Chapter 25

Jennie

Rosé's wedding was only six weeks away and the list of things that still had to be done was nothing short of a mile long. Add to that my school work, which I was falling miserably behind on, trying to keep the girls from complaining that it was the "most boring summer ever" and watering my budding relationship with Lisa, and I was one exhausted mama. There simply weren't enough hours in the day for everything I needed to accomplish, so when Rosé knocked on my door one morning with tears streaming down her face, I knew things were about to get even more hectic.

"What's wrong?" I reached out and grabbed her sleeve, pulling her in out of the rain.

Thick black streaks of watery mascara ran down her cheeks and she kept wiping her swollen, red nose with a wadded up tear-stained tissue.

"I'm freaking out, Jennie, like totally losing my mind." She sniffed.

"Oh God, you guys didn't break up, did you?" I asked, completely panicked. "Invitations just went out yesterday … I'm sorry, but you guys have to make up."

She reached out and smacked my arm. "We didn't break up, you brat, but he just called and told me that the University he's getting this hot shot scholarship through needs us to come and go to some fancy dinner with elite board members or some shit. He tried like hell to get us out of it, but they were insistent. Apparently, it's a huge deal for his program. They're paying to fly us there and everything."

"That's great! A paid for trip to Italy? Sounds like good news to me," I exclaimed. "I don't get why you're upset."

"It's next week!" She wailed into her snotty tissue again.

Oh, shit.

"If it were anywhere in the U.S. it wouldn't be such a big deal. I could work on my planning through phone calls and e-mail or whatever, but being all the way across the Atlantic Ocean makes everything a little more difficult," she rambled.

I sighed, looking for a silver lining. "Okay, relax. We can do this. You'll be gone—what, like three days or so?"

"Try nine!" Her words were swallowed up by more sobs.

She laid her head in my lap and howled some more while I stroked her hair, desperately thinking of a solution to her problem. My time was swallowed up whole as it is, but she couldn't afford to put the planning on hold for nine days. She was already trying to do everything in fast motion as it was.

"Sit up," I ordered her.

"No." She refused stubbornly, hugging my legs tighter.

"Okay, you big baby, lay there, just cry quieter for a minute so you can hear me. You are going to have the most amazing wedding ever. Do you understand me? You'll be the most breathtaking bride ever and everything will be absolutely perfect that day. Does this cramp things? Yes, a little, but lucky for you, Jisoo and I can multitask really well." She sat up, a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "We'll hurry and get what we can done before you leave, and while you're gone, that cranky bitch and I will step in and be your surrogate bride. Anything you need us to do, consider it done. We got this."

She threw her arms around my shoulders and started crying again. This time, thankfully, they were happy tears.

"Thank you, Jennie. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"You're so welcome, but please don't snot on my shirt," I teased lovingly, squeezing her back.

After she hugged me for a solid two minutes, she jumped back.

"Oh my God, didn't you go to Lisa's last weekend?"

I couldn't help but grin at the memory of being at her house, and in her bed, and on her counter. "Yeah."

Tears flooded her eyes again. "I'm such a bad friend." She wept. "I've been so wrapped up in my life, I haven't even asked about yours."

She hurled her arms around me again and I laughed. "Rosé, when is your period due?"

"I got it today, why?" She sniffed.

"No reason." I giggled. "Come in the kitchen. We'll call Jisoo over and fill her in on the wedding stuff then I'll tell you guys all about Lisa's. It was … the best kind of good there is."

"She fucked you right there on the kitchen counter!" Jisoo opened her heavily lined eyes so wide they just about fell out of her head.

Rosé leaned forward in her chair, silently hanging on my every word.

"Shhhh!" I hissed, looking around to make sure no one heard her.

My mom was in our apartment, occupying the girls so we could do some planning, but this week's guests were roaming all over.

"Yes."

"Whoa," Rosé uttered.

"Yep, intense. The whole weekend was intense. Lisa certainly doesn't do anything half-assed, that's for sure." I sighed happily.

"First of all, I can't believe you've been home for three days and didn't tell me that part." Jisoo rolled her eyes. "But I really want to get back to this Blaire thing for a minute. Why didn't you knock her out?"

"Um, maybe because that's totally not me. I surprised myself though." I looked back and forth between the two of them. "I've never had a problem sticking up for myself before, but with her, I couldn't. I just stood there, frozen, and it only egged her on more. When she went on about Lisa and her friend Kendall, it made me sick to my stomach."

"You believe her though, right?" Rosé asked curiously.

I thought back to the things Lisa told me when we were sitting on that bench. They made sense. She had no reason to lie to me and I couldn't be mad at her for her actions before we even met. If anything, I brought more baggage into this relationship than she did.

"I do believe her, she was very honest about all of it." I told them.

