Syl.” I laughed. I really did like her. And she was right. I was marrying Collin Case. No matter what. “I should have asked you to be a bridesmaid.”
“Ha! I actually think it’s better for our friendship that you didn’t. Being a bridesmaid sucks.”
“Have you been one before?”
“Oh, yeah, more than a few times. Girls from my H&M days, a girl from the group home. Really, it’s a punishment, which I know, I know, isn’t very nice, but it’s true. I mean, you know how it is.”
“Not really. I’ve never been a bridesmaid before.”
“Really?” Syl seemed genuinely shocked. Like I must have had scores of girlfriends over the years. She didn’t know she was my first real friend.
“Well, I’m sure Wren will ask you when her time comes, and she’ll pull every trick in the book,” Syl explained. “She’ll pick the worst color dress and make you go to Vegas for the bachelorette party and it’ll cost a small fortune. All so you can share a queen bed with some weirdo she went to camp with when she was ten. Although, I guess you don’t need to worry about the spending part.” Syl started laughing. “She’ll probably make you her maid of honor. Everyone always picks their richest friend so their parties are better. Hey, maybe I should ask you to be my maid of honor?” The way she rattled off all this information led me to believe she was a true authority on female friendship. I was agog. “I’m kidding,” Syl continued. “I’m not doing bridesmaids. We’ll probably just elope or have his family there. We’ll see, we haven’t planned shit yet. Anyway—”