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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: What He's Been Missing
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“But what about my big birthday surprise?” Scarlet smirked coyly like a seven-year-old. I'd seen Ian fall to his knees for this display from her before.
“In a second, hon,” he said in a way that clearly shocked both Scarlet and me. “Rach—” He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the room before Scarlet could find another reason to disagree.
On the other side of the suite was a king-sized bedroom Ian had decorated with rose petals all over the floor and bed, and white taper candles on the nightstand. It was clichéd, but much more than I'd ever expect from Ian.
“What's up with you?” I asked, standing alone in the room with Ian after he'd closed the door behind us. “And why in the world did you lie and tell Scarlet I had a boyfriend?”
“I can't do this, Rach! I can't!” He threw the book onto the bed.
“Can't what?” I knew what I was thinking he was saying, but I needed to confirm that he was saying what I was thinking.
“I can't!”
“Can't what?”
“You know I didn't even tell my parents? Who gets engaged without telling their parents? I can't. They're gonna hate this. They're gonna hate her. My mother hasn't even met Scarlet. Oh shit!”
“Can't what?”
“And you know why I haven't told them about her? I didn't because I was afraid—I was afraid they'd try to talk me out of it.”
“Out of what?”
“Asking Scarlet to marry me, Rach,” Ian said, falling onto the bed. “I can't ask her to marry me.”
“You can't?” (Hiding my excitement here was quite difficult. But considering the distraught look on Ian's face, with him laid out on the bed like a man about to undergo open heart surgery, I couldn't break out the streamers and balloons just yet.)
“It's just not right. There's something that's not right!”
I stood in front of Ian on the bed with my arms crossed.
“What's not right? This morning you called me all excited about the ring from Namibia. What happened?”
“Don't play with me, Rachel. You know she's not right for me. Maybe now isn't the time.” Ian shot up and stood beside me. “There's something missing. Something just missing from us.”
“Something like what?”
A rap sounded at the door and one of Scarlet's happy friends poked her head into the room.
“We're almost ready for the surprise!” she whispered. “About to cut the cake, too!”
Ian was frozen.
“We'll be out in a minute,” I said.
She closed the door slowly and reluctantly.
I looked back at Ian. We'd been in these kinds of standoffs together in the past: sophomore year when he caught his girlfriend cheating on him with some muscly Omega in a bar in Tallahassee and I had to stop him from going off and losing his first fight; senior year when I was cheating on my boyfriend with a muscly Omega in a motel room in Tallahassee and called Ian from the bathroom for help when my boyfriend knocked on the door (ten minutes later, Ian pulled up in back of the motel and I climbed out the bathroom window).
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I can't do it, Rachel.” Ian looked into my eyes.
“I'll get you out of here if you want me to. We'll walk right out the door. But I need you to be clear about what you're doing,” I said. “That girl in there—all those people in there are expecting you to get down on one knee and propose.”
“I know.”
We looked to the balcony outside the glass doors beside the bed.
“It's the tenth floor,” he said mordantly and we laughed.
“And we're a little too old to be escaping from hotel rooms.” Ian walked to the doors and looked outside.
“I can't do this to Scarlet,” he said. “I know you hate her, but it'll really hurt her. She's worth more to me than that.”
“I don't hate—”
“She'll be devastated. I don't want to be that guy in her past. The one who—made her jaded like most of the other women I know.”
And there was Ian being the man I knew—always complex. Always caring for someone else. Sometimes, I thought that was what kept him going with Scarlet—for all of her perfection, she needed him for something. To hold her hand. To be her cherry on top.
“So?”
Ian turned back to me.
“You know,” he started, “Scarlet obviously knows about the ring—”
“Obviously—”
“But she doesn't know that I know that she knows. She still thinks it's supposed to be a surprise.”
I nodded along with his twisted thinking.
“And—”
This time the friend didn't knock. She burst into the door and grabbed Ian.
“It's time,” she whined . . . or growled.
I grabbed for Ian's other hand, but he leaned into the girl.
“Don't worry,” Ian said. “I know what to do.”
