Say Forever (16 page)

Grace pulls a face, looking as if she's just swallowed a lemon wedge in her organic green tea. No, wait, maybe it's the tea. "I guess it's not her thing," she says with an exasperated breath.

Now I feel bad. I play with the string on my stinky tea bag and slump in my seat as I think about how this whole wedding is going down the toilet. Most of my bridal party is made up of people I don't want (or else people who don't want) to be in my wedding.

"Then don't make her wear it."

I think back to Violet as she came out in that dress and wig. Other than that twisted scowl, she makes a hot chick. Too bad she doesn't want to be in my wedding. Then again, maybe I don't want two lanky beauties outshining me on my special day. It's bad enough I'll probably be bloated and "soiled."

"I was trying to help you. I want you to have enough bridesmaids." Grace flashes a woeful smile, the kind of smile I'd give to a three-legged dog or a homeless baby. Okay, maybe I went a little overboard with the homeless baby part, but the smile oozed pity, and the fact that my wedding is turning into a charity case is over-the-top humiliating.

"I did have enough." I square my shoulders and turn up my chin. "I had you. I don't want anyone to do anything they don't want to do. I want my wedding to be happy and fun." Images of Violet ripping off her wig and Marie's smug smile flash through my mind. I pound the table with my fist. "I want red flowers on my dress. I want fucking tamales!" I cringe when I hear a gasp at the booth behind us, and I drop my voice to a strained whisper. "I don't want this wedding. Not like this."

Grace's blue eyes turn as dark as a stormy sea. "Do you want me to tell them to back off?"

"No." I groan as I push aside my tea cup. "That will piss them off even more."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know." I feign a smile. "Eat chocolate." I really wish the waiter would hurry up with my brownie. Maybe if I get enough chocolate in my system, I'll forget all of my troubles in a sugar induced haze.

Grace frowns. "You look terrible. Aren't you sleeping?"

"Just feeling a little under the weather," I mumble. I reach for my stinky tea and stare into the steamy green liquid. Truthfully, it's hard to sleep in that big bed alone, especially when I'm forced to endure listening to my fiancé's night terrors in the other room.

"You're rushing this wedding."

I jerk my head up to see my best friend eyeing me pointedly.

"It's a little too late for the lecture." Smirking, I pat my stomach.

Grace responds with a patronizing scowl.

I'm tired of pretending I'm drinking liquid vomit, so I set my tea down for good, grimacing as it sloshes all over my hand. "What about you and Violet?" I ask with a note of accusation in my voice. After all, she's got no room to criticize Andrés and me for getting married so soon when she and Violet started talking about marriage months ago. "You two have been dating as long as Andrés and I have."

Now it's Grace's turn to avert her gaze. Uh, oh. I was hoping their little argument in the bridal shop was no big deal.

When her eyes gloss over, I clasp her hands in mine. "What's wrong?"

"I think we rushed things." She sniffles. Oh, crap. Grace is one of the strongest women I've ever known. Other than the time her parents disowned her after she came out, I don't think I've ever seen her cry.

"You two used to seem so happy together."

Grace grabs a cloth napkin off the table and dabs her eyes. "The honeymoon's over. Now she's taking in all these troubled teens."

"But that should be perfect for you. Isn't that why you're studying to be a therapist?"

Grace dabs her eyes again and then blows her nose.

I jerk back at the sound that comes from her nose, a cross between a dying whale and a fog horn. Wow. That's something I've never, ever seen her do. Grace had been raised to be a prim and proper southern belle.

"Yeah," she says as she daintily folds the napkin and sets it to the side, "but Violet doesn't want my input on how to deal with them. It's like my opinion doesn't matter."

I look at the busboy cleaning a nearby booth, and I think about warning him to use rubber gloves for our table, but Grace needs me at the moment, so calling out the Hazmat team will have to wait. "Andrés and I went through that, remember? I didn't listen at all to him."

Grace sinks into the booth and rubs her temple. "You guys worked through that, but I don't know if this is fixable. And it's not just that. She's always so busy, we hardly do anything together anymore, unless it involves the ranch."

