My heart jumped to my throat the second I opened the door to my room and was greeted with the sight of Simone and Mida on my bed, bearing suggestive smiles on their faces.

"What are the two of you doing in here?" I asked them as I shut the door behind me and took off my shoes, one at a time.

"We should be the ones asking you that," Simone retorted, expression dropping dramatically. Mida's face dropped too, and she pouted.

"Yeah," she agreed with Simone, causing me to arch a brow. "I thought you were with Garth."

Advancing toward them, I tossed my shoes aside. "I was, but your maid of honor had to talk to him." I nodded towards Mida, who frowned. There was no need, including the fact that I felt left out in our group and didn't want to talk to Parker about it. They both had rings on their fingers. Mine were devoid of the accessory.

Single life!

"About?" Mida questioned, drawing me out of my headspace.

"No clue," I replied quickly, dropping onto the bed in a sitting position, bouncing once in the process.

"That's a bummer," Simone cut in to add, shifting on the bed, so she sat beside me.

Mida fell backward onto the bed and groaned. "I can't believe the two of you haven't kissed yet."

My eyes went round, almost popping out of their sockets. "What?!"

She shrugged casually, "I thought by now, with all the romance in the air between the both of you, a kiss would have occurred. You know, once or twice."

I looked away from her, a foreign heat reaching my face. Technically, Parker and I had kissed before, gone farther even. But they didn't need to know that, at least not yet. I felt my face heat up stupidly.

"We all expected a kiss by now."

I turned to Simone, who had uttered the statement, and narrowed my eyes. "What do you mean 'we'?"

"Everyone." She said casually, counting off her fingers as she began to list 'everyone' out. "Mida, Shawn, myself, your mother, even Marcus-"

"-Marcus? My mother?-"

"-You'd have to be plain blind and stupid to not notice that something's up with the two of you. And you know how your mother is; she squeezed the info out of Simone over the phone." Mida cut in, sighing wistfully. I remembered the last time my mother had called. It was over twenty-four hours ago, which meant that Simone acted as a spy. "Both of you remind me of Shawn and me in our early stages of love."

"I'm not in love with Parker," I told the both of them, their faces contorted into funny looks as they stared at me, Mida straining herself in the process. Sure, I was attracted to him, but it was only a crush. Crushes leave. Right? "You guys are taking it too far."

"I didn't say you were." Mida blinked.

"But you insinuated it." I blinked right back at her.

"Hold it. Hold it right there." Simone put up a finger and stood up, coming to stand before me. "What's up with you calling Garth Parker all the time?"

"Yeah," Mida quipped, lifting her head off the bed for a second and dropping it back down to the bed. "Garth always uses his middle name. How did you find out his first name?"

"I-"

"And don't you dare lie," Simone warned, wagging a finger in my face. "You called him Parker yesterday as well, and that was before I saw the two of you converse." She brought her hand to her hip and leaned to a side, gaze flickering to the ceiling in thought. "Which means the two of you met before now because I don't see Shawn discussing his brother with you."

Mida sat up suddenly, holding up a finger. She gasped. "Did you know Garth before this wedding?"

And there it was, people: the million-dollar question that I'd planned to avoid till the end of this wedding fiasco. Honestly, I had planned to lie and steer clear of the truth until Parker was fine out of my life for good. If Mida and Simone learned about our history, they would never let my head leave the high.

Parker was a one-time thing, and nothing was going to change that. Not the raging zoo in my stomach whenever he was five feet within my range and certainly not Mida and Simone's chirpiness. We were just friends.

I had to keep telling myself that if I was going to make it out of this without getting my heart broken again. But I had already lost this case. They were going to find out anyway.

So with a sigh, I spoke. "I did know Parker before this wedding."

I watched shock take over their expressions simultaneously. Eyes widening, jaws dropping, they gasped at the same time. And then the questions came.

"When did you guys meet?"

"Where did you guys meet?"

"How did it happen?"

"Have you two kissed before?"

"Are the two of you close to each other?"

"Are you secret lovers?"

I exhaled and rubbed my temples, their questioning causing an ache to form in my head. Simone frowned.

"Don't just sit there and breathe. We need info. STAT!" She smacked her hands together.

So, I gave them what they wanted: Info. I told them about my breakup with Liam, meeting Parker in my car, drinking with him, our heart to heart, our lip to lip. Then I told them about the next morning and Parker's eloping.

