“Blair and I never set a wedding date.” Cruise bears into me with his powder-blue eyes. “Not real or imagined. The topic never came up. We never got that far.”
“She said it was her birthday.” I shrug. The truth is, Blair killed me a little the other day when she talked about how things cooled off between her and Cruise. And judging by the steady decline in bedroom antics, I’m a little afraid things might head in that same direction with us if I’m not careful. It’s becoming painfully clear that I’ll have to go above and beyond to keep our relationship alive.
“Her birthday is in April,” he deadpans.
“That lying bitch.” A wave of fury sears through me. “Do you know she slapped me the other day in the bridal shop? And here she lied to my face? I’m going to kill her.”
His eyes round with rage. “Let me. There’s no way in hell I’m going to let her run around assaulting you.” His gaze darts around the room like he’s trying to process exactly how the pending homicide will take place.
“Don’t bother. I’d hate to reduce our relationship to conjugal visits.”
“I’ll talk to her. I’ll see if I can’t get our wedding date back. Have you thought about other churches?”
“They all have wait lists. And Christmas Eve isn’t available anywhere on the planet. Face it, we’re doomed to the county courthouse.”
“Kenny.” He tugs at my hand, trying to get me to perk up. “I would be happy to marry you at the courthouse. I’d marry you in a jailhouse, an outhouse if that’s what it took. How about the beach? Or a park? We could do a cliffside ceremony if you want. It’ll be beautiful.”
“They all sound great.” Too bad I can’t muster an ounce of fake enthusiasm. “But with my luck it’ll rain and we’ll be swept to sea.” You read about it every now and again on the news. I can practically see the sharks circling me now, and, oddly, each one has a striking resemblance to Blair.
His lips curl on the sides because a tiny part of him knows this to be true.
“Okay, how about the reception?” Cruise dips his chin. His eyes are practically pleading for me to glom on to any ray of hope because we both know he’s having a hell of a time trying to see the silver lining himself. “Have you thought about what you might like for that?” Cruise creates tiny circles with his thumb over my palm, sending a warm tingle right up my spine.
“I was sort of hoping we could all go out to the Della Argento after.” I bite down on a naughty grin. “You and I can make a quick trip to the back for dessert and kick-start our honeymoon a few hours early.” I give a little wink. How’s that for shooting down the negativity? All I have to do is remind myself of the ray of sunshine Cruise has in his pants, and suddenly every cloud has a sexy silver lining.
His face smooths out as if he’s genuinely worried for me. “Della Argento sounds perfect.”
“It will be,” I whisper. His lack of enthusiasm for my dessert dalliance leaves me wondering if we’ll ever get back to where we were. “But it’ll also be expensive. I’d like us to pick up the tab for our family and friends.” True story. I’m sure somewhere my Visa is cringing.
“Of course we will. We’ll just cut back on the spending and we’ll be fine.”
A flood of relief washes over me. “Then we’re going to the Della Argento?”
He gives a brief nod.
“Plus it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” I’m quick to add. Finally, something is going my way. Cruise doesn’t mind one bit. “Besides, I don’t overspend,” I gently correct. “I’m totally frugal. Really it borders on scary. I’m practically addicted to the dollar store. It’s a wonder Lauren even speaks to me.”
Cruise glances behind the barstools, eyeing the bags piling up that I keep meaning to put away.
Crap.
“Um . . .” I clear my throat, trying to garner his attention before he decides to delve into them. “Those are just the necessities.” I take a sip of my wine, never taking my eyes off his judgmental stare. “What? They are. Plus they were on sale and double-discounted, so it would have been fiscally irresponsible for me to have passed those deals up.” God, that was brilliant. I should go into law. “You don’t want me to run around town, buying things at full price, do you?”
“Heavens no.” He’s mocking me. I can tell.