I think back to last night, and every other night these past few weeks, when Andrés has had to work late. I have been telling myself things will get better when he learns the ropes, but Andrés has been working there for almost a year. What if these long shifts are permanent? But I push those dark thoughts aside. Andrés will make time for us. He has to.

"What are you going to do?" I ask, when in reality, I know I'm asking myself the same question.

"I'm going to give it a little more time and try to see if she can understand my side, but we're definitely not getting married anytime soon." The hopeless look in Grace's eyes is enough to break my heart.

"I don't blame you," I barely rasp, choked up all of a sudden. I decide to blame it on the tea, and not the bad feeling I get about this wedding. I burp up the rancid taste of old stevia and pungent tea. Ew. Guess that's my karma.

I want to curl up into a fetal ball and roll away from this whole conversation when Grace looks at me again with that pitiful smile. "It was only a few weeks ago that Andrés walked out on you. Are you sure you're ready to get married so soon?"

I don't want to answer her question, so I look away, and then damn, I'm burping up tea again. I should have had the latte. Despite the café's noisy chatter and clatter of forks scraping plates, I feel like I'm trapped inside a glass bubble with Grace, and she won't let me out until I tell her the truth, but I'm not even ready to face the truth myself. Everything about this wedding feels wrong, and the bubble around me is closing in, cramping my space and making it hard to breathe. I'm forced to ask myself why I'm doing this. And I don't just mean the shrimp puffs and annoying bridesmaids. Why am I marrying a man who is clearly overworked and overstressed?

Because you love him, Christina,
a voice inside me echoes. And it's true, I do love him more than life, but I still can't help but wonder if we're making a mistake.

Grace slaps a white envelope in front of me, startling me.

She flashes a crooked smile. "I'm sorry. We came to this lunch to celebrate right?"

"What's this?" I say as I pick up the envelope and dump the contents on the table.

"An early wedding present," she says with a wink.

I gasp when I recognize the airline printout. "Tickets to Vegas? Grace, these must have cost a fortune. I can't accept these."

"Too late." She arches back against her seat, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder. "They're non-refundable. Besides, Violet helped me pay for them."

I'm completely stunned. Vegas. Wow. I've always wanted to go. That was my original dream for my twenty-first birthday. I'd hinted to Jackson more than once, but he said he didn't like to gamble, as if my twenty-first birthday was supposed to be about him.

"So is this for our honeymoon?"

Grace laughs out loud. "Would you listen to yourself? These tickets are for whenever you want. I'm not the one to tell you where to honeymoon."

I shrug half-heartedly. "Everyone's making all the wedding decisions for me, I guess I fell into habit. I've always wanted to go to Vegas, though." I clutch the tickets to my chest and smile. "Thank you. A Vegas honeymoon would be perfect."

"You're welcome. And if the wedding prep gets too out of hand, you can always screw it all and get hitched in Vegas." She tosses up both hands in the air, like she's on a roller coaster at Six Flags.

Oh, right. If only. "Our families would freak."

Grace grasps the edge of the table with her perfectly polished nails and leans forward. "Who cares what they think? Besides, you have your maid-of-honor's blessing. My opinion is the only one that counts." She laughs again, more like the unaffected Grace I know.

Wow. Just the thought of running off to Vegas with Andrés and screwing this whole wedding planning thing makes me giddy inside. The idea is too tempting, but I think again of the horror in my mom's and Tia's eyes when we get back from Vegas and announce we're already married, and that swelling inside my chest quickly deflates.

Luckily, I don't have time to dwell on my disappointment, as the waiter finally shows up with my brownie.

"Omigod," I squeal like an eighth grader who's been asked out by the hottest boy in school. "Have you ever seen a brownie like this?" Grace had warned me it was big, but this thing is monster enough for three people to share, which is exactly why I'm glad I ordered my own. Now I have something to snack on when I get a chocolate craving in the middle of the night.

I immediately stab it with a fork, but quickly realize I'll need a knife to cut through all those layers of fudge sauce and gooey dough.

Grace works faster than me, cutting through her brownie like a logger with a chainsaw. She moans as she takes the first bite. "It's perfection."

