Part I
Engagement Party
Naelle
I stared at the coat closet in shock. There were very loud moans coming out of it.
Normally, I’d just leave them to it, but the moans sounded very familiar.
“Oh, yes, right there,” someone panted.
That someone sounded an awful lot like my fiancé, the one who had put a ring on my finger just two weeks before our engagement party tonight.
Our parents were here. Literally dozens of our friends were here, and more importantly, our parents’ friends.
And Brayden was doing very loud things in a coat closet in my parents’ house while our engagement party was going on.
“Naelle, are you okay, sweetheart? Where have you been?”
My dad walked up behind me and slung an arm around my shoulders.
“Why are you staring at the coat closet?”
A loud moan answered his question.
“What the…”
He yanked open the closet door, which I hadn’t even thought about.
Two people came tumbling out of the closet.
“Jenny?”
She got to her feet, a little unsteady in her stilettos, her makeup an absolute mess. She had kissed off all of her lipstick…or Brayden had.
“Oh, Naelle…hi.”
She ran a hand through her long blonde hair, which was a wild mess. She had clearly been in there for a while.
Brayden had gotten to his feet and was zipping his pants. He had a scrap of lace in his hand, which I realized was Jenny’s tiny thong.
“Sorry about the disturbance, sir,” he said respectfully to my dad.
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe that his first instinct was to apologize to my dad — not me.
I looked at the rock on my finger. I was about to take it off and throw it at him.
But my dad beat me to the punch.
Literally.
My dad slugged my fiancé in the face, knocking him to the ground.
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Brayden protested. “My dad has always kept a woman on the side. It’s just how families work.” But he was backing away slowly, his eyes on my dad’s furious face.
“It’s not how my family works,” my dad hissed. He looked like he was ready to pound Brayden into the ground. “Listen, I don’t care about the particulars of your family’s dirty laundry, but in mine, we don’t cheat. And we don’t cheat in coat closets with our fiancée’s best friends.”
Brayden held up his open palms. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re not going to get the opportunity to ever get in this situation again,” I said, interrupting the conversation between my dad and Brayden.