Queen of Babble Bundle with Bonus Material

by Meg Cabot

  “Yeah,” I say, slightly annoyed by this. “But Luke’s not doing it to make money. He used to be an investment banker. But he gave it up because he realized saving lives is more important than making money.”

  Tiffany chews noisily on the cheese stick. “That depends on whose life it is,” she says. “I mean, like, some lives are worth more than others. I’m just saying.”

  “Well.” I don’t know how to reply to this. “It doesn’t matter whether or not he makes money, anyway. Because I plan on making enough money for both of us,” I say.

  Tiffany actually looks interested when I say this. “Rilly? Doing what?”

  “Bridal-gown design,” I say. “You know.” It would help if she actually paid attention from time to time. “Or, I should say, refurbishment. And restoration.”

  Tiffany stares at me. “You mean like Vera Wang?”

  “Something like that,” I say. It doesn’t seem worth it to try to explain.

  “I didn’t know you went to design school,” Tiffany says.

  “I didn’t,” I say. “But I majored in fashion history at the University of Michigan.”

  Tiffany snorts. “Oh, well. That explains a lot.”

  I glare at her. I only invited her to be nice. I don’t need to be insulted in my own home. Or my boyfriend’s mother’s own home.

  Before I can say anything, however, we’re interrupted…and sadly, not by the arrival of Chaz and Shari.

  “We are moving on from Bloody Marys,” Monsieur de Villiers appears in the pass-through to announce. He is holding one of the bottles of red wine Raoul brought with him. “This is a bottle of the first Beaujolais of the season. You simply have to try a glass. I am sorry your friends are not here yet, but this is an emergency! A wine emergency! Everyone must have some!”

  “Oh, that sounds great, Monsieur de Villiers,” I say, and accept the glass he’s just poured for me. “Thanks.”

  Tiffany takes a glass as well, then says with a laugh, as Luke’s father moves away, “He’s sweet.”

  “Yes,” I say, looking after the older man, in his navy-blue sportscoat and spotted ascot. “Isn’t he?” How can Bibi de Villiers be cheating on him? It just seems so…cold.

  And completely unlike her in a way. Oh, she’s very stylish, and seems to enjoy making people think that the only thing she’s got on her mind is the latest Fendi bag and Marc Jacobs couture.

  But I saw how her face melted a little when I mentioned the Renoir. She loves that painting—not just the person who gave it to her, but the painting itself. You have to be a little less than shallow to love a painting that much. At least in my opinion.

  So what is a woman like that doing, agreeing to meet her lover (if that’s what Phone Guy is) behind the back of the husband with whom she’s been newly reunited?

  Not that I’m about to say anything about it, though. When Luke got home the first night his parents arrived and his mother asked, after she’d kissed him hello, “Darling, did I get any messages here in the apartment? A friend said he’d left several…”

  Luke had just shrugged and said, “I never got any messages for you. Lizzie? Did you ever come home to find any messages for my mom?”

  I’d nearly swallowed my tongue, I’d been so embarrassed.

  “Messages? You mean on the answering machine?” I’d been stalling for time, but all I ended up doing was making myself look like a bigger idiot than Luke’s mother already thinks me.

  “That is generally where people leave messages,” she’d said, not altogether unkindly.

  Great. Now she thinks I’m an even bigger idiot.

  “Um,” I’d said, still stalling for time. “Uh.” Great. Because stammering always helped.

  Then, as always, my tendency to babble kicked in…for once to my advantage.

  “Well, you know,” I’d said, “a few times I came home and the light was blinking, but when I pressed play there was never anything on the tape. Maybe the machine is broken or something.”

  To my everlasting relief, Mrs. de Villiers had nodded and said, “Oh, yes, of course, it might be. It’s quite old. I suppose I should stop being such a technophobe and get voice mail, anyway. Well, another thing to put on the shopping list!”

  Great. Now Luke’s mom was going to enroll in a voice mail plan, because I’d made her think there was something wrong with her perfectly functional answering machine.

  But what was I supposed to have said? Oh yes, Mrs. de Villiers, this man with a sexy foreign accent left multiple messages, but I erased them because I assumed he was your lover and I want you and your husband to stay together?

