Whatever flush I had before, is now flaming red. My ears are on fire from the embarrassment his words provoke. My eyes scan the boutique, pinning the location of everyone, making sure my conversation isn’t discovered.

Lakin: Dinner, it wasn’t a question. I’ll see you at 7, Cam.

I can’t help but grin. This man has turned everything upside down. He goes against everything I tried to protect myself from, but I’ve found him to be the hardest thing to resist. Lakin has aggressively pursued a relationship and I have aggressively avoided one. But no matter how hard I struggle out of his grasp, he’s captured me and claimed my heart. My fear of him letting go of us is stronger than anything I was ever afraid of before him. I let my heart lead, and type the words it demands.

Me: See you then.

Lakin: Nabac dom gan, mo ghrá.

And there it is, the affirmation I needed…‘forget me not, my love.’ He gave me the necklace last night, but it’s tucked into a pocket in my purse. I feel it beckoning me to put it on, those words calling to me, but I’m not brave enough to wear it. Not yet.

Commotion at the store entrance pulls my attention away from my thoughts of Lakin. Jen’s voice reverberates through the establishment. She has no concept of the other people in the store. Today is her dress day and apparently, everyone at this bridal shop needs to be aware of that fact. It’s Jen’s world and we are just living in it.

“Sorry, I’m late, girls!” she shouts from across the store. Carly’s eyes widen and she ducks behind the rack next to her in mortification. Vivian bows her head and shakes it, acknowledging Jen’s antics will never change. An engagement, kids, none of it has mellowed our spunky spitfire.

“Jen, there is a store full of other people, and their day is getting messed up by your entrance,” I say, hushing her.

She looks around and scrunches her face in understanding, but then shrugs her shoulders and moves closer to us all, pulling us each in for a hug. Yup, teachable moment is over and forgotten.

“I had to drop off the kiddos with Casen and the guys so we could just have us girls today,” she says before turning to Carly and Olivia. “I thought this was an adult day?” she adds pointedly at Carly.

Carly diverts her eyes. “I didn’t have childcare. I thought it would be more important that I was here with Olivia, than not at all.”

“I call bullshit,” Jen responds quickly. “You know Casen, Brooks, hell any one of the guys would have watched her today. I’ll let it slide, chica,” she says, pointing her finger at Carly. “But you better arrange a sitter for my bachelorette party. It’s all planned…Vegas, baby,” she says, nodding her head at each one of us, grinning widely.

“No way, not happening,” Vivian interjects. “I have four children, including an infant. There is no way I can run off and leave Brooks with the kids all weekend.”

“What do you mean? Brooks is coming too. It’s a joint bachelor-bachelorette party!” Jen exclaims.

“Did you sustain some kind of brain injury on the way here? What in the world would make you think we can all just drop everything, including our children, and run off to Vegas?” Carly asks. “Besides, the wedding is several months away, why have it now?”

Jen looks to me for my opinion, and I know she’s not going to like my answer. When I stall in my delivery, her brow scrunches in disappointment.

“Please, you guys. I feel like we are all getting so wrapped up in our individual lives. Our men, our kids…” she looks to me and adds, “our careers.” She grabs my hand, her eyes pleading with me. “I just want one weekend for us, like old times. In college, we didn’t have to give a shit; we had no responsibilities. We only had to worry about ourselves and each other. I want that again for just one weekend.”

I search each of my friends’ expressions. They are all looking to me for direction on this one. “Fine,” I say, exhaling loudly. I look at both Carly and Vivian. “It’s one weekend. Fly in Friday, be home by Sunday, surely we can pull that off.”

“I’ll have to talk to Brooks, but I’m sure between Katie and our parents keeping the kids, we can go,” Vivian resigns.

Carly nervously bites her lip, unsure of what to do or how to respond to her friends. Her expression is pained. I know she doesn’t want to let anyone down, but she also doesn’t want Jack to think she’s not being a good mother either. That’s exactly what he would think of her if he found out she ran off to Vegas for the weekend, bachelorette party or not.

Vivian must sense the same uncertainty I am, because she quickly offers an out for her mental indecision. “If Jack isn’t around to keep her, Olivia can always stay with our kiddos. No one will mind a bit.”

Carly’s body relaxes and her frown softens into an easy smile. “Thank you for that, Viv. If it isn’t a bother, I would rather her go with you guys than Jack. I really don’t even want him aware of the trip. He’ll only make a big deal out of it.”

Vivian tilts her head, reading between the lines. “How’s everything going with Jack? Is he making everything more difficult?”

I look around for Olivia to make sure she’s outside of earshot. She doesn’t need to hear the verbal bashing that her father is about to receive. Carly, I can see, is thinking the same thing because she doesn’t speak until she confirms Olivia is too far away and too engrossed in the dresses she’s looking at to hear the conversation.

“You know at first, he tried to make me feel stupid, like it was nothing and I just misunderstood an innocent friendship. He insisted the vasectomy was his way of taking the pressure off of me to have more children, so we could look into other options like adoption. He wanted us to go to counseling and work things out,” she explains.

“Bullshit. There is no mistaking what we saw on that video,” Jen insists.

She is absolutely correct. The video I gave Carly was edited. There was plenty more to show if necessary, but I felt that was enough to give her the push in the right direction. I didn’t need to shove the affair in her face; she saw what she needed to.

“I agree. He’s just trying to take advantage of my emotions, and if he really thought he could talk his way out of any wrong-doing, then he must have never had too much respect for me, or my intelligence, in the first place.”

“Fuck him,” Jen spouts off. Vivian immediately glares at her and then searches the store for any eavesdropping ears. When Carly shows offense for her use of language, Jen relents and apologizes.

“Yeah, well, once he realized I wasn’t going to take him back, he’s gotten rather nasty about things. He criticizes me any chance he gets. He tries to guilt me into thinking the divorce is my fault because we had a less than stellar sex life. That I’m homely and I’ll never find any other man, so I might as well come back because he’s the only one who would be all right with the way I look.”

Her shoulders sag, and it’s evident this man has completely torn down every bit of her self-confidence. I maintain a cool demeanor; however, I want to hunt this man down and make him pay for ever hurting my friend this way. After I’m done with him, he’ll regret ever treating a woman this way.

“I’m going to kill him,” Vivian steams, her rage rolling off her. She is typically the most sensitive, caring woman, but if her fiery temper flares, Hell hath no fury.

“It’s fine. I get that I’m not much to look at right now. I’ve been in mommy mode and let my appearance go,” Carly tries to explain her mom jeans, lack of make-up, and pony tail, but I think there is more to it than that. She’s always been the self-conscious one in the group. She’s curvy in a way that men usually love, but the average female hates. While she hides her figure because she’s insecure, men drool over her cleavage and bubble butt. She has no idea how truly beautiful she is, and it sounds like Jack helped to trap her in that box of self-doubt.