Jisoo's gaze slid to Rosé and then back to me. "You know we have to stalk this girl, right?"

"What? No. No way," I argued. "I just want to be blissfully unaware about the whole thing. I don't want to know a thing about her, or her and Lisa."

"Oh yeah, blissfully unaware got you real far last time, didn't it?"

Jisoo's words stung, but she was right. My relationship with Kai was filled with all shapes and sizes of red flags, but I put my blinders on and pushed through, determined to mold him into the family man I wanted and the dad the girls deserved.

"We just won't tell you what we find, okay?" Rosé smiled at me, pulling her iPad out of her bag as Jisoo scooted around to her side of the table with a wicked grin on her face.

"You're probably not going to be able to find anything. I know nothing about her but her first name." I folded my arms on the kitchen table and cradled my head in them. "I'm just going to nap here while you guys waste your time."

"Found her!" Jisoo exclaimed.

My head snapped up, and my pulse took off. "You did??"

She peered at me from the corner of her narrowed eye and smirked. "Nope, but nice to know you're really interested."

"Okay, what is Lisa's agent's name?" Rosé had her game face on.

"Bambam … Bambam Bhuwakul."

"Let's see if we can find his bitchy wife's Facebook page and go from there." Her eyes lit up as she typed away.

"Boom!" Jisoo threw her hands up in the air in celebration. "There she is—at least I think that's her. Fake boobs, fake hair and a picture of herself in a bikini as her profile pic. Shocker."

"Is this her, Jennie?" Rosé turned the screen just enough for me to see Blaire's obnoxious sneer looking back at me, taunting me. I really wish I had that night to do over again. I would've reacted so differently.

"Yep, that's her."

"Score!" Jisoo said proudly, high-fiving Rosé. I just rolled my eyes. "Now let's hope her friend's list isn't private … crap! It is."

"Wait," Rosé said, "she's too vain to have her profile pics private. Let's see if anyone named Kendall has commented on any of them."

"You two need help, you know that?" I teased, secretly excited that they were on the trail of something. I didn't want to know anything about them being together, but the morbid, overly obsessed girl side of me was dying to know what she looked like. Then I would hate myself for looking and wish that I could unsee it. That's how my world worked.

"Look, look!" Jisoo pointed at the screen and jumped up and down happily. "A Kendall liked that pic of her and … Bambam, I'm assuming. He's cute too! Why is he with her?"

"Gawk at Bambam later, let's check this chick out." Rosé's tongue ran along her lips as she concentrated, diving deep into her investigation.

"What are you looking up now?" I tried to sound nonchalant.

"I clicked on her page, but it's private. I'm gonna Google her name and see what I come up with," Rosé said. "Kendall Bauer … okay, Google, come to Mama."

"Whoa." They both said in unison, their eyes fixated on whatever came up.

"What?" Tension rose in my chest.

Please let her have three eyes … and green teeth … and huge, hairy moles all over her face.

"Nothing, she's um … okay looking," Jisoo stuttered while Rosé sat wide-eyed, staring at their find.

We had been best friends for almost a decade. I could tell the very second Jisoo was lying about something, and if that wasn't enough, Rosé's face was a dead giveaway. I jumped up from my chair and scrambled up behind them.

"That's her?"

On the screen was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in my whole, entire life. She was crawling on the sand, her ultra-dark brown hair falling down around her face, strands of it plastered to her perfect cheekbones. Her wild eyes were an exotic shade of blue with a purple hue to them, while her pouty lips seduced the camera. A blue bikini swirled around her amazing body, accentuating every asset.

"What is this site?" I asked, scanning the screen for answers. "Oh my God, she's a swimsuit model?"

"Wait, just hold on a sec. This is the first link that came up," Rosé said, hitting the back button. "This might not be the Kendall that she was seeing. We need to look more."

Right under her modeling website was a link to a news article. Rosé clicked on it and within seconds, the caption screamed at me.

NEWEST COUPLE? SUPERMODEL AND HOCKEY SENSATION SEEN OUT FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A MONTH.

My heart sank when I saw the picture under the caption. Kendall and Lisa were sitting together at a baseball game, a month ago, exactly two weeks before we met. A hunter green baseball cap that I'd become very familiar with the last couple weeks was perched comfortably on top of her head. They were laughing, sharing a soft pretzel. They weren't overly affectionate to each other, but now I would never get the image of her wearing Lisa's hat and them having fun together out of my head. This was exactly why I didn't want to look her up in the first place.

"Okay, I'm done. Can we please be done now?" I blurted out in frustration, spinning on my heels and marching down the hall to my room. I may have been a twenty-four-year-old mother of two, but that didn't mean I wasn't entitled to a hissy fit every now and then, and now was that time.