Melissa Senate (19 page)
Authors: Questions To Ask Before Marrying
T
HE NEXT MORNING
, S
TELLA AND
I
TOOK THE SUBWAY TO
B
UY
B
UY
Baby, a huge baby emporium. There were aisles upon aisles of everything you never thought of, despite having read all the books and scanning all the checklists, such as sunshades for the rear passenger windows and a warmer for diaper wipes.
Stella walked in with no idea of what she wanted the nursery to look like. Yet with the hundreds of cribs to choose from, simple or ornate, she fell in love with a white Jenny Lind crib with its spindles and old-fashioned charm. It was a perfect match for the cradle. She chose soft, pale-yellow sheets and a matching crib bumper with sunwashed blue cartons of blueberries. Armed with our lists, we knew what we were looking for. Into our carts went the Diaper Genie, the wipes, and newborn-size Pampers, the wipes warmer, just because, and several onesies and sleepers in all different colors. We’d researched the infant car seat and stroller beforehand, so that made choosing those easy. Stella went for a white Jenny Lind changing table and a thick terry-covered mat. All the heavy stuff would be delivered to her apartment.
There were aisles upon aisles of so much stuff that Stella said she couldn’t possibly spend another half hour choosing between nasal aspirators and tiny nail clippers. She had months to round out the nursery and her medicine cabinets. As we neared the checkout, two overflowing carts between us, she added an adorable clock with an illustration of the cow jumping over the moon and a matching night-light.
I insisted on paying for everything. Despite Stella’s stash—it turned out that she had taken good care of the money she’d inherited from our mother—I wanted to treat her, wanted to be the doting relative who showered her with what she needed, what the baby needed. She argued and shook her head and tried to elbow my credit card out of the way with her own, but then finally relented with a hug.
Outside, as we spent at least twenty minutes trying to hail a cab, the hot, humid New York City air reminded me of how much I missed the cool bay breeze in Blueberry Hills, the ocean at the ready just minutes away. In just a few hours, I’d be heading to LaGuardia Airport and boarding a plane bound for home, home to Maine, home to Tom, home to being Ruby Truby. To being me. Without hesitation and without a safety net. Safety nets were what friends were for. And sisters.
For our last meal together on our cross-country extravaganza, we both wanted good New York Chinese. Stella’s favorite restaurant was a fifteen-block walk south (an issue only because it was so hot and sticky out), but there was a street fair along a stretch of Amsterdam Avenue, which meant funnel cake for dessert on the way back.
A blast of air-conditioning greeted us at Lucky Duck. We were seated by the front window, the curved, dark red
Lucky Duck
letters backward above our heads. Stella had brought her camera to photograph the big furniture items at Buy Buy Baby so she could mentally decorate her apartment before delivery, so I asked the waiter if he would go outside and take a picture of us, making sure to get the sign in the photo. I felt guilty sending him out into that heat, but he happily went, snapping two just in case.
We were debating between sesame chicken or chicken in garlic sauce when someone called Stella’s name. We both glanced up to find a very good-looking guy smiling at Stella. She gasped, both hands flying to her face.
“I’m not sure if you remember me, but—” his cheeks pinkened a bit “—we met a few months ago…in the bar at Georgina’s?”
My mouth dropped open.
“Jake,” she said.
He nodded.
She was barely able to contain her burst of smile. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He was all smiles, too. And he did bear a striking resemblance to Hugh Jackman, brown eyes and all. “I’ve been looking for you, too. I went back to Georgina’s a bunch of times, but never saw you. And I couldn’t remember the other places we went or where you lived.”
He was ridiculously cute. Tall, about six-feet-one, and lanky, but broad-shouldered. With one dimple. His brown eyes were so open and honest. He had dark-brown hair, thick and wavy.
“Jake, the night we met, did you say something about Las Vegas?” Stella asked.
He nodded. “My brother had his bachelor party there. We stayed an entire week at Caesars.”
