Taking the Leap Read online

  “Do you wish you were different?”

  I give her a sharp look. “No, actually. I don’t. I’m happy with who I am.”

  “Do you wish your sister was different?”

  “Of course not. I love my sister.”

  Jenna shrugs and says no more; I figure out what she’s getting at, though. She’s got more going on for her than a gorgeous face and hot body, I think. She’s smart, too. Insightful. I better watch myself. I’m on my way to a crush.

  “I wish she would stand up to our mother, though.” The words tumble from my mouth, solid and sinking as the rocks I toss into the creek.

  Jenna sighs. “Maybe she feels like she can’t. You know, weddings bring out the worst in people. The money. The pressure.”

  “My mom needs to back, off, that’s all. Not just about me and that damn bridesmaid’s dress. About Abby and Tony, too. It’s their day.” I scuff at the ground again and slide Jenna a sideways look. “I mean, look, I’ll wear the damned dress if that’s what my sister really wants, but I’m not cool with us both being bullied into it. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean.” She eyes me. “You shouldn’t wear the dress. It’ll look awful on you. A tux, on the other hand….”

  I blink at her soft noise of appreciation, not sure if I should be mad she just insulted me, or flattered that she’s…what? Trying to flirt? I shake off that idea fast. Girls who look like Jenna Monroe don’t go for girls like me.

  “I’ll wear whatever my sister wants me to wear,” I repeat for what feels like the millionth time.

  “Of course you will,” she says.

  Both of us turn toward the firehall at the sound of a voice hollering Jenna’s name. It’s her mother. Jenna rolls her eyes, but grins.

  “It’s time to open presents!” Mrs. Monroe shouts across the back lawn. “Get in here!”

  “We’d better go,” I say.

  Jenna punches my arm lightly. “Yeah. But hey, we should exchange numbers, yeah? Aren’t all the bridesmaids supposed to be in touch?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Right.” I fumble my phone out of my jeans pocket and give her my number.

  She texts me immediately, and when my phone pings with her message, she gives me a grin. Strikes a pose. She’s totally ignoring her mother’s shouting. “Take my picture. You know. For my contact photo.”

  I do, a quick snapshot that has no business turning out as good as it does. She doesn’t even ask me to see it, just gives me a wink and links her arm through mine. We walk back together, not fast and not slow, and I’m the one trying to step up the pace.

  “Getting there faster won’t make them less pissed off,” she says from the side of her mouth. “And just makes them think they can boss you around.”

  Just outside the door, her mother having gone inside in a huff, I turn to face Jenna. I shake my head. “You. You’re trouble, aren’t you?”

  “Me?” She points to herself with a mock-surprised expression that quickly turns smug. “I try.”

  Four

  Jenna

  * * *

  When my brother was little, he used to eat crayons. I mean, the kid was dumber than a box of hammers. But he grew up all right, and as far as brothers go, I guess I could’ve ended up with a lot worse.

  Tonight, he’s stretched out along the lumpy couch in our parents’ rec room. Mom and Dad went to bed an hour ago, and we’re hanging out watching old movies from the DVD collection we’ve had since elementary school.

  Tony moved back home about six months ago, allegedly to save money for the wedding. You couldn’t pay me enough to move to this house. I’m only here tonight because my mom’s planned a big family dinner tomorrow, and I live two hours away, so driving back and forth would’ve been too much. Considering that I have to sleep in a room that was never mine but contains all my childhood bedroom things, I’m thinking I made the wrong choice.

  “So…” I say and nudge him with my foot. “Talk to me about Sam.”

  “Abby’s sister?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah.”

  “She’s cool.” Tony shrugs and drags a hand through the bowl of popcorn. He takes a long slug from the two-liter bottle of cola next to him on the floor. He’s stress eating, and I can’t blame him. This wedding business is driving me crazy, and it’s not even my shindig.

  “You’re not going to fit into your tux, if you keep that up.” I lean to grab away the bowl, but he laughs and pulls it out of my reach.

  “Make your own!”

  I laugh and lean back against the couch. “I don’t want any. I’m just trying to look out for you.”

  “Yeah. Bleah.” Tony puts the bowl down.

  “I know she’s cool,” I tell him to get back on track. “I want to know more about her.”

  Tony glances at me. “Why?”

  “I just do. She’s my future sister-in-law’s sister.” Oh, shit. Does that make us related?

  Because that is definitely not how I’ve started thinking about Sam Donovan.

  “She works at a nursing home. She’s a CNA, a nursing assistant. Umm…she…doesn’t get along with their mom,” Tony adds with a significant look at me.

  We both laugh. His future mother-in-law is, maybe not the worst, but among the worst. Nobody gets along with her.

  I nod. “She makes Mom look like Mother Theresa.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. But, yeah. She’s a piece of work all right. Abby’s worried that she’s going to ruin the wedding. I told her that nothing could ruin our wedding, because we were going to be married and that was the important thing. Not a dress or a cake or her mother.”

  “Wow.” I shake my head in awe at my brother’s insight. I’m a little jealous, to be honest. Of that kind of love. That sort of partner, who’d take the time to ease your fears that way. I didn’t know he had it in him.