These black people had formed an actual runway from the bedroom to the dining table where the lit birthday cake was waiting beside a beaming Scarlet. The shiny silver cake knife was on the table beside the cake. Everything was quiet and slow-moving as the friend led us down the gauntlet to the sacrificial table. Like we were mobsters walking into the coffee shop in Little Italy where we were about to become made men—or dead men. Folks were holding out iPhones ready to snap pictures and record the scene. Whatever Ian had up his sleeve, I hoped it was good. Suddenly, that tenth-floor balcony escape wasn't looking too bad. Scarlet was from Buckhead, but she was still a sister. There was no telling what she'd do in this situation. Too bad I'd disobeyed Grammy Annie-Lou's advice and left home without my framing knife—I felt the bottom of my purse to be sure.
“Happy birthday to you—happy birthday to you!” they all sang so happily once Ian had made his way to Scarlet.
The color in Ian's face was gone. He was a white man. Was he planning to faint? Good stuff.
Scarlet blew out the candles. Posed for more pictures. Thanked everyone for such a nice surprise. The place got quiet as a funeral parlor.
The girlfriend beside Ian nudged him—visibly.
He ignored her, but then she said, “And Ian, don't you have a surprise for Scarlet?”
“A surprise?” Ian smiled and everyone laughed like he was a dear old dad holding out on the keys to some sixteen-year-old's first car. “Yes, I do have a surprise—a surprise for my sweetheart.” He took Scarlet's had and the cameras started rolling.
“Really?” Scarlet shrugged like she was completely caught off guard.
“Yes. Scarlet,” Ian said, “I love you and I want to know if you would—” He stopped.
“What, baby?” Scarlet pushed. “What do you want to know?”
Was he about to ask her anyway? Now I was about to pretend faint. Was that the plan?
“I want to know if you would join me”—he paused again—“on a two-week vacation to”—he did a little two-step that impressed no one in the crowd—“Hawaii!”
“Hawaii?” Scarlet repeated with a half smile on her face, her left hand mistakenly extended. “Hawaii?”
“Hawaii?” The word was said in different ways around the room—none good.
“Hawaii!” I cheered and clapped like I was going. “Oh . . . that's so great!”
Had Scarlet's eyes have been guns, she would've shot bullets right through my neck.
Ian clapped along with me for the big sell.
“All inclusive!” he added. “Drinks and food!”
“Yo, that's what's up?” her roommate's boyfriend said before the roommate elbowed him in the gut. “What? That must've cost the brother a grip.” He raised his glass and then, like hostages unsure of what else to do, everyone else did, too, one by one—everyone but Scarlet. She was looking at her boyfriend and thinking so hard I could see her brain moving around beneath her pretty little hat.
“So?” the roommate's boyfriend opened again. “Do you want to go to Hawaii?”
“Yeah, do you?” someone else behind me asked.
Scarlet looked down at her feet pensively. There was no way to know if she'd started to cry. Her shoulders were shaking. She took one of Ian's hands into both of hers.
Ian looked at me for a second and I knew he felt terrible.
“Do you?” someone else asked.
“Ian,” Scarlet said with her eyes moving from her feet right to Ian's eyes. “You know, I think I would like to take that all-inclusive trip with you to Hawaii.”
Ian's face brightened. All around me let out the breath they'd been holding in.
“I would like to go,” Scarlet went on, “but . . . but only if it's as husband and wife.”
“What?” I'm nearly certain this was me.
“What I'm trying to say, Ian, is that it's 2011. I'm an independent, educated, and successful sister. And I'm not ashamed to say that I'm in love with you and I want to marry you. Times have changed and, as a woman, I want to ask you to be my husband.”
The cameras around me started rolling again as Scarlet tried to get down on one knee to ask Ian to marry her.
Shocked as he was, Ian's mouth was just as wide as mine had been in the lobby earlier, but he didn't let Scarlet get down on her knee. He pulled her back up: “Will you marry me?” she asked.
I was standing there praying to God and everything holy that Ian said yes. Really, I'd actually seen this a few times in my years working in nuptials, and when a woman proposes and a man declines, there's simply no savvy recovery. She leaves there let down and goes to the insane asylum and then from there to her grave. I didn't want him to marry Scarlet, but to say no right then would ruin her and the dreams of every woman in that room. He could say yes now and then no later.
