“Wait…he said what about her?” asked a whispered voice.

A pair of gentle green eyes stared up from over the edge of Sophie’s toes. Cecilee Ford was a little pixie of a thing – a teeny 5’2 frame, covered with flawless porcelain-coloured skin and topped with a short mop of gorgeous jet-black curls. At only 27, she was the youngest of the group, but undoubtedly the most successful in her own right. The hottest young fashion designer to come out of the UK in the last five years, Cecilee was undeniably talented, remarkably humble, and frighteningly naïve.

“He said she was ‘getting too thick’,” said Sophie, taking a generous sip of her double G&T and gesturing towards her own, naturally svelte mid-section. “And that if she didn’t ‘cut the crap’ no one was going to want to see her in a wedding dress. That was her breaking point.”

Cecilee stared. Wide-eyed. Obviously appalled.

“But I don’t get it…why would he say that?” She continued to whisper, this time a little louder than before. Clearly the three sips of her drink were going to straight to the miniscule woman’s head. “I think she looks fabulous!” She gestured semi-wildly with the nail polish wand she was using to carefully apply a shocking tangerine colour to Sophie’s toes.  She knew her friend was just trying to be sweet, but in reality, what Morgan needed right now was the shocking realism and cynicism that only she and their other best friend Kat could offer.

“Ces, really? Nobody likes to be sugar-coated at a time like this,” said Sophie, tipping her drink in the other woman’s direction and flipping her dark locks off of her shoulder.

“What?” she asked, in a completely obliviously tone. Poor thing, Sophie thought, she really is just too sweet for her own good. A bad man would eat her up and swallow her whole, and Sophie was bound and determined to make sure that never happened. The two were polar opposites in reality; Sophie had grown up amongst the hustle and bustle of NYC, while Cecilee was home schooled in a small town in Southeast England. Sophie was the life of every party, while Cecilee didn’t even attend her own astonishing debut at Fashion Week last year. Sophie had been with the same man for more than fifteen years, Cecilee had never been with a man at all.

See? Polar. Opposites.

But something about the younger woman brought out the instinctively protective side of Sophie, which was funny because she wasn’t even a ‘motherly’ kind of person. More and more she was beginning to wonder if she would actually wanted children of her own. How could someone as selfish as her actually be expected to raise a child? To put someone else’s needs before her own? It just seemed, well, unfathomable, right now. 

The thought of babies made her think of Jake. Sweet, sweet Jake. Her rock, her soul, the love of her life. The man who would make any woman the luckiest alive. The man who made her feel like the luckiest woman alive. And yet, she just didn’t know how to give him what he wanted most. A family.

Ugh. Snap out of it, Sophie, she thought to herself. You are 29 years old, you do not have to figure this all out right this very second. To squash her ongoing inner monologue she decided to prove her point to dear, innocent Cecilee.

“Hey Morg!” Sophie hollered into the kitchen, where her friend had disappeared to watch Kat whip up another batch of her famous toxic gin-infused beverages. “Ces thinks you look F-A-A-A-A-A-BULOUS!”

At the mimicking of the younger girl’s accent, the friend in question stumbled into the kitchen doorway with a look of disgust on her face.

“Ces, I’ve gained 20lbs since he proposed in December,” Morgan said, dramatically swooping her hands from her shoulders down to her hips, putting her figure on full display. “I haven’t worn anything but yoga pants since March because none of my jeans fit anymore and I have to wear a sports bra over top of my real bra to hold these bad boys up.” Morgan placed her hands firmly over the two rapidly expanding globes on her chest. The petite blonde had always been the curviest of the bunch, but her bust had already been a generous size D before her weight gain and, if Sophie had to place a bet, she would say that at least 10 of the 20lbs Morgan had put on were now residing in her chest.

“And, to top it all off, I can’t get this off because my fingers now look like cocktail sausages,” Morgan exclaimed, dramatically throwing her left hand up next to her face. The enormous diamond ring, now strategically squeezed on her third finger, glinted obnoxiously in the sun. Just months earlier the girls had “oohed and aahed” endlessly over the gorgeous bauble. Now it almost seemed like it was mocking them all with of its glory.

Morgan Witherow and Brock Andrews had been a match made in New York socialite heaven. Both 30 years old, the couple, whose uber-wealthy families grew up side-by-side on the Upper East side of Manhattan, had basically been bred-to-wed from the time they were toddlers. And miraculously, all of their parents plotting and planning to mesh together their only children had actually worked. Even after a number of years attempting to rebel against her family’s wealthy lifestyle, Morgan came home from university at 23 and could no longer deny her attraction to the adorable boy from next door…who had suddenly become the gorgeous man next door.  She was absolutely smitten, and she was willing to do anything, even fall into line with everything she hated about her family, in order to keep him. For years the pair carried on a whirlwind romance that was the envy of nearly every girl in New York City. Their engagement, which took place on a mountaintop in Sweden on Christmas Day, made the front page of the New York Times and pretty much every, gossip magazine in the country. They were the epitome of NYC royalty. And then in less than six months, it all came crashing down.

The emails started in late-December. By mid-February it was text messages to Morgan’s personal phone. In March, when the culprits started harassing Sophie and the two other girls, Morgan could no longer hide her secret from them – she was not the only woman in Brock Andrews’ life. Not by a long shot.

And as the women began to accumulate, so did Morgan’s waistline. And the press and her husband-to-be had the audacity to rub that fact in her face.

Just the thought of the last few weeks made Sophie’s knuckles instinctively go white around her glass. She had to give Morgan credit. If it had been Jake who had kept such a dirty little secret, she would have left him high and dry in a heartbeat. But then again, she didn’t have a family name to protect and countless people who were hell-bent on making sure that she was “keeping up appearances”. The anger bubbled inside of Sophie’s chest once more, for the poor heartbroken girl standing in her kitchen. The girl who she knew deserved so much better. But even after three months of intense therapy, and countless “the rumors are false!” statements splashed across headlines, there was no saving NYC’s most beloved couple.

Sophie watched from her couch as her childhood friend allowed the other two girls to dunk her pudgy fingers in a bowl of olive oil and make several desperate attempts to yank off the world’s most stubborn piece of jewelry. Sophie knew they were likely going to have to get the atrociously expensive bling cut off the girl’s hand, but she had to admit that watching their tug-of-war was definitely entertaining, and thus she withheld her interjection.

As she watched, her beautiful friend started to laugh and then started to cry. But this time, for the first time in weeks, they were tears of laughter and not tears of pain. She smiled because she knew the time was right. She knew that her friend was finally ready to take the next step in her life. She dug out her cellphone and walked out on to the balcony. She dialed a number and took a seat on the lounge chair. It rang twice before a deep male voice answered.

“This is St Clair,” he spoke into the phone. Clearly he hadn’t even glanced at the number to know who had been calling him.

“All right Officer, are you ready to lay down the law?” She asked. The man let out a low laughed.

“As dramatic as ever, aren’t you Soph?” he said. “I’m just finishing up some paper work at the station. Can you give me an hour?”

“An hour is perfect. It’ll let me get a few more drinks into her before you and your boys show up,” she said. “I’ll call my peeps and have them on standby.”

She stood up and leaned over her balcony, glancing down at the entrance to her apartment complex. She smiled as she imagined the scene that would be unfolding in just 60 minutes. She was finally going to have the old Morgan back in her life.

“And bro…make sure you don’t forget your handcuffs.”