Stella and I almost fell off our chairs. “You were in Las Vegas for an entire week?
Last week?
”
“No, a few months ago,” he said. “I left the day after we met.” The waiter came by with a chair, gesturing at Jake. “Could I join you?” he asked us both.
Stella was too beside herself to speak.
“Please do,” I said, wondering if the baby would get Jake’s brown eyes or Stella’s blues. The kid couldn’t lose.
It turned out that Jake had been passing by Lucky Duck, heading for his health club around the corner, when he noticed Stella in the window. He’d thought the heat and humidity had affected his brain, that his eyes had to be playing tricks on him, that the woman sitting right there in the window couldn’t possibly be his dream woman (that was a direct quote), the one he’d spent the past three months looking for.
If we’d been sitting in any other seat, if Stella had gone to the ladies’ room just two minutes later, he would have missed her entirely.
Lucky Duck indeed.
Over two chicken dishes, one beef, two kinds of dump-lings, and vegetable fried rice, we learned that Jake Singer was a corporate attorney, lived five blocks away, and this was his favorite Chinese restaurant as well.
Stella Singer. Now
that
was musical.
It finally occurred to me that I was crashing their second date. And I needed to take off for home.
I called Stella’s cell phone from the plane, which added another gazillion dollars to the cost of the trip.
“I won’t even ask questions,” I said. “Just tell me everything, in any order!”
She laughed. “Well, after Lucky Duck, he asked if I wanted to go for a walk, and at first I thought we could just stroll through the street fair, but then I realized that a street fair wasn’t where I wanted to tell Clarissa or Silas’s father about him or her. So, I suggested we walk to Central Park, and I told him at my favorite spot.”
The Angel of the Waters statue at the Bethesda Fountain. Where she did all her hard wishing.
“So you did tell him?” I asked.
“I did.”
I waited, but she was prolonging the suspense.
“Ruby, I told him—I just came out and told him everything, starting with meeting him, and how I felt, and then not being able to find him, and then driving up to Maine and asking you to drive cross-country with me to find him.”
“And he said?”
“He said
wow
a few times. And then he said the news was a little easier to process now that we’d had three dates, if we counted the first meeting, and then Lucky Duck and now Central Park, and that no matter what, he would not disappear on me ever again.”
“He said that?”
“He did. Twice.”
“When are you going to see him again?” I asked.
“He’s coming over in an hour. He’s cooking. And bringing the groceries. Apparently, he’s quite a chef. Cousin Rory would be proud.”
“I’m very glad, Stella. Very, very glad.”
“Me, too,” she whispered. “What’s that saying about how sometimes you have to travel a gazillion miles to find what was right in your own backyard the whole time? Guess we proved that right.”
“We sure did,” I said. “So what are you going to wear?”
“My Nebraska dress. It has history.”
I laughed. “Yes, it does. Bye, Stella. Call me tomorrow?” She promised she would.
Tom was waiting for me at the gate. He had a bunch of orange irises in one hand and the other over his heart. Then he ran over and picked me up and spun us around for a long, hot kiss that definitely made the earth move.
September
P
INK BRIDESMAIDS: CHECK
. F
ANCY SEASIDE INN: CHECK
.
My wedding planners, aka my soon-to-be sisters-in-law, came over often with thick, glossy magazines and color charts and color samples. Did I know there were seventy-two shades of pink? Did I like taffeta as much as Anne did? Did I know Caroline never liked
peau de soie?
After they devoted an entire week to the “bridal party dress concept,” I tuned them out when they turned to shoes. There were hundreds more bullet points to consider (they, too, were armed with checklists), from the wedding gown to the food to the band to the flowers, and I’d much rather plan the upcoming semester than the nuptials.
Caroline and Anne, with their headbands and twin sets, would only err on the side of dull for the wedding, so they seemed like safe bets. (And a safety net for a wedding was not only okay, it was a good idea.) They were thrilled when I told them I would leave the entire affair up to their good taste, down to the music, as long as “Fly Me to the Moon” was in there somewhere. Tom and I had yet to pick a wedding song, but Frank belonged to me and Stella.
