Shotgun Wedding (Sidelined #4)

by Ainslie Paton

  He stood in the doorway and looked back at her. “A pleasure doing business with you, Flygirl.” He grinned and she wanted to kiss him again, start up again, but she had to put a liquor order in, and work out how to host a wedding in four days’ time.

  Fingertips to her forehead, she gave him a salute. “Anytime, Back Booth.”

  “About the antique bar . . .” He let the sentence trail off as he raked her head to foot with eyes that said everything about how he loved her.

  She pointed at the door. They were so going to test out that bar. Make sure it could stand up to some heavy duty bump and grind. “Get out.”

  He blew her a kiss and was gone and before she could retie her dress, Cara was back with that sandwich and her laptop.

  “A wedding, here, on Sunday. He uses sex to drug you, doesn’t he?” she said.

  “I’m a hapless victim of his amazing wang.”

  Cara made a gagging sound and then they got down to it and planned a wedding.

  FIVE

  Owen

  Owen looked at the agenda on his tablet. Five items: ramifications of CapEx spend on quarterly results, the board report, a discussion about staff benefits, candidate review for the new leadership role, and what the hell? Nowhere there did it say get ready for a wedding in four days’ time, but that’s what Dev had just said was happening.

  “We need suits,” Owen said, as Reid walked in to his office carrying his helmet. It was a default thought, it was the shock, following so closely to Sarina announcing she was pregnant with Dev’s kid.

  “You have more suits than you can ever wear,” Reid said. “I don’t need another suit. I need a car.” He dropped into the seat beside Owen, throwing his keys on the table and putting his helmet on the floor.

  “It’s a wedding.” He looked at Reid and gestured across the table to Dev. “You’re buying a suit.” Dev made a sound and Owen cut him off. “You both are.”

  “Listen to you.” Sarina said. “Weddings are all about the bride. I need a dress.”

  “She also needs a better car,” said Dev.

  Sarina leaned into his shoulder. “You can get me a car. Cara is going to help with the dress. If we’re going to have a leadership meeting, we need to get on with it, because I suddenly have a lot of personal stuff to do when I’m not too nauseous to stand up.”

  They all looked at her.

  “Okay, TMI,” she said with a laugh. “I’m fine, I can survive on sorbet.”

  “You cannot survive on sorbet,” he said. “Dev.”

  “I think we’ve broken Owen,” Dev said. “She’s joking. She’s totally going to eat proper food at some point.”

  Owen palmed his face. “I think you have broken me.” He was the first of them to have a serious relationship. The first to be engaged. The only one to have to attend the funeral of the person he intended to marry. He was delighted Dev and Sarina had finally gotten it together. “A wedding on Sunday. It’s Wednesday. I know you can go to the courthouse and get married in an afternoon, but that’s not what you said you’re doing.”

  “We’re having a party for our friends and family,” said Sarina.

  “At Lucky’s,” said Dev, looking at Reid who nodded. So that’s where Reid had been, to put the squeeze on Zarley.

  “Really? No? On Sunday,” he said, as it hit him that they’d be unlikely to find anywhere else, with no notice. “Didn’t know it’d opened.”

  “It hasn’t. My girl is a phenomenon,” said Reid.

  “We need to hit up the tailor now. Can Cara make a wedding dress in four days?” he said to Sarina.

  “If we can get on with this meeting, Mr. Chair, I might find out,” Sarina said.

  The meeting, right, there were things they needed to discuss, but he couldn’t think of any reason why they had to do it now. “Meeting adjourned,” he said. “Dev and Sarina are getting married.”

  “Let’s not go crazy,” Sarina said. “We need—”

  “No, no, whatever you were about to say. We’ve got time for crazy.”

  “Yeehah,” Reid shouted, loud enough for Christopher to stand up in his cubicle outside Sarina’s office and glare at them. “But I don’t need another suit,” Reid said in his regular loud voice. “I rarely wear the ones I’ve got.”

  “Humor me,” Owen said. “It’s our first wedding.”

