by Meg Cabot
“No way, José,” Tiffany says. “I think he’s warm for our Miss Lizzie’s form.”
“Told you,” Gran sings.
“Oh my God, you guys.” I shake my head. “He is so not. And even if he is… it’s not going to go anywhere. He’s completely damaged from what happened with Shari. He says he—”
It’s at this moment—fortunately—that the door to the shop bursts open, and Ava Geck comes tumbling through it, her bodyguard and Chihuahua in tow. Ava has a wild look on her face, as if she’s being hunted. She’s wearing short-shorts over fishnet stockings, even though it’s approximately twelve degrees outside, and her lower jaw is moving rapidly… except that she’s not speaking.
Tiffany scowls down at the book in front of her. “What are you doing here, Ava?” she demands. “Your next appointment’s not for four weeks.”
“Sorry,” Ava says, still chewing. She collapses onto the chaise longue I insisted Madame Henri place in the far corner for nervous, waiting mothers, and peers out the plate-glass window in the front of the store, her body hidden from view by a display dummy dressed in a princess gown from the 1950s, complete with a voluminous, diamanté-dotted tulle skirt that takes up almost the entire display window. “We were in the neighborhood looking at condos and suddenly… paparazzi! Can we hide for a few minutes until they go away? I don’t have any eyeliner on.”
“Hold on, Gran,” I say into my cell. I walk over to Ava and hold out my hand expectantly. “You may,” I say.
Still crouching behind the tulle skirt, she looks down at my hand with a blank expression on her face. Then comprehension dawns. She spits her gum out into my hand. I walk over to the trash can beneath the desk at which Tiffany is sitting and dump it, then reach for a tissue.
“Little Joey,” I say to the bodyguard, to whom we’d been formally introduced during Ava’s last visit. “There are blinds if you want to pull them down.”
Little Joey—whose hulking three-hundred-pound, nearly seven-foot frame makes it clear that his name is ironic—begins pulling down the black metal blinds I’d bought at the Manhattan Target when I’d been rehabbing Jill Higgins’s gown, and she, too, had had problems with stalkerazzi.
“Why are you looking for a condo in Manhattan, Ava?” I ask her.
“It’s, like, so much better here than in Los Angeles,” Ava says, pulling her shivering Chihuahua onto her lap. “Except for the weather. For one thing, you don’t have to drive as far to get to cool places. Which is great if you’re wasted. And for another, no one asks you for autographs, or crap like that—usually. I mean, people stare. But they don’t bug you. Except, like, teenagers at H&M.”
It takes us a moment to digest this. Tiffany is the first to recover.
“So are you looking for a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom, or what?” Tiffany asks conversationally.
“She’s looking for four bedrooms, three baths, and an eat-in kitchen with at least two thousand square feet of outdoor terrace, and full southern exposure,” Little Joey says when Ava just blinks bewilderedly at the question.
When we all turn our heads to stare at Ava, dumbfounded by this information—since to my knowledge, no such piece of real estate exists on the island of Manhattan (for less than five million dollars, anyway)—she just shrugs and says, in her little girl voice, “I’ve got seasonal affective disorder. Hey, do you have anything else to eat? All I’ve had today is a PowerBar, and I’m, like, starving.”
I hand her the other half of my tandoori chicken sandwich, but she makes a face.
“What’s that white slimy stuff?” she asks suspiciously.
This causes Tiffany and Monique to dissolve into a fit of hysterical laughter from which it’s clear they won’t soon recover.
“Tzatziki sauce,” I say. “Ava, how can you be marrying a Greek prince and not know what tzatziki sauce is?”
“I like him,” Ava says, snatching the sandwich out of reach of her dog—whose name, she’d informed us the day before, is Snow White (“After the Disney princess”)—“not his country’s food.”
“Well,” I say. “You should try it, at least, before you decide you don’t like it.”
Ava shrugs and takes a bite. Her mouth occupied, I turn back to Tiffany and Monique, who are wiping their eyes from their shared—if disgustingly raunchy—joke.
