“She refused to come. She said she could still be my friend but that she couldn’t watch me marry you today. She’s just jealous that I got you and she didn’t,” Simone snapped and the twisted half-grin on her mouth made me want to run like Jasper suggested. Then I remembered why I had to do this. My baby. I couldn’t leave him or her to a mother who I couldn’t trust to do the right thing. My brain stalled and I also remembered theway she leaned on me and cried as she told me about her absent father and how it had left this hole in her heart that she kept trying to fill in the wrong ways and she wanted to change that. She looked at our marriage and the baby we had on the way as the first step in becoming a better person. I believed her then. I wondered if her hormones made the mean-spirited way she’d just spoken come out.
“Why would Cassidy have been here?” Grandpa asked.
“She was supposed to be Simone’s Maid of Honor,” Jasper explained.
“That’s just cruel,” my grandma whispered to her husband.
“You’re right, it is cruel that she’d leave her pregnant best friend on a day when Simone needed her the most,” I shot back as I narrowed my eyes on my grandparents. Grandpa shook his head and didn’t bother to hide his disappointment.
5.THE CONSEQUENCES
KNUCKLES
“Hey guys!”Ashley’s smile would have dazzled anyone else. I’d had her during our sophomore year and she was a little too repressed in bed to smile like that regularly. It was false advertising to anyone who didn’t know better.
“Ashley,” Simone snipped as she adjusted her graduation gown for the umpteenth time. “Don’t you just hate this stupid thing? It won’t sit right over my dress. I don’t understand why we have to wear them.”
“It’s tradition,” Ashley explained before she caught sight of something on Simone’s hand - a particular, shiny something. Her eyes quickly darted over to my hand and my first instinct was to hide it but there was no point. Everyone would know before graduation was over because Ashley had a big fucking mouth.
“Oh my God! Are you two married?” If her voice could have carried to another country, it would have, she was that loud about it.
“Would you please be quiet?” Simone growled at her. That was weird because I would have thought she’d want everyone to know. Then again, everyone would immediately jump to conclusions as to why we were married and she didn’treally want anyone to know about the pregnancy yet in case announcing it was bad luck or whatever. “We don’t want our news to overshadow graduation. We planned to tell everyone after.”
We had no such plans and had discussed the fact that we lived in a small town and news would get around on its own as soon as Simone started to show. None of the people I’d been so concerned with in high school seemed important enough to share the details of my life with except the two classmates of ours who already knew - Jasper and Cassidy. One of which refused to come to our wedding even though she knew the reason for it and was supposedly still Simone’s best friend.
Ashely’s eyes grew wider but then she lowered her voice and in almost a whisper asked, “Does poor Cassidy know?”
“Poor Cassidy?” Simone shouted at her. “Why is she suddenly, ‘poor Cassidy’?”
“Oh come on!” Ashley groused. “She was your best friend for years and you married the only boy she’s ever set her eyes on. The poor girl has never even dated anyone because she was holding out for him, and you knew it. I can’t imagine how awful she must feel if she already knows.” Ashley glanced down toward Simone’s non-existent belly. “Especially if you got married for the reason I think you did.”
“It’s none of your damn business, Ashley,” Simone said before she turned and clutched onto me in a desperate move to hide her tears.
“Get out of here before you upset her more than you already have, Ash.” I ground the command out and luckily, she followed it without hesitation. Unluckily, it was probably only because she was off to spread the gossip to anyone who would listen to her.
The minute Ashley was out of sight, Simone broke into hysterical sobs. “Why couldn’t she put her jealousy aside and bethere for us at our wedding? She knew that you could never be interested in her. Cassidy isn’t stupid.”
That made me want to throttle Simone. Of course I had been interested in the girl, anyone who spent any amount of time with her would have been. She was amazing, talented, always ready to listen and give advice. I’d taken her friendship for granted. Taken time for granted, too. I thought I could fuck around now and allow Cassidy room to grow into womanhood before I claimed her as mine and made her my wife. My grandpa had given me the advice years ago when I first thought I might like Cass. He told me relationships that started too young rarely lasted because someone always felt as though they missed out. Oddly enough, my father echoed his sentiments over the years that I’d lived with him.
“Don’t fall for the first girl who makes your heartbeat faster,”had been my grandpa’s words.
“Don’t fall for the first bitch who gets your cock hard,”had been the infinite wisdom my father passed along repeatedly. Same sentiment just one was cruder than the other.
Cassidy had been the girl on both counts. So, when the rest of our schoolmates basically ignored her, I knew I should, too. For my own sanity. If she was in my sphere all the time, how in the hell was I supposed to get it out of my system to be with other women? Or how was I supposed to let her attempt to date? I couldn’t stand by and watch as someone other guy got her first kiss, first time… I had to ignore her, too. When I was home alone at my grandparent’s place, though, I could pretend that was our own special little bubble we could exist in for a time. One day, it would be a norm, not a secret. But we would both have a world of experience in our arsenal to know that we only wanted to be with one another for the rest of our lives. Zero room for doubt.
Only now I was married with a baby on the way and it was to Cassidy’s best friend. She would never be able to look past that even if the marriage thing didn’t work out for me.
“You have to calm down, Simone. This isn’t good for the baby.”
“I can’t. My best friend refused to be there for me - for us, James. Don’t you get it? She’s still so in love with you that I’m going to lose her and she’s all I have.”
“You have me now,” I suggested.
“That’s different. Cass knows all my secrets and even when she was mad at me, she never told a soul.”
“What secrets are you keeping?”
“That’s not the point, dammit. How am I supposed to get through a pregnancy at eighteen without my best friend by my side. My mom is already talking about moving away. What am I supposed to do?”
