by Meg Cabot
But I decide to cut Shari some slack. Because I did leave her in the lurch and all.
“Come on, Shari,” I say, reaching for the binder. “I’ll find us something fun to sing. What do you say?”
“Count me out,” Shari says. “I’m too tired.”
“You can never be too tired for karaoke,” Chaz says. “All you have to do is stand up there and read from a teleprompter.”
“I’m too tired,”Shari says again, this time more adamantly.
“Look,” Luke says, “somebody has to get up there and sing something. Otherwise, Frodo is going to perform another ballad. And then I’ll have to slit my wrists.”
I’ve started flipping through the binder. “I’ll do it,” I say. “I can’t let my boyfriend commit suicide.”
“Thanks, honey,” Luke says, winking at me. “That’s so nice of you.”
I’ve found the song I want and am filling out the little slip of paper you’re supposed to give to the waitress if you want to sing. “If I do this,” I say, “you guys have to do one, too. Luke and Chaz, I mean.”
Chaz looks solemnly at Luke. “‘Wanted Dead or Alive’?”
“No,” Luke says, shaking his head vehemently. “No way.”
“Come on,” I say. “If I’m doing it, you guys have to—”
“No.” Luke is laughing now. “I do not do karaoke.”
“You have to,” I say gravely. “Because if you don’t, we’ll be subjected to more of that.” I nod toward a group of giggly twenty-somethings, each wearing the light-up penis necklaces and slackly drunken expressions that give away the fact that they are part of a bachelorette party—as if the fact that they’re screeching “Summer Lovin’” from Grease into a single microphone is not evidence enough.
“They are making a mockery of the karaoke,” Chaz agrees, pronouncing “karaoke” with the correct Japanese inflection.
“’Nother round?” the waitress, wearing an adorable red silk mandarin dress, with a not-so-adorable metal bar through her lower lip, wants to know.
“Four more,” I say, sliding two song slips toward her. “And two songs, please.”
“No more for me,” Shari says. She holds up her mostly full beer bottle. “I’m good.”
The waitress nods and takes my song slips. “Three more, then,” she says, and goes away.
“What did you mean,two songs?” Luke asks me suspiciously. “You didn’t—”
“I want to hear you sing that you’re a cowboy,” I say, my eyes wide with innocence. “And that on a steel horse you ride… ”
Luke’s mouth twists with suppressed mirth.“You—” He lunges at me, but I shrink against Shari, who goes, “Stop it.”
“Save me,” I say to Shari.
“Seriously,” she says. “Cut it out.”
“Oh, come on, Share,” I say, laughing. What’s wrong with her? She used to love goofing around in dive bars. “Sing with me.”
“You’re so annoying,” she says.
“Sing with me,” I beg. “For old times’ sake.”
“Get out,” Shari says, giving me a shove toward the end of the bench we were sitting on. “I have to go pee.”
“I won’t get out,” I say, “unless you sing with me.”
Shari pours her beer over my head.
Later, in the ladies’ room, she apologizes. Abjectly.
“Seriously,” she says, sniffling as she watches me stick my head beneath the hand dryer. “I am so, so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s okay.” I can barely hear her above the roar of the hand dryer—not to mention the keening of the bachelorettes on stage. “Seriously.”
“No,” Shari says. “It’s not okay. I’m a terrible person.”
“You’re not a terrible person,” I say. “I was being a jerk.”
“Well.” Shari is leaning against the radiator. The ladies’ room at Honey’s is not what anyone would call the height of chic decor. There is one sink and one toilet, and the walls have been covered in vomit-beige paint that does little to hide the layers of graffiti beneath it. “You were being a jerk. But not any more than usual. I’m the one who’s turned into such a massive bitch. I seriously don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Is it your job?” I ask. The hand dryer is solving the problem of my wet hair. But it isn’t doing much for the beery smell coming from my Vicky Vaughn Junior minidress. That’s something I’m going to have to tackle with the Febreze bottle when I get home.