And when I looked at Ian, I knew this was what he was about to do—the first part, anyway—because he was looking at Scarlet like she was all new and smelling like spring again. His color was back. His hands were confident at his sides. He looked, well, happy.
“Yes,” he said. “I will marry you.”
It would take me some years to understand that Ian didn't say yes to Scarlet just because he couldn't say no. Birds of a feather flock together and, as I was looking for love, Ian wanted to believe he was already in love. That the feelings that had him rolling up that poor little book weren't real doubt, but real fear—something that would dissipate, go away, once he realized that he was doing the right thing. Right or wrong, so many of my clients, so many of my friends, had gone to the altar using the same logic. Thinking that the love they wanted would conquer all. I wouldn't admit it myself, but if I was in the same position—ready to get married and had the person I thought I loved standing in front of me asking for my hand in marriage—I might've done the same thing.
In the end, only time would give the answers in Ian's case. As the crowd of awkward smiles closed in upon him and Scarlet, cheering, I realized that the time for questions was over. I picked up a champagne flute and joined in. Kissed Scarlet on the cheek and winked softly at Ian. Posed for pictures, slid off my heels, and walked to my car, vowing to never again bring up the escape plan we'd discussed in the bedroom at the W Hotel.
2
“No ‘Settle for' Man”
#IlovewhatIdobut: But when you love love like I do, it's hard to listen to two people who probably aren't in love and shouldn't be getting married, explain why they're in love and are getting married.
“I would fucking kill someone for her! You know what I'm sayin'? Shoot a nigga right between his eyes, yo!”
Alarm Clock is a rapper who seems to like to remain on my client list. After Journey and Dame introduced us a few years ago, I'd arranged every detail for his first two marriages to a backup dancer and video model respectively, and now he was in my office for our first consultation to plan his third.
I'd opened the meeting by asking the pair how they met. Donnica, a beautiful girl with a body that made me promise myself that I'd go to the gym as soon as I left the office, was a nail technician where Alarm's last child's mother (not a wife) was getting a pedicure in Miami. She'd volunteered to give Alarm a shoulder massage in a back room while he waited for his baby mama.
My second question was why they'd fallen in love with each other.
Alarm always seemed to equate love with murder. He knew he was in love with his first wife because he was going to kill her if she tried to leave him (he eventually left her), he knew he loved his second wife because he'd die trying to protect her from harm (he didn't), he knew he loved Donnica because he'd kill someone for her.
“Know what I'm saying?” he asked me.
“Well, no. I actually don't know what you're saying” I said, sitting on the opposite side of my desk in my midtown office with Alarm and Donnica. They were my third of four consults before lunch and I was getting tired of nodding along. Actually loving the couple whose wedding you're planning is kind of like finding a really great book you know you'll forever cherish and remember. When it happens, it makes the less likable and “well, I could've done something much better with all that time” books bearable and actually a great litmus test through which to determine how much you actually love what you love.
I actually liked Alarm Clock. While he seemed infatuated with murder in both his music and conversation, he was like me. He wanted to find love and still believed it was possible. After four children and two failed marriages, he was still willing to say “I do.” It wasn't the most gangster thing he could do with his time, but he was trying.
“What about you, Ms. Grant—Donnica?” I turned to the bride with the two-million-dollar ring on her airbrushed French manicured fingernails. “Why did you fall in love with Zachariah?” (Rappers always have the funniest first names.)
“He real good to his sons. I ain't got no kids, but grandmamma always told me that if you want to know how a man will treat you, watch how he treat his mama and his kids.”
And although Donnica's grandmother's advice seemed to assume every man her granddaughter would meet would already have children, it was sound rhetoric that made me believe these two had a chance, so I said, “That's great advice. Now tell me: how do you two envision your wedding day?” I already knew what Alarm envisioned, but I didn't want to bring up the past—and then this happened:
Donnica: “We got to have a chocolate fountain! Fruit at a chocolate fountain.”
