Fire & Flesh

by Kerri Carr

  Once they had everything in the house, Patrick and Kevin took showers, got dressed, and headed out to the neighborhood bar where nearly all of the adults in town gathered on weekends. When they were just out of high school, the pair had spent evenings in the bar playing pool and eating the overly greasy food that filled the menu as they tried to stay beyond the 9 PM cut-off for anyone under the age of 21. Eventually they became such fixtures that in the last weeks before they deployed, they spent nearly all of their time at the bar collecting the good will and advice from the friends, family, and neighbors who gathered there to support them.

  Walking back into the bar after more than a year since they had been able to visit on leave before their deployment was just as much coming home again as it had been to step in the house, and immediately Patrick felt the last of the tension and stress ease out of his muscles. They walked up to the bar and slipped onto two of the worn leather stools, but before they could even order their beers, Patrick heard a shout from across the room.

  He turned toward the sound of their names being yelled in their direction and saw Evan pushing toward them through the crowd. One of their close friends from school, Evan was supposed to be there that night for their homecoming celebration, but the gleam in his eyes and the slight wobble in his step said that he had been there for much longer and might be celebrating something beyond just his friends coming back.

  "Hey, Evan," Patrick said as his friend clasped his hand and pulled him in for a hug.

  Evan stepped back and hugged Kevin, pounding him on the back a few jovial times.

  "I'm going to do it," Evan announced, opening up his arms and sloshing a bit of beer over the edge of his glass.

  "You're going to do what?" Patrick asked.

  He looked over at the bartender and gestured at the glass in Evan's hand with his eyes and then between Kevin and him with one finger. The bartender nodded and reached for two glasses, filling them with a frothy ale from the tap and sliding them toward the two men.

  "I'm getting deployed."

  "What?" Kevin asked, setting the beer his had picked up to sip down and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  "I'm getting deployed."

  "I thought you were in the reserves."

  "I am, but my unit got called up. I'm leaving in six weeks."

  "Wow," Patrick said, unsure of what else to say. Evan seemed unusually excited at the prospect and he wasn't sure what the appropriate response at that moment would be. "That's…"

  Before he could finish, Evan whirled around and reached his arm out toward a blond woman standing a few feet away. She took his hand and let him pull her toward them.

  "That's not the good part," he said. "This is."

  "Hi," the woman said, extending her hand to them. "I'm Brandy."

  "Brandy and I are getting married."

  "Married?" Patrick asked.

  He had never met this woman and the announcement was truly surprising to him.

  "Yep. She just agreed to it a few minutes ago."

  "That's great, Evan," Kevin said, sounding more convinced than Patrick was feeling, but still hesitant. "When's the big day?"

  "As soon as possible," Evan said. "We want to do it before I leave. I wanted to ask the two of you if you'll be my groomsmen."

  Patrick looked at Kevin and then back at Evan. They both nodded. Regardless of the circumstances, their friend was getting married and they knew that it was their responsibility to be there for him.

  "Of course," Patrick said, lifting his glass as if in toast of Evan.

  "Awesome," Evan said. He looked back over his shoulder and another blond woman, this one smaller and slightly younger-looking than the first, walked up. "This is Brandy's sister, Eileen."

  "You'll be helping me plan the wedding."

  Patrick was so lost in Eileen's big green eyes and the swell of her hips beneath her tight jeans that he almost missed that sentence. When it sank in he snapped his eyes to Evan and then back to Eileen.

  "What?"

  *****

  "What do you mean we're going to be helping you plan the wedding?" Patrick asked.

  Eileen looked up at her sister, who glanced over at Evan, who looked at Patrick and Kevin sheepishly. He shifted around for a few seconds as if he were trying to come up with the right thing to say at that moment.

  "I should probably have mentioned that, huh?"

  "Mentioned what?" Kevin asked, his voice leading like he wanted to force Evan to say exactly what he was thinking.

  "Well…" Evan hesitated for a few more moments before going into his explanation. "I probably should have mentioned that the position of groomsmen comes with the fun and responsibility of helping Eileen plan Brandy and my wedding."

  "Fun?" Kevin said unsurely.

  Evan nodded, seeming to smile as wide as he could so that he could demonstrate just how much fun it would be for the two confirmed bachelors to team up with a woman they didn't even know to plan a last-minute wedding.

  "It'll be a blast," Eileen said. She looked at the bartender and gestured for another drink, accepting it when he held it out to her. "Want to go sit down and talk about it a bit?"

  The last thing that Patrick wanted to do at that moment was go sit and talk about a wedding, but he did want to continue looking at Eileen, so he was willing to go along with it. He nodded and followed Eileen as she led him toward a booth in a shadowy corner of the bar. He could feel Kevin following behind him and heard Brandy whispering to Evan as they walked away. He felt somewhat ambushed by the sudden proposal that he and Kevin be the ones that were going to put together Evan's wedding. But the sway of Eileen's hips and the soft glisten of her hair in the lights of the bar helped to lessen the negative feelings.

