“Come on, girls!”

“No!” Nadine yelled back, not even moving. She and Reese were both sprawled out on the blanket next to the picnic basket, basking in the rays of the midday sun and steadfastly ignoring the Bennington brothers’ calls for them to join in their football game. Reese’s logic was that she was being ably represented by Drake. Nadine’s was that she didn’t want to and nobody was going to make her.

“When are they going to give that up?” Reese muttered sleepily.

“When they realise we always have and always will out stubborn them.”

“They are kind of dumb, you know.”

“I know. That’s my point; we could be waiting a while, sweetie.”

“Blah.”

Reese shifted slightly, trying not to get too comfortable before she really did fall asleep. The problem was that this was the first time she’d really relaxed in some time. She and Nadine had finally made up after Nadine had sworn a solemn vow that since there was no way she’d ever be able to top her last swipe she had sufficiently humiliated Justin and would keep quiet in future. It was good that they had; for one thing it felt too strange not to talk to her every day, and for another there were dress fittings to be done. She and Nadine were nowhere near the same shape or size so she couldn’t just use herself as a stand in the way she could her sister in law who was her second bridesmaid. Work was going smoothly, the wedding plans were going suspiciously smoothly, everything was all going smoothly and for the first time in a good few months she’d been able to breathe for a moment. And that made her want to sleep.

“You know, I have to say…” Nadine peered at the boys as they pushed and shoved each other. “Your fiancé is mighty fine. I do appreciate the whole shirtless thing.”

“I know. Isn’t it great?” Reese cracked an eye open to affectionately leer over her boyfriend’s muscled form.

“Dean used to look that, four years and one baby ago,” Jenna joked.

“Please do not make me imagine what my brother used to look like sans clothing.” Reese pulled a face. “The beer gut’s bad enough as it is.”

Jenna leaned over and gave her an affectionate poke. “Just you wait, honey. It’s all romance and roses for the first six months, then they get used to it and it’s beers in front of the game.”

“Bring it on,” she announced. “I’m quite happy to get used to being the little wife indoors. I have this whole plan where I’m going to be pregnant and a stay at home mom within three years tops.”

Nadine propped herself up on her elbows and laughed, staring at Reese in disbelief. “Says she who used to claim that career was key and nobody should be a parent before thirty five.”

“I changed my mind. Marriage, babies, just call me Suzie Homemaker because I am so done with adults. Bring on the little people.”

Jenna laughed. “I’m going to remind you of that when you’re complaining that you’re knee deep in dirty diapers and haven’t had a grown up conversation in weeks. I know I make it look fabulously easy but running after people who can’t even talk yet can get kind of dull, sometimes.”

“That’s when we drop them off at Uncle Dean and Aunt Jenna’s house for the night and go dancing.”

Jenna threw her head back and laughed, while Nadine smirked and smothered her giggles. “Seriously though, that’s quite the turn around,” Nadine said.

Reese shrugged lightly, pulling at the hem of her tank top. “Honestly, I know I used to want to do that whole high flying thing for a while but now that I’m out of the city it just kind of seems like unnecessary stress. You run around like a lunatic trying to kiss ass when all around there’s tons of people who, okay, less high powered, but who actually get some kind of work-life balance. So I figure I get me pregnant, have a nice couple of years at home with my kids and then when they go to school I can do part time or something.”

“Wow. Is Drake aware that he’s about to be a daddy or were you gonna tell him when the stick goes blue?”

She poked Nadine for that. “He wants kids though he wants us to have more money first, so I told him he needs to start bugging Old Man Johnson for a raise. Which he should have got like a year ago anyway because I swear he’s the only guy at that garage who actually does any work.”

“So true,” Jenna commented. “You know I left the Buick there with Sam for one stupid oil change at nine am sharp, I go back at the end of the day and he claims he was too busy to get to it. I take it back the next day and it turns out ‘busy’ meant at Joe’s watching the game and drinking. I tell Drake and he’s got it done for me by the end of the afternoon. Though, that might be because he was trying to butter up the future in laws.”

