Bridesmaid Lotto Read online

  Bridesmaid Lotto

  McMaster the Disaster, book 1

  Rachel Astor

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

  ~ 1 ~

  “In a bizarre twist on her much publicized engagement with Alan Hall, brother to the famous movie actor Jake Hall, New York socialite Emma VanHorn announced today that she will not be choosing her Bridesmaids from among her friends. Instead, she will be holding what she calls a ‘Bridesmaid Lotto,’ where members of the general public can purchase a ticket, similar to a lottery ticket, the prize being a coveted spot in the wedding party. Soon to be brother in law, Jake Hall, has been announced as one of the groomsmen. Miss VanHorn has also announced that proceeds from the lottery will be split, half going to charity, and the other half going towards what she calls ‘the wedding of the century.’”

  “Boo,” I yelled, interrupting the entertainment broadcast and throwing popcorn at the TV.

  “Shhh,” Calla said. “I want to hear this.”

  I rolled my eyes and tossed another piece of popcorn into my mouth.

  The report continued. “In related news, Jake Hall has recently announced his intent to find a mate and settle down saying, quote, ‘I am tired of dating. I’m very ready to settle down. I just have to find the right girl.’ Well ladies, now may be your chance. Tickets for the Bridesmaid Lotto will be available for purchase between midnight tomorrow, and midnight this coming Saturday. You can find more information at www.BridesmaidLotto.com. The winners will be announced here on Entertainment News in a one hour, special Sunday night broadcast.”

  “Wow,” Calla whispered, forgetting to chew the popcorn that was partially hanging out of her mouth. “Could you just picture it? I can’t imagine even being in the same room as Jake Hall!”

  “Oh please, Calla,” I said. “A lottery for being a Bridesmaid? Pffft. You couldn’t pay me to be a Bridesmaid, especially for someone I don’t even know.”

  “Josie! You don’t even want to be a Bridesmaid when I get married?” my roommate said. She crossed her arms and stuck out her lip.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll be a Bridesmaid at your wedding. But that’s it!”

  “Oh my God though.” Her words were starting to pick up speed. “Wouldn’t it be so cool to meet Jake Hall? I mean, if he were a doctor, he’d be McDreamy and McSteamy all rolled into one.”

  “Uh, you know, they aren’t actually doctors either,” I reminded her. “They’re also just actors.”

  “Shhh. You don’t have to ruin my fantasy,” she said, throwing a piece of popcorn at me. “But even you can’t argue the fact that Jake Hall is the hottest actor in the history of the world.”

  I shrugged. “I guess.”

  Calla smiled at me like she knew something I didn’t. Perhaps she was picking up on the fact that I’d had a complete and utter movie star crush on Jake Hall since I’d seen him seven years ago in the teen horror flick, High School Hell. Of course I would never, ever admit to that to her, or anyone else for that matter.

  “Well I’m definitely going to enter,” Calla said and got up. She headed over to the computer. “What was that website again, Bridesmaid something?”

  “Lotto,” I answered. “But they’re not even selling tickets yet. Not until tomorrow.”

  “I know, but I just want some more information.” She happily started clicking away.

  “Ew. This is a little sick,” she said, scrolling down the webpage. “You must be under 130 lbs. but also under 5’ 10” tall, and under the age of 30. It says they’re going to actually weigh, measure and verify the ages of the winners. And you have to send a photo in with your entry. They say it’s for advertising purposes only though.”

  “I guess that Jake Hall likes his women to be shorter than him, and obviously she’s going to have to be thin,” I said sarcastically. Secretly I was a little disappointed that he would be so superficial.

  “The tickets are ten bucks,” Calla continued, apparently not too put off by the entrance criteria.

  “Hmmm.”

  “Josie! Don’t you even care that the hottest bachelor in New York is looking for a girlfriend?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because this is our chance to meet the man of our dreams and have him fall madly in love with us.”

  She was completely serious.

  “Yeah. That’s gonna happen.”

  “Josie! Come on. You’ve got to have some faith. It could happen.”

  “Yeah. Right. It could happen. And I’m sure he’ll fall madly in love with us both and we’ll all live happily ever after.”

  “Well, maybe not both of us,” Calla said. “But seriously, it could happen to one of us. And I would be so happy for you if it was you, you know.”

  “Well I’ll be happy for you too,” I said, humoring her. “But you go ahead and take this one. I’m not gonna enter.”

  “What!” She looked at me like I had just told her I had murdered someone.

  “I said I’m not going to enter.” I started flipping through the channels. “I wonder if there are any How I Met Your Mother reruns on.”

  “How can you possibly say that? It’s only ten bucks.”

  “It’s not the money I’m worried about. I’m just not into lottery things. No one I know ever wins anything.”

  “Well not yet,” she said. “But you can’t win if you don’t play.”

  “Mm. Hmm,” I said, losing interest in the whole thing.

  She sighed. “I can’t believe you’re not even going to try.”