"Do me a favor and don't tell Andrés about the brownie," I say with a wink. I finally saw off a chunk and twirl fudge sauce around my fork before sinking my teeth into chocolate bliss. "Mmmm," I groan and don't have the mental facility for much else. All rational thought has completely shut down, and I focus all my brain cells on savoring the rich, chocolaty flavors that explode in my mouth. If I could get an orgasm from food, this would be the brownie to do it. In fact this brownie is so damn delicious, its euphoric flavors are almost enough to make me forget about my problems.

Almost.

Chapter Fourteen

Christina

Grace and I spend the rest of the day bridal shopping. We hit at least ten different shoe stores and I can't find the right pair. I'm probably making this harder than it needs to be. All I need is a pair of white heels, right? I know it sounds crazy, but none of the shoes I try on speak to me, and after a while they all look like the exact same shoe, white satin heels with buckles, and sometimes pearly flowers.

Big whoop.

I'm not interested in the same old bridal shoe. I want something different. That bold voice inside me tells me I should be daring and go for something either red or pink to match the hues of the flowers on my dress, but then that wimpy Christina whom I thought I'd gotten rid of last year rears her timid head and warns me Tia would have a heart attack if I walked down the aisle in red shoes.

We finally give up shoe shopping and go to Hobby Lobby instead. I'm ecstatic when I find flowers that look almost like the Cyclamen on my gown. I've been thinking I want to design my own bouquet. That way I can keep it forever, and now I have the perfect flowers. I also spot these adorable little gossamer butterflies I'm going to sew onto the bottom of the gown once I finish painting in the flowers.

It's late evening when we finally drag our weary butts home. Tonight is my night to cook, which means I've got pizza takeout in Grace's backseat. I ask Grace if she wants to come inside, but she's going to Violet's ranch to patch up things.

Andrés is sitting at the kitchen table, tapping away at his laptop when I stumble through the door, steaming pizza in one hand and a big bag of crafts in the other.

As soon as he sees me, he jumps up and takes the box. "Where have you been?"

I jerk back, stunned by the harshness of his tone.

"I was with Grace," I say, shocked by the way he slams the pizza box down.

He leans against the kitchen counter, folds his arms across his chest, and glares at me like I'm one of his wayward mechanics. "I've been trying to get ahold of you for the past three hours."

"Oh." I shrug as I walk past him toward the bedroom. "I turned my ringer off," I say this in the same indifferent tone I would use to choose between pepperoni or mushrooms. I've had a rough day dealing with his family's shit, and I'm not going to deal with his anger, too.

Andrés's footsteps echo behind me, and I can practically feel him breathing fire down my neck. "What if I had an emergency?"

"Did you?" I heave my weary limbs onto the bed and start removing my heeled boots, not bothering to make eye contact

"That's not the point. Tia called me freaking out." His voice rises an octave with each word. "She said you took off today upset."

"Yeah." I laugh under my breath. "Major understatement." Why am I not surprised Tia would try to drag Andrés into this? As if he doesn't have enough stress to deal with right now. I slip off my socks and wiggle my toes as pain lances up the soles of my feet all the way to my ankles.

"What the hell is going on?" Our bedroom isn't big to begin with, and Mr. Angry Ogre's booming voice shakes the cramped space around me.

I resist the urge to cover both ears with my hands. "Don't raise your voice at me," I say through clenched teeth.

Again, I remind myself he's been under a lot of stress lately. I rotate my ankles to alleviate the soreness. That's when I notice they look bigger than normal. I'm only a few weeks pregnant and my ankles are already swollen? Crap! What are they going to look like when I'm nine months? I have this sudden horrifying vision of me wobbling around with swollen kankles that resemble monster truck tires. So not good.

"You could have at least called to tell me you were okay."

Ugh. He's not giving up, is he?

"You never answer my calls when you're at work," I say dryly. I want to add something about how he's quick to answer Tia's calls, but I don't want to piss off the ogre even more.

"You could have sent a text."

"You never answer those, either."

Andrés steps into my personal space, hovering so far over me, he looks ready to topple at any moment. "I was fucking worried!"

Oh, no, he didn't just swear at me. Sore feet and swollen ankles be damned, I pull myself up and stand on the bed. Now I'm the one towering over him.