  “Our first baby,” said Dev.

  Owen leant over the table and gripped Sarina’s hand. “When did we all get so grown-up?” He looked back at Reid. “Even you.”

  Reid grunted acknowledgement and Sarina said, “It’s just a party.”

  “It’s not just a party,” said Reid. “You two are finally getting your shit together and you’re going to stand in front of everyone and promise not to fuck it up again.”

  “Reid,” Sarina said, pulling her hand out of Owen’s and scowling at Reid.

  “Tell me that’s not true, that’s not why you weren’t looking for a sperm donor and Dev wasn’t ready to quit over it?” Reid glared at them both. “You fucked up with each other.” Into the silence that followed, he said, “Ah, screw it. If two sensible people like you can fuck it up, what chance is there for an asshole like me?” He head-desked. His, “And I’m fucking jealous,” was spoken into the fake wood of Owen’s meeting table.

  Owen reached over and shoved Reid’s shoulder. He realized that’s what he was feeling too, jealousy. Which was ridiculous. He was deliriously, unexpectedly happy with Cara. He had a second chance at love and family and yet he wasn’t buying a suit for his own wedding because he didn’t have a date for it.

  “What do you have to be jealous about, dickhead? Ironically, you were the first one to settle in a relationship, post-college,” said Dev. “That’s end of the world thinking right there.”

  Reid straightened up. “I want the whole program.” He held up his left hand. “I want the ring.” He dragged his hand through his hair. “I want the stupid sentimental vows. I want the legally arguable paperwork. I want the fake security of the happy ever after and the idiot promise of for better or for worse. I want Zarley bound so close to me she has to think twice about walking away, and she’s too smart to give it to me.”

  “She won’t marry you?” Sarina said, shocked.

  He shook his head. “She says we’re already as good as married, but maybe I keep asking wrong.”

  “I’ve got the same problem,” Owen said.

  “No!” said Sarina, shock in her voice and in the shift of her brows. “Give Cara time. You’re still a new couple.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  Reid turned to Owen but waved a hand at Dev and Sarina. “No fucking way. Girl loves you. You’re all over her. You can’t become like them.”

  “Dude,” said Dev with his eyes closed.

  It was fair warning. He’d let Cara think their relationship balanced on her uncertainty about having kids. That having a family was a breaking point for him. He wanted his own kids. Had Lacey lived, he’d likely have been a dad by now. When he first met Cara, a family was off the table and it almost stopped him committing to her, for her sake, because he didn’t believe she wouldn’t want her own kids. Now that his sexual function was restored it was off the table again, but this time because she was pushing back.

  “Cara doesn’t know if she wants kids.”

  “And you always did,” said Sarina. “I see the complication. What does she say about it?”

  “She feels like it’s an expectation and that it might stop her doing what she wants with her own life. But—”

  “Stop right there.” Sarina put both hands up, palms flat. “Cara’s right. It’s a straitjacket women are born with.” She folded her arms defensively. “Don’t have children, you’re not a proper woman. You’re some kind of inhuman, unfeeling freak, shallow and self-absorbed. One kid, selfish. Two, stereotype mom. Three, indulgent, four, irresponsible, a drain on society. Have those kids with more than one partner and we have a whole other scale of judgment and none of it g
ood.”

  “Have a kid by yourself when you’re still in school like Ana,” said Dev, “Your own parents might turn on you.”

  “I . . .”

  Sarina cut him off. “I know you love her, but she needs to know you’ll play your part. She’s hungry to make her business succeed. She backflipped off a desk to get it started. You already have that in your life, and you never need to break for babies.”

  “But I would if that’s what she needed. I’d be the primary carer.” Any kids he did have weren’t going to be brought up with hired help acting the part of parent, like he was.

  “Does she know that?”

  He put both hands to his head. “I think I only now worked it out.” The assumption between them had been that Cara would be the one to sacrifice her own ambition to building a family. Owen pressed his fingertips into his skull. It didn’t need to be that way. Honest didn’t mean no compromise. He dropped his hands and picked up his cell. “I need to make a call and then we’re going to get suits.” He could distract himself with suits until he could see Cara, talk this out. “And tell me whatever else I can do to help.”