  “When you think about it, it’s better for you,” I said, hoping she would let it go. “If I don’t enter, that’s one less person for you to go up against.”

  “Aw. Really? That’s so sweet,” Calla said.

  Wow, I thought, she really is gullible.

  Frankly I couldn’t care less about who won the stupid Bridesmaid thing. If she wanted to get her hopes up, who was I to stop her? It was just a silly little contest anyway.

  “I can’t find anything on this bloody thing,” I said flicking off the TV. “I’m just going to go to bed.”

  “Okay. I’m gonna hang out on the computer for a while, see what else I can find out.”

  “Have fun,” I said and headed to my room.

  # # #

  The next morning, I decided I may as well get into work early.

  “Hello gorgeous,” Matt said as I walked into Walker and Walker, the firm that I was a junior copywriter for.

  “Hey Mattie,” I said.

  “Did you hear?” he asked breathlessly.

  “Hear what?”

  “About the Bridesmaid Lotto of course.”

  “Oh no, not you too. Calla is totally excited about it.”

  “Aren’t you? You’d be perfect,” he said, and begun to play with my hair and brush and invisible piece of lint of my shoulder. “Yes, you would make a fine specimen.”

  “Thanks,” I said without a hint of sincerity behind it. “I’m so honored to be a specimen.”

  He let out a disgusted sigh. “You know what I mean. You two would look so cute together.”

  “Us two?”

  “You and Jake Hall, obviously,” he said.

  “Well, why not you my friend. You would look positively lovely in a powder pink gown.”

  “Don’t I wish,” he said and sighed. “Jake Hall is so hot. Why are all the hot guys straight?”

  “Are you kidding me? It’s nearly impossible to find a good looking straight man anymore. At lea
st one that’s not married.”

  “Then enter!” he said. “You’d be robbing yourself of the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” I rolled my eyes and walked away.

  I could almost picture him watching me, one hand on his hip, mouth hanging open, completely disgusted that I wouldn’t put myself into the circus that this Bridesmaid Lotto was sure to become.

  Whatever, I thought. I had better things to do, including preparing myself for lunch with my mother. Which was about the last thing I felt like doing.

  I holed up in my cubicle for most of the morning and shut the phone ringer off, pretending I needed to get some urgent work done. Really I was just avoiding everyone talking about the whole stupid lotto thing.

  Around eleven, I finally dialed the code to retrieve my messages.

  “You have thirteen messages,” the sugary sweet recording announced.

  What? Thirteen messages! Oh my God, there must have been some kind of emergency.

  “First new message,” the recording said.

  “Josephine, this is your mother. Just a reminder of our lunch date at noon. Please dear, don’t forget this time.”

  I sighed.

  “Next new message,” the recording said.

  “Josie. Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re not answering your phone on a day like today,” said Calla’s recorded voice. “Everyone is talking about it. I am nearly wetting myself I am so excited. Call me back.”

  “Next new message.”

  “Hi Josie, it’s your sister Rosie. I just heard about the contest going on. Oh my, how exciting. I almost wish I were single again so that I could enter the lotto too. You are so lucky. Bye!”

  My sister always announced herself as ‘your sister Rosie’ even though she was the only sister I had. And I knew she didn’t really think I was the lucky one. She and her husband had moved out to the suburbs three years ago and started having babies. They’re that blissfully happy couple that pretty much makes you want to barf, and she just loved to take any opportunity to remind me of just how very single I was.

  “God, does every single girl under the age of thirty in the city have to deal with this?” I said out loud after deleting the tenth similar message.

  The messages went on and on the same. All thirteen of them. Not one person had actually phoned about anything important or work related. By the time I listened to all of them, the morning was gone and I had to leave to meet my mother.

  I arrived ten minutes late. Which, in my mother’s world means I may have well stabbed her in the eyeball.

  “Josephine. There you are,” she said, flustered. “I was so worried. I thought maybe you wouldn’t make it again.”

  I stood her up once, four years ago when the subway broke down with me on it. She had not yet let me live it down.

  “Sorry I’m late mom,” I said without any further explanation.

  I had come to learn that no excuse was good enough.

  “Well, I’m just glad you made it dear,” she said in a tone that I knew actually meant ‘I can’t believe you left me waiting here for this long.’

  I said nothing.

  “So dear,” my mother said as she looked over her menu. “Have you heard about the Bridesmaid lottery thingie?”

  I buried my head in my menu. “Argh. Not you too,” I groaned.

  “What dear?” she said, as though she hadn’t just insulted my entire being.

  “What is with everybody? Wasn’t there anything else going on in the world yesterday? I can’t believe anybody cares about this. It’s entertainment news. Not actual important world news.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I brought it up,” she said. “I just thought it might be a wonderful opportunity for someone in your position.”

  “My position? And what position would that be?”

  “You know,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Single.” She said the word as if it were a disease.

  “I like being single.”

  “That’s all well and good for now, but what about five years from now. You aren’t always going to be able to fall back on your looks you know.”