“Look.” I spot a stack of mail and head over to find my AmEx, MasterCard, and Visa bills. “There’s not one of these that I can’t handle.” The truth is I’ve dwindled my savings to nil, and the tiny detail of no actual job is about to land me in the red if I’m not careful. I rip open the AmEx and proudly display my zero balance for his fiscally judicious eyes to witness. The same with the MasterCard, which I forget on occasion that I even have—and it’s a good thing, too. Then my Visa, which I know I’ve used for oddball purchases—the all-important wedding stuff, and a few back-to-school clothes, but I tend to favor that card because of the frequent-flier miles it lets me accrue. Right now I have enough to get me to Cincinnati with about twelve layovers. “See?” I hold out the final summary of my prudent spending, and his face bleeds dry of all color. It’s obvious I’ve impressed the hell out of him.
“Kendall?”
For a second I want to ask who the hell Kendall is, because Cruise is pretty consistent in calling me Kenny, and truth be told, my formal name sounds foreign coming from his lips.
He snatches the page out of my hand and begins reading voraciously.
“What?” I yank it back with an explanation already bubbling from my throat. “You can’t really blame a girl for getting excited about a few back-to-school supplies. All those colorful notebooks and pens just scream, ‘Buy me!’” My eyes drop down to the balance and the room starts to spin and fade.
“Crap,” I whimper. Six thousand and eight hundred dollars. God almighty. I forgot all about that bitch in Patagonia. “Shit,” I seethe.
“So you did a little shopping.” Cruise forces a smile, and it’s quick to glide right back off his lips. “There’s nothing wrong with that.” He swallows hard. “Let me help you pay that bill,” he offers sweetly.
Crap. Not five seconds after I tell him how financially responsible I am, I prove myself to be a walking disaster in the shape of a dollar bill.
“No. I’ve got this handled.” I can officially add lying to my roster of deception. “Anyway, I’ll be looking into all those wedding venues you mentioned and we’ll have all the details hammered out soon. I promise.” I sniff, holding back tears while my entitled inner child happily strangles Blair Lancaster and evicts her from the Garrison chapel. This is all falling apart. It’s like Blair figured out a way to go back in time just to piss me off. And now, Cruise and I are in this awkward place. Where’s that damn silver lining when you really need it?
I give a forced grin. “Wanna have sex?”
“What kind of sex did he have with you?” Lauren leans over her steaming cup of pumpkin-spiced coffee while Ally finishes up her shift behind the counter.
“The good kind.” It speeds out of me as only the truth can.
“You mean the boring kind.”
I sink a little in my seat, guilty as charged. “What’s happened to us?” I’ve spent the better half of the last fifteen minutes relaying my night of fiscal horrors to Lauren, who looked genuinely confused. I think I’d have a better chance of making her understand by drawing it out in hieroglyphics—lots of red dollar signs might get the message across.
“And not only do you have a love life that’s not subscription-worthy, you’re short one used wedding dress—which, by the way, isn’t due until after the ceremony.” Lauren sputters it out, harsh as a reprimand. “What are you going to do now?”
“I called the credit card company this morning and told them my card was stolen.”
“You what?” Lauren’s forehead breaks out in a series of worry lines, and this alarms me because I know for a fact she Botoxed her face into oblivion a few weeks back. Disabling an entire line of credit is one fucking boundary you do not
cross in her world.
“What’d I miss?” Ally pants as she plops down between us.
Lauren strings it all out for her, swift as a hummingbird, and now I feel like a pervert for even looking at wedding dresses on eBay, not to mention she practically made me sound like a felon in the making for trying to have my credit card company eat the bill.
“Call them back.” Ally clutches at her chest with a look of sheer panic. “Tell them you found it at the bottom of your purse. You can do all kinds of time for Internet fraud and credit card theft—extortion—and who knows how many other laws you’re breaking.”
Shit! Fraud and extortion are the kinds of things Wall Street swindlers go to prison for, not coeds who are trying to marry their Gender Relations professor.
