For the Love of Friends Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Sara Goodman Confino

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542027595

  ISBN-10: 1542027594

  Cover design by Philip Pascuzzo

  For Nick, Jacob, and Max

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sunday morning, six o’clock

  A time best experienced while sleeping, preferably in your own bed and next to a loved one. Or Leonardo DiCaprio.

  It is not, however, best experienced as I did—waking up, incredibly hungover, in an unfamiliar hotel room next to an unfamiliar sleeping man. Who, while mostly hidden by the combination of a hotel quilt and a mercifully facedown sleeping position, was likely not Leonardo DiCaprio.

  Oh dear God, I thought, leaning over as far as I could to try to see my bedmate without actually waking him. What (and who) did I do last night?

  Think, Lily!

  Megan’s engagement party. That explained the hotel. Sort of. I had been planning to stick to two drinks and drive myself the forty-five minutes home afterward. Which clearly had not worked out as intended. But what happened?

  My eyes traveled to my cell phone on the nightstand, triggering a hazy memory of stepping onto the hotel’s terrace outside the reception the previous night to answer a call. I closed my eyes, wincing. Amy had called. Repeatedly. Until I finally answered. My twenty-four-year-old little sister had gotten engaged. Which, under normal circumstances, probably doesn’t seem like an excuse for getting wasted and sleeping with some random guy, though it felt like one that morning.

  But I would deal with that later. First I needed to get out of that hotel room, preferably without waking my mystery bedmate.

  When I was younger, I would have tried to justify my actions at the engagement party by forging an exceptionally ill-advised relationship with said bedmate. I would have snuck into the bathroom to try to salvage the tattered remains of what I had looked like before I morphed into the bridesmaid of Frankenstein, crept back into the bed, and pretended to wake up Disney-princess style, with a graceful, stretching yawn and perfect mascara. The courtship that would follow would be half-hearted on both of our ends, pursued by me solely so I could continue my day-to-day existence without feeling bad about myself for sleeping with him, and by him to keep getting effortlessly laid.

  But I was thirty now, and therefore too old to lie to myself and call it honor. Or in this case, too old to lie to myself and call a one-night stand the start of a relationship. Fine, if you wanted to be picky about it, I was thirty-two and therefore way too old to kid myself that this was anything worth pursuing. So I slowly inched my way off the mattress without allowing it to shift. Once fully out of bed, I breathed a quick sigh of relief, then looked around the room for my clothes.

  The little black dress I had worn to the party had been flung across the room’s desk. It posed the next problem: the bandage-style, knockoff Hervé Léger dress had required my roommate’s help to squeeze into the night before. And after a full night of drinking enough to black out, there was no way I was getting it back on without Spanx and a pair of pliers. Which left bedmate’s dress shirt or suit jacket. As the odds were pretty high that I would never see this guy again (considering that I didn’t even know who he was), I felt no guilt buttoning his shirt over my bra and underwear. Would I be doing a very obvious walk of shame? Yes. But again, it was six o’clock on a Sunday morning. The only people who would see me would be hotel staff and any other walk-of-shamers. I could handle this.

  I quickly gathered my cell phone, keys, dress, shoes, and purse and tiptoed to the door, where I found two matching bags, one labeled “maid of honor” and one labeled “groomsman.” I was Megan’s maid of honor, which meant that I would, in fact, be seeing the bed’s occupant again. Repeatedly. And in very close proximity.

  Why, oh why, couldn’t I have picked literally anyone else?

  I had to stay and face what I had done.

  I turned back to figure out my plan of attack and peered over the edge of the bed, trying to get a glimpse of the sleeping groomsman’s face. But he stirred and gave a little half snore. Grabbing the maid of honor bag, I ran out of the room in a panic.

  Breathing heavily, I leaned against the hallway wall. Maybe he won’t remember either, I told myself unconvincingly. And, worst-case scenario, there are six bridesmaids and six groomsmen. There’s room to hide in that number. I began to formulate a plan—I would give the shirt to Megan and ask her to return it to its owner. And if I could convince her to not tell me whom I had spent the night with, I couldn’t act awkward around him because I wouldn’t know who he was. I might just be able to survive this wedding after all.

  I padded barefoot to the elevator before wedging my swollen feet into the impossibly high heels I had worn the night before. As I waited for the door to open, I studied my reflection in the mirror and rubbed desperately at my eye makeup, trying to look less like Alice Cooper. Then I pulled the ribbon off my bridesmaid swag bag and belted it around my waist in the elevator, doing my very best impression of a person who meant to look the way I did right then. Head up, eyes straight ahead, bored expression, I didn’t even look around to see who could be watching me as I crossed the lobby and made my way down the too-steep-for-my-hangover marble staircase to hand the valet my parking ticket. Only when I was safely ensconced in my car, bare thighs sticking to the leather, did I allow myself a moment to rest my head against the steering wheel.