“That’s my man,” Reese said smugly with a bright smile.

“Well I approve. He can suck up to this in law all he wants.”

“I’ll be sure and tell him that.” Her tone was wry.

“So anyway, what are we doing about a bachelorette party?” Jenna asked. “I figure you’ll want to do it sooner rather than later, you don’t want to leave it until the night before the wedding. I made that mistake and it took a lot of concealer to fix.”

“Don’t ask me, ask my maid of honour.” Reese adjusted her sunglasses. “I already told her that all I’m doing is turning up when I’m told.”

“Ugh.” Nadine rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t think it’d be so hard to check your diary. It’s not like I’m asking them to go away for a week, it’s one Saturday night. This is why I make Reese organise everything.”

“I’ll organise your bachelorette party.” Reese patted her shoulder.

Nadine snorted – Reese knew full well that was never going to be necessary. Marriage wasn’t for her. “Which would be helpful if I was ever getting married.”

“I know, but it works out great for me.”

“Hey.”

Having momentarily left the game, Drake dropped down next to Reese and started rummaging in the basket for a soda. Popping the tab, he leaned his head back and swallowed down half of it in one go before speaking. “And what are you three gossiping about?”

“Not a lot.” Jenna shrugged. 

“How your fiancée ought to organise her own bachelorette party and spare me the pain.”

“Hey, you got one job besides turning up and wearing the dress,” Drake chuckled. “Fair’s fair.”

“Really, only one? So does that mean I never have to look at that damn table plan ever again?”

“Soon as we squeeze Trace in I swear, we’re done,” Reese laughed.

“Oh.” Drake frowned momentarily. “Did we forget him or something?”

Reese froze, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Nadine’s steely gaze. That had been a stupid slip – Drake had no idea that Trace wasn’t on the original guest list and she really didn’t want to have to explain why. As far as he was aware Trace had no connection to her ex and was just a family pal who should have always been coming. Nadine had of course immediately realised this and that was why she was looking at her in that narrow-eyed way - when she’d first asked her to help rearrange the table plan she’d suffered a lecture about it.

“Yeah. Apparently it’s true, you always forget something when you’re organising this shit,” Nadine finally laughed before giving Reese another pointed look. “Though if one guest off the table plan is the worst that happens we should be okay.”

When Drake wasn’t looking, Reese mouthed a ‘thank you.’

“Well, I’ll see you girls later.” Drake kissed Reese’s cheek before jumping up and jogging back to the game.

“What was that?” Jenna asked shrewdly.

“Oh, Reese doesn’t want Drake to know that Trace only just got invited.”

“Oh. I take it the Timberlake connection had him banned before?”

“Yep. Apparently they’ve made up now.”

“Screw you.” Reese folded her arms crossly. Why was it bad that she’d accepted the olive branch? Trace was an old friend, even if he was also friend to the asshole. Okay, she was still sore that he’d defended Justin even knowing what he’d done, but there was no point continuing to be mad at him over it. Justin had taken quite enough from her without robbing her of a childhood pal too.

“So how you handling that, by the way?” Jenna picked up a stray grape from her plate and munched on it thoughtfully. “You inviting the Harlesses?”

“Yeah. Not their fault Justin’s an ass,” she replied. “I just made sure that unlike the engagement party invite this was strictly to Lynn and Paul only.”

“Because that’s not going to be awkward.” Nadine let out a snort of a laugh. “Watching you marry somebody who isn’t their son.”

“Nade,” Reese breathed out heavily, “I love you but if you don’t quit being a bitch about everybody even vaguely connected to Justin it’s gonna be you I don’t invite.”

“Would that mean I don’t have to organise the bachelorette party?”

She got a cracker thrown at her head for that. “Shut up.”