When I finished, Simone had frozen to a spot, and Mida was pacing from one end of the room to another, rubbing her forehead.

"Wow," Simone broke the silence that had come upon us. "I need to sit down." With that, she plopped down on the bed next to me. "Girl, you have gone through a lot of shit."

"Thanks," I gave her an overly sweet smile. "You'd think my thirteen breakups would have given you the memo."

Simone exclaimed, "ha! Remember the James incident? Your first love?"

It took all my willpower not to flip her the bird at that wildly embarrassing moment.

When I was eleven, I had this friend that I had a huge crush on. After finding out that he liked me back, we sealed it. With a bar of chocolate that we'd split that day and promised to be loyal to each other, we declared ourselves a couple.

Two weeks later, I saw him kissing another girl's cheek in the middle of the school's hallway. She was admittedly prettier. She had dark hair and rosy cheeks while freckles dotted mine.

"I like your freckles," James had told me once, a delicate index finger against the bridge of my nose. "They look like chocolate sprinkles."

Well, he sure liked her cheeks better. James never kissed my cheeks, forehead, or any other facial parts.

But that was what made the difference. Unlike my thirteen exes, Parker made me feel pretty with how he looked at me. I had noticed it, but it couldn't mean what they were saying.

"Having a one-night stand with a stranger?" Mida was still pacing as she spoke. "Preposterous! You're only lucky he wasn't some psycho drug-dealing maniac who had some juju on him. That was a dangerous move, Cammie."

"I know. I was drunk." An exhale left my nostrils. "We both were. We were drunk and heartbroken, and we weren't thinking. Trust me, it didn't mean anything," I told her.

She paused abruptly, turning to face me robotically. "Have you seen the way he looks at you?"

My brows furrowed. Even before I said the words out loud, I already knew the answer to that question. But I lied to soothe my mind.

"No, I haven't."

Parker didn't look at me in any way. To him, I was probably just a girl he'd hooked up with. It should have been the same for me, but for some reason, I couldn't embrace that.

"He looks at you like he wants to have you for breakfast, Cam," Simone said beside me. "If you can't see it, then you're blind."

"He's in. Deep," Mida added. "Even if he doesn't know it yet."

"But he said he's not interested in relationships for now," I told them, shaking my head to clear my raging mind.

All this information was literally blowing me up from within. Parker? In deep? For me? That was preposterous.

"Maybe his head isn't, but his heart is." She smiled. In a way, it looked sinister.

"Do you know the next time you guys will be together?" Simone asked, leaning closer and raising her brows. "Alone?"

"Um... yeah. We're supposed to have coffee together tomorrow?" It was a statement, but it came out more like a question because I wasn't sure what these two were thinking about.

"That's perfect!" Mida exclaimed and clapped once. "Tomorrow, you straighten things up with Garth. You tell him exactly how you feel towards him, and you show him what he's going to miss if he doesn't take a chance with you."

Before I could get a word in, Simone chirped.

"I agree. Your story is complicated and messed up. I mean, a one-night stand returned at a wedding party?" She gave me a look. "It must be a sign from above saying the two of you were meant to be."

Meant to be.

I shook my head. No. I shouldn't be getting any ideas. They shouldn't be putting any ideas in my head.

I wasn't ready for any deep emotions. Yet.

Oh, but Simone and Mida begged to differ. With their suggestive smiles and wide grins and winks thrown in for good measure, I watched them plan my entire outing with Parker. They were literally fangirling over the two of us. At this rate, they were going to plan my wedding.

I decided to stop them before it got to that.

"I think you guys are taking it too far," I told them while they stared at me like I'd grown a blob for a head. "That night didn't mean anything."

"Yeah," Mida scoffed. "And I'm Jojo Siwa."

Simone shot her a confused look. "Who's Jojo Siwa?"

"Some teen popstar that I am not," she replied, saying the last part pointedly to me. "Look, Cammie, you know nothing about love. So it's best you keep shut in this matter and let the expert do her thing."

"With the help of an even higher expert!" Simone butted in, causing Mida to roll her eyes.

"What are you guys going to do?" I asked, shifting my gaze uncomfortably between them. I tried to steer my love life away from them because these two would go to any extent to make me settle down.

A shiver ran down my spine at the thought. Neither of them seemed to care about my comfort. They just grinned like Cheshire cats making me dread this coffee date already.