  “Never again, Lily,” I told myself through gritt
ed teeth. “You’re never getting that drunk again.”

  Becca was asleep on the sofa, the television quietly on Bravo, when I walked into our apartment. She had the blanket from the back of the sofa over her and had changed into yoga pants and a T-shirt, but she was still wearing her makeup from the night before. An open bottle of wine sat next to an empty glass on the coffee table.

  She woke up with a small start when I shut the front door behind me. “What time is it?” she murmured sleepily.

  “A little before eight,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

  She squinted up at me. “You look terrible.”

  I sighed. “Thanks, Bec.”

  She sat up suddenly, taking in my unconventional outfit. “That’s not your shirt. How much fun did you have last night?” She swung her legs off the sofa and I sank down beside her.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Always a good start. I thought you were coming home. I was waiting up for you.”

  “I was going to. But Amy called. She’s getting married.”

  Becca let out a low whistle. “And she wants you in it?” I nodded and she counted on her fingers silently. “Five?” I nodded again.

  “Including both my younger brother and my younger sister.”

  “Wow.”

  I leaned my head back against the wall. “I swear, Bec, if you get engaged this year and want me to be in your wedding, I will never forgive you.”

  “I came home alone last night and drank most of a bottle of wine myself in yoga pants, then fell asleep watching reality TV. I think you’re safe.” I smiled tightly. “So whose shirt is it?”

  “One of the groomsmen’s.”

  “Which one?”

  “Whichever one is still sleeping it off in that hotel room.”

  “Wait, you saw him this morning, but you don’t know who he is?”

  I shook my head. “He was facing the wall. Fight or flight kicked in, and I needed to get out of there fast.”

  Becca started to laugh. “This kind of thing could only happen to you. You know that, right?”

  “I know.” I stood up and untied the ribbon at my waist. “I’m going to take a shower and wash the shame off. You want to get pancakes when I’m done? If I have to be in five weddings in the same year without even a boyfriend, I’m going to need all of the carbs.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Of course, the story of how I got here starts well before the events of Megan’s engagement party. I could take the David Copperfield approach and begin with my birth, but then we would be here for way too long and you would completely lose interest before I got to the juicy stuff, like sleeping with an anonymous groomsman and going viral for being the world’s worst bridesmaid. So it’s probably best to start with the basics.

  My name is Lily Weiss, and I am my mother’s worst nightmare. In other words, I am a single, thirty-two-year-old spinster who lacks even the hint of a marital prospect and who is therefore increasingly unlikely to provide her with the grandchildren that she wants yesterday.

  Or, as I like to spin it, I am a fabulous career woman who refuses to settle for anything less than true love.

  Which would be an easier sell, I suppose, if my career weren’t the most singularly boring job on the planet. Unique? Definitely. Well paying? Nothing lavish, but I’m doing okay. Fabulous? Absolutely freaking not.

  I work as the Director of Communications at the Foundation for Scientific Technology. Capital letters theirs, not mine. Such a great title. Such a lame reality. It boils down to writing a lot of press releases for a huge science nonprofit. The foundation funds research experiments around the world, and I write about the findings of those experiments. Which sounds cool until you realize the experiments have no practical application to everyday life. Studies on marine sponge life don’t exactly cure cancer.

  It would probably be a total dream job if I liked science, but I don’t. I majored in journalism in college because it was as far from my particle astrophysicist father’s world as I could get. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my dad. But he started his crusade to convince me to follow in his footsteps as soon as I emerged from the womb, and even that early, I wasn’t feeling it. For my eighth birthday, he got me a telescope and a journal to chart the stars in. That telescope sat there collecting dust while I scribbled my first story, about a pony named Chloe, in the journal.

  But even majoring in journalism, I was told every time I had to write a technical article that my calling was science journalism. Apparently I have a knack for explaining complex concepts in layman’s terms—maybe that’s what comes from being raised in a household where neutrinos and quarks were dinner-table conversation. And writing jobs are scarce. Writing jobs that pay enough to keep me from sleeping in my childhood bedroom and eating breakfast with my parents every morning are even scarcer. It may not be groundbreaking journalism, but my science-minded colleagues seem impressed with my ability to communicate their efforts to the rest of the world daily.

