Page 57 of Manhattan Bossholes

“Maybe a little shopping…a nice lunch…we could go to a Broadway matinee…”

“Any other ideas?” I asked as I hitched up the t-shirt I was wearing and tied it in a knot so my belly was exposed. I leaned back and stretched my arms dramatically, which caused the shirt to rise higher and show off the bottoms of my breasts.

“Umm…” he stared at me, suddenly dumbfounded as I trailed my finger through the Nutella on my plate then popped it in my mouth.

I held his gaze as I dragged my finger out slowly, then pushed it back in.

Vincent jumped out of his chair so forcefully it fell over, and he grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder. I screamed with laughter as he smacked my ass. He grabbed something as we walked by the kitchen.

“What’s that?” I asked, still laughing.

“Nutella,” he answered in a hoarse voice. “I’m going to lick it off your entire body.”

And honestly, that was the only celebration I needed.

16

VINCENT

Of course everything was blowing up the day before Paul and Chloe’s wedding.

It was an all-hands-on-deck scenario at the Manhattan Building, Chloe’s beautiful but challenging venue. The à la carte aspect of the exposed brick, boho chic building was tough enough, forcing them to find vendors willing to bring every single spoon and napkin to the top floor, but the fact that the service elevator had gone out was a new layer of challenge.

And Chloe was falling apart.

The entire wedding party assembled at the building to try to help Avengers-style since building management was MIA, and their wedding planner was off with another client for the day. I could see the panic in Chloe’s eyes, the way her hands kept clenching and unclenching as though she was trying to physically keep herself from crumbling to pieces. Obviously, throwing money at the problem was my go-to solution, but elevator repair on such an old building required an expert, and they were hard to come by these days. Even with all our connections, we had to wait for a service call without any sort of clear timeline.

“Why did I pick this place? It’s my fault, everything’s falling apart…” Chloe’s voice cracked, her eyes wide as she looked around. “Tomorrow is going to be a disaster! We should just…just postpone the whole thing.”

We’d clearly reached a new level of insanity.

Her bridesmaids rushed over to comfort her, and all the guys turned to watch what Paul would do next.

Which was freeze in place.

Yeah, it looked like the pressure of the whole ridiculous spectacle of a wedding was about to break him. When I finally caught his eye, I beckoned him to follow me to the stairwell.

“Yo,” he said glumly once we were alone. “Wake me when it’s over.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if his marriage turned out anything like the ones I’d seen up close and personal, thanks to my father as well as Dominic and his ongoing marital woes, the nightmare was just beginning. Paul rubbed his temples, then refocused on me.

“It shouldn’t be this hard, you know?”

I shrugged noncommittally. Telling him what a crock marriage was wouldn’t help at this moment. All I could do was be supportive.

“We’ll make it work,” I said as I gestured around me. “The next twenty-four hours won’t be easy, but we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure tomorrow will be perfect. We’ll get the elevator guy out here, he’ll fix it up, and the setup can begin. There’s plenty of time, and if things get tight later in the day, I’ll make it worth the staff’s while to stay as late as it takes to finish up.”

Paul’s half smile wasn’t at all convincing.

“I appreciate that, and I know tomorrow will be great, but there’s collateral damage, you know? Chloe has poured everything on this one single day. She’s been obsessed. And for a while we were fighting about it constantly, because she couldn’t see reason. When I mentioned that the wedding fights were taking over our life, she stopped talking about it to me at all.” He waved his hand in front of his face like he was trying to wake someone from a trance. “We went from full-on brawls to nothing. It’s like she bottles everything up and then she explodes, like what we just witnessed. When she manages not to blow up in front of me, that’s even worse. She’ll act like everything is fine but then I’ll hear her crying in the shower.”

“She is coming across a little…manic,” I agreed. I didn’t want to insult Chloe—the woman was an absolute sweetheart, and I knew she wouldn’t be acting like this if she wasn’t stressed beyond belief. “And I’m not calling her a bridezilla. It’s not like she’s being unreasonable. I mean that she seems like a stick of dynamite with the wick burned all the way down.”

“Exactly,” Paul agreed quickly. “It’s not healthy for her or our relationship. We should be able to talk through everything, but she’s totally cut herself off from me. I shouldn’t feel distant from the woman I’m marrying the day before our goddamn wedding, you know?”

I searched for a way to comfort my friend but came up empty, because long-term commitment was a mystery to me.

We both stared at the ground with our arms crossed. There was plenty more to say but no way to put it into words.