  When they reached the booth, Eileen slid into the seat on one side of the table and positioned herself directly in the middle of the cushion, indicating that she expected the two men to sit on the other side facing her. They complied, sliding into place and setting their beers in front of them and staring at her expectantly.

  "I know that you probably aren't thrilled to be roped into doing this, especially when you just got home and you were expecting a celebration for the two of you," she said, taking a sip of her own drink.

  "It's an interesting change of events," Patrick said, wanting to agree with her but also not wanting to sound like he didn't care about how Evan felt.

  "Evan has been really excited about the two of you coming home and being in the wedding," she said seriously. "He says that you two are the closest friends that he still has."

  That statement sent a slight wave of guilt through Patrick and he looked at Kevin, giving him an expression that he knew would speak to his best friend without him having to use words. They had been able to communicate that way since they were very young and were still able to tell what the other one was thinking just by looking at each other.

  "What can we do?" Patrick asked.

  Eileen shifted, straightening her back in a way that made her breasts push out toward him. She didn't look pleased about the situation, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of the lovely cleavage now appearing over the neckline of her shirt.

  "You don't have to do much," she said. "I've already picked a place for the ceremony and found an officiant. I can handle most of the details myself."

  "Then why did he want us to do anything?" Kevin asked.

  "He thinks that you will make sure that the wedding is something that he will enjoy and that you'll take some of the burden off of me. I told him that I can take care of it and that you wouldn't want anything to do with it, but for some reason he insisted that you would be happy to be a part of it. I say that we just chat here for a few more minutes and then I'll put the wedding together and we can pretend that you helped if they ask."

  Patrick felt a surge of defensiveness and stared at her, trying to see past the slightly unpleasant look on her face so that he could talk to her without getting even more defensive than he already felt.


  "You don't even know us. How could you possibly know that we wouldn't want to have anything to do with planning the wedding?"

  "Guys don't ever want anything to do with weddings."

  "How many times have you been married?"

  "Never," she admitted somewhat reluctantly.

  "And how many weddings have you planned with guys helping you?"

  "None."

  "But you automatically know exactly what all men are thinking and how we are going to react?"

  Eileen looked somewhat stunned. She blinked a few times and made small sounds like she couldn't quite bring the right words forward.

  "I guess I don't."

  "No, you don't. Evan is a really great guy and he was one of our best friends in high school. If he wants us to help plan this wedding for him, then it's not really your place to decide if we are going to do it or what we are going to do."

  "Alright," Eileen said, some of the terseness coming back to her voice. "Here's my phone number." She pulled a pen from the small purse she had been carrying and scribbled numbers on her napkin. "Call me tomorrow and we'll figure out a time for you to come to my house to see everything that I've done so far and we can figure out where to go from there."

  Patrick took the napkin and tucked it into his pocket.

  "Fine," he said. "We'll do that."

  Eileen grabbed her drink and slid out of the booth, stomping back across the bar toward her sister.

  "What the hell did you just do?" Kevin asked when she was out of earshot.

  Patrick looked at him and shook his head.

  "I have no idea," he said. "She was just pissing me off and I reacted."

  "So you don't actually want to be a part of this whole wedding planning thing?"

  Before Patrick could tell Kevin that he didn't know the first thing about planning a wedding and that they would have to try to figure out a way to get out of it, Evan showed up at the edge of the table. He was beaming, much of it undoubtedly coming from the beer he had already consumed throughout the evening, and he gazed back and forth between Patrick and Kevin.

  "You guys are the best," he said, slurring slightly, but sounding genuinely delighted. "I'm so happy you're going to be a part of this with me."

  Patrick looked at Kevin again, who looked at Evan with a forced look of excitement.

  "Of course, buddy. We're happy to do it for you."

  Obviously not recognizing the tension behind the expression or the words, Evan smiled even bigger and raised his glass as if to toast his own upcoming nuptials. Patrick picked up his own glass and took a swig.

  "It's going to be great."

  *****

  "What is it that we are supposed to be doing here, again?" Kevin asked.

  Patrick turned off the engine of his car and leaned so he could look over Kevin through the passenger window at Eileen's house. He was now looking at the way she had approached them about getting their help with the wedding planning as a competition and didn't want to give her any more leverage by showing up to their first planning meeting late so now they were sitting in front of her house ten minutes before they were supposed to arrive.

  "I don't know," Patrick said, sitting back. "I've never even been to a wedding much less helped plan one."

  "You've really never been to a wedding?" Kevin asked, sounding surprised.

  Patrick thought back for a few minutes and then shrugged.

  "Actually, yeah, I have. I was six and it was for a distant cousin who I had never met and who I haven't seen since. It was also in her backyard followed by cake and punch in her living room, and I'm fairly certain her new husband then left with all of the guys to go to a bar. So I'm not sure that that would exactly be considered a prime example of a wedding."

  "Sounds about like my family's weddings except you didn't mention any gunfire or the fact that the lighting effects for the reception were provided by the police cars that showed up to break up all of the fights that inevitably broke out by the time the buffet closed down."

