One

Charlotte

To take the pink bikini or not to take the pink bikini…

“You’re taking the pink bikini, right?”

I turned my dropped-jaw expression on my best friend. “Are you reading my mind?”

Sarrah shrugged, looking as effortlessly cool as ever as she lounged on the sofa that provided a line of demarcation between my bedroom area and my living room area. She tossed her glossy black ringlets, and the beads of her dangly boho earrings clicked together. “I’m just here to play costume designer.”

“I’m packing for my brother’s wedding. Not playing Madison Square Garden.” I turned back to the mound of clothing on my bed. I didn’t need a costume designer, but I definitely needed someone who could stop me from trying to take every item of clothing I owned along for my brother’s destination wedding.

Sarrah sighed her patented fed-up-with-Charlotte’s-bullshit sigh. “Packing for your brother’s wedding at a tropical resort—”

“It’s in South Carolina.”

“Packing for your brother’s wedding at a resort where there is still going to be a pool and an ocean and plenty of opportunities to wear the tiniest swimsuit you own,” Sarrah amended. “Believe me, you need to look hot. Twenty percent of married people met at other people’s weddings.”

“That’s not true.” I picked up a much safer pink gingham one-piece—when one lived in one’s parents’ pool-house-slash-guesthouse, one tended to have enough swimsuits to choose from.

“It’s probably not,” Sarrah conceded. “But you do know that at least one eligible bachelor will be there.”

“Ah yes.” I snorted a laugh. “The elusive billionaire my brother mooches off.”

“Says the woman who lives in her parents’ guesthouse,” Sarrah pointed out. “Besides, if you had a superrich best friend to finance an amazing destination wedding at a four-star resort—”

“Which he owns, okay?” I kept reminding everyone of that; it wasn’t like Matthew Ashe had dug deep into his pockets and saved his pennies to pay for my brother’s fiancé’s dream wedding.

“We take what we are offered.” She finished with a satisfied flourish of her wrists.

She had a point. My parents weren’t hurting financially—a guesthouse, for Chrissake—but they didn’t have resort-wedding-on-Hilton-Head money.

They would have, if you hadn’t wasted it. The closer the date of my brother’s wedding got, the more critical of myself I became. I didn’t want Sarrah’s evaluation of my situation to sting, but it did. I’d dropped out of college. I’d wasted a huge chunk of money that could have paid for a beautiful wedding for my brother. I had nothing to show for my frustrating, on-and-off relationship with college. They might as well have used those funds on the non-disappointing child.

“Isn’t the bride’s family supposed to pay for the wedding?” I grumbled under my breath.

“What?” Sarrah asked.

I shook my head. “Never mind. I think you’re probably right, though. Scott does have a lot of rich friends. Maybe it’s time to consider the life of a trophy wife.”

“Right, better get hitched before you’re an old maid.” Sarrah gave me two thumbs up. “You’re twenty-five and unmarried. You’re a burden to your parents.”

“I know you’re joking, but ouch.” Not that it was Sarrah’s fault my feelings were hurt. I’d spent most of my life feeling like I let everyone down. Especially my brother. Scott deserved a nice wedding. 

And why was I being so bitter about the fact that his best friend was rich? I had the best best friend.

And she gave good advice. I wadded up the pink bikini and tossed it in my suitcase. “Fine. But I refuse to become a cliché. I’m not going to throw myself in front of the rich guy.”

“Agreed. Financially comfortable guy. Or girl.” Sarrah paused. “Does your brother even have any women friends?”

I scoffed. “Of course he does. He’s not some kind of misogynist weirdo.”

“Well, you make his friends sound so unappealing,” she pointed out.

“Unfair of me. I haven’t met them. It’s not like we hang out a lot, socially.” Scott had been fourteen when I was born. He’d been out of the house before I remembered him living with us.

“Well, this weekend is as good a time as any to get to know one. Or two. At the same time.” She waggled her eyebrows.

I ignored her and zipped my suitcase shut. “There. One bag. Nobody can complain that I took too much.”

A knock on the door drew my attention. Through the blinds, I saw the tanned forearm that indicated my father was back from the golf course.