  Yeah. That’d make me more popular than ever with Luke’s parents.

  “What do you think of the wine?” Raoul pops his head across the pass-through to ask Tiffany and me. He is darkly handsome—but not objectionably good-looking or what Shari would call a “pretty boy.” He has an easy smile and lots of chest hair peeping from the open collar of his shirt…and he only has just the one button undone.

  “It’s great,” I say.

  “I love it.” Tiffany leans across the pass-through to kiss him, practically putting her knee in my bowl of cranberry relish. “Just like I love you…”

  The two of them are exchanging baby-talk and I’m doing my best not to vomit when the buzzer rings.

  “Ah,” I hear Luke say. “That must be them at last.” He picks up the intercom phone and tells Carlos to send Chaz and Shari up.

  Finally. And about time, too. My turkey was in danger of drying out. Just how long can you keep poultry warming, anyway? Especially poultry that’s already been cooked once—or however they make precooked turkeys.

  I pull it from the oven, relieved to see that the skin is dark golden in color, and not blackened as I’d started to fear it might have become, and let it rest in its own juices, as the little handbook that came with it—and Mrs. Erickson, who, at seventy, knows from good turkey—advised.

  The doorbell rings, and Luke goes to answer it. “Hey!” I hear him say cheerfully. “What took you so—hey, where’s Shari?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Chaz is trying to keep his voice low, but I can still hear him. “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. de Villiers. Long time no see. You guys are lookin’ good.”

  Tiffany has popped down from the kitchen counter and is now leaning her sinewy body (I’m positive she isn’t wearing Spanx beneath all that leather) through the doorway to peer at Chaz.

  “Hey,” she says, sounding disappointed. “I thought he was bringing your girlfriend. That friend of yours you’re always talking about, Shari. Where is she?”

  I pop my head out the kitchen doorway and see Chaz handing over two pie boxes to Luke. The door to the hallway is closed. And Shari is nowhere in sight.

  “Hey,” I say, coming out of the kitchen with a smile. “Where’s—”

  “Don’t ask,” Luke mouths, coming toward me with the pie boxes. In a louder voice, he says, “Look, Chaz spent all day baking not one but two pies for dessert. Strawberry-rhubarb and your favorite, Lizzie—pumpkin. Shari’s feeling under the weather, so she couldn’t make it. But that just means there’s more for the rest of us, right?”

  Has he lost his mind? He tells me my best friend can’t make Thanksgiving dinner because she’s under the weather—and he expects me not to ask?

  “What’s wrong with her?” I demand of Chaz, who has headed directly to the bar Monsieur de Villiers has set up on his wife’s antique rolling drink cart, and is helping himself to a whiskey—straight—that he quickly downs before pouring another. “Is it the flu? It’s going around. Is it stomach or head? Does she want me to call her?”

  “If you’re gonna call her,” Chaz says, his voice rough from the whiskey—and something else maybe, “you better do it on her cell. Because she’s not home.”

  “Not home? When she’s sick? She’s—” I widen my eyes…then lower my voice, so the de Villierses and Tiffany and Raoul can’t hear me. “Oh my God, she didn’t go into the offi
ce, did she? She went to the office when she’s not feeling well—and on a public holiday? Chaz, has she completely lost her mind?”

  “It’s entirely possible,” Chaz replies. “But she’s not at the office.”

  “Where is she, then? I don’t understand…”

  “Neither do I,” Chaz says, going for his third whiskey. “Believe me.”

  “Charles!” Monsieur de Villiers has finally caught on that Chaz is helping himself at the bar—and not to the wine Raoul brought, either. “You must try the wine this young man brought with him. It’s the new Beaujolais! I think you will like it better than whiskey, even!”

  “I highly doubt that,” Chaz says. But the liquor seems already to have improved his mood. “How you doing there, Guillaume? You’re lookin’ good in that cravat there. Is that what you call it? A cravat? Or is it an ascot?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Monsieur de Villiers confesses. “But it doesn’t matter. You must come and try a glass of this—”

  He leads Chaz away before I can ask him any more questions.