Forget the music, forget the women, forget the pants hanging down below their asses—the only problem I have with rappers is how they spend their money. Yes, you can get a Maybach if you have the money, but don't get Burberry's signature print spray-painted on the hood. Yes, you can move into an eastside estate, but your first order of business need not be to install inside and outside basketball courts and a pitbull kennel. Yes, you can get married at Musha Cay, the most luxurious and expensive private island in the southern Bahamas, but no, you won't have a chocolate fountain—not if I'm planning it. Golden Corral has a chocolate fountain. My home church in Social Circle had a chocolate fountain at the Easter revival. They sell chocolate fountains at CVS. It's over. Let it go.
“I saw a chocolate fountain on
Real Housewives of Atlanta
, and I wanted one at my wedding,” Donnica went on.
“Will you shut the fuck up about that damn chocolate fountain?” Zachariah spat out, sounding more like Alarm Clock. “I told you my girl Rachel gonna plan everything. Keep shit classy. Fucking chocolate fountain is mad ghetto. Tell her, Rachel.”
Alarm sat up and pointed at me.
“Well, no,” I delicately answered, looking at Donnica, who was holding onto Alarm like she and I were two hens in a house with one rooster. “I wouldn't say it's ghetto to want a chocolate fountain. I'm just sure we can come up with something a little more sophisticated together.” Something that speaks to where this couple is going (a divorce paper fountain?). “To where you're going, Donnica.”
“What you mean?” she asked.
“Well, sweetheart, you're about to be married to one of the most powerful performers in the world,” I said. “You won't be trying to snag a rich man like those allegedly married women on all those reality shows. You've got one. You're it. You're better than a chocolate fountain.”
Alarm grinned while Donnica looked into nowhere at the possibilities.
“That's why I fucks with you, Rachel!” Alarm said. “See, baby, you gotta think about where we going!”
Donnica nodded and then asked, “Whatever . . . well, what about the horse and carriage? I always wanted to have a horse and carriage at my wedding. You know, with one of those pumpkin carriages that lights up—like in Cinderella?”
“What the fuck?” Alarm fell back, deflated, in his seat.
“What? What the fuck is wrong with that?” Donnica snapped back at Alarm. “It's my fucking wedding. She fucking asked. Fuck! I don't understand why we got to be answering all these fucking questions anyway. Uggh.” Donnica sucked her teeth, rolled her neck, and looked out the window in disgust.
“Well, Donnica, the thing is, I work on inspiration. You tell me what you like and I use what I know to finesse it into something you'll love. Something you'll never forget.”
“Fuck. I don't see why we couldn't just get married in Miami anyway,” Donnica said, getting up from the chair and walking to the window with a sad, pouty face.
“Oh shit.” Alarm sank farther and spoke so only I could hear him. “Here we go with this again.”
Donnica started crying and went on about wanting everyone in Liberty City to see her marry her prince charming. And how it wasn't right that all her cousins couldn't be there.
Alarm was shaking his head at first, but then he started looking at her like he was a man in love. He got up and went over to the window.
I sat back and watched the drama unfold. Planning a wedding is very emotional. Most of my clients, even the best ones, have these moments right in front of me. It's usually best to just sit back and let it happen.
He grabbed for her. She pushed him away. He kissed her shoulder. She cried some more. He kissed her chin. She shuddered. They started kissing like that was how you had an orgasm.
Just as I was about to throw my bottled water on them, Krista, my assistant who'd probably heard the overuse of “fuck” a few minutes ago, poked her head into the doorway and announced my next consult.
 
A. J. Holmes had quickly become the most popular black face in news when he got his own show on CNN. Everyone was sad that he'd replaced the network's first black female to have her own show, Sasha Bellamy, after she got a little power hungry and ended up getting fired, but A. J. was to news what Obama had been to politics—what everyone wanted to see, when everyone wanted to see it. Somehow, even through television, you had a sense that you knew him, that you liked him, that he was a great guy who really cared about the world.
I was more than excited when one of my clients called the day before my meeting with A. J. to request what I call a “trade out” with A. J. Because my calendar is booked for three years solid, many clients who aren't engaged yet but pay annually to keep their spot “trade out” as a gift to a newly engaged friend. In return, the client gets the first next spot available on my calendar and a refund of the money they've paid, so long as the new client pays in full before the consult.
