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“You wouldn’t dare,” Rachel glared at her and Vanessa put her hands up in a motion of surrender.
“Fine, fine, I’ll let the two of them be happy together. Sheesh, Rach, you always take things too seriously.”
“Someone’s got to keep you in line.” Rachel looked up at Vanessa with a heart-melting smile.
"All right, enough of that,” Samuel said, turning back to me. “So, what’s going on with you and Bernadette that we need to know about? Besides the fact that you finally got up the courage to tell her how you felt.”
“Actually, it was her who told me first,” I said, remembering that fateful day when she had revealed to me what her feelings were. Everyone gasped, looking at me with surprise.
“Once a coward, always a coward,” Samuel said, shaking his head with a smile.
“Let’s not worry too much about the details,” Howard said. “What’s important is the fact that the two of you are together now, finally.”
“Finally?” I raised my eyebrows. “Remind me how long again it took you to confess your feelings to Ana.”
Howard looked down at his feet. “That’s not important. We’re married now, so who cares if it took me a year.”
“It has taken you even longer,” Vanessa said, nudging me with her shoulder. “Now, tell us what’s going on.”
“Well, the fact is that Bernadette is in a bit of a difficult situation right now,” I started, wondering how much of her story I should actually divulge. I didn’t want to talk about too many personal details as I figured that was something, she would want to do for herself. So, I decided to keep things short and simple.
“Apart from me, she doesn’t really have a support system right now. Her friends from college are all terrible and got her into some bad situations and her mom just kicked her out of the house. I’m there for her, but she needs more, you know?”
“Of course.” Rachel looked at me with a sympathetic expression. “I can’t imagine what that must be like for her.”
“There’s more too,” I said. “But I’ll let her tell you those things herself. I don’t want to speak her whole story for her.”
“Of course,” Rachel smiled at me. “I’d love to meet her for sure.”
I looked around, realizing that it had been a while and Bernadette still hadn’t found me. Maybe she had gotten lost? Or caught up in talking to someone else? Either way, it was probably a good idea to see if we could go find her.
“She went to go to the restroom,” I said. “I thought that she would have been back by now.”
“Hmmm, should we go find her?” Samuel asked. “Someone else might have started a conversation with her, or she could just be overwhelmed.”
I nodded. “It is a lot more crowded than I thought it was going to be. I don’t remember inviting this many people.”
“People might have heard about it and decided to show up, or people could have invited friends,” Vanessa suggested. “Some people are just fine with overstepping boundaries like that.”
“Oh! come on, don’t tell me you’ve never done that,” Samuel said.
“No, I haven’t. But it certainly sounds like you have.” Vanessa shot an accusatory glare at Samuel and I stepped between them to try to de-escalate things.
“Guys, it’s fine, seriously. Bernadette said she was fine with a party and I wanted her to get the chance to meet people like this. It’s not something you have to worry about.”
“Let’s go find her then,” Vanessa said, shooting Samuel one final glare before starting to walk off. She then looked over her shoulder at all of us. “Are you guys coming or not?”
“We’re coming,” I said, and hurried after her along with the rest of my friends.
I would have thought that with Bernadette’s dress she would be easy to spot and find, but though we must have looked for roughly ten minutes there was still no sign of her. I was beginning to get worried, so I suggested we split up and try to find her that way. Maybe she was looking for us too and we just kept missing her?
But I had no luck on my own and was beginning to get seriously concerned when I finally heard a voice that sounded exactly like hers.
15
Bernadette
As soon as I got out of the restroom I was cornered by a sweet-looking girl with long brown hair and a smile that almost seemed too wide.