  “Shut up,” Tony says and kicks me a little.

  I laugh, but grab his ankle to keep him from nudging me again. “Abby’s a lucky woman. You know that?”

  “Yeah.” He grins, that same old smart-ass I’ve always known. “I know.”

  The movie is over and it’s probably time to head upstairs to the room that was never really mine because my parents moved here after I’d escaped to college. I’ll toss and turn in a bed too hard to be comfortable. My creepy collection of dolls that my mother has insisted on keeping even though I told her a hundred times I don’t want them will stare down at me all night. I’ll hear my father snoring from all the way down the hall and my mother’s muttered cursing at him to “turn over, damn it.”

  “When do you and Abby get the new place?”

  Tony sits up to point the remote at the TV, turning it and the DVD player off. “She’s moving into it the month before the wedding. My stuff will come out of storage then. I won’t live there until we get back from the honeymoon.”

  “Saving yourselves for the wedding night, huh?” I tease.

  He snort-laughs. “Don’t get me started.”

  “I was joking. Shit, are you serious?”

  “Her mother,” my brother says, and he’s not smiling or laughing right now.

  “Oh. Shit,” I repeat. I draw my knees to my chin. “She doesn’t want you to live together before you get married?”

  “She claims people will think awful things about Abby. There’s been a lot of pearl clutching.”

  I wave a hand toward him. “Dude, but…you guys lived together for an entire school year already.”

  They’d shared an apartment their last year of college, before each had moved home for the summer and then on to different jobs and their own places. Then they got engaged and each had moved home to save money, and that made sense, but they were both also twenty-five years old. Adults, who’d already lived on their own and had full-time jobs to pay their bills with.

  “Yeah, well, she pretends that didn’t happen. What can I say? The woman’s a lunatic. But she’s footing the bill for most of the wedding, and we’re just trying to
keep the peace.” Tony frowns and digs through the almost empty bowl of popcorn again.

  I gently take it from his hands. “Stress eating is bad for you. Listen, it’s only another few months. You’re going to make it. And then, you’re right, the part that matters is the marriage. Not the wedding.”

  “Thanks.” Tony offers a fist for me to bump. “I just want it be over with, you know?”

  “Six more months. You can make it. What could go wrong?”

  Then we both laugh, because we both know there’s a very, very long list of things than can go totally up the old bung, and with a mother like Abby’s, there are sure to be bumps. Tony yawns and stretches, takes the popcorn bowl upstairs. I brush my teeth in our shared bathroom and hit my bed, a little too keyed up for sleep.

  Pulling out my phone, I open the dating app I keep thinking I should delete. I turned off the notifications months ago, otherwise my phone would never stop beeping and booping and lighting up with messages from randos sending dick pics at all hours of the day and night. It amuses me to scroll through the inbox, trying to guess from the single line headers if the message is going to be lame or gross or oddly sweet — that happens, sometimes. There are good dudes out there, even if they’re overshadowed by the assholes.

  I haven’t changed my profile in months. In my picture, you can’t even clearly see my face. It’s shaded by the brim of a sunhat. You can glimpse my mouth and my manicure touching the hat, but that’s it. It doesn’t stop anyone from messaging me, though. I tap the screen to scroll through my other photos and delete them, one by one, in the unnecessarily tedious process this app requires. I look at my information. It says I like guys, and that’s true, but I wonder for a second what would happen if I changed it to being into girls? Because that’s also true.

  Would I get as much attention? Women don’t send pussy pics, at least not without being asked. Women usually try to have a conversation first, too. My fingers hover over the screen, but in the end, I don’t change anything else. I just delete the entire app.

  Five

  Sam

  * * *

  My sister posted some photos of her bridal shower on Connex, and I haven’t been able to stop myself from stalking through them. I’m only in one or two, far in the background, but Jenna’s in a lot of them. At least it seems that way to me, but since I’m really only searching the pictures for a glimpse of her, and because that platinum blond hair stands out, it seems as though she’s in every shot.

  “You ready, Mrs. Winslow?” I ask from outside the bathroom. I tuck my phone away into the pocket of my scrubs. We aren’t forbidden from using phones at work, but I like to give my residents my full attention.

  Mrs. Winslow is eight-nine years old and curses like a sailor. Today, she’s due for a visit to the salon, which means getting her from her room to the beauty parlor in the next building and then when she’s finished, picking her up and bringing her back to her room. It’s not hard work, compared to some of the other tasks I have on my list for today. She’s taking a long time in the bathroom, though.

  “You okay?” I rap on the door. “Do I need to come in?”

  “I don’t need your help to wipe my ass just yet,” Mrs. Winslow snaps as she opens the door and shakes a finger at me. “I just needed to put on my lipstick.

  I grin. “Of course. And you look gorgeous, as usual.”

  “Oh, you. Don’t you go trying to flirt with me. I’ll never be too old for dick.”

  “But I can’t help myself, Mrs. Winslow. That red lipstick is just too hot.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her and help settle her into her wheelchair.

  “You know, back when I was a girl in school, we sometimes practiced kissing on each other.” Mrs. Winslow says this with a nod.