“It’s not my job,” Shari says mournfully. “I love my job.”
“You do?” I can’t hide my surprise. All Shari ever seems to do is complain about her hours and workload.
“I do,” she says. “That’s the problem… I’d rather be there than at home, any day.”
I open my double-flap seventies Meyers handbag (in stunning lime-green vinyl, only thirty-five dollars with my Vintage to Vavoom employee discount) to look for something—anything—that I could spray on myself to get rid of the beery smell. “Is that because you love your job so much?” I ask carefully. “Or because you don’t love Chaz anymore?”
Shari’s face crumples. She puts her hands over it to hide her tears.
“Oh, Share.” My heart twisting, I step away from the hand dryer to put my arms around her. Through the door, I can hear the thump-thump-thump of the bass as the bachelorettes shriek that it’s up to you, New York, New York.
“I don’t know what happened,” Shari sobs. “I just feel like whenever I’m with him, I’m suffocating. And even when he’s not around… it’s like he’s smothering me.”
I am trying to be understanding. Because that’s how best friends are with each other.
But I’ve known Chaz for a long time. And he has so never been the suffocating or smothering type. In fact, it would be hard to find a more happy-go-lucky guy. I mean, except when he’s jabbering on about Kierkegaard.
“What do you mean?” I ask her. “How is he smothering you?”
“Well, like he calls me all the time at work,” Shari says, furiously wiping away her tears. Shari hates it when she cries… and consequently doesn’t do so very often. “Sometimes even twice a day!”
I blink down at her. “Calling someone twice a day at work isn’t all that much,” I say. “I mean, I call you that many times a day. A lot more than that, actually.” I don’t even mention how many times a day I’ve started e-mailing her, now that I spend so many hours at a workstation with an actual computer, on which I’m supposed to record any notes and messages for the lawyers I work for.
“That’s different,” Shari says. “Besides, it’s not just that. I mean, there’s the whole cat thing.” My revealing to Shari that Chaz was thinking about adding a four-legged friend to their domicile had resulted in her being “diagnosed” with a previously unknown dander allergy, and the sad admittance that she would never, alas, be able to live in a house or apartment with anything furry. “There’s also the fact that when I get home from work, he wants to know how my day went! After already having talked about it on the phone.”
I drop my arms from her. “Shari,” I say. “Luke and I talk to each other about a million times a day.” This is a slight exaggeration. But whatever. “And we always ask each other how our day went when we get home.”
“Yeah,” Shari says. “But I bet Luke doesn’t spend the whole day you’re gone lying around the apartment reading Wittgenstein, then going grocery shopping, cleaning the apartment, and making oatmeal cookies.”
My jaw drops. “Chaz goes grocery shopping, cleans, and makes oatmeal cookies while you’re at work?”
“Yes,” Shari says. “And does the laundry. Can you believe that? He does the laundry while I’m at work! And folds everything up into these perfect squares! Even my underwear!”
I am looking at Shari with suspicion now. Something is wrong. Very wrong.
“Share,” I say. “Are you even listening to yourself? You’re mad at your boyfriend because he calls you regularly,
cleans your apartment, does the grocery shopping, makes you cookies, and does your laundry. Do you realize that you’ve basically just described the most perfect man in the world?”
Shari scowls at me. “That may sound like the perfect man to some people, but it isn’t to me. You know what would be the perfect man to me? One who was around less. Oh, and get this: he wants sex.Every day. I mean, that was all right back when we were in France. But we were on vacation. Now we’ve got responsibilities—well, some of us do, anyway. Who has time for sex every day? Sometimes he even wants it twice a day, morning and then again at night. I can’t take it, Lizzie. That’s just… that’s just too much. Oh my God… can you believe I just said that?”
I’m glad she asked that, because the answer is no, I can’t. Shari’s always been more sexually aggressive—and adventurous—than me. It looks like the tables have finally turned. I have to keep myself from blurting out that Luke and I often have sex twice a day—and that I quite enjoy it.
