Queen of Babble Gets Hitched (25 page)

“I told you, nothing. Look, I’ve always wanted to ask you. What’s with the garter?”

“What?” I stare at him in an alcohol-befuddled daze.

“The thing with the garter,” Chaz says. “At weddings. You know, when the groom peels the garter off the bride and throws it to the guys.”

“Oh,” I say. The bartender has delivered my Diet Coke, and I take a grateful swig. “That’s from olden times, when people in the court were required to follow the newly wedded couple to their bedroom after the ceremony to make sure they consummated the marriage. They’d demand the royal bride’s garter or stocking as proof that the defloration had occurred. Since peasants like to imitate the behavior of nobility, it became standard practice to demand that all brides give up their stockings or garters after the ceremony—sometimes the wedding guests would take the garter by force, so it became traditional for the groom to take it off during the reception so people wouldn’t follow the bride and groom back to their bedroom, and also so that the wedding guests wouldn’t rip it off her.”

Chaz makes a face. “Now, see,” he says. “That right there is reason enough why the institution of marriage ought to be abolished.”

I stare at him, comprehension dawning. “It’s not marriage you’re against,” I say. “It’s weddings.”

“True,” Chaz says. “But you can’t have one without the other.”

“Yes, of course you can,” I say matter-of-factly. But it doesn’t, I realize, matter. Not really. Not considering the grave we’ve already dug ourselves. “Do you really not feel guilty about what we’re doing?”

Chaz finishes off his screwdriver. “Not in the least,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of terrible things in my day, Lizzie. But loving you is not one of them. I don’t know what’s going to happen when Luke gets back in the fall. But I intend to enjoy the weeks I have left with you to the fullest. Because as I know from my study of the philosophy of time, whatever is going to happen in the future is already unavoidable.”

I blink at him. And say the only thing I can think of to say. Which is, “So?”

“So… what?” he asks me.

“So… what next?” I am really hoping he has the answer. Because I feel completely lost. And sort of scared. In a heart-pounding, excited way. The way I felt when Shari and I got off the plane from Michigan and were standing in the line for taxis at LaGuardia Airport, not knowing what we were going to find when we got into Manhattan. I didn’t have the slightest idea where I was or what I was doing.

But that didn’t mean I was in the wrong place, exactly.

“Next,” Chaz says, signaling the bartender, “I’m going to have another drink. And I suggest you do the same. Because there’s a lady I know who deserves to have her memory toasted, and not with Diet Coke.”

I give him a somewhat watery smile. “I’m not good at not knowing what’s going to happen,” I say when our screwdrivers arrive, and we lift them to clink.

“Are you kidding?” Chaz says. “That’s what you’re best at. You take the road less traveled and turn it into gold every single time. Why do you think Luke’s still hanging on so tight when he’s half a world away? You’ve got the magic touch. And everyone knows it.”

“I don’t know,” I say uncertainly.

“Lizzie.” Chaz looks me dead in the eye. “Why do you think it was you, out of all the people in your family, your grandmother connected with so well? You, and no one else? You were the only other person in your family who, like her, would never take no for an answer, and just did whatever the hell you wanted. Now raise your glass.”

I do, chewing my lower lip a little.

“To Gran,” Chaz says, clinking the rim of his glass to mine. “A fine old drunk with some damn good taste.”

“To Gran,” I say, blinking back sudden tears. But they’re happy tears. Because finally someone is saying what I’ve been wanting to say about Gran all along.

Gran, I know, would approve of what Chaz and I are doing. Whatever that is, exactly.

I lift my glass. And I drink.

To Gran.

The first toasts were performed back in the sixth century B.C., when the ancient Greeks would pour wine for their dinner guests from a communal pitcher. The host would drink first to assure his guests that the wine wasn’t poisoned (a common practice at the time for getting rid of pesky in-laws or neighbors). Later, the clinking of vessels at weddings became a popular method of keeping demons away from the newly wedded couple.