I take a deep breath and try to put it all in context, considering the source. Ally is probably just overreacting because she’s scared spitless when it comes to any kind of legal drama. Her once-upon-a-boyfriend almost dragged her into an attempted murder plot way back when, and she’s been allergic to the color orange ever since.
“She’s right.” Lauren shakes her head. “You’re going to land yourself in the big house just in time for your wedding day. Although—conjugal visits might be a little more exciting than what you’re experiencing now.”
Crap. I dial my credit card company without hesitating and report the happy news that I have been reunited with my credit card.
“They said they’re already sending out a new one. There’s that,” I say, tossing my card onto the table. Maybe I’ll conveniently leave it and lose it for real this time.
“That’s one problem down.” Lauren narrows her gaze. “Now how do we solve the problem of your terminal love life?”
“I’ve got just the thing.” Ally gets a wicked gleam in her eye that both excites and worries me. “I think we should pay a visit to the Carrington Shopping Mall.”
“Great.” Lauren is on board to save the subscription sales of The Naughty Professor in any manner possible—including retail therapy. “That’s right next to the Cake Chief’s bakeshop. My appointment’s set for later this afternoon. We can head over right after.”
I hate to break it to Ally, but the Carrington mall might as well be made up of dollar signs. I doubt anything new in my sex life will come by way of some simple lingerie.
Nope, I’ll just have to think outside the box. And the chapel. And the wedding dress.
Cruise
I lure Cal into coming over—told him I want to turn the entire damn living room into a weight room and to bring all his expensive catalogs. I watch as he navigates his truck through the bevy of pickups and expensive SUVs, most of which belong to students at Garrison.
“Holy smokes.” He waves the other vehicles off as he gets out of his car. “You’ve got one hell of a parking problem, buddy.” He starts making his way to the porch, and I block him.
“Correction. You’ve got one hell of a problem.” I spin him around by the shoulders and lead him over to the B and B. “Prepare yourself. You’re about to have a family reunion like no other.”
We make our way up the steps, and I give a few unsettled fist pumps on the door. A short blonde with an ear-to-ear grin opens up. She’s wearing microshorts that qualify more as a belt and a crop top with Garrison written across the front in sparkly letters.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re here to see the Skin.” Words I thought would never fly from my lips.
“Skinny girl!” She whoops it out before sauntering off, leaving the door wide open.
Inside, much as I suspected, there are wall-to-wall bodies. It’s turning into a genuine frat house in here. I let a few expletives fly as we walk over the threshold.
Cal’s cousin Lisa comes barreling down with her hair dyed black-and-blue, like a bruise. Her face contorts in twelve different stages of agony once she sees me, but the second she lays eyes on Cal her features smooth out, and she looks innocent as a schoolgirl.
“Cally?” She jumps on top of him and they engage in a rather long, quasi-incestuous hugging session. “Look at you.” She slaps him over the arm. “You’re a freak of nature!”
They both are, but I keep the commentary to myself.
“Yeah, well, you know what they say. It takes one to know one.” He playfully socks her in the stomach. “What’s cooking, good lookin’?”
“Just stuck in stupid Carrington. I tried to liven things up.” She motions at the newly upholstered walls, and my gut drops to my knees. My mother’s Victorian flocked wallpaper has been replaced with cheap plastic stickers of seagulls flying across the expanse of the living room.
Cal looks around, bobbing his head approvingly. “Like what you’ve done with the place.”
He can’t be serious.
“I didn’t have much to work with.” She frowns while digging her fingers through her hair.
“You’ll have less to work with in a few hours.” It belts out of me. I had planned on keeping my trap shut, but I can’t stand what they’ve turned my family’s pride and joy into—especially now that seagulls are flocking around the living room. Things just got serious as shit. “I suggest you back those moving vans to the entrance and get the hell out. And I want all my stuff back and put exactly where it belongs without a single scratch.” Like I’ll ever see it again. Something tells me that at the end of this nightmare, the Plague will be the new owners of the B and B and I’ll be the one backing a moving van up to the cabin because I can’t seem to catch a fucking break.