  “So your friend’s sick, huh?” Tiffany slinks over to thrust her concave stomach at me. “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to meeting her. Hey, so what’s the deal with all these paintings on the walls? Are they real or what?”

  “Could you excuse me for a moment please?” I ask Tiffany. “I just have to, um, check the turkey.”

  She shrugs. “Whatever. Hey, Raoul. You should tell them about that racehorse you owned that one time—”

  I hurry into the kitchen, where Luke is trying to find a place to put down the pies—no easy task, considering all the food the granite counters are practically sagging under.

  “So what did he say to you?” I stand on tiptoe to hiss in his ear. “Chaz, I mean. About Shari. When he came in?”

  Luke just shakes his head. “Not to ask. I think that means—not to ask.”

  “I have to ask,” I sputter. “He can’t just come in here without my best friend and say not to ask where she is. Of course I’m going to ask. I mean, what does he think?”

  “Well, you asked,” Luke says. “What did he say?”

  “That she was sick. But that she wasn’t at home or at the office. But that doesn’t make any sense. Where else could she be? I’m calling her.”

  “Lizzie.” Luke looks helplessly at all the food, some of which is still sizzling on the stove. Then he looks back at me. Something in my expression must have told him not to pursue it, though, since he just says with a shrug, “Go on. I’ll start bringing stuff out to the table.”

  I give him a quick kiss, then hurry over to where my cell phone is charging (my Happy Thanksgiving call to my parents had worn out my battery, since they’d forced me to speak to each of my sisters, their various children, and Grandma, too—who hadn’t even wanted to talk to me, as doing so required taking her attention away from the episode of Nip/Tuck—“I just adore that Dr. Troy”—she was watching, Dr. Quinn apparently not being on yet).

  “Uh, I’ll be right back,” I say to my guests. “I just have to run to the store to get some more, um, cream.”

  Mrs. de Villiers—the only one, besides Luke, who knows how very, very far it is from her apartment to any store that might be open and selling cream on Thanksgiving Day—looks at me in horror. “Can’t we do without?” she wants to know.

  “Uh, not if we want whipped cream with our pumpkin pie!” I cry.

  And slip out the door. Fortunately, no one even seemed to notice I’m not wearing a coat. Or carrying my purse, for that matter.

  As soon as I get to the door to the emergency exit, I start dialing. Inside the stairwell, it’s cold…but private. And for once I get excellent reception. Shari picks up on the second ring.

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she says. She knew it was me from the caller ID. “Just enjoy your meal. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “Uh, no, we won’t,” I say. “We’ll talk about it right now. Where are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Shari says. “I’m at Pat’s.”

  “Pat’s? Your boss? What are you doing there? You’re supposed to be here. Look, Shari, I know you and Chaz had a fight, but you can’t leave me alone with all of them like this. Tiffany is wearing a suede BODYSUIT. With a zipper that goes from her throat to her crotch. You can’t do this to me.”

  Shari is laughing. “I’m sorry, Lizzie,” she says. “But you’re just going to have to fend for yourself. I’m not leaving here.”

  “Come on!” I’m begging, but I don’t care. “You guys fight all the time. And you always make up.”

  “It’s not a fight,” Shari says. “Listen, Lizzie, we’re right in the middle of dinner over here. I’m really sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow and explain, okay?”

  “Shari, don’t be this way. What did he even do this time? I can tell he feels terrible about it. He’s already had three scotches, and he only just got here. Just—”

  “Lizzie.” Shari’s voice sounds different. Not sad. Not happy. Just different. “Listen. I’m not coming over. I didn’t want to tell you, because I didn’t want you to freak out—I want you to enjoy your holiday. But Chaz and I didn’t just have a fight, okay? We’ve broken up. And I moved out.”

  Lizzie Nichols’s Wedding Gown Guide

  Finding the perfect dress for your bridesmaids…

  I know what you’re thinking. You’re remembering all the hideous dresses you were forced by your sisters and friends to wear at their weddings, and you want to get revenge by choosing something similarly frightening, and forcing them to wear it.