At a traditional modern reception, the first toast is always to the bride, usually by the best man. The last toast is generally from the father of the bride. After he has made a weepy spectacle of himself, the reception can officially begin. Only at a nontraditional modern reception does the bride get to give her own toast, thanking her wedding party and guests (who, after sitting through so many toasts, truly deserve thanking).

Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster

Keep your toasts short. Please, no crib sheets. The point of the toast is to wish the happy couple well and invite all the other guests to join you in doing so, not to embarrass the couple or show how witty you are. You should also thank the parents for hosting the wedding and the couple for bestowing the honor of allowing you to be their best whatever-you-are. Lift your glass, ask others to do so as well, congratulate them, then get your butt back in the seat, for the love of God, so the rest of us can eat our cold rubbery chicken.

LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS
^™

I’m late for work Monday morning.

There is only one explanation for how I can be late to work in a place that is precisely two floors below where I live: Chaz.

It turns out there is a disadvantage to living two floors up from where you work… if you don’t want the people you’re working with to know you’re sleeping around behind your fiancé’s back, anyway.

I told Chaz that if he wanted to spend the night at my place he had to get out before anyone else showed up at the shop in the morning. I couldn’t have Tiffany and the other ladies seeing him leaving. Which meant he had to be out of there before nine… preferably before eight thirty.

He would have made it too, if it hadn’t been for my own insufferable weakness when it comes to men who bring girls breakfast in bed. It isn’t a weakness I ever knew I had before. Because no guy has ever brought me breakfast in bed before.

And it wasn’t just that he brought me breakfast in bed, either, but that he got up way before I did and must have crept around super-quietly so as not to wake me, and gone to the store—since there was seriously nothing in my refrigerator—and then made scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and brought it all in on a tray with a single red rose in a bud vase next to an icy cold Diet Coke still in the can… just the way I like it.

What girl wouldn’t have melted? And then jumped his bones (as soon as she was done with her eggs… I didn’t want them to get cold, after all)?

So I’m a little bit… frazzled… when I finally get downstairs to work. Frazzled in a good way. A highly relaxed, but still slightly disoriented and dazed way. It’s how I’ve been feeling since I first kissed Chaz… good, but almost as if I had gone ahead and started taking those pills Shari’s dad had given me, instead of flushing them down the toilet back at the Knight’s Inn, like I actually did. The world seems… different. Not better, not worse, just… different. Suddenly, things that used to bother me—men who wear baseball caps indoors, for instance—don’t bother me at all anymore. Fears that used to consume me—that I might end up shopping for vast amounts of cold medicine at my hometown grocery store on weekends like Kathy Pennebaker—no longer seem likely… in fact, they seem improbable. Instead of obsessively eating in one sitting the entire bag of cheese popcorn that I bought at the airport, I ate only a handful.

And I didn’t even think about buying a Cinnabon.

Something is happening to me. I’ve even stopped wearing Spanx. I just don’t care if my bulges show. Maybe because Chaz actually likes my bulges?

I never have to worry about being on top with him, or making sure I walk backward out of the room when I’m naked so my butt doesn’t show. In fact, I’m pretty sure if I did this, Chaz would ask me what the hell I was doing, something Luke never seemed to notice. Or wonder about.

Maybe this is what comes from being a loose woman. When you give up your morals, they all just go, inhibitions too.

Anyway, I’m not the first person into the shop. Sylvia and Marisol are already there, working on the lace-and-tulle I. Magnin & Co. 1950s cocktail-style number we’d gotten from a punky bride whose mother had worn it and who wanted to squeeze into it as well… only she was a size 12 and her mother had been a size 8. We’d assured her we could handle it.

But from the way Sylvia and Marisol start staring, their mouths hanging open, when I walk in, I’m not sure we can handle much of anything, let alone retrofitting a size 12 I. Magnin cocktail dress to an 8.

“What?” I demand, staring right back at them.

They know. I don’t know how they know, but it’s obvious they do. I might as well be wearing a big scarlet letter A on my chest.

Great. The boss is a slut. In an hour, when Tiffany gets here, everyone in Manhattan (and parts of North Dakota, where Tiffany is from) will know it.