  It is also the one writing job that makes my father as proud of me as he would be had I actually gone into a scientific field. And with my mother suffering the constant agony borne of knowing exactly how ineffective my dating life is at providing me with a husband, it’s nice to have at least one parent’s undying approval.

  All of this is well and good, but it’s really just background noise to get to my current predicament. Which is the weddings. All five of them.

  The foundation, or FST, as it’s called in the scientific community, isn’t exactly a bustling hub of the young and the hip. It’s full of old men who think it’s perfectly acceptable to wear a tie with a short-sleeved shirt and a jean jacket with jeans. And the handful of women are basically exactly like the men, except sometimes with longer hair.

  Except for Caryn.

  Caryn, like myself, grew up with absolutely zero interest in science. Technically, she’s the Administrative Assistant to the Director of the FST. But call her a secretary at your own peril. She runs the whole operation, largely because social skills are not exactly the strongest suit of the higher-ups here. Without her, the entire foundation would disintegrate within twenty-four hours. She also has more tolerance for people than anyone I have ever met in my life.

  Our lack of interest in science was where the similarities in our career goals ended though. Caryn was still actively pursuing her MRS degree, having failed to achieve that particular title in college and somehow, inexplicably, for the seven years thereafter. Which meant that this job, for her, was a nice little marital résumé booster to show she could hold her own in an intelligent conversation and run a home and family while looking like a supermodel.

  She’s where the craziness began.

  “Good morning!” Caryn trilled as she came gliding into my office.

  I looked up warily. No one was that happy at nine fifteen on a Monday morning. At least no one I would voluntarily be friends with.

  “Coffee?” she asked, wiggling the clear plastic, mermaid-bedecked cup that told me she had gotten my favorite iced skinny vanilla latte after her morning exercise class.

  “Oh no. You want me to completely rewrite the Higgins proposal again, don’t you?” Caryn didn’t drink coffee—especially not mass-produced coffee from a chain. Organic juice cleanses? Yes. So if she was supporting Starbucks, whatever she wanted was going to be more than I could handle on a Monday morning. And she had bought a venti!

  Caryn laughed. “Can’t I just bring my friend coffee on a beautiful Monday morning?”

  I glanced out the window. It was overcast and supposed to rain for most of the day. I looked back at her to see if she had finally snapped and was ready to go on a killing spree while decked out in Lilly Pulitzer and Chanel perfume, but she just stood there, smiling sweetly, her left hand holding out the coffee.

  Then I saw the dazzlingly giant gemstone on that hand.

  “Oh my God!” I jumped up, banging my knee and scattering papers in the process. “Caryn!”

  She managed to
set the cup down on my desk before I tackled her in a giant hug. “Tell me everything!”

  She sank gracefully into the chair at my desk, while I grabbed the coffee like the lifeline that it was.

  “Well, you know our anniversary was last night.” I nodded, despite knowing nothing of the kind. They had only been dating since January and it was early July now. Was she counting month anniversaries? “So Greg took me to the restaurant where we had our first date. And I honestly didn’t expect a thing.” This was a bit of a stretch. She had bridal magazines in her desk. Granted, she had been hoarding those for years before she met Greg. But still. “And we ordered drinks, but the waitstaff brought a bottle of champagne instead. I looked at Greg, thinking he was going to tell them they’d brought the wrong drinks, but he wasn’t at his seat, he was down on one knee.” She held out her hand for me to admire the ring.

  “It’s perfect,” I said. And it was. Which was no surprise. Caryn had honed the appearance of effortless flawlessness in absolutely all aspects of life. Sometimes I felt twinges of jealousy for how easily everything seemed to come for her, but in the seven years since she had started working at the FST, I had snuck enough peeks behind the Wizard’s curtain to know there was genuine effort involved in that appearance. Some people, like my little sister, fall backward into everything without trying. Caryn never stopped trying. I tended to fall somewhere between the two of them—I tried more than Amy did, but I couldn’t reach Caryn’s level of perfection even if I wanted to. Which, if I was being perfectly honest, I didn’t want to. I liked being able to skip the gym when I was tired and eat refined sugars.

  “When are you thinking for a wedding?” I knew the answer, but still wanted to ask the right questions. “And where? What did your mom say?”

  “June. Somewhere outside, maybe by the water. But not destination. It’s just too much of a strain on people. She was thrilled, obviously!”

  I grinned. Caryn’s news was possibly the only thing that could put a smile on my face first thing on a Monday morning.

  “Will you be a bridesmaid?”

  “Of course.” I was genuinely flattered. She might have been my best friend at work, but we didn’t exactly run in the same circles. “You didn’t have to bring me coffee for that!”