by Ali Parker
Before she could finish what she was saying, she slapped a hand over her mouth and sprinted to the bathroom. The sudden change would have been comical if I didn’t hate seeing her like this. I wanted to gather her up in my arms, to make it all better, to take some of the pain of this pregnancy away from her for a while, but I just had to sit tight and suck it up, no matter how much it sucked.
I hovered by the bathroom door and hoped she wasn’t having second thoughts about the pregnancy. I wanted the baby, but I hated how much pain it was already putting her through. I decided to give her some privacy, and I headed back through to the kitchen to make up a tea Nonna had sworn to me helped with morning sickness. Amaya had screwed her nose up at it when she had caught a whiff before, but I had a feeling there wasn’t much she would turn down if it meant it would take the edge off her illness for the time being.
She emerged though at last, and Jolene let out a cheer. She smiled at her sister and slumped into a seat at the dining table.
“That bad, huh?” Cleo asked, furrowing her brow, and Amaya nodded, massaging her temples.
“Yeah, that bad,” she replied ruefully. “But I feel better now, and it’s supposed to get better as the pregnancy goes on.”
“Here, I made you that tea.” I put the mug down in front of her. She picked it up, smelled it, and then shrugged and took a sip.
“Actually, that’s pretty good,” she admitted, and the four of us crowded around the table to talk about what we were going to do that day. And as I sat there with my sister and my fiancée and my sister-in-law-to-be, I knew that this was the family I had always been waiting for. Yes, we had taken a few wrong turns in getting to this moment, but it was here now, and that was all that mattered. This little family of mine was perfect, as perfect as it could be until our newest arrival joined us, of course. I let my hand rest on the back of Amaya’s neck, and she smiled at me, as though the exact same thoughts were running through her head as well.
64
I could have just crawled back into bed for a nap when the knock on the door came. I glanced over at Kristo, who had been reading a book quietly on the couch, and he shrugged.
“Who’s calling on us now?” I asked, sighing deeply. I was so exhausted from the last couple of days, all I wanted was to relax and catch up on some sleep and hopefully not throw up anything I put in my stomach. The nausea had just begun to recede, but I was still taking it slow. Kristo and Cleo had taken Jolene for a walk around the neighborhood while I had tried to make myself useful at home and succeeded only in lying very still on the couch, hoping nobody would appear to disturb me.
Kristo stood up, holding his hand out to me to keep me in my seat.
“Don’t move an inch. I’ve got it,” he assured me. I lay there grateful my husband-to-be was so helpful. Damn, but if I hadn’t become a little pampered in this life that he built up for me.
Before he could say a word, his grandmother swept into the room, not just her but what looked like an entire department store’s worth of stuff. Fabric, papers, lists, she was carrying so much, I had no idea how she didn’t wilt under the sheer weight of it.
“What’s going on here?” Kristo asked, and he sounded a little nervous like he half-expected his nonna to turn on him for not being able to figure it out. Instead, a large smile broke over her face, and she held up the bags.
“Wedding planning stuff,” she told me. “Everything you could need to put this thing together.”
“What do you …?” I got to my feet, planting my hand on my lower back and wincing as it twinged slightly. God, if this was how I was just a few weeks into pregnancy, how bad was it going to be by the end?
“Here, let me help.” Kristo looped an arm around my waist and held me up as he guided me over to his grandmother. She was laying out bags of stuff on the table, and Jolene and Cleo had both emerged from their respective hiding places to see what the hell was going on.
“I was talking to Kristo last night,” Nonna explained. “And he told me that you still don’t have a lot planned for the wedding?”
“We have a venue and a date, but that’s pretty much it,” I admitted. “We’ve been, uh, distracted by other stuff for a while, that’s all.”
“You want to get moving on it now,” she told me firmly, and Cleo chuckled from behind us.
“I don’t know what you’re laughing about, young lady. You’re going to be helping.” She flashed around to aim the comment at Cleo. The smile dropped off Cleo’s face at once.
“Can I at least call Darla?” she asked hopefully. “Rope her into this as well?”
“The more hands we have on deck, the better.” Nonna nodded firmly. I stared at her for a long moment, trying to make sense of what she was saying.
“So you want …?”
“We’re going to get this wedding planned,” she told me, catching my face between her hands and smiling at me kindly. I grinned and shook my head at her.
“I’m not sure we can just get everything done in one day.”
“I’ve organized more in less time,” she told me, and she beamed as she saw Jolene rolling toward us. She gave her a big hug. “And we’ll get some help from your sister, right?”
“Of course.” Jolene hugged her back. “Anything I can do. Preferably to do with the food.”
“Okay, let’s get started,” Nonna began, and she pointed to the bags and then to Kristo. “Over there, to the dining table. We need space to spread out.”
Kristo did as he was told, and Cleo called up Darla, and before I knew it, I had a full crew of people right here with me helping me put together the wedding of my dreams. I hadn’t realized how much work went into putting together a wedding like this one. In my mind, it was just about hiring the place and picking a date and hoping all of your friends could make it. But as it turned out, there were so many details to everything that I would never have thought of myself. I was so grateful for Kristo’s Nonna seeing me in a state of disarray and descending on me to help because otherwise, I wouldn’t have had any clue as to what to do.