“Oh.” She moans dramatically, clutching at her temples as if I just threatened to plant a hatchet in her skull. “I think I’m getting a headache. I’d better lie down.”
“Are you still getting the spells?” Cal helps her to the couch.
“Are you still buying her bullshit?” I’m beside myself. Bringing Cal here was useless.
“She’s been getting the spells since we were kids, dude. She had to spend weeks home from school.”
The Skin moans into him as a thank-you for proliferating her brain baloney.
“Sounds like she’s been a manipulation mastermind from the time she exited the womb. I’m going to take a wild guess that she didn’t want to go to school, just like she doesn’t want to leave the bed-and-breakfast.”
Lisa looks up and gasps with a look of genuine rage because, obviously, I’m the first person in her life to see right through her lackluster performance.
“You sound just like my father!” she snaps.
“Your father sounds like a wise man.”
“He never believed a thing I said.” She bares her fangs at me as if I’ve morphed into the DNA dispenser himself.
“Again, he sounds like a wise man.”
Cal holds a hand out to me, pleading for mercy. “Dude, her father ran out on her when she was thirteen.”
“That’s probably because he got sick of her damn lies.” Okay, that was probably a low blow.
The Skin starts in on a violent sob, and for the first time she looks like a vulnerable, lost, albeit pathetic, little girl.
“Look, I’m sorry.” And I usually am after I reduce a girl to tears. “My dad sort of did the same thing to me when I was a kid. We’re not that close.”
Her watery eyes look up at me. Her mascara drips into two large half-moons just above her cheeks and she looks scarier than shit.
“Look”—I say it again, as tenderly as possible—“you’ve got to get your crap together and get the hell out. I can’t have you living here another damn second because if you do, I’m going to lose the place. And I can’t lose this place. It’s all my family has. You see, I sort of have a no-squatters policy, and you happen to be breaking it.”
Her lips contort into all kinds of criminally insane shapes. She jumps to her feet and gives a few good solid barks right in my face before bolting upstairs.
“Now look what you did.” Cal smacks me on the arm. “When little Lisa barks, that means the spell is settling in for a few solid
weeks. And believe you me, no one gets a good night’s rest when she’s pissed.”
“Little Lisa?” I say through gritted teeth. “Spells?” I shake my head at him. “I’m going to have a fucking spell when I have to pay an attorney to file an eviction.”
Cal glances up the steps momentarily. “I’ve got something that might take your mind off the situation. Are you free for the next hour or so?”
Cal drives us to a bakery in the next town over. It’s teeming with people, and a long line snakes out of the facility and straight up the street.
“What’s going on? They giving away beer-battered donuts? Let me guess, it’s frosting wrestling night?” Something tells me this is a little more than your average doughnut run, considering we bypassed a dozen other shops to get here.
“Nope.” Cal parks and leans over the wheel to get a better look at the chaos. “No discounts here. Trust me, there’s not a thing under ten bucks in that place. Every one of those poor bastards is paying top dollar for anything those people are willing to sell them.”
“Looks like I’m in the wrong business.”
He slaps me on the back. “We both are.” We get out and Cal walks us straight to the front, bypassing the line and generating jeers from the crowd.
It’s clean inside, warmly scented with fresh baked brownies and coffee. It makes me want to stay a while and dive into the rows of confections they’ve got lining the refrigerated display cases.
“I’m here to see Vito,” Cal barks at a lady behind the counter, and she motions us to the back.
Vito? Maybe Cal’s solution to all my troubles is a loan shark, and right about now, I’m not too sure I’d protest the idea.
“What, are you like a celebrity here?” I ask as we make our way down a long hall that opens into an enormous kitchen, and much to my delight, I spot the sweetest treat of all—Kenny.
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