A Ballad of Confetti, Cake and Catastrophes Read online

  A Ballad of Confetti, Cake and Catastrophes

  By Helen Juliet

  A Ballad of Confetti, Cake and Catastrophes

  Copyright ©2017 by Helen Juliet

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Dedication

  For Dan, who asked me to join him in our own, catastrophe-free, wedding.

  Also to his wonderful family for welcoming me to the fold, and to my family for being with me every step of the way.

  Acknowledgements

  My first and foremost thanks have to go to my brother for his brilliant content editing and never-ending encouragement, and Alyson Pearce from Between the Lines Editing for fixing all my mistakes. Also to Alyson for the multitude of transatlantic messaging at all hours of the day and for squealing at all the right parts. You guys rock.

  Thank you to the dozens and dozens of people involved in making my own wedding happen. Only an idiot would try and write a book at the same time as getting married, but you all made it worthwhile. Especially my mum and new mother-in-law, who are two truly amazing ladies.

  Natasha Snow of Natasha Snow Designs cannot get enough praise for how patient she was in creating this book cover. It frustrates me that there seems to be a lack of diversity in MM romance, so I was absolutely determined to show Fynn on the front of the book. It was no easy feat, but we got there in the end and I couldn’t be happier to have yet another gorgeous cover.

  Finally, thank you to Carol for letting me borrow so many of your catastrophes. I hope you enjoyed seeing them immortalised in fiction forevermore.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Soundtrack

  About the Author

  Also by Helen Juliet

  Coming Soon

  Chapter One

  (Seven days to go…)

  Nicholas had forgotten something important.

  He just didn’t know it yet.

  The truth was, he probably didn’t know a lot of what was going on right at that very moment. The whole wedding business had been something of a whirlwind that he had tactfully stayed on the peripheral of. There had also probably been a point in the early hours of that morning where he hadn’t even known his own name, so he figured he could forgive himself for not knowing that Busy Lizzie was in fact a flower, and not the name of some funky cocktail.

  His stomach rolled at the very thought of any more alcohol, and he discreetly covered his mouth to encourage any bodily fluids to stay within his body.

  “I think it’s crucial that we’re all on the same page,” his older cousin Danielle announced from where she was standing. Nicholas tried not to groan audibly.

  Danielle was still in her gym gear, a look he was well used to. Her blonde hair tied back in an immaculate ponytail, a strip of her flat stomach on display and the rest of her tanned skin glowing with just a hint of perspiration. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but if we pull together, I know we can do it!” She sloshed a squeezy drink bottle filled with something disturbingly green at those gathered around the kitchen table, thrusting her hand forward to punctuate every point she made.

  Nicholas flinched, then poked at his plate. He was perched around the central island in his parents’ kitchen, along with everyone else who had been summoned by Danielle. She had proudly presented them with a homemade brunch, designed to fortify them through this pre-wedding briefing. Nicholas, being so hungover there was a possibility he was still drunk, wasn’t all that impressed.

  Given that it was still before midday, he had foolishly hoped for a proper cooked breakfast. Instead he had limp kale, and pale pink salmon, and mushy eggs so bland he was seriously eyeing up the decorative bottles of chilli oil and soy sauce his mother had on display on the counter to his right.

  What he wouldn’t give for some fried bread and beans.

  “Thanks Danielle,” Peter said from across the marble island, giving her a small smile. He and Nicholas’s sister Clara were holding hands, their eyes wide as they slowly sipped cups of tea. “We’d be lost without you.”

  There was a small snort from the seat to Nicholas’s left, but no one else seemed to hear it. He was tempted to glance over, but his rolling stomach told him to stay put for the time being. He tried a bite of eggs, swallowing with determination. You’ll feel better for it, he argued with himself. At least the orange juice was poured from a carton.

  Danielle was beaming as she sifted through the half a dozen folders piled on the island table, each labelled with a name to match one of the people in front of her. “I’ve printed us all out itineraries to get us through the next several days,” she informed them, handing the cardboard packs out. Clara leaned forward to take hers with a keen smile, but there was tension in her shoulders. “I’ve got a colour coded system in place.” Danielle said, laughing at herself. It was a sound like gently-tinkling glass. “I know that’s dreadfully pernickety, but by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. And that’s not going to happen to us, is it?” She looked at Clara, who nodded back, then seemed to realise what her cousin had said, and hastily shook her head.

  It was going to be a long week.

  Another tiny huff came from Nicholas’s left. Surreptitiously, he glanced over to where Peter’s sister was waiting to be handed her pale pink file from the stack that was going around the table, diminishing as each person took the one inscribed with their name. Ash Cove had short, bleached blonde hair with dark roots, cut into a pixie style that suited her elfin face. She was sat with her back straight, her face alight with interest as she popped a slice of avocado into her mouth, acting as if there was nothing she would rather be doing with her Saturday morning than attending a wedding briefing, no doubt complete with a soon-to-be-shown PowerPoint presentation. Upon seeing Nicholas’s glance, she winked.