“It’s open,” I called.

“Hey, Sport,” Dad said as he stepped in. He noticed Sarrah on the couch. “And Sarrah. Am I interrupting?”

“I’m helping Charlotte winnow down her wardrobe choices, Mr. Holmes,” Sarrah said in her most kiss-ass voice.

“Good. There’s a weight limit on planes. We don’t want to crash.” Dad chuckled at his own remark.

I groaned inwardly and patted my suitcase. “This is the only one I’m taking.”

Dad’s expression took on a worried cast. “Are you feeling okay?”

I shook my head in annoyance as he broke into a grin. “Does your sense of humor wear off slowly after becoming a dad or do they have to surgically remove it at the hospital and replace it with a new, worse one?”

Sarrah’s phone alarm went off, and she shot up from the sofa. “That’s my time. Do you need me to pick up anything for you after work?”

“We won’t even be here,” I explained with a wave of my hand. “Our flight leaves at six.”

“And it’s wheels up at four-thirty,” Dad added.

“Wheels up refers to the plane, not the taxi taking us to the airport,” I corrected him. I put my arms out for a hug from Sarrah. Yeah, I was only going away for a long weekend, but I didn’t know how much we’d get to text while I was busy with wedding stuff, and we saw each other almost every single day. When she released me from her crushing squeeze, I downplayed my separation anxiety. “Chill. I’m going to a wedding. Not my own funeral.”

“Plane crashes happen.” Leave it to Sarrah to say exactly the wrong thing to a nervous flyer. “Not yours, obviously. Because you’re never going to die.”

“Neither of us are,” I agreed. “Ever.”

“Okay, I’m holding you to that,” she said and headed for the door.

When it closed behind her, Dad got to the point of his rare visit to his own guesthouse. “I heard about the interview.”

I cringed a little. “Yeah, not my finest hour.”

“The job market is tough right now.” Dad always had some kind of excuse as to why the problem wasn’t me. “You’ll get ’em next time.”

I knew he didn’t mean to sound condescending. “Next time what? Next time I get told I’m not ‘the right fit’ for telemarketing? That one really hurts.”

Dad’s graying eyebrows rose in an expression I’ve seen on my own face an uncomfortable number of times. “Does it, though? I think most people would feel like they dodged a bullet missing out on a job in a dying industry.”

While my father and I shared the same coppery-blond hair and bright blue eyes, I had my mother’s porcelain skin and deep sense of cynicism.

“I know this weekend is going to be hard for you,” he began. “People will ask you what you’re doing, and you’re going to want to say, ‘nothing, I’m a failure.’”

“You don’t know what I’m going to say,” I grumbled, because absolutely, that was what I would say.

“Your brother is fourteen years ahead of you. He’s had a lot more time to build the life he has. You have to stop measuring yourself against him.” Dad’s eyes were kind, but his words ignored the core problem. I would always measure myself against my brother.

He was the only reason I was born in the first place.

When Scott had been twelve, he was diagnosed with leukemia. His best hope had been a bone marrow transplant, but neither of our parents had been a good enough match. Mom and Dad took a chance that a sibling might be, though.

And then I hadn’t been.

Obviously, Scott had survived. He’d gotten his bone marrow transplant from the registry, and I’d gotten to enter this world a crushing disappointment. My parents had tried to reassure me throughout my entire life that they wouldn’t have had me if they hadn’t wanted another baby, that they loved me even though I didn’t work as spare parts, that even thinking about myself as spare parts was absurd. But it had been impossible for me to shake the conviction that if my brother hadn’t gotten cancer, I wouldn’t be around.

Failing at everything else? Didn’t make the situation any better.

“Look,” Dad said with a sigh of resignation. “Your only job this weekend is to go to a wedding. You’re not in the wedding party—”

“Thank god!”

“—and you’re getting a stay at a luxury resort where everything is paid for and there are plenty of swim-up bars. I think you should take a modest swimsuit and spend the entire weekend drunk.” He paused. “Just as long as you’re not too drunk to

make it to the wedding.”

“Thanks, Dad. I think that’s a good plan.”

Even if the bathing suit wasn’t going to be modest.