“Seriously, you guys,” I say to them, addressing my remark into the phone. “Do you think I should try talking to him? Luke thinks he’s depressed. What if he’s right? Maybe if I talked to him about it, it would help. To bring about closure, you know? Sometimes when things are out in the open, they don’t bother people as much.”
“Says the girl who can’t keep a secret to save her life,” says Tiffany with a laugh. Although frankly I don’t see what’s so funny about that remark. Also, it’s not true. I’ve kept lots of secrets.
I can’t happen to think of any right now. But I’m sure there are some.
“What are we talking about?” Ava wants to know. She’s already gnawed off a quarter of an inch of the sandwich half I’ve given her. Snow White is busy with another quarter of an inch. It’s not hard to see how the two of them stay so trim.
“Lizzie’s fiancé’s best friend is in love with her,” Monique says lightly. She’s split her vegi muffuletta with Little Joey. “And she doesn’t know what to do about it.”
I roll my eyes. “He’s not in love with me,” I say. “He—”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Ava interrupts, licking the fingertips Snow White’s just licked. “Why don’t you just fuck him?”
“Who’s that?” Gran asks over the phone. “I like her.”
I have no choice but to set down my Diet Coke and say, “Ava, first of all: Monique is wrong. Chaz isn’t in love with me. We’re just friends. Second of all, you shouldn’t be driving anywhere, short or long distance, if you’re wasted. I want you to know that I Googled you after I got home last night, and I know all about your DUI. You need to be more careful. With all your money, why don’t you just hire a driver? And last, while I appreciate that, as feminists, we have every right to embrace whatever kind of language we choose, even words considered by previous generations to be ‘unladylike’ or ‘coarse,’ it really isn’t tasteful or imaginative to use vulgarities in everyday conversation. Sure, if you’re really upset about something. But the f-word, Ava, when you’re speaking about making love? I think you’re better than that. In fact, I know you are. Besides, what would Prince Aleksandros say?”
Ava looks at me with the same blank expression she’d worn when I’d held out my hand for her gum. “He says ‘fuck’ even more than I do,” she says.
I sigh. “Let’s just drop it,” I say to the room—and into the phone—in general. “Pretend I didn’t say anything. Especially to Mom. Okay, Gran?”
“Tell you what you should do,” Little Joey remarks, after taking a delicate sip of the Diet Peach Snapple he’s produced from one of his enormous pockets. “Get this guy alone, in a darkened room. Open up a bottle of Hennessey. Play a little Vandross. That’s how you have yourselves some closure.”
“Now,” Gran says approvingly, “someone is finally talking sense.”
I gape at my cell. “That’s… that’s preposterous,” I stammer. “I happen to be deeply—deeply—in love with my fiancé. I mean… come on, Tiffany.” I turn to her for help. “You’ve seen Luke and me together. You had Thanksgiving with us, remember?”
“Right,” Tiffany says, thoughtfully tapping on her perfectly aligned—also capped—front teeth. “But I think Little Joey might be onto something, Lizzie. I think you want us to say you should go talk to Chaz. I mean, why else would you have mentioned it?”
Monique nods too. “Right. You do seem to want us to tell you that you should go talk to Chaz about it.”
“I think you liked having his hand down your bra and are hoping he’ll do it again,” Tiffany adds.
I widen my eyes at her. “Boundaries,” I say, jerking my head urgently at Little Joey, who is n
ow smirking into his Snapple bottle. “Ladies! Boundaries!”
“That’s what I said.” Ava, ignoring me, has turned her huge baby blues onto Tiffany. “She should just fuck him and get him out of her system. That’s what I did when I found myself with feelings for DJ Tippycat on Celebrity Pit Fight.”
I blink. Then I say firmly, “I am not going to make love to my fiancé’s best friend, Ava. That is a totally ridiculous suggestion. For one thing, I would never betray Luke’s trust like that. And I can tell you that if that’s how you deal with your fiancé’s friends—or… or DJ Tippycat—well, he isn’t going to stay your fiancé for long. And for another thing, I happen to be in love with my boyfriend. Besides which, Chaz happens to be my best friend’s ex-boyfriend—”
“Yeah, but it’s not like she wants him anymore,” Tiffany says in a bored voice. “Seeing as how she’s gay and sleeping with a woman now.”