  "So do we bail? She probably doesn't even know that we got here yet. We could make a clean getaway."

  Patrick laughed and shook his head.

  "No. I think we have to do this. We owe it to Evan. Besides, as sexy as she is, this Eileen girl can certainly be annoying, and the last thing I want to do is give her any more fuel for acting like that. She seems like she could use somebody putting her in her place a little bit."

  "There are several places that I would like to put her," Kevin muttered.

  Patrick gave a slight grunt of agreement and nodded.

  "You and me both."

  It was getting close to when they were supposed to be at Eileen's house. So they climbed out of the car and started up the long sidewalk to the front door of the house. The house itself was much larger than Patrick anticipated and something about its pristine appearance surprised him. It sounded like a horrible cliché in his mind and he would never have voiced it to anyone else, but he didn't expect Evan to marry into a family that could afford this type of home.

  Patrick rang the doorbell and after a few seconds, Eileen opened the door. She was wearing a long blue dress that swept across bare feet and had her thick blond hair pulled into a messy bun. Even though the look was casual, she was even sexier than when he had met her in the bar. Eileen gestured for them to come inside and both men complied, trying to get through at the same time and then battling briefly to enter first when they realized that they wouldn’t be able to get through the door at the same time.

  "Is this your house?" Patrick asked, immediately regretting the words as they came out of his mouth.

  Eileen glanced over her shoulder at him and gave him a strange look.

  "Yes."

  "You live here alone?" Kevin asked.

  Patrick slid his eyes toward his best friend, silently willing him not to continue the embarrassing course of questioning that he had begun.

  "Yes," Eileen repeated. "It is my house, I own it, and I live here alone. Come on. Everything's in here."

  She crossed the foyer toward an open arched doorway that led into what looked like a pastel-decorated living room. Patrick and Kevin exchanged glances and then followed her. By the time they made it to the living room, Eileen was sitting on a large white leather sofa, her legs tucked under her as she sifted through papers that were spread across a glass coffee table in front of her.

  "This is what I've gotten planned out so far," she said as they walked into the room.

  She hadn't invited them to sit, but Patrick took an overstuffed chair that sat diagonal to the sofa while Kevin perched on the edge of a loveseat opposite across from Eileen. Patrick reached forward and picked up one of the pieces of paper on the table and read it.

  "The ceremony and reception are going to be at a hotel?" he asked.

  Eileen looked up at him.

  "Do you have any other suggestions?"

  "Not really, I just have never been to a wedding at a hotel before."

  Kevin looked at him but Patrick avoided making eye contact with him, knowing that his friend would be covering a laugh at the sincerity in Patrick's voice after learning of the one and only wedding Patrick had ever attended.

  "It doesn’t matter anyway, because with this thing only three weeks away we don't have time to book another venue. I've ordered flowers and am meeting with a caterer tomorrow about dinner."

  "What haven't you done?" Patrick asked.

  "Not much, to be honest. I still need to choose a cake."

  "I can do that," Patrick answered swiftly.

  "Not a lot needs to be done with it. White cake to feed around 50 people. Simple flowers."

  "Really?" Patrick asked. "You want something that boring for the wedding?"

  "It's not boring, it's classic."

  "It's boring. They aren't getting married under conventional circumstances, so why make their wedding cake boring and conventional? They should have something flavored at the very least."

  "Weddin
g cakes are white."

  "Not always, besides, is there some sort of law that says that all wedding cake have to be white in order for them to be right? I really doubt it."

  "I guess not," Eileen said, not sounding like she was fully conceding, but unable to say anything else.

  "Then let me come up with the flavor."

  "I don't know."

  "I tell you what. I'll go to the bakery and try some out and I'll bring you samples of a few to try and we'll decide."

  He knew that he was putting her in a strange position, and it was exactly the way he wanted it. Eileen wanted all of the power and control of the planning, but at the same time she wanted to force the guys to prove that they were actually going to help her with the wedding. If she refused to let them do anything, she wouldn't have the chance to gloat when they didn't do what they were supposed to do or when they dropped out halfway through the planning. He was making it even worse by offering to allow her to be a part of the decision, at once showing his willingness to be part of the process and taking away any opportunity she would have to say that it was all his fault if they picked a flavor that didn't go over well at the wedding and to say that she should have just done it all on her own.

  This meant that as much as she obviously didn't want to leave a decision that was as important as the wedding cake up to Patrick, he wasn't really giving her a choice. She finally nodded reluctantly and Patrick had to withhold a laugh. Toying with her was proving to be more fun than he would have anticipated.

  "Fine," Eileen said, grabbing a business card from the table. "This is the bakery. Call them tomorrow and set up a tasting."

  "Sounds good," Patrick said, slipping the card into his pocket.

  "Where are they going on their honeymoon?" Kevin asked.

  Eileen looked up at him with a slightly startled expression on his face and Patrick felt proud of his best friend for how smoothly he was able to throw her off of her perfectly organized path with just that one question.