  When he had his office back to himself, he called Cara. Her cell rang out. The top floor of Lucky’s where she had her workshop was a large space. She could be anywhere in the building. He dialed again. It could wait. He wasn’t going to spill on the phone anyway, but he wanted to hear her voice.

  At the last moment before the cell switched on message bank, she answered, breathless. “Found it. Buried under . . . hello, lover.”

  “You’re busy.”

  “Some idiot talked Zarley into having a wedding here in like three minutes.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Meant to call you. Spoke to Sarina. She might be wearing a white sheet. There’s no time for anything.”

  “They just want to be together.”

  She sighed, a puff of air in his ear. “It’s crazy romantic. Are you calling to check in?”

  “Can we talk tonight?”

  “That’s . . . aww. Am I in trouble? I’m going to be late.”

  “You’re not in trouble.” But he was. He had to make her understand she came first for him before anything else. “I’ll wait up.”

  “I’ll try not to be too late, but blame Reid if I am.” The most convenient of scapegoats. “Also remind me to tell you about Zarley’s antique bar top.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  “In someone I hope.”

  “What?”

  “Gotta go.” She disconnected.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was in the parking garage with Dev. “How did your folks react?” he asked, unlocking the car.

  Dev pulled a face and opened the passenger side door as Reid galloped across the lot to them.

  “Oh shit, they don’t know.”

  “Your dad will worry but your mom loves Sarina. They’ll be fine,” Reid said. “I need a lift, it’s raining.”

  Owen opened the driver’s door. “Your bike doesn’t run in the rain?”

  “Promised Zarley I wouldn’t ride in the rain anymore.”

  “That’s why you need a car,” said Dev.

  “Yeah. I suppose it’s about time I owned one.”

  Owen looked across the hood to Dev. “Wow, he really is a grown-up boy now.”

  “It’s love,” said Dev and got in the car. “Also shotgun.”

  “I gotta ride in the back?” Reid opened the door. “You’ve got me buying another suit I don’t need and not taking the bike, that’s enough pain for one day.”

  “You saying Zarley didn’t already give you pain about the wedding?” said Dev.

  “No pain. No gain.” Reid got in the car. “Hey, this is not bad. What kind of car is this?”

  There was a thirty minute discussion about cars while Owen drove them into the city and then Dev said, “Half expected you to tell me I was going to have to marry Sarina on the Plus rooftop.”

  Owen groaned. “Least romantic place on earth.”

  “No, the least romantic place is the storage room on two,” said Dev.

  They exchanged a glance. “The two of you have . . .” He let that trail off as a memory of Cara conspiring to meet him there invaded his brain. That dump of a room was where they’d confessed to being more than a fling. He’d told her he loved her in a room where office junk went to die. She deserved so much better than feeling she needed to sacrifice anything she wanted for his happiness.

  “Oh, yeah. It was—” Dev started.

  Reid cut him off. “Not suitable for work.” He leaned forward. “Jesus, am I the only one of us not to make out in the dead furniture showroom.”

  Owen eyed him in the rearview. “You’re buying a car now. Your sex in storage room days are over.”

  “You had full-on sex with Cara in the storeroom?” He poked Dev’s shoulder. “With Sarina?” He flopped back into the seat a look of disgust on his face.

  “No, but it was inappropriate anyway and none of us should’ve done it. I have to get facilities management to clear it out.”

  “Oh hell, I’m not worried about that. I’m trying to work out how I can lure Zarley there.”

  “She really said no to marrying you?” Dev said.

  “Yeah, but that whole thing is about my insecurities. I’ll get over it.”

  “So grown-up,” said Owen.

  “What about kids?” Dev twisted to look at Reid through the gap in front seats.

  “Man, it’s never even come up.”

  “You don’t want kids?” Dev said.