How do I handle this? There was never an article about this in Fortune Small Business. What to do when all your employees know that you’re sleeping with your fiancé’s best friend. At least I don’t think so. Damn, I knew I should have paid more attention to that magazine and less to Us Weekly.

“This is looking good,” I say about the dress the two women are working on. They’ve ripped all the stitching from the waist and bodice and will be inserting stretchy lace panels—the big girl’s friend—in discreet locations. Yeah, that’s it. Maybe I can distract them by complimenting their work!

The two women exchange glances.

“I was sorry to hear about your grandmother, Lizzie,” Marisol says.

“Yes,” Sylvia says. “I’m very sorry too.”

I blink at them for a moment, then realize… they don’t think I’m a slut at all! They weren’t being weird before. They just didn’t know what to say because I’ve just come back from my grandmother’s funeral.

God! I’m such an idiot!

“Oh,” I say, smiling. “Thank you so much. She… she had a good, long life.”

I’m feeling much better about things—less disoriented, and actually caught up on the things I’ve missed, including phone messages, of which there weren’t too many, due to the holiday weekend—an hour later when Tiffany walks through the front door, takes one look at me, and goes, “Oh my God. You had sex this morning.”

I nearly choke on the Diet Coke—my second of the day—I’m sipping.

“Wh-what?” I cry, trying not to spill all over the appointment book I have open in front of me. “What are you talking about? No, I didn’t.”

“Oh, don’t even try,” Tiffany says in disgust as she sashays into the shop in her four-inch lace-up stilettos. “You think I can’t tell by now when you’ve had morning sex? And whoever it was, he did you good. Who was it? It couldn’t have been Luke. I’ve never seen you glowing like that before. It’s kind of revolting.” She halts midway across the shop and stares at me owl-eyed. “Oh my God, Lizzie. Did you and Chaz—”

“NO!” I leap up from the reception desk and begin to wave my arms at her like a madwoman. “No, of course not!”

“Holy shit.” A slow smile begins to spread across her face. “You screwed your fiancé’s best friend. You slut.”

“I didn’t,” I cry. “I swear I didn’t!”

“And now you’re lying about it.” Still smiling, Tiffany reaches into her Marc Jacobs bag and pulls out her Sidekick. “Monique needs to hear about this. So does Raoul. In fact, I can’t think of one person I know who doesn’t need to hear about this. This is sick. Little Miss Prudy Pants got her rocks off this weekend with her fiancé’s best friend. Oh shit, her best friend’s ex!” Tiffany laughs to herself as she types into her Sidekick. “Even better! Man, you are going to burn in hell for true!”

I reach up and lay a hand over her keyboard. “Tiffany,” I say earnestly. “Please. Look at me.”

Tiffany looks down from her towering six feet two inches (with the heels) and blinks her heavily mascaraed eyes. “What?” she asks. She’s still grinning like the Cheshire cat.

“It’s not what you think,” I say. There’s a knot in my stomach. All the yummy eggs and toast and things I put into it an hour ago feel as if they’re about to come back up. “The thing is… ”

“Oh, what?” Tiffany demands sarcastically. “You looooooove him?”

“Yes,” I say tightly. I am so close to vomiting I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to throw up all over Tiffany’s pretty Laundry sundress, but I’m not sure how much longer I can hold it in. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

Tiffany lowers her Sidekick, leans down until her face is level with mine, and says, enunciating very clearly, “Duh.”

Then she straightens back up, yanks her keypad out of my grasp, and, prattling on as she keeps her gaze on what her fingers are doing, says, “Jesus, Lizzie, do you think we don’t know that? Frankly I think the only person in all of the tristate area who didn’t know you were in love with Charles Pendergast the Third is you. It was so fucking obvious you like him and he likes you that it was just a matter of time until you guys did something about it. And you know what? I’m glad, because I am so fucking over Luke. He was getting on my last nerve. What is this spending the summer in France thing? Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care if he is a prince. There’re more important things than being royal, you know. Like, did he go to your grandmother’s funeral? No? But Chaz did, right? Did he? Is that how this all happened?”