55 pages • 1 hour read
The Worst Best Man
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Themes
The Importance of Loyalty
In The Worst Best Man, Lucy Score makes a case for The Importance of Loyalty by making it one of the most important aspects of all the loving relationships that develop. Aside from the physical chemistry, the shared trait of loyalty is the glue that initially binds Frankie and Aiden together as they work to make their mutual friends’ wedding a success. After this initial discovery of their shared value, each character makes powerful gestures that highlight how important loyalty is to their relationship, and these gestures escalate considerably as the novel progresses. For example, while Frankie begins by mildly defending Aiden as a “nice guy” in one scene, she eventually becomes willing to bash someone over the head for insulting Aiden. Likewise, Aiden goes from verbally correcting Margeaux to throwing all the weight of his money and power behind Frankie when a man dares to threaten her, even going so far as to buy the man’s company. Thus, Frankie and Aiden essentially speak the same love language of loyalty.
It is also important to note that the theme of loyalty manifests in multiple ways, and Score uses various secondary characters to illustrate the fact that loyalty is just as important among family members as it is between lovers. The loyalty that Aiden loves about Frankie is actually an extension of the loving family from which she comes. Throughout the novel, her brothers, Gio and Marco, provide multiple examples of this loyalty in both their actions and their words. For example, when Aiden first meets the Baranski family, Gio and Marco casually threaten him physically if he were to hurt Frankie. However, as Aiden establishes a solid reputation with the family, he also becomes the recipient of the same love and loyalty that they show to Frankie, as they make it a point to reassure him when he needs help with reconnecting with her. They also lavish care and affection upon their sister, and their manner proves that they feel an unconditional form of love and affection that carries no strings. This dynamic is something entirely foreign to Aiden, who has long been forced to contend with the cold and manipulative behavior of his own family. To further emphasize this point, Score uses the character of Ferris Kilbourn as a prime example of damaging and dysfunctional family dynamics. While Marco and Gio offer their loyalty freely to anyone who is part of their circle, Ferris uses the concept of loyalty to manipulate his son into acceding to his unreasonable demands. His methods may have worked in the past, but once Aiden sees true loyalty of the Baranski family, he no longer responds to Ferris’s manipulative attempts to control him.
Showing Vulnerability in Relationships
Score’s protagonists struggle with being vulnerable throughout The Worst Best Man, but they ultimately learn that vulnerability is an essential element of a balanced relationship. Score repeatedly emphasizes this point and uses a variety of different scenarios to explore the concept in detail. For example, in Frankie and Aiden’s first sexual experience, both parties are physically vulnerable, and the power of the situation initiates further romance. Another example occurs when Aiden’s migraines cause him to appear vulnerable and weak in front of Frankie. The first migraine in the opening chapters leads to her initial softening toward him, and the last one of the novel represents the moment in which she realizes that she truly is in love with him. His ability to be vulnerable with her stops her from maintaining the barrier between them, and as she finally taps into her natural generosity, she finds herself becoming more willing to open up to him. Because showing vulnerability is Frankie’s biggest inhibition, her declaration at the end must be grand to overcome the obstacles that have hindered her relationship up to this point. For this reason, she chooses to simultaneously expose her ego and her heart, and when Aiden accepts her proposal, the narrative suggests that Frankie has finally learned the necessity of being vulnerable.
In addition to using these dynamics to advance the protagonists’ relationship, Score also shows that every meaningful relationship can benefit from sharing moments of heartfelt vulnerability, and to this end, she makes it a point to develop a variety of scenes featuring family dynamics. For example, when Aiden is willing to open himself up to Frankie’s family, he essentially gains a set of brothers in Marco and Gio, who care about him far more than his own brother does. In many ways, Frankie’s whole family acts as a foil to Aiden’s family. The Baranski family is open, expressive, and dedicated to protecting and supporting each other, while most of Aiden’s family members are far more concerned with the welfare of the family business and with appearing respectable at all times, and they have little inclination to ensure each other’s emotional well-being. Given this information about Aiden’s background, his willingness to show his vulnerability to Frankie in the midst of his migraines suggests that he trusts her far more than his own family. These moments of vulnerability are not calculated to gain him a romantic advantage, but when he makes his weaknesses known, he becomes far less intimidating to Frankie, and she allows herself to drop her guard.
However, an equal show of vulnerability is essential for Frankie as well, as she must learn to compromise her staunch pride and sense of independence in order to accept the signs of affection that Aiden yearns to lavish upon her in the form of material benefits such as coats, dresses, a luxury mattress, and funding for all her philanthropically minded business projects. On top of the material benefits, Frankie grows considerably when she learns to forgive past transgressions and embrace a deeper knowledge of herself. While Frankie’s resistance to Aiden’s charms indicates her fear of taking emotional risks, her positive trajectory ultimately highlights the importance of vulnerability in forging authentic relationships.
Navigating Power Differentials and Class-Based Mistrust
The Worst Best Man acts as a rebuttal to the fantasy that a wealthy character will inevitably solve all of a poorer character’s problems. Because Score’s romance is based in a contemporary landscape, Frankie must work hard to overcome her staunchly independent outlook on life and her resistance to Aiden’s social status and financial resources.
Frankie’s initial disgust for the more affluent members of the bridal party indicates that she is heavily biased against most members of the upper class, and from the very beginning, Score foreshadows the fact that this internal bias will prevent Frankie from fully embracing her growing romance with Aiden. At the wedding festivities in the beginning of the novel, many people in Aiden’s social circles embody her worst expectations, and Aiden himself displays a cavalier approach to authority that highlights his innate sense of entitlement, simply by virtue of being born into a social class with considerable wealth and status. Thus, although Aiden is attracted to Frankie’s genuine nature and becomes interested in the nuances of her working-class world, Frankie finds herself unable to overcome her suspicion and defensiveness, which stems from her realization that Aiden’s money and position create an unequal power differential between them. Because she is fiercely independent, she therefore feels a great degree of cognitive dissonance; although she is falling in love with Aiden himself, she does not know how to remain fully independent in the face of his vast resources.
The belief that she and Aiden will be unable to exist in a balanced way comes from her family’s deep-seated suspicions toward the upper class, and Score uses the objections of Frankie’s mother, May, to fully articulate the complications involved in such a seemingly unequal partnership. However, the very structure of the novel foreshadows the fact that Frankie will eventually find a way to move past this class-based mistrust, and she ultimately accomplishes this goal by taking charge and single-handedly solving Aiden’s ongoing problems with his half-brother, Elliot. By forcing Elliot to leave Aiden alone, she proves that although she may not have vast financial resources, she does have the inner strength and assertiveness to be an equal partner with Aiden. At the advice of Pru, she finally realizes how much her reticence has been hurting Aiden, and when she learns to disregard his wealth and view him as the person he is, she realizes that he only spends money on her because it is a source of joy for him to be generous. While the dynamics of the billionaire romance subgenre never quite reconcile the inescapable power differential involved in such a relationship, Score nonetheless implies that the characters’ strong personalities and deep love for each other will allow them to overcome the divide of socioeconomics.
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By Lucy Score