  He raised his eyebrows in an inquiring manner. “What?” he mouthed. He could feel himself swaying, and a cold sweat had formed on his top lip.

  Ash leant over, not too obviously, but enough so when she spoke in barely more than a murmur, Nicholas caught every word. “Nothing champ,” she said, a sparkle in her blue eyes. “I was just thinking how nice a maggot sandwich would go down with a glass of toilet water.”

  Nicholas gagged.

  Danielle paused in whatever she had been saying, and looked at him in concern. “Darling, are you quite alright?”

  Nicholas coughed and wiped his face. Ash gave him a smirk and another wink. “Fine, fine,” he spluttered.

  Ash was older than Nicholas, however so was everyone else at the table. He had assumed that might make her more mature, but apparently not. At only twenty, he was the baby of the family, but he was still determined to hold his own weight for his sister’s sake. Even if his head currently felt like it was home to a particularly vindictive marching band.

  After taking another grateful s
wig of juice, he pushed his thick, black specs up his nose and fished out the contents of his personalised folder. Ordinarily, he wore contact lenses rather than his glasses. With his small stature and unruly dark brown hair, he’d become quickly sick of the Harry Potter comments that had started in his early teen years. But as he’d dragged himself out of bed at stupid o’clock that morning, his eyes had already been burning enough from dehydration, and he hadn’t been able to face the prospect of sticking lenses into them as well.

  His whole family had terrible eyes. Clara was equally sat there with her glasses on, and it amused Nicholas that she’d picked a fiancé who also sported specs. Their other sister Lauren, who wouldn’t be coming until later in the week, had taken the plunge and got laser-eye-surgery the year before. Nicholas shuddered, not able to stomach the thought of being awake and having surgery on his eyeballs at the best of times, let alone when he was fighting to keep down the measly mouthful of squidgy eggs he’d been able to manage so far.

  Ash chuckled, very quietly. He turned and scowled at her, but she was engrossed in studying the seating plan. Apparently.

  “Oh,” said Clara. She sounded wary, but her face quickly brightened as she looked up at Danielle. “I didn’t realise we’d invited Michelle and Tom?”

  Nicholas blinked in surprise. Michelle and Tom were good friends of Danielle’s mother; his and Clara’s aunt. Michelle had a cigarette permanently attached to one hand, as well as a mouth quick to smirk and cold eyes hidden under layers of black liner. She’d delighted herself in unerringly referring to Clara as ‘the plump one’ when they were growing up, always laughing it off as a joke whenever Clara began to cry.

  “I thought we didn’t have any more room for day guests?” Nicholas asked. He heard the accusatory tone in his voice, so tempered it with a smile. Or, at least he hoped he did.

  Danielle waved him off with a big grin full of perfect teeth. “Oh we couldn’t not invite them,” she gushed. She swigged on the green juice concoction, causing the bits of whatever to swirl in the bottle. Nicholas’s stomach flipped thinking about slimy swamps. “I’m amazed they weren’t on the list before, but it’s all sorted now.”

  Clara hummed, a smile on her lips that didn’t reach her eyes, and Peter rubbed her back.

  “I guess they’ll be happy to sit on a table with your mum and dad, won’t they?” He turned his copy of the seating plan this way and that, narrowing his eyes behind his glasses. He was a tall guy with long, unruly limbs, and usually he was the most cheerful person in the room. The odd time Nicholas had seen him be grumpy was when he thought he’d lost unfairly at Christmas board games. But by the way he was raising his eyebrow at Danielle, he must have been as much of a fan of Aunt Louise and Michelle as Nicholas was.

  Looking from the outside in, a person might have been forgiven for mistaking the maid of honour for the bride at this particular wedding. But Nicholas, who had grown up witnessing their cousin lording over his sister at any given opportunity, didn’t find her actions all that unusual. As much as it might piss him off, he had unfortunately gotten used to it. But for non-family members, it had come as a little bit of a shock.

  “Any other last minute changes we should be aware of?” Ash asked cheerfully.

  She leant back in her seat, her Spiderman t-shirt pulling tightly against her pert breasts. Nicholas wondered, not for the first time, if he should find her attractive. He decided he could revisit that old issue when the room stopped spinning.

  Getting home from uni wasn’t all that bad a trek. The train from Bristol into London St Pancras was quite quick, and then he’d been lucky enough to catch a fast train to St Albans. However, he’d only had a little less than three hours of sleep, after two days fuelled by nothing but off-brand Red Bull and stress. That was then followed by an obscene amount of beer, vodka, and he was pretty sure at one point absinthe. Therefore, as he sat in his parents’ kitchen, he was almost certain he was starting to see sounds. It didn’t do wonders for his concentration.

  Danielle’s smile didn’t slip a jot as she turned to answer the question. “Oh, nothing to worry about Ashley,” she said breezily. Ash’s eyes narrowed, just a fraction. Nicholas didn’t know her all that well, having only met her the once at the engagement party over a year ago, but he’d never heard anyone else refer to her as ‘Ashley’ in that time. She didn’t correct Danielle however, who carried on speaking jovially. “Just little tweaks, you know how these things are. Nothing we can’t handle.”