  “When have I ever fallen back on my looks?” I asked, mortified.

  “Oh you know what I mean dear. I’m simply saying that your good looks won’t last forever. You’ve got to seize every opportunity to find a husband.”

  “Oh good God,” I said. “Look, I am not entering some stupid lottery to find a husband. It is offensive and degrading to all the poor girls who are gullible enough to enter. Not to mention it’s a blatant money grab.”

  “That money is going to charity,” my mother said. “And it’s a fantastic opportunity. That Jake Hall is quite the catch. Did you know that he made twelve million on his last picture?”

  “Mom, the whole world does not revolve around money,” I said.

  “Well, that’s a lovely notion,” she said, “but you and I both know that that is just not true. It’s a sad fact, but money is everything.”

  “So what about Daddy, he didn’t have any money when you married him.”

  “Well no dear, but he had ambition,” she said with flair. “I knew he was going places. It’s what made me fall in love with him.”

  “You fell in love with daddy because you knew he’d eventually have money?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Well, not only that. But I have to admit, it certainly was a factor.”

  I smacked my forehead.

  “And you know dear,” she said. “You’re already behind in the game. By the time I was your age I was already married with two children. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  “Mom. I’m twenty-six.”

  “Exactly my point dear. Do you know how much harder it is to get married after thirty? They’ve done studies on it you know.”

  “Can we just drop it already?”

  “Fine. Just make sure you get your entry in by Saturday.”

  My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am not going to enter that stupid lottery,” I said.

  “What? You must!”

  “No. I must not.”

  “Well that is just ridiculous. You can’t just go around throwing away opportunities like this.”

  “What opportunity? Meeting some movie star?”

  “But you know he’s looking for a wife,” she said, still looking like she was positively in shock.

  “Yeah. I heard. And I’m so sure one of these Bridesmaids is going to end up being his wife,” I said.

  “Well if you never meet him, you’ll never know if you’re the one.”

  “Right. I’m the one for Jake Hall. Okay.”

  “Well, you’ve got just as much of a chance as anyone else out there.”

  “Right. About ten thousand to one. Why bother?”

  Mom fanned herself with the menu as if she were about to faint. “Oh, I’m never going to have grandchildren.”

  “Mom. You already have two grandchildren.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean your sister. I mean grandchildren from you.”

  “Mother, this conversation is over. I am not entering the stupid lotto, I am not getting married in the near future, and I am most certainly not having a bunch of kids anytime soon. Just drop it. Please.”

  She opened her mouth but apparently decided to keep whatever it was to herself. Thank God. If she’d kept talking I swear I would have walked away. Which of course would have started an all out family feud where my mother and I would refuse to speak to each other until my father intervened and guilted us back into talking. Hmm. A nice bout of the silent treatment from my mother might not have been so bad. Oh well. Next time.

  We finished our lunch in silence.

  # # #

  A few days later, the Bridesmaid Lotto news had died down, at least from where I was standing. Everyone seemed to finally get the hint that I wasn’t interested in entering, or, for that matter, even talking abou
t the stupid thing.

  Even so, I was not able to get out of watching ‘the big reveal.’ Calla absolutely, positively, oh-my-God-I’ll-hate-you-forever-if-you-don’t, insisted that I watch it with her.

  “Fine,” I said. “But you have to provide the Häagen-Dazs.”

  “Sure,” she said, giddy about the whole thing.

  So there we were, me and my Häagen-Dazs. Oh, and Calla of course, watching the stupid Entertainment News.

  “And now, the moment you have all been waiting for has finally arrived,” the dippy reporter said. She was actually dressed in an evening gown for the big event.

  “I have Emma VanHorn, her fiancé Alan Hall, and of course, his brother Jake Hall. They have all gathered in the studio to announce the lucky winners of the Bridesmaid Lotto.”

  A crowd that had gathered outside the giant studio window cheered in the background.

  “In an amazing turn out, Emma VanHorn has received entries from over one hundred thousand women, generously offering to stand up for her at her wedding!”

  “Yeah, like she has anything to do with it,” I said, shoveling another bite of ice cream.

  “Shhh,” Calla said.

  “I can’t believe all those women paid her ten bucks for this. That means she’s got over half a million extra to spend on her wedding.”

  “Shhh,” Calla said again and gave me a look that said ‘I will end you if you don’t.’

  “…and here… we… go!” the reporter said. “This computer will randomly choose the four women from the online entrants.”

  The camera zoomed in dramatically to the computer screen on the wall behind her. She swept her hand over it Vanna White style. A drum roll started out of nowhere.

  “The first lucky lady is… Rebecca Singleton!”

  Everybody in TV land clapped and cheered.

  “Lucky Bridesmaid number two will be… Bobbi Lynn Mayfield!”

  Clapping and cheering.

  “And on to number three…” The reporter’s smile was starting to look like it hurt. “… Miss Jennifer Wilson.”