“But you and Chaz used to, um, do it that much all the time,” I say. “I mean, when you first started going out. And you liked it then. What’s changed?”
“That’s just it,” Shari says. She looks truly upset. “I don’t know! God, what kind of counselor am I, when I can’t even figure out my own problems? How can I help people with theirs?”
“Well, sometimes it’s easier to help other people with their problems than deal with your own,” I say in what I hope is a soothing voice. “Have you talked about all of this with Chaz? I mean, maybe if you told him what was bothering you—”
“Oh, right,” Shari says sarcastically. “You want me to tell my boyfriend that he’s too perfect?”
“Well,” I say. “You don’t have to put it quite like that. But maybe if you—”
“Lizzie, I am perfectly aware that I sound like a lunatic. There’s something wrong with me. I know it.”
“No,” I cry. “Shari, it’s just… it’s hard. It’s my fault, really. Maybe you guys weren’t ready to move in together. I should never have bailed on you like I did and moved in with Luke. I deserved to have beer poured on me. I deserve to have a lot worse than that done to me—”
“Oh, Lizzie,” Shari says, looking up at me with her dark eyes filled with tears again. “Don’t you get it? It has nothing to do with you. It’s me. There’s something wrong with me. Or at least with the concept of Chaz and me. The truth is… I just don’t know anymore, Lizzie.”
I stare at her. “Know what?”
“I mean, I look at you and Luke, and how perfect you two are together—”
“We’re not perfect,” I interrupt quickly. I don’t want to remind her about the woodland creature thing. Or the fact that I’m pretty sure Luke’s mom is having—or was having, anyway—an affair, and I haven’t told him. “Seriously, Shari. We—”
“But you seem so happy together,” Shari says. “The way Chaz and I used to be… but for some reason, it’s gone.”
“Oh, Shari.” I chew my lower lip, frantically trying to think of the right thing to say. “Maybe if you two got couples counseling… ”
“I don’t know,” Shari says. She looks—and sounds—hopeless. “I don’t know if it would even be worth it.”
“Shari!” I can’t believe she would say that. About Chaz, of all people!
“Lizzie?” Someone bangs on the door. A woman’s voice calls my name again. “You’re up!”
I realize it’s the waitress and that my song’s waiting to be played—and performed.
“Oh no,” I say. “Shari, I… I don’t know what to say. I really think maybe you and Chaz are just going through a weird phase right now. I mean, Chaz is a great guy, and I know he really loves you… I’m sure things will get better with time.”
“They won’t,” Shari says. “But thanks for letting me unload on you. Literally. Sorry about the beer.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “It was kind of refreshing, in a way. It was getting hot out there.”
“Are you coming?” the waitress demands. “Or not?”
“Coming,” I call. Then I appeal to Shari. “Will you sing with me?”
“Not a chance,” she says with a smile.
Which is how I find myself all alone on the stage at Honey’s, assuring the bachelorettes, who are drunkenly catcalling me, the dwarf, who is glaring at me angrily for robbing him of yet more time in the spotlight, and Chaz, Shari, and Luke that young girls do get weary of wearing that same old shaggy… and that when they get weary, it would behoove everyone to try a little tenderness.
A piece of advice that, sadly, Chaz seems to have already employed… with less than satisfying results.
Lizzie Nichols’s Wedding Gown Guide
Fittings
Ensuring that your gown fits properly is one of the many duties of your certified wedding-gown specialist. You can help by bringing with you to your fittings the shoes, the headdress, and the kind of support or undergarments you plan on wearing on your special day. Too often a bride has not tried on her gown with the bra or shoes she plans to wear at her wedding, only to discover her straps are showing or that her gown is too long or short!
It’s important as well to be at or very close to whatever weight you want to be on your wedding day at your first fitting. Gowns can of course be taken in… but the less your seamstress has to do so, the better. And don’t even talk about letting gowns out… that’s a whole other story, and you don’t want to go there.