“Children,” Jenna said with a warning tone, sensing the tension beneath the jokes. “Reese is right, there’s no need to be rude to anybody who isn’t Justin. If Lynn and Paul are uncomfortable nobody’s going to force them to accept the invite.”

Nadine smiled brightly and took another handful of chips, but on the inside she was frowning. She knew that Reese felt she was being unreasonable and she knew that a lot of other people didn’t understand her hostility towards anything connected with Justin Timberlake, but then nobody else knew what had happened. Not even Reese’s parents knew why the engagement had been broken off – people knew enough to gather that something Justin had done had prompted Reese to leave him, but she’d always refused to be drawn on exactly what. She had been pretty much the only person Reese had confided in, and thus she had taken the brunt of the pain and anger. Contrary to appearances she really didn’t hold anything against Justin’s parents or even Trace (though she still thought he was a moron for even attempting to defend him); she just knew how messed up and not over the whole thing Reese was and she genuinely thought it was a bad idea for her to involve the remnants of her previous relationship so much in the wedding.

She didn’t doubt that Reese loved Drake and she didn’t think she was only with him to pretend she was over Justin, it wasn’t that; yet the girl clearly still had a lot of issues, hadn’t really closed the chapter yet. To her it felt like every time Reese went out of her way to pretend she was okay with such reminders of Justin it re-opened the wound and delayed the healing yet further. That wasn’t healthy. She knew how invested in the childhood sweetheart fairytale her friend had been, and she couldn’t help seeing this sudden rush to do a 180 and stop resembling even in the slightest the Reese who had been with Justin as blinkered and reactionary. It was only going to cause trouble in the long run if she rushed into everything and pretended nothing had happened.

Nadine couldn’t do the same. She remembered all too vividly. Reese had been living with Justin in LA at the time, and had flown out to surprise him in New York. The surprise had been on her when she’d discovered him with Hollywood’s Slut Du Jour (Lord only knew how he had kept their hook up out of the papers, Katy Marron was known for getting through men like most girls got through hot meals), and she had immediately jumped on a plane home to Tennessee. When she had arrived on Nadine’s doorstep, dishevelled and crying and with little concept of what time zone she was supposed to be in or her body thought it was supposed to be in, it had been horrendous. She’d never seen her usually immaculate friend look that way – there had been a grey pallor to her skin and huge purple circles beneath her eyes. There had been tears and wailing and even a little vomiting.

What had then shocked Nadine was the sheer speed at which Reese had proceeded to cut all ties from her life in LA. It hadn’t even been 24 hours before she’d quit her job without notice, arranged for somebody to pack her things and ship them back to Shelby Forest. In her opinion, most people wouldn’t have been able to do much more than sleep and cry – it was just one more thing that convinced her Reese had tried to move on too quickly without ever actually addressing anything she was feeling. It was probably why she couldn’t even hear Justin’s name without becoming snippy and agitated.

Taking him back was a big no-no and Nadine had never been worried about Reese’s refusal to even consider doing so – Lord knew she despised Justin for what he’d done to the friend she considered a sister – but even she thought that the hostility and fury Reese was holding onto when it came to him was a bad thing. And that really said something, because she hated Justin with intensity and had more than once told him to go die in a fire.

“So we still on for dinner tonight?”

Nadine was snapped out of her reverie by Reese poking her. Lord only knew how much of the conversation she had missed. “Abso-tively. You still want to head out to Alessandro’s?”

“Yes. I have serious craving for the linguine.”

“Cool. You and Dean going to join us or are you stuck with the rug rats?” She asked Jenna.

“No, it’ll just be your happy little threesome.”

“Eww, that makes it sound dirty.”

As Jenna laughed and chatted on, Nadine stifled a sigh. She really didn’t enjoy pretending everything was normal when it so wasn’t. That had been easy enough before Timberlake had decided to show up and throw a dark cloud over everything, but these days she was finding it hard to bite her tongue.

It wasn’t like it had been her greatest skill to begin with.