Moonlight Kisses

carefree liberation

"Luke!" I shout out across the venue. Him and a few other guys are carrying in the cocktail tables, or trying to anyway. They all stop in their tracks upon hearing my clipped tone. "I told you to put them over there," I point to the back of the main area closest to where the open bar will be set up later on, "And put 'em out all over the place, don't cluster them up."

"I know how cocktail tables work, Jo," Luke grumbles, shooting me a glare. I told him earlier that I'd be high-strung, but he insisted on helping anyway. All the hostility I'm showing and he's reciprocating with humor was all part of the deal we made to get this whole thing going. So if Beau's not here to deal with my shit, he's practically the next best thing.

For a while, it was only me and the girls working on getting everything set up. From blowing up and tying balloons to curling dozens of ribbon to create an arch in front of the entrance, we handled the majority of the more decorative things. However, when it came time to actually do heavy lifting, I had the guys hauling ass from one end of the main area to the other. Most of the girls had to go home and get ready anyway, so I sent them off.

Still, I don't trust that these guys will work very hard if I'm gone. Every so often, I'll catch them fucking around in the lounge or having a little 'pre-party' of their own outside and I have to raise my voice at them again. They all know me to be pretty timid on a regular basis, so to hear me calling out orders and basically putting everyone in line for the last few hours really threw them off.

Aside from the little distractions though, everyone's been pretty good. The party I willingly took into my hands is coming along nicely. I can finally picture how it'll look tonight when the real party begins.

Ever since the downfall of...well, everything, I've decided to take on projects that occupied more of my time and energy. Hence, why I took this going-away party off Sophie's plate. Only three days before this party was set to happen, I suggested to Sophie last time we spoke that it shouldn't be up to her to throw a party for herself. It was the last thing we talked about after covering all the heavy shit and to be honest, she was too much of a guilty wreck to be stressing herself out even more with party-planning. She needed a fun distraction while I needed one that was going to tire me out, so this new arrangement worked out perfectly.

The next morning after I told Beau everything, we went back to his house after breakfast. There I found Sophie in Mariella's study crying to her mom. I didn't want to intrude so I waited for her until she came upstairs and we had a good talk about everything. I didn't go into detail about the things that happened, but she didn't need much to put the pieces together herself.

She informed me of the truth of their first night together. That he did in fact slip something in her drink, but the next morning she was too afraid of what I would say or do if I knew that, so she lied. For the first time, we cried together. And I mean really cried. By the time I left, I had made sure that she knew she had nothing to feel sorry about in terms of what happened to me. I wanted her to know that I didn't blame her for it. She'd been carrying around this already heavy burden of guilt when she found out about me. I didn't have the heart to tell her about Kat. I didn't want her to think that by bringing that horrible guy into our lives that she had anything to do with what happened to us.

I had known about the party she was planning before that day. I helped her with it somewhat, along with the other girls. But then she told me it was taking too much of a toll on her alongside all the recent events and was thinking of just handing it over to someone else. However, I know her reservations about that. She likes things done her way, and as her best friend, I already knew what she envisioned for this party and she could trust that I would do it justice. So I volunteered to take it on for her. Everything was already set up, the drinks, the venue, the music, all I had left to do was decorate the whole thing. And she does have people for that too, but some of us still had to go in there and help to ensure everything got done to her liking.