Ava sucks in her breath. Little Joey looks as delighted as if he’s just won the lottery. Snow White yawns and curls herself into a little ball and goes to sleep. Gran says, “I think I’ll just TiVo today’s episode of Dr. Quinn… how the hell do you work this thing?”
“Chaz doesn’t even believe in marriage,” I inform them desperately. “He thinks it’s nothing but a slip of paper, and that marriage doesn’t actually mean anything—”
“Okay, now we get to the heart of the matter,” Little Joey says in a satisfied voice. “So this is why you aren’t busting a move on the guy.”
“Of course,” Monique says, wide-eyed. “It all makes sense now. What’s a woman who makes her living making women’s wedding dreams come true going to do with a man who doesn’t even believe in the institution of marriage? It’s absurd.”
“She can always make him change his mind,” Ava says, as if I’m not even in the room. “It’s hard. But it happens.”
Tiffany looks dubious. “I don’t know. This is a philosophy Ph.D. candidate we’re talking about. He studies, like, existentialism and shit. I think it’d be hard to get him to change his socks, let alone his mind.”
“Let’s just forget I brought it up, all right?” I ask in an unsteady voice. “Let’s talk about something else—”
“Nooooo!” Gran yells, so loudly that I have to hold the phone away from my ear.
“Let’s talk about your gown, Ava,” I say, ignoring Gran. “I think you’re right to go a little more conservative than usual. After all, this is your wedding, and you’re going to be marrying into a royal family. But since it’s going to be a summer ceremony, I was thinking capped sleeves—”
“This is boring me,” Gran threatens. “I’m hanging up.”
“You’re young and slender and can get away with them. And since it’s Greece, I was thinking an empire waist… going a little Grecian. Here, let me show you what I mean.”
The click echoes with startling finality in my ear. I ignore it, closing my cell phone and laying it aside. I’ll deal with Gran later. A load of coal into my steam engine?
With difficulty, I finally steer them away from the topic of my love life and onto the subject of my ideas for Ava’s gown—which she seems to like—until Tiffany bursts out, after a glance at the wall clock, “Crap! I have to go to work. I mean, my other work. Okay, you guys, don’t talk about anything good while I’m gone. And, Lizzie, don’t you dare make any decisions about Chaz without checking with me first. Obviously you can’t be trusted about any of this. Just, you know. Call me first if anything new comes up, and we’ll talk.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I say with a sniff. “As I’ve said before—repeatedly—I love my boyfriend—I mean, my fiancé—and nothing is going to happen between his best friend and myself, because there is nothing going on between us.”
“Right,” Tiffany says with a laugh, which is echoed by everyone else in the shop, with the exception of me.
After Tiffany leaves—announcing that there’re still paparazzi waiting on the corner and that Ava had better continue to lay low—I declare that I, too, have to go to work—on making some sketches for Ava’s dress; plus, there’s the Bianchi, which I’m determined to finish up; not to mention loads of other projects to get started, given the fact that my boss is going to be out for at least the next four to six weeks, according to his wife, who’d phoned to give me a progress report—and slink into the back.
But instead of sketching or tweaking the Bianchi, I find myself staring into space, wondering whether or not what the others had said—that Chaz was in love with me—could possibly be true.
“I’m manically depressed because the girl I’ve finally realized I’ve always been in love with, and who I was beginning to think just might love me back, turned around and got herself engaged to my best friend, who, frankly, doesn’t deserve her.”
Sure. He’d said that. But he’d only been teasing me. And I, like the simple Midwestern fool that I am, had fallen for it. Why did my heart go all jumpy when he said that? I am completely and one hundred percent committed to Luke.
Of course… Chaz had said he saw nothing but me in his future… and that I wasn’t even wearing Spanx.
Luke still doesn’t know that I wear Spanx, or even what they are. I’ve managed to keep them a well-guarded secret from him.
How I’ve kept the twenty or so pounds I’ve managed to gain back since moving to New York City a secret from him is much more complicated. It involves never turning my back on him while undressed, and always letting him be on top during our more, er, intimate moments, so he doesn’t notice my belly. Thank God for gravity.