  “It all looks wonderful,” piped up Clara’s childhood best friend, Kinny.

  She was sat with Nicholas and Clara’s mum at the end of the table, both their packs already spread out in front of them as they began eagerly attaching coloured post-it notes and scribbling annotations on the various sheets of paper. Kinny’s hands fluttered in excitement as she oohed and ahhed at all the elements that had been brought together for the big day. Nicholas saw the tension in Clara’s shoulders ease as she watched her friend’s enthusiasm bubble up.

  Nicholas jerked as he felt something touch his leg. He wasn’t certain what his over-tired mind had thought it could be – a nefarious tentacle? A hand reaching from beyond the grave? He’d been home more than ten minutes, so he should have remembered that was more than enough time to be reminded whose home it really was.

  Archibald, his mother’s large Maine Coon cat, rubbed his back against Nicholas’s sock-clad foot as it dangled from the stool he was perched on. Archibald’s tail swished provocatively, and Nicholas held his breath, not daring to twitch a muscle. But the cat sauntered on, disappearing out of the kitchen door, with no one else at the table seeming to have noticed him passing through.

  Nicholas’s mum nodded in agreement with Kinny, circling several words and underlining a number of others. “You’ve done so much work on this,” she gushed at Danielle. “Thank you love, you’re such a treasure.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” said Danielle bashfully. Nicholas’s mum shook her head in disagreement. Ash’s eyebrow twitched. Just a fraction.

  Out of all of Lyn Herald’s children, Clara, the oldest, was most evidently her offspring. They both had puffs of strawberry blonde curls, round features, and the customary glasses as thick as the bottom of milk bottles. They were both alike in temperament too; very trusting and forgiving.

  “I think everything’s just about in order then?” Danielle said, posing it as a question to Clara.

  Nicholas watched his sister ruffle through the various sheets of paper she’d been presented with. “Uh, yeah, I guess so?” she replied.

  She considered the menu choices, the order of service and schedule for when the cars would be arriving. Nicholas zoned out while they confirmed details between them, wondering if he could escape any time soon and get himself to a McDonalds. He wasn’t going to be good to anyone if he collapsed or threw up all over the paperwork before them.

  He hadn’t intended to get absolutely wasted the night before. But it had been a hellish couple of weeks for most people in his halls and on his course. As first year undergrads, they had thought the last term would be the toughest, as that was when most of their exams were. But Nicholas, like almost all the others, had underestimated how hard the final essays and coursework would be before the Easter break. Many frantic nights had been spent in the library and his eyes had suffered more than usual after too many hours squinting at his computer screen, rearranging words and calculations until they had made some sort of reasonable sense.

  The temptation to freak out and partake in a bender had been too much. As soon as he and his friends had stumbled into their departments to sign off their submissions at precisely 14:59, they had congregated down the nearest union bar, and things had become progressively worse from there.

  But now he was home. His insides may have felt like a soapy washing machine, and his head like the inside of a drum, but he’d made it. He was pretty sure once his hangover subsided, all he would have to do was just follow the itinerary, not snap at Daniell
e if at all possible, and he’d get through the week just fine.

  However, that was before he realised his name had been called. Twice.

  He snapped his head up. He’d been staring at the diagram of the table decorations, and his eyes might have been starting to drift closed. But he was awake now. Definitely. “Yep, hello,” he said. He rubbed his sleeve against his mouth just in case there was any drool lingering.

  Danielle downed the last of her swamp juice and pointed to one of the lists she had in front of her. “It’s all sorted on your end?”

  A cold sensation slipped down Nicholas’s inside. “Uhh…?” he said, doing his finest impersonation of the village idiot.

  Kinny, bless her, came to his rescue. “With the harpist,” she supplied. She flipped her long black hair over her shoulder, and mimed playing the harp with her long, delicate fingers. “For the drinks reception, and the meal. You said you had that mate at uni.”

  “The one whose sister played professionally,” Clara prompted. She smiled at Peter, who appeared to have lost the train of the conversation. “Just so there’s some music on in the background, in case people get bored.”

  “People aren’t going to get bored,” Peter assured her, tugging at one of her curls. “It’s a wedding, they’re going to be having fun and drinking and talking about how pretty you look.”

  Clara blushed. “Shut up,” she said, swatting him lightly as colour rose rapidly into her cheeks. Nicholas would probably have found the scene endearing. If he hadn’t been struggling not to pass out in horror.

  The harp – the fucking harp. He had absolutely, one hundred percent promised over Christmas that he’d ask Jones about his sister and if she was available to play the wedding. He’d promised, told them it was a done deal. He had been so happy to be contributing something special to the big day, something unique that he’d arranged by himself, that he forgotten to actually arrange it. He’d not thought about it once since that conversation.