I Do (Hate You) by Sienna Blake

Shell

“I need to talk to Shell.”

“Go away, James.”

I sat there in the other room of the bridal villa listening to James and Vina go at it at the front door. It was going to be very hard to forget the man if he kept following me places.

“Just tell Shell that I’m standing outside, and I need to talk to her.”

“Okay,” Vina said. She slammed the door, then opened it three seconds later. “I told her. Shell says she has no interest in talking to you now or ever and you should go away.”

“Haha. I mean really tell her,” James insisted.

I heard the door swish shut again but instead of a slam, I heard James give out a grunt of pain.

“Move your foot, James.”

“It’s okay, Vina,” I said from the living room. “You can let him in.”

It made me smile to see that James was limping a little bit as he came into the living room. If Vina’s career as a venture capitalist didn’t work out, she could always be a bouncer.

“Shell, I need your help,” he said as he shuffled in. “Oh, hello. You’re all here.”

Miguel, Talia, and Claire were sitting next to me and Vina followed James in and sat down on the arm of my chair. They looked like a gang of angry mobsters but with perfect hair and makeup. Except Talia, who still had huge Velcro rollers in her hair.

I had turned my back to him before he looked at me, still at the table where the makeup artist had worked her magic.

“Shell, I need to talk to you alone,” James insisted.

That wasn’t happening. God knows what I’d do if I was alone in a room with him again. I’d either screw him or punch him. The first one would be a disaster and the second would ruin the manicure I just got.

I still didn’t turn around, knowing the sight of him might make me give in to whatever he was planning. “James, whatever you want to say to me, you can say in front of my friends.”

“I really can’t,” he said.

“Then Vina is right, and you need to just go away.”

James wouldn’t give up that easily. “I really need to talk to you in private. It’s about the ‘wedding gift’ for Rupert.”

“What are you even talking about?” I asked and whirled in my chair to face him.

He gasped. “Wow. You look…amazing. With your hair pulled back like that and your eyes all…”

“Stop, James. No one wants to hear it.”

My tone was disinterested and my words were cruel, but I had to look down at the floor so he wouldn’t see how flattered I was by his words. Every bride is beautiful, I reminded myself.

James kept right on pushing. “Five minutes. Just give me five minutes alone to convince you, Shell. Please.”

“Fine,” I said and stood up from my chair just as Brooke, the bouncy makeup artist, walked back in. She had spiky black hair and sparkly blue eyelids, but she had given the rest of us the most subtle, perfect bridal makeup I’d ever seen.

“One last thing!” she chirped, holding a small makeup brush and a little glass pot to go with it.

I sat back down.

“No, love. Follow me to that big window in the kitchen. I’ve mixed up another batch of custom lipstick and I want to make sure that it’s just perfect. The natural light in the kitchen is better than in here. I’ll leave the little pot and brush with you so you can retouch it through the night.”

James looked so exasperated at such silly girl stuff that I vowed to take twice as much time as necessary in there. As I walked out, he made to follow.

“Oh no, we’re doing important work in the kitchen. You stay here with the wedding party,” I said, then turned to my row of friends and winked. “Play nice, everyone.”

I took a last look at James before I swept out of the room. The look on his face was pure terror. The last time he’d seen Talia, Claire, Vina and Miguel all together, they’d been drunk and silly and harmless, smiling at everyone and loving the world. Now the girls looked like they wanted to rip his face off, and Miguel looked like his favorite child had just disappointed him.

There was no truer group of friends and if one of us had been wronged, all of us had been wronged. I was half expecting to see a pile of ashes instead of James when I got back, and right now, that was fine with me.

Miguel spoke first. “I was rooting for you, mate. I really was. Isn’t that right, Shell?”

“Sorry, was someone talking to me?” I called from the kitchen. “I can’t really hear anything in here.”

Brooke gave me the side eye as she painted my lips with the brush. “You can’t hear that?” she whispered.

“As far as they know,” I whispered back, and she grinned.

In the living room, James was answering Miguel. “Listen, I want what’s best for Shell. I really do. I just need her help with something right now. It’s important.”

Claire went next. “James! Weddings are sacred days! You don’t ask the bride to go run errands for you a few hours before she’s about to say ‘I do.’”

“Maybe she shouldn’t say ‘I do,’” he countered, which was followed by a thump and then an “Ow!”

Brooke and I slapped our hands over our mouths so we wouldn’t laugh. When I pulled back my hand it was covered in pink lipstick. Brooke shook her head and started the application process all over again while I mouthed, “Sorry.”

I went back to listening while Brooke worked. I wondered who had hit James, or maybe it was all four of them.

I heard Talia’s voice next. “James, Logan will kill you if he finds out you slept with his little sister the night before his wedding.”

“We were handcuffed together. We had to share a bed! And sleep was all we did! Well, mostly…”

“Gross,” Vina said. “Spare us the details. The best thing you can do now is let this go and let Shell get married in peace.”

James let out an exasperated breath. “There’s a lot more going on here than any of us knows. I need to find out what. And I can’t do it without Shell. If she does this one last thing, then I’ll leave her alone. Forever.”