  Well, stop right now.

  This is your opportunity to be the bigger person…also, to accumulate some good bride karma (and let’s face it, all of us can use a little of that).

  It is impossible to find a dress that looks good on everyone—unless of course your bridesmaids are all Victoria’s Secret models (but even then there are going to be issues over the color of the material. Not even covergirls look good in every shade).

  But you can significantly reduce your bridesmaids’ angst by:

  Picking a dress that flatters the most figure-challenged person in the group. If it looks good on your size-eighteen niece, it will look good on your size-eight roommate. Or—and I know this is radical—give your bridesmaids a color that you know they all look good in (black is flattering to nearly everyone), and ask them to pick their own dresses. True, they won’t all match completely. But neither do their personalities. And that’s what you love them for anyway, not how they look.

  If you really want them to all have the same dress, pick one that they can afford, or pay for all the dresses yourself. Yes, I know—they made you pay for yours when you were their bridesmaid, so why should you pay for theirs? But we are RISING above their level, remember? Asking your friends and family to spend three hundred bucks or more on a dress they will never wear again (DO NOT tell yourself that they will. Surrender the fantasy, they WON’T) is unreasonable. Pick one they can all easily afford—or pay for it yourself.

  Alterations, alterations, alterations. A good seamstress can fix any number of problems with fit. Employ one. And make sure your bridesmaids get to her in plenty of time for her to make any necessary adjustments.

  Your wedding is supposed to be a happy time. One reason some brides have a difficult time with it is because they refuse to be flexible and to think of anyone else’s feelings save their own. DO NOT BE THAT BRIDE.

  Your bridesmaids will thank you for it.

  LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™

  Chapter 16

  What you don’t see with your eyes, don’t witness with your mouth.

  —Jewish proverb

  It wasn’t any one thing,” Shari is telling me over a bubble tea break at a place near where she works called the Village Tea House. I wanted to meet at Honey’s. But Shari said she is over dive bars. Which I guess I can understand.

  But I sort of prefer red vinyl booths to velvet throw pillows on the floor
. And diet Coke to herbal tea with tapioca on the bottom. They don’t serve diet Coke at the Village Tea House. I asked. They only serve beverages with “natural” ingredients here.

  Like tapioca is natural.

  “We just…grew apart, I guess,” Shari goes on with a shrug.

  I am still having trouble processing all of this. About Shari and Chaz breaking up, I mean, and her moving out…and missing my Thanksgiving dinner, which, not to brag, turned out pretty darn well.

  Well, except for the part where Mrs. de Villiers insisted we all play charades after dinner, and her team of Luke, Tiffany, and herself creamed my team of myself, Chaz (who was so drunk he could barely move), Monsieur de Villiers (who doesn’t understand anything about how to play), and Raoul (ditto). Not that I am competitive or anything. I just hate boring party games like that.

  Oh, and the part where I had to drag myself to work this morning at Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn, even though practically no one called and I was the only one there, except for all the junior partners, of course. And Tiffany, who showed up hungover (of course), claiming she and Raoul went out after leaving my place and “got so wasted” drinking at Butter with a bunch of other models (I don’t see how these girls can drink so many high-caloric cocktails, like mojitos and cosmos, and stay so thin).

  “I don’t understand how you could grow apart,” I say to Shari, shaking my head, “when you were living with each other. I mean, Chaz’s apartment is not all that big.”

  “I don’t know.” Shari shrugs again. “I guess I just fell out of love with him.”

  “It was the curtains, wasn’t it?” I can’t help asking gloomily.

  Shari gapes at me. “What? The curtains you made?”

  I nod. “I shouldn’t have gone with Chaz’s choice of material.” Chaz had insisted I make their living room curtains out of a bolt of red satin he’d found in a Chinatown thrift shop. I wouldn’t have agreed—I was thinking a muted sage linen—except that the material was embroidered with gold Chinese characters (the clerk at the shop had said they spelled “good luck”), and had such a deliciously kitsch look to it that I agreed with Chaz that it really livened up the place, and that Shari would get a kick out of it.