Generally only two fittings are necessary, but of course more can be scheduled if necessary… so long as you don’t wait too long! Not even the most brilliant certified wedding-gown specialist can work wonders overnight. Plan on having your last fitting about three weeks prior to your wedding day—and lay off the Krispy Kremes!
LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™
Chapter 12
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
— John Tudor (b. 1954), American Major League baseball player
“So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Tiffany wants to know.
Even though her shift doesn’t start until two, Tiffany has been showing up every day at noon, and hanging out with me at the reception desk until I go home… sometimes even bringing lunch for both of us to nibble on surreptitiously beneath the desktop, since food is banned in the reception area (“Highly unprofessional,” is what Roberta called it the day she caught me innocently nibbling on a bag of microwave popcorn I filched from the office kitchen).
At first I just thought this was an odd habit of Tiffany’s—showing up two hours early to work every day, I mean. Until Daryl, the “fax and copy supervisor” (he’s in charge of making sure all the office fax and copy machines are fully stocked and in working order, and the faxes delivered promptly to their addressees), informed me that I had only myself to thank for Tiffany’s new and improved work ethic.
“She likes hanging out with you,” he said. “She thinks you’re funny. And she doesn’t have any friends except that nasty-ass boyfriend of hers.”
I was touched but surprised when I heard this. The truth is that Tiffany and I have little in common (save the desk chair we sit in, and a love for fashion, of course), and her potty mouth can be a little alarming at times. And I have never, for instance, seen her outside of work… hardly surprising, since we work completely different shifts. But not exactly what I’d call a true bond.
On the other hand, we’re both regularly screamed at by Peter fucking Loughlin. And that’s something that scars someone for life and therefore cemented our friendship.
Still, when Tiffany asks the Thanksgiving question, I’m afraid. Afraid that she’s about to follow it with an invitation to join her and the “nasty-ass boyfriend” (so called by Daryl for no other reason—that I can ascertain, anyway—than that he is keeping Tiffany from being available for Daryl to date) for their holiday meal.
Which I’m sure would be fun and all of that, but not something I think Luke is quite ready for—to be su
bjected to my coworkers, I mean. So far, I’ve managed to keep him a safe distance from both Monsieur and Madame Henri, and the fine folks of Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn.
Although, considering that I still haven’t told my family he and I are living together, you might say I’m keeping him from my family, as well.
“Luke’s parents are coming to town,” I say truthfully.
“Rilly?” Tiffany looks up from the nail she’s filing. “They’re coming all the way from France?”
“Uh, no, Houston,” I say, after a slight pause during which I pick up, answer, and transfer a call for Jack Flynn. “They only spend part of the year in France, and the rest in Houston, where Luke’s from. They’re coming here for Thanksgiving so his mom can do some holiday shopping and his dad can go to some Broadway shows.”
“So they’re taking you out for Thanksgiving dinner?” Tiffany looks impressed. “Sweet.”
“Uh,” I say. “Not exactly. I mean, I’m cooking the dinner. Luke and I are. For the two of them, and Shari and Chaz, too.”
Tiffany stares at me. “Have you ever cooked a turkey before?” she wants to know.
“No,” I say. “But I’m sure it won’t be hard. Luke’s a really good cook, and I printed out a bunch of recipes from the Food Network’s Web site.”
“Oh yeah,” Tiffany says, her voice tinged with sarcasm. “That’ll work out great, then.”
But I don’t let her negativity get me down. I’m convinced our Thanksgiving is going to work out great. Not only will Luke’s parents—whom we’ll be giving up our bed to, since it is, technically, his mom’s bed—have a great time, but so will Chaz and Shari. In fact, if everything goes as planned, Chaz and Shari will be so moved by the example of loving bliss Luke and I (and his parents) make, that they’ll start getting along again.
I’m sure of it. More than sure. I’m positive.
“Your own family must miss you,” Tiffany says casually. “Are they mad you aren’t coming home for Thanksgiving?”