“What kind of napkins?” Darla asked, lifting her gaze from a pile of swatches and holding up three separate ones. “This one suits the food theme more, but this one goes better with the color theme, and this one—”
“Is sort of a mix of the two,” I finished up for her. “I think I’m starting to get this now. The second one, I think?”
“All right.” Darla nodded, and she grabbed one of the several phones we had strewn around and went to put in a call.
“I’ll help you.” Cleo got to her feet and followed her new crush. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw them exchange those flirtatious little glances. Who’d have thought a librarian and a socialite would make a good match?
“Okay, and this is what I was thinking for the menus.” Jolene pushed a piece of paper toward me, one covered in her chicken-scratch scrawl, and pointed at a particular sentence.
“And this one, that’s the meatless option, but I don’t know if we should make it vegan too,” she explained.
“Go for it.” I nodded. “Make it as inclusive as we can.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Jolene agreed, and she reached over to squeeze my hand. “I can’t believe you’re getting married!”
“Me neither.” I shook my head. “All of this, it’s so much.”
“Yeah, but on the day, you won’t have to worry about a thing, and it’s all going to be perfect,” she reminded me. “Better a little stress now than a lot of stress on the day, right?”
“Right.” I nodded. “You’re right. I just don’t think I’ve ever had to consider the color of napkins before in my life.”
“All right, so that’s the flowers booked in.” Nonna reappeared next to us, placing the phone she’d been using on the table. She ran her hands through her hair, and for a moment, she looked as human as the rest of us all sitting around that table, working our butts off as though our lives depended on it.
“If you want to take a break�
�” I suggested to her gently, but she shook her head at once, not buying it for a second.
“I don’t want to,” she replied firmly. “I want to make sure this thing is finished once and for all by the time I walk out of here.”
“All right.” I grinned to myself. She reminded me of myself in some ways. Even if I would never have been so blunt and straightforward about what I wanted and how I was going to get it, both of us locked onto a goal and stuck with it no matter what. Maybe that’s why we’d always gotten on so well.
Kristo drifted in and out, bringing us coffee and food where he could. I was still feeling a little under the weather, but I had been chugging a bunch of that apparently magical tea, and it was more or less keeping me on my feet. Besides, with the buzz of having everyone around, everyone focused on helping me get this damn wedding off the ground, I couldn’t let any of them down. As though realizing this, the baby seemed to decide to give me some respite, for the time being, a break from the nausea that had been plaguing me, and before I knew it, we had put together the most spectacular wedding I had ever heard of in my life.
“Okay, so let me run through it from the top.” I clapped my hands together once I had everyone in front of me. Like me, they all looked a little ragged around the edges but kind of energized, too, like they could have spent another hour on the phone talking about the color of the flowers we were going to have at the ceremony versus those we were going to have at the reception.
“The wedding takes place in Nonna’s back garden.” I pointed to Kristo’s grandmother, who smiled sweetly.
“And I’m going to get the gardeners through next week to make sure the place looks perfect,” she assured me as though it wasn’t already the most gorgeous garden I’d ever seen one person own in my life.
“Right.” I smiled. “And we perform the ceremony with a nondenominational priest—thank you, Darla—in front of a small seated crowd and under an arch surrounded by lilies.”
“White and pink,” Jolene piped in as though the difference was vital to the success of the day. I winked at her in acknowledgment.
“Of course,” I agreed. “And then, when the ceremony’s done, we’ll cater the reception in the pavilion area.”
“I still think you should have let me cook the food,” Nonna muttered, and I shot her a look. We had been having this conversation on and off all day, and there was no way in hell I was lumping a woman of her age with the catering for an entire wedding, no matter how much I enjoyed what she had to make.
“Maybe another time, huh?” I soothed her. “And from there, the classic swing band plays for the first hour, and then we just go to regular music for the rest of the night?”
“That sounds right to me.” Cleo nodded, and I noticed that she and Darla were holding hands beneath the table. It was so cute, it made my heart ache a little. They had spent the whole day running off together, just the two of them, like they couldn’t wait to be all by themselves. But they had been the ones who had pulled enough strings to get me this amazing swing band to play the reception, Cleo’s socialite connections coming in handy, and I was so grateful to them for all their hard work.
“And the napkins will be eggshell-colored,” Darla finished up for me. “Which I feel is the most important thing.”
“And what about the dress fittings?” Jolene asked excitedly. She had pulled out a selection of a dozen dresses from various magazines, and I had made phone calls to salons across the city to see which ones they all had in. I had narrowed it down to three favorites, and I was going to try them on at some point in the next week.
“You’ll be right there with me,” I promised her. “And I’m going to need your brutally honest opinion so I don’t look like a meringue on the wedding day, all right?”
“Anything you need.” She flashed me a grin, and I knew she was looking forward to playing arbiter of my fashion sense.