  “Zarley lost a baby, that’s why she never went to the Olympics. It’s on her. She wants to have a kid with me, I’m one hundred percent there. I’ve got no idea if I can do dad, but if she thinks I can, I’m there. Otherwise, it’s her body, her call.”

  Owen eyed Reid in the rearview. “Do you really mean that?”

  “I mean it.”

  He grunted in annoyance. “How is it you’re more enlightened than me on that count.”

  “It’s a miracle.”

  He caught Reid’s shrug before he checked the road. “And what do you know about Zarley’s bar top?”

  Reid laughed. “More than you. But I disagree with Cara about her cutting table.”

  “I have no idea what any of that means.”

  He knew about suits though, and how to delight a tailor with a premium urgent order. According to Dev, the three of them looked boss.

  Late that night, lying in bed with a copy of Wired open on his tablet, waiting for Cara to get home, he didn’t feel boss. He felt uncomfortably conflicted. He was more like Sarina, wanting a family so hard she was prepared to do it alone, than Reid who’d take it as it came, and he didn’t know how to reconcile himself to Cara’s ambivalence or his own selfishness.

  At midnight, he started to worry, and as he was reaching for his phone to call her Sammy’s head shot up. The dog knew she was home before her key hit the door. He woke from a dead sleep and whined before Owen heard a sound. “Go get her, Sam.”

  Sammy left the doorway to the bedroom and trotted downstairs with a wildly whipping tail. Owen heard Cara make a fuss of Sam, and then her footsteps on the stairs. She came into the room, stripping off her dress, flinging it on the floor and face-planting the bed with a moan.

  He put his hand over her starburst tattoo. “Long day.”

  “I’m dead.”

  “Have you eaten?” He could heat something for her.

  “Hmm. Yeah.”

  She was exhausted. He’d be the most selfish man in the world if he tried to talk to her about anything as serious as whether they started a family. He shifted closer to her, unclipped her bra, rearranged the bedcovers and rolled her so she was curled in front of him. He kissed the back of her neck.

  He loved her. She was his family and he’d find a way to tell her that, so she knew nothing she wanted for herself had to come second.

  SIX

  Sarina

  “You two, getting married.” Chri
stopher touched his bun, not a hair out of place. “Can’t say it rocks my jocks,” he said, giving her side-eye. “Explains what you all have been doing this week. It’s been a madhouse. All that shocker tension. Reid yahooing, like a rodeo clown,” he pointed at Sarina, across her desk, “you crying actual tears, and you,” he chin-lifted at Dev, who sat beside him, “losing your cool. I thought we were about to go Chapter 11. I updated my LinkedIn.”

  Sarina almost laughed. “You’re not surprised?”

  Christopher curled a hand and looked at his manicure. “Only that it took so long. What was up with that?”

  She glanced at Dev, who’d sucked his bottom lip into his mouth. It’s like they were the last two people to get a joke that everyone else had been riffing on forever. Like they’d thought “winter is coming” was literally about the season.

  “Is that why you kept giving me stink-eye?” said Dev.

  “I had trouble watching you fumble the pass, dude, is all.”

  “Chapter 11 might be less embarrassing,” Dev said.

  “We’re not going into Chapter 11,” she said, firmly. “You can ignore LinkedIn and I need your help.” Might as well deliver all the shocks. Sarina needed Christopher to help reschedule her life. “Also, we’re pregnant, but it’s early so that’s between the three of us, Reid and Owen.”

  Christopher looked at Dev. “Impressive. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  Dev unfolded from his chair. “This is like a practice session for telling my dad.”

  “Dude, you haven’t told your family.” Christopher made a tongue-clucking sound. “That’s severely lame.”

  It was wrong to giggle at that, but she did. She wasn’t going to admit her family were in the dark as well until dinner tonight.

  “I’m going to go use spaces instead of tabs in my code and buy a suit now,” said Dev in homage to “Silicon Valley.” He stood and looked down at Christopher. “We’re cool?”

  “I’ll get used to it,” Christopher said without looking up, and Dev exited shaking his head.