Stella was going to be my maid of honor. Caroline, Anne, and my old friend Amy, my bridesmaids. My great-grand-mother, Zelda, would walk me down the aisle and give me away (oh, how tickled she was by the request!). And Tom Truby would be waiting for me at the end of the aisle.
I had seen Nick only once. I’d called him a few days after returning home and asked if we could see each other in person. He’d welcomed me to his apartment, the bachelor pad that had once been the secret site of all my fantasies and now did absolutely nothing for me.
He was still Nick, still so utterly breathtaking, but my heart was fully elsewhere.
“Our friendship means so much to me,” I told him. “It has for the past almost three years. I know that sounds so platitudey and hokey, but it’s true. We don’t have to lose the friendship, do we?”
“Like you could get rid of me?” he asked. “Not that you didn’t do some damage, Ruby. But, I don’t know. You were probably right, about me wanting what I can’t have, romanticizing what’s between us. Everything you said on the phone when I called you in Vegas rang true. Hard to hear, but it rang true.”
“You’re one of my favorite people, Nick.”
“Good, because you’re still my best friend. I might always wonder about the what-if, but I know you’re with the right guy.”
Me, too. Except the part about wondering about the what-if. That was over.
Within a month, Nick had moved onto his next conquest, a toughie: the wonderful English chair, Meg Fitzmaurice, who’d warned me away from him on my first day at BLA. She’d taken her own advice for four years, but fell during a weak moment when her husband left her for a younger woman. She
said
Nick was a delicious distraction, but I sensed something in both of them when they were together, something deeper, something growing. Something good.
As for Jake and Stella, they were quite the couple. He’d fallen hard for her, and though they were nervous wrecks about the baby, about being parents while getting to know each other, they were committed.
She called while I was out on the swing with Tom, enjoying the last summer weekend before school started on Tuesday.
“He’s so wonderful,” she said. “Last weekend he painted a little mural on the wall above Clarissa’s crib. To match that adorable clock we found, the cow jumping over the moon. I can’t wait till you see it, and see the room now—”
“
Clarissa’
s crib?” I asked. “Not Clarissa’s or Silas’s?”
She laughed. “The whole reason I called was to tell you that it’s definitely a girl, but of course my mind is on fifty different things. You should see me, Ruby, I’m as big as a house. Ginormous. Did you know that word is in the dictionary now? Oh, Ruby, I have to go—the Singers are here. Jake’s parents. We’re meeting for the first time! They live in Florida. We’ve only spoken on the phone, and they seem so nice, but of course I’m still nervous. Just think—they’re going to be Clarissa’s grandparents! I’m so glad she gets grandparents. And an aunt like you. Ooh, gotta go. Love to Tom. Bye!”
It was good to hear Stella so happy. She and Jake were already talking about marriage. Via the
New York Times
Web site, Stella had found and printed out the marriage article, with the questions every couple should ask before marrying, and they agreed they should marry when they both were comfortable answering those questions in the first place.
They had some time to go on that. In the meantime, they would focus on being the best possible parents to Clarissa. (It turned out that Jake loved both names, even when Stella had explained who Silas would be named for.)
Tom returned from the house with a fresh pitcher of lemonade and one of those little battery-operated handheld fans that his nieces had left last weekend. Tomorrow we would put back on our teacher clothes and wake at the crack of dawn and spend our days with tweens and teens. He refilled my glass and we toasted to the last days of summer. Then we linked arms and swung, Tom chivalrously aiming the little fan on me, both of us secure in the knowledge that our answer to question fifteen—the one about whether or not our relationship was strong enough to withstand challenges—was yes.
QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE MARRYING
A Red Dress Ink novel
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1772-4
© 2008 by Melissa Senate
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