“I think that’s it. We’re done,” I sighed deeply, and I felt this swell of relief rush over me. And gratitude too. I couldn’t have gotten a job of this magnitude finished without all of them surrounding me, and I was more grateful to them than I could possibly express.
“Thank you so much for all your help,” I told everyone, covering my mouth as I yawned. “And I’ll be sure to thank you properly once I’ve actually had some sleep.”
We bid goodbye to everyone, and Kristo emerged from the kitchen with some light nibbles and some water. I ate happily, and Jolene made her way off to bed.
“So, our wedding is actually happening, then?” Kristo remarked, sitting opposite me at the dining table and glancing around the near-bombsite of fabric swatches and dress pictures. I nodded.
“Too late to back out now,” I teased him. “No time for cold feet, all right?”
“As if.” He shook his head, and he planted a kiss on my temple. “Come on, let’s get you to bed. You’ve had a hell of a day, and you could probably use some sleep.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” I yawned, and he guided me to my feet and then through to bed. And as I lay there, eyes already drifting shut, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I realized that my wedding was really, truly happening. Soon enough, I would be bonded to this man, to this family, for life.
65
“Malaka,” I muttered to myself, forgetting for a moment that my dad was the one on the other end of the line, and he could well understand I had just called him an—
“Did you just call me an asshole?” he snapped at me. I rolled my eyes, tempted to point out that the word didn’t have a specific English translation, but playing the smart-ass was only going to land me in a heap more trouble. As if it wasn’t bad enough as it was.
“No,” I lied swiftly. “Look, are you sure you can’t get back sooner than that? You need to be here, Dad. It’s my wedding.”
“I know,” he replied tersely. “You think I don’t know that? I’m as annoyed about it as you are.”
“Then why won’t you just make the effort and actually come back home?” I pointed out. “This is ridiculous, Dad. Even you must be able to see that.”
“I didn’t plan it this way,” he snapped back, but I didn’t believe him. I knew my dad well enough to know he had everything in his life carefully planned out. If he was stuck in Greece right now, it was because that was exactly how he’d wanted it.
“You knew we were going to move the wedding up a little,” I reminded him. I didn’t tell him, of course, that it was because Amaya was pregnant and she wanted to look as unpregnant as possible in her dress, but he didn’t need to know any of that. All he needed to know was that I, his son, wanted him at my fucking wedding, and he was going to be halfway across the world, not giving a damn. I was tempted to make a snide comment that I only intended to have one wedding in my life so he might not want to miss mine while he was probably already planning his next divorce and remarriage.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it would be a couple of weeks away,” he protested weakly. “You can’t just expect me to drop everything for you, Kristo. We’re both adults. You know how life goes.”
“I know that I’ve been to every single one of your weddings,” I reminded him sharply. “Including the one you threw in Greece a month after you met her. Remember? We were all there for that. We all made it out.”
“I remember,” he shot back, and I could hear the irritation in his voice. Well, it was nothing on how pissed I was feeling. I was supposed to be focusing on work while Jolene got settled in with her nurse next door, but here I was on the phone fielding phone calls from family members who couldn’t even be bothered to make the trip out here to see me marry the love of my life.
“It’s one night,” I reminded him. “That’s it. And everyone’s going to be there. If you don’t come, everybody’s going to think you don’t approve of the marriage and you don’t like Amaya. You really want that kind of gossip running around the family?”
He fell silent for a long moment. He knew as well as I did how gossip made its way t
hrough the Balaban clan, and if he didn’t turn up, there would be questions about his absence. I would be all too happy to stoke some fires of disapproval around him if I needed to, if that’s what it took to get him there.
“Look, I’ll see what I can do, but I have business out here,” he fired back, voice taut with tension. “I’ll let you know.”
“Fine.” I hung up the phone, and I ran my hands through my hair and tried to steady myself. I felt like I was going to flip the fucking table over right there and then. I couldn’t believe he was doing this to me. I couldn’t believe he was pulling this shit right before my wedding, of all places. Maybe I should have expected it. He had always been this way, irritated at being anything other than the center of attention, but I thought he might put that aside so he could come to see me marry the woman I loved.
Business? He had business in Greece? I knew exactly what was going on with the company, and I could say for damn sure there was nothing in the way of business in Greece that needed to be taken care of. He had forgotten that I worked for the company, and I could pick apart his lies with more certainty than before. He was probably on the prowl for his next wife, knowing him. I still couldn’t believe he and Karen were together, no matter how happy they had seemed when I’d last run into them.
I took a deep breath, planted my hands on the desk, and tried to center myself. There was no point getting upset about this. At the end of the day, either he was going to make the effort and come to my wedding or he wasn’t, and there was very little I could do to change his mind if he didn’t want to. Short of flying out to Greece and dragging him by his collar back to Nonna’s house to be there for the ceremony, if he wanted to skip it, he would. And I had a feeling he was going to. Amaya wouldn’t want this to be a stressful time for me. She wanted our wedding to be full of joy, peace, happiness, not me yelling into a phone to my father from half a globe away.