  “Yeah? Did you like it?”

  She twists in the chair to shake her finger at me again. “No!”

  “Are you sure?” I chuckle as I push her down the long hallway.

  She’s silent for a moment. The wheels of her chair squeak. By the time we get to the doors leading to the corridor between the buildings, I’m already thinking about what I’ll have time to finish before she needs to be picked up again. We aren’t short staffed here, but we all have more than enough work to keep us busy all day long.

  “I might have liked it, just a little,” Mrs. Winslow says to me with a twinkle in her eyes as I drop her off at the beauty parlor. “Are you coming back to get me?”

  “It should be me, yes.”

  “Try not to faint when you see me,” she says, fluffing her white hair.

  I put a hand over my heart. “I’ll do my best.”

  Back inside the main building, I slip my phone from my pocket again. I don’t have Connex set to allow noise notifications, but there’s a small red one on the app, which means I got one. It’s a friend request. From Jenna.

  My heart doesn’t stop, I mean, that’s a stupid thing to say. If your heart stops, you die. It does bump so hard for a moment that I’m almost sure you can see it bursting out of my chest like one of those old cartoons when someone falls in love, and that’s just dumb because I barely know her.

  I tap the screen to open the app, and my finger hovers over the “confirm connexion” button. Of course I accept her. The second I do, I’m looking at her profile, all the photos, everything she’s posted on her feed. I don’t want to see a bunch of stupid memes or quotes that are supposed to seem inspirational. I don’t want to see anything that’s going to make me think less of her. But I look, anyway.

  God, she’s funny. Smart and sexy and hilarious. And not afraid to look less than pretty. She makes goofy faces in her pictures and posts songs from artists I like, and my heart pounds hard again because it’s happened, for real. The crush hits me dead center between the eyes.

  My phone hums in my hand, surprising me so much I almost drop it. It’s not Jenna, though. That would’ve been unreasonably coincidental, not to mention that I’m sure she wouldn’t simply call me out of the blue…I shake myself out of that fantasy.

  It’s my mother.

  “I didn’t forget,” I tell her before she can get more than a few words out of her mouth. “I told you before, I’m working a split shift. I’ll be there a little late.”

  My mother squawks on, her voice rising so loud she might as well be on speaker, and there’s not much to do but listen as I get back to the nursing station to check the list of tasks. I have a lot to do before I can leave to meet her and Abby at the flower and craft warehouse where we are supposed to be picking up the supplies for the reception table centerpieces and favors. The only reason they need me is so they can use my truck, which I offered to lend them, but neither can drive a standard. I kind of screwed myself in that deal, because it made my mom squeal with delight that “both her girls” could spend the say with her.

  “…and we’ll grab lunch,” she’s saying.

  “I told you, I’ll have to get back to work. I won’t have time for lunch. I have to go. I’ll meet you there, but I’ll be a little late. You guys just go in and get started. You don’t need my opinion about flowers,” I toss in before she can protest, and add quickly, “gotta go.”

  Then I disconnect with a huge sigh.

  Myrna, the nurse on duty, laughs. “That didn’t sound good.”

  She’s heard some of the stories about my mother in general, and this wedding in particular. “Reception favors.”

  “Makes you think twice about getting married, huh?”

  “I’m never going to get married if it means dealing with my mother,” I say. “I could not give a single tiny little damn about mesh bags for after dinner mints or cocktail napkins with my name on them. I’m pretty sure my sister doesn’t care, either, but you know. It’s what’s done.”

  “That’s why Roger and I eloped in Vegas. Tell your sister it’s not too late.”

  I laugh. “I will, but even though my mom’s being a total pain in the butt, I think Abby’s had her heart set on the fancy princess wedding since we wer
e kids.”

  “If you need to slip out a few minutes early,” Myrna begins but laughs again when she sees my face. “Or, not.”

  I make it through the rest of the shift without incident, trying hard to resist pulling out my phone at every opportunity to check Connex to see if Jenna’s updated anything. I mostly manage it until right at the end as I’m pulling on my jacket to leave. Then, I see her status update, and again, my heart does that weird thud-pound thing. I actually get a little light-headed, until I realize I’m holding my breath.

  IF GLITTER IS THE HERPES OF THE CRAFTING WORLD, I’M ABOUT TO GET MYSELF AN STD. NEVER SAW A CRAFT STORE THIS BIG.

  And her location, tagged? The flower and craft warehouse.

  She’s already there.

  Six

  Jenna

  * * *

  Oh, if only I’d been self-disciplined enough to get my ass out of bed and get on the road before my mom could wrangle me into going along with her to the craft place, where she’s meeting Abby and her mom to pick up stuff for the reception. Oh, if only I hadn’t made the mistake of telling her yesterday that I didn’t work until Wednesday, so she couldn’t, with such glee, tell me I didn’t need to leave until Tuesday night! Oh, if only, if only!

  Well, if only I had done any of that, I wouldn’t be here right now in the middle of an aisle overflowing with fake sunflowers, and I wouldn’t be talking to Sam about the benefits of real versus fake plants. She’s not a fan of fake. She seems surprised that I am.