How much longer I’ll be able to carry on this facade, I don’t know. It may end up to be easier to give up tandoori chicken sandwiches in exchange for salads or—God forbid—I could start working out.
But I do want to be a slender bride. Or at least less large than I am now.
But where will I find the time to work out, now that I’m running the shop single-handedly—well, not counting Tiffany and Monique—and will be doing so for at least another month and a half… maybe even longer, according to Madame Henri, who explained that bypass surgery recovery times can be hard to predict and depend on the individual? I don’t even have time to plan my own wedding, let alone get in shape for it.
Funny how just thinking the words “my wedding” makes me feel a little tight in the chest. Seriously, like I can’t breathe. And what is with that itchy red splotch on the inside of my elbow all of a sudden? What is that? Why does it keep appearing and then disappearing, only to reappear in a new spot, sometimes more than one?
Is that… oh my God, is that a hive? No. It can’t be. I haven’t had hives since I was in high school, when I was put in charge of the costumes for Jesus Christ Superstar, and the director wanted everyone in bell bottoms. This was before bell bottoms were back in style, and I realized I was going to have to slash—and insert brightly colored panels into—the pants legs of seventy-five cast members. In one weekend. I’d broken out into such bad hives that Dr. Dennis, Shari’s dad, had had to give me a shot of prednisone.
Oh my God. There’s another one on the inside of my other elbow.
Oh no, please. Don’t let me turn out to be the same way over this damn wedding with Luke as I was over the bell bottoms. Why? Why is this happening? Is it Mom, and her insistence that our backyard is just as nice a place to have a wedding as Château Mirac? It can’t be… you know, that other thing. What Monique said, about Chaz’s being in love with me. It can’t possibly be that.
No. It has to be the thing with Mom, and the whole idea of my family descending on Luke’s familial estate, and how they might act when they get there. Gran, with her drinking, and Rose and Sarah, with their bickering and their picking on me, and…
Oh yeah, see? Another hive. Right there on my wrist. I knew it. It’s because I keep seeing Rose’s husband, Angelo, in my mind’s eye, wandering around the château, wanting to know where he can get a Pabst Blue Ribbon…
And Gran. Gran, going up to
Mrs. de Villiers and asking her what time Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman is going to be on…
Oh God. Two more.
Chaz stepping forward when the justice of the peace—or whoever marries people in France—asks if there is anybody who has any reason why this couple should not be wed, because he doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage, and it’s just a slip of paper…
Oh my God! Another one on my wrist!
Okay. That’s it. That is it. I am not going to think about Chaz—or my wedding—again. Whatever happened between Chaz and me, it’s done, over, finished. What would be the point, anyway? There’s no future for our relationship—even if we had one—since he doesn’t believe in marriage.
And I’m sorry, but—call me a simple-minded fool—I do! I really do!
No. This is it. I am not going to see or speak to Chaz ever again—it’s better this way, to avoid temptation—except when I have to, because he is my fiancé’s best friend and our best man, and it would look weird if I didn’t speak to the best man at my own wedding.
That’s it. I’m done with Chaz.
And done with thinking about my wedding. For now.
Okay. Exhale.
Now. Where was I? Oh, right. The Bianchi. Okay.
That’s right. I’ll just throw myself into my work. That’s all I need to do, and time will fly by so fast, I won’t even realize it. Before I know it, it will be June… time to get ready for my own wedding day.
And then nothing Chaz can say or do will be able to ruin it for me… By then everything will be perfect. Just perfect.
Exactly the way it’s supposed to be.
See? I feel better already.
And look at that. No new hives.
Phew. Great. Okay. So… work. WORK!
A HISTORY of WEDDINGS
Everyone knows a bride needs to wear something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. But hardly anyone knows why. According to ancient superstition, the “something old” ensures the bride’s friends will be faithful when she needs them after she’s embarked on her new life with her husband and his family. The “something new” is supposed to promise success in that new life. The “something borrowed” symbolizes the love of her own family—that she may take it with her as she goes to live with the family of her new husband. And the “blue” symbolizes loyalty and constancy.