I swore as I looked at everyone’s hand. “I lost. Fuck.”
“You should have folded,” Eric told me and swept up the chips.
“I was distracted. I had a hard night.”
“Maybe Eric will go easy on you.” Liam patted me on the shoulder.
“As if!” Eric said with a snort. He put his briefcase on the table.
“You had this planned. I knew you all were cheating!” I yelled.
“What? Never. Svenssons don’t cheat.”
I snorted and crossed my arms.
“But it’s good that you lost because I have the perfect dare for you,” Eric said with an eat-shit grin.
His brother Josh was practically bouncing in his seat.
“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” I said with a sigh.
“But you’re getting married!”
“What the hell?” I jumped out of my seat. “No!”
“It’s not real marriage,” Eric explained, setting several papers down in front of me. One was a casting advertisement for Marriage in a Minute.
“’Meet your life partner’,” I read out. “No way. You know how I feel about marriage.”
“Look,” Eric said in exasperation. “One of my younger little brothers signed up to be on the show. Greg found out about it and flipped his shit. He was mad at me because he thinks I broke his coffee maker. It was Archer, but of course Greg wouldn’t listen. So he told me I had to fill in because he didn’t trust Adrian not to get fucked over.”
“Isn’t there anything else?” I pleaded.
“Stop being such a baby. All you have to do is pretend to get married and be in a fake marriage. There are like five shoots including the fake wedding.”
“I’m going to look so stupid,” I moaned, running my hands through my hair.
“Everyone will chalk it up to you being an eccentric billionaire,” Josh said.
“Fuck all of you.”
“You have to be there tomorrow morning to do the little compatibility interview,” Eric told me as I grabbed the paperwork and stuffed it in my bag.
“Keep an open mind!” Liam said with a laugh. “Maybe one of those reality TV bimbos will be the future Mrs. Winchester!”
I gave him the finger as I slung my bag over my shoulder. “That is the last time I’m playing poker with you all.”
“You say that every time you lose!”
3
Grace
“That is the last time I go on a date,” I said to my friends the next morning.
“Someone didn’t get laid,” Sophie remarked.
“I have been up all night working on the photo edits that I should have been doing while I was buying alcohol and Ubers for Chris.”
“You should have let him give you the ride of your life in that limo,” Amy said with a cackle.
“I refuse to debase myself.”
“You’re wound so tight you could use a little debasing,” Brea joked.
“He lied to me,” I reminded them. “And played a horrible trick.”
“He’s a dick for sure,” Ivy agreed, shoving a bowl of chocolate Rice Krispies in front of me. “And a man-child. But you did say he was hot!”
“She can’t just forgive and forget because he’s hot,” Elsie argued.
“Of course not!” Brea added. “But it would have been a boss move to sleep with him, then be like, ‘Sorry, that sucked, I’m out of here!’ You know, really take him down a peg. You have to slap a guy like Chris in the face with a dildo for him to get the message.”
“I do not have time to play mind games with some deranged billionaire,” I said, angrily eating a spoonful of Rice Krispies.
“I need that time to work on my coffee-table book. I think it’s almost ready to start shopping around to publishers.”
“You work too hard,” Amy said, flopping back on the couch.
“Speaking of,” Sophie added, “let’s do our morning meeting before our ten o’clock arrives.”
We settled around the long reclaimed wood table in our office at the top of the Brookview Hotel.
Ivy had started Weddings in the City as a collaborative so that brides could have a one-stop shop for a beautiful, high-class wedding. She was the wedding planner. Amy, short and bubbly, created beautiful, locally grown flower arrangements. Sophie baked delicious wedding cakes decorated with her signature sculpted sugar flowers. Elsie cooked the tastiest catering ever. Brea designed and sewed one-of-a-kind, ethereal wedding dresses, and I was in charge of the wedding photography, though lately I felt more like a therapist-slash-hostage-negotiator.
The sun streamed in from the large windows surrounding our office.
“Ladies,” Ivy said, opening up her planner, “we have a new bride, Addison, who is planning