The Vow

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

Trista

I have a wicked hangover. And as the Saturday-morning sunshine streams between the curtains into the hotel room and warms my face, I'm certain that a jackhammer has taken up residence behind my right pupil. Damn, I forgot to take my contacts out last night; they're stuck to my eyeballs. For a moment, I think about staying in bed all day and sleeping off my pounding headache, but as my splintered gaze slowly begins to focus, it falls on the strapless violet gown hanging on the back of the closet door. I groan and remember that duty calls. Today, my best friend, my homegirl, my soror, my ace boon coon Elise is getting married, and I'm the maid of honor. And no matter that we've been friends since we learned how to double Dutch, I don't think sistergirl would forgive me for even thinking about missing her big day.

Gently clasping my throbbing head in my hands, I sit up in the bed and wrap the sheet tightly around my naked body. Is the room actually spinning? I'm such a lightweight. I should have stuck to my self-imposed two-drink-max rule last night. As I feel my hair, I realize most of it has fought its way free of the sleek French knot Elise requested the bridesmaids get at the hair salon yesterday. It's a matted mess. We were supposed to wrap it tightly and have it lightly touched up today, if necessary. Elise is going to kill me. What time is it? Pushing aside two champagne flutes, a half-empty bottle of Veuve Clicquot, my cell phone, and BlackBerry resting on the mahogany nightstand, I squint at the digital clock. Luckily it's only 10:17. I've got a while before I have to pull myself together and meet my girls Amaya, Viv, and the rest of the bridal party downstairs in the lobby to go take pictures before this evening's wedding ceremony.

My office is under strict orders not to bother me this weekend, but judging from the red voicemail light flashing rapidly on my cell, the vibrating pager, and the bright-orange message light on the hotel phone, some are still desperate to reach me. Ordinarily I would return all voicemails and emails first thing in the morning, but I drank so much champagne last night my head feels like it's being squeezed between the bellies of two sumo wrestlers.

Well, this is the first real vacation I've taken in the seven years since I joined The Agency (derisively referred to in the entertainment industry as T&A -- Tits and Abs -- for the high number of busty starlets and leading men with six-packs in our stable), so the demanding partners and my narcissistic clients seeking reassurance that they are beautiful, talented, and destined for Oscar glory (always in that order) will have to function without me for a few more days. Hopefully none of them have been arrested for intent to distribute, left their wife for the fifteen-year-old Scandinavian au pair, or gone AWOL from a movie shoot to check into rehab.

Gingerly turning my head toward the window, I think I hear rain. Damn, Elise has to be freaking out right now. Her ripped-from-the-pages-of?Martha Stewart Living dream wedding day is ruined. The bridal party was scheduled to take pictures outside at the botanical gardens prior to this evening's candlelight service. Didn't someone once tell me that rain on a wedding day was good luck? Whoever said it doesn't matter, because I'm not about to say that to Elise Erin Jacobs. And I know my girl Amaya, the diva of drama, and even Viv, who's the most rational of all of us, ain't trying to say that mess either. Let the man who will vow today to cherish her till death do us part get cursed out in front of four hundred of their closest friends and family members.

Elise is an only child, so this wedding is a big deal for her family. Her daddy hit the California Quick Pick Lotto Jackpot for $87 million back when Elise was in junior high school. Two weeks later, Big Poppa Cal bought three one-way airline tickets to Atlanta, where his brother lived, and told his family to pack only the family photos; that was all they would be taking from Mercy's Way Housing Projects in Compton.

Elise and I had lived next door to each other since we could remember; we were best friends. Whenever my mom was out on one of her drunken binges down at the dog track, my father was out looking for her, and my older sister was running the streets, I would spend the night with the Jacobs, no questions asked. Her mom -- I call her Ms. Evelyn -- would tuck me into Elise's narrow cot. If I was lucky, I would fall asleep before I heard my father dragging my mother, yelling and cursing, down the hallway, back into the apartment.

After Elise moved to Atlanta we vowed to keep in touch. We wrote each other long letters with glittery red pens on ?Hello, Kitty? stationery. And every Sunday, I would wait by the pay phone in the hallway of our building for Elise's four-o'clock call. For an hour, I would catch her up on who was gang bangin' now, my sister's latest antics, and my nonexistent high school social life, and she would tell me about living in Atlanta. I loved hearing about their big new house, their heated swimming pool, Jacuzzi, tennis court, her new poodle Mercy. When she told me about some of the girls in her new school who called her ?project girl,? I teasingly told her, ?Look, Wheezie Jefferson, you better let those bama-ass girls know you don't take no mess or punch them dead in the eye!? She'd laugh and say she'd try to do better. I thought she had the best life. When she came back to Southern California to go to UC with me, it was just like old times. We even pledged together.