While I was in a NyQuil coma, A. J. had asked his fiancée Dawn to marry him on national television during a CNN taping of the ball drop at Times Square. Getting him on my list as a trade out was a godsend. The space he was taking was promised during the fourth quarter of the year. The winter wedding of CNN's darling star. The press would be all over it. I'd be booked for three more years now. But that wasn't what interested me most.
“So how did you two meet?” I asked, looking at A. J. and Dawn in my office.
When they'd walked in, his hand was on the small of her back. He waited for her to sit down. When Krista offered them something to drink, he asked Dawn what she wanted and then requested two of the same.
Dawn didn't look like what I'd expect A. J. to go for—a man who literally had his hand on the remote control to the world. She looked a little homely. Had on a respectable Target dress with actual flesh-toned stockings and blush on her cheeks. But still, just by looking at her, it was easy to know what he loved about her. “Going for” someone and “loving someone” were two different things. Being in this business for so many years, I'd learned fast that there was no formula to explain how and why people made their choices in love. Sure, the rappers and newly famed actors and ballplayers typically went for the Barbie types, but the ones I found who were truly in love at the altar picked what you must have thought they'd want their mother or some version of her to have looked like when she was their age and getting married. Soft eyes. A humble smile. Shoulders not low or high but right in line with his.
“I was married before,” Dawn said, pursing her lips like she was in confession. “And right in the middle of my divorce, this man came in and threw me a life vest. He saved me.” Dawn put her hand on A. J.'s knee.
“Well, that was after she beat up one of my coworkers,” A. J. said and they laughed like she'd just said something I wasn't supposed to hear.
“I did not beat her up!” Dawn's eyes and smile were on A. J. and then she turned to me. “His coworker, my college roommate, who shall remain nameless, was having an affair with my husband. . . and I came to the job to gently ask her to back off.”
“Wow!” I said. “Sounds like some drama there!”
“Yeah, it sure was, but even through that, I saw my baby and was like, yeah, she's what I've been looking for. What I've been missing.” A. J. lifted Dawn's hand from his knee and kissed it. “See, I was dating at the time, but none of those relationships seemed to be going where I wanted them to go. A few dinners here. A movie. A play. Whatever. A broken promise. It just didn't feel right. But as soon as I saw Dawn I just knew. She was everything I was looking for. She loves her children and she loved her marriage enough to put everything on the line to fight for it. You don't find that nowadays. And she was just like me. Real. No pretense. I know everything I need to know about her by looking into her eyes.”
There was quiet while I was trying to catch my breath as I thought, “Is he for real?”
“Wow,” I said again. “I guess you just answered my second question, A. J.” I grinned and turned to Dawn. “What do you love about A. J.?”
Dawn's eyes pooled with tears, as though she and A. J. were at the altar and I was officiating. A. J. rubbed her back as she wiped a few tears sneaking from the corners of her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was fractured and honest.
“I didn't think this was love. I can't explain it. I just didn't even think this was what love was,” she said. “Like everyday. Someone who cares and listens to my needs and, my God, takes me seriously. Holds me. And doesn't stop. It's every day. I don't have to ask. He showed me that love isn't connected to power. That it should be free, and accessible, and honorable. And that gave me the permission to give him all of that back and not even think about the result. He's given me a real love that I can give back. And being through what I've been through, that's more than a reason to say I love this man.”
My eyes were as glassy as Dawn's. I was without words again for the second time after sitting with this pair for less than ten minutes. Was she serious? This was it. This was why I was doing what I was doing. People always ask me what the difference is between couples who make it five months and those who make it a lifetime—well, here it is. Honesty. Surrendering your heart.
A. J. and Dawn explained that they wanted a small wedding. One that Dawn's twins could enjoy and remember. Nothing too fancy or exotic. But they wanted the best. And they heard I could give that to them.
“So when are you thinking about doing this?” I asked, already envisioning these two jumping the broom at an old plantation house in the North Georgia Mountains where their entire family could stay over the night before. I looked up from the pad I'd been writing on. “I only do one wedding a season—it allows me to focus. Your trade slot is in the winter. Any dates you've been considering?” I looked directly at Dawn. Usually the brides had such details.

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