Chaos series by Kristen Ashley

“I see that,” Elvira returned. “If Princess Zadie didn’t pull that shit. Now a message needs to be sent that she can’t act up and get what she wants.”

“I hate this for you,” Kellie cut into the exchange, and I looked to her. “The big reunion with Low should be all hearts and roses.”

This surprised me coming from Kellie. Nothing since we were kids was hearts and roses for my friend. She wasn’t a romantic. She loved life and lived it by her rules, but she never expected hearts and roses, not for her, not for anyone.

“She’ll come around,” I assured her.

“What’ll you do if she doesn’t?” Justine asked.

I shook my head, lifting my cosmo and taking a sip.

Then I answered, “She will. Eventually. With this start, it might take years but she’ll get how much I love her father. And if she doesn’t, well…” I shrugged. “I have her father and he and I have learned the hard way that life can suck.”

I felt something coming my way from directly across the table, so I looked to my sister.

When I caught her eyes, she didn’t try to hide the disappointment edged with pain she felt for me that Logan’s girls didn’t fall head over heels in love on sight.

They weren’t all I was going to get. I had Katy and Freddie that I could love and adore and spoil rotten.

But we both knew just how wonderful it would have been if I also had High’s girls to do the same.

“I’m okay,” I mouthed.

She nodded but didn’t look much like she believed me.

So I gave her a reassuring smile and looked to the table.

“Right,” I said. “Enough of that.” I turned my attention to Elvira. “Wedding with soft and bling, wrap your head around this…” I paused for dramatic effect, then threw out, “Velvet.”

Elvira stared at me a second, then smacked her hand on the table and hooted, “I knew you’d deliver!”

“You’ll need a late fall or winter wedding,” I told her. “But an ivory velvet wedding dress with some strategic diamanté placements would look stunning on you. Nothing off the rack. I know a local designer who makes unique gowns and she’s fabulous. Velvet bridesmaids gowns, perhaps in champagne. Bunched swaths of velvet adorning the reception tables or covering the chairs. You’d have to give up on peonies but I see calla lilies with silvered Christmas berries. Or ivory roses bunched with crystals. If you pick winter, we can do a Winter Wonderland theme and incorporate blinged-out pinecones. Glittered twigs. Fur. Marabou or chandelle feathers. Anything, really. Snow glitters. It’s also soft. Winter is made to be soft and blinged.”

Elvira kept slapping her hand on the table when she cried, “Oh Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord.” She stopped slapping her hand and pointed at me. “I want it all.”

All of it?

Feathers and fur? Crystal and glittered twigs?

“That’s a lot,” I pointed out.

“You’ll make it work,” she declared.

I would because that was me but it would be a design nightmare.

“Good thing she’s got more than a year to plan,” Lanie murmured, likely taking in the dread on my face.

“And more than a year for Malik to pop the question.”

Veronica’s eyebrows flew up and she asked Elvira, “You’re planning a wedding and your man hasn’t proposed yet?”

“I’m thinkin’ I don’t care,” Elvira stated. “I’ll just tell him he’s gotta put on a suit, get his ass in the car, and drive him to the church. He can stay and do the deed or he can leave and never see me again.”

“New reality program. Extreme Proposals, Denver,” Kellie whispered through giggles.

“Things are gonna get extreme if that man doesn’t put a rock on her finger,” Tyra put in.

“As far as I’m concerned, my girl Beyoncé made a call to arms,” Elvira said. “And I listened.”

“I think the Great One meant that, if you didn’t put a ring on it, you would see the back of her. Not that you should go out and buy a handgun,” Tabby pointed out.

“Then I shoulda wrote that song,” Elvira returned.

“Don’t settle for anything less, Elvira,” Carissa stated. “But you won’t have to. Malik adores you. He’ll make you an honest woman.”

“Haven’t been that in a good long while,” Elvira muttered, and everyone smiled. “So it’d be nice to wear an ivory velvet wedding dress during my Winter Wonderland Wedding to wash in the honesty.”

“I think I like your new friends,” Kellie decreed to me.

I looked to her and smiled.

“I know I do,” Justine stated.

Dot raised her cosmo. “Right, girls. To old friends. And to new.” Her gaze came to me before it went to Elvira. “And to dreams coming true, no matter how that happens.”

“I hear that!” Tabby cried, lifting what looked like sparkling water.

“Hear, hear,” Veronica said, lifting her martini.

We all followed suit and clinked.

I looked over my shoulder and caught Claire writing what was undoubtedly her phone number on a cocktail napkin for the smiling hot guy who was watching her do it.

I turned back to the table, suppressing a sigh at the same time I suppressed a giggle.

“Right,” Justine turned to Tabby. “When are you due?”

I tuned in to Tab and tuned out my day.

And as it was when the sisterhood gathered—something no relaxing bath, no glass of wine could do better—my crew helped me wash away my shitty day.