Queen of Babble Bundle with Bonus Material

by Meg Cabot

  “Oh sure,” I say. “Anything you want.”

  “Oh goody,” Ava says, grinning widely. “Joey, she said yes!”

  Little Joey, I realize belatedly, is sitting in the front seat beside the driver, half hidden by the privacy screen, which Ava lowers to deliver this news.

  “Oh, hey, Lizzie,” he calls to me from the vast expanse of leather seats and twinkling halogen lights in the ceiling between us. “How you doing?”

  “Hi, Joey,” I call back a bit hesitantly, since I’m suddenly realizing I have no idea what I’ve just agreed to. “I’m good. Um, Ava?”

  “What?” she asks a little distractedly, having dug out her Sidekick, into which she is tapping with some urgency.

  “What, exactly, did I just promise to do for you?”

  “You’re letting me stay at your place, of course,” Ava says with some surprise, not even looking up from the screen.

  I stare at her. “My place? You mean…in my apartment?”

  “Well, I can’t stay at my place,” Ava says, finally looking up. Ava’s condo, which is on East End Avenue near the mayor’s house, Gracie Mansion, is within easy walking distance of mine (not that Ava ever walks). Ava chose to move to the Upper East Side—to the consternation of many a poodle-toting matron there—because that’s where she happened to find the only condo that met her exacting standards (the aforementioned four bedrooms, three baths, and an eat-in kitchen with at least two thousand square feet of outdoor terrace and full southern exposure).

  But she’d also fallen in love with the nearby Carl Schurz Park, which is right by the river, and includes a dog run built especially for small dogs.

  “My place is crawling with paparazzi,” she goes on. “Word’s already getting out that I left Alek at the altar. They’ve got all the hotels staked out too, and my parents’ and friends’ places, as well. You’re my only hope, Lizzie. I figured you could just stay at Luke’s.”

  I’m shaking my head before the words are fully out of her mouth. “No,” I say. “No, I can’t stay at Luke’s.” The thought fills me with panic. I don’t want to see Luke. I…I can’t see Luke. Not again. Not this soon.

  “Well,” Ava says, looking slightly annoyed. “Fine. Then I’ll stay at Luke’s, and he can stay with you.”

  “No,” I say, still shaking my head. “You can’t stay at Luke’s either. Because Luke and I are…we’re…we’re in a fight. Remember? Remember how he came running out of the restaurant after me just now, and I was like, Drive? Please drive? Remember that?” My eyes fill with tears again at the memory. Oh God. What’s happening to me?

  Little Joey says, from the front seat, “She did say that.”

  Ava screws up her face, trying to remember. “Oh yeah,” she says. “Well. Can’t I just stay at your apartment with you, then? It’ll just be for a few days. Until all this blows over. You’ll hardly know I’m there. Snow White and I don’t take up much room.”

  I glance at Little Joey. Ava, noticing the direction of my gaze, laughs.

  “Oh, don’t worry about him,” she says. “He won’t be staying there. He has his own place in Queens.”

  I want to suggest that Joey’s place in Queens might be the ideal hideout for Ava. The paparazzi would never think to look for her there.

  But then I remember what she said, about all of this being my fault. And so instead, I say, “Ava, my place…it’s just a one bedroom. There’s only one bathroom. And it doesn’t have southern exposure. Believe me, it’s not luxurious—”

  “I don’t mind, I’m used to roughing it. I served forty-eight hours at CRDF, you know,” Ava assures me, referring to the Century Regional Detention Facility in Los Angeles, which housed her when she did her time for driving under the influence.

  “My place isn’t as bad as prison,” I say, slightly annoyed.

  “Oh, I knew you’d say yes,” Ava says, throwing her spindly arms around me and giving me a hug, and partially suffocating Snow White in the process. “This is gonna be so fun! Like camping out or something! We’ll order in, and do our nails, and watch me on TV, and stay up all night talking bad about our boyfriends. Your having a fight with Luke makes it just perfect!”

  I say in a strangled voice, since her deathlike grip is cutting off my oxygen, “I can’t stay up all night, Ava. I have gowns I have to get finished.”

  “That’s even better!” Ava cries, releasing me suddenly. “I can help!”

  “Okay,” I say. I massage my neck where she’s squeezed it. I can’t believe this is happening. “I guess.”

  “I’m so excited,” Ava declares. “Vincent, make the turn onto Seventy-eighth. We’re getting out there!”

  Sooner than I could have imagined possible, Ava Geck, her Chihuahua, and seven of her suitcases are in my apartment, and her bodyguard is saying good night, while assuring me he’ll be by at nine tomorrow morning to pick Ava up to take her to the New York Health and Racquet Club to meet her trainer for her workout. She’s on my couch—though we’ve already established that she’ll be sleeping in my bed, and I’ll be on the couch, thanks to her sciatica—flipping channels with the remote, trying to see if news of her broken-off royal wedding is on E! yet. I’m supposed to be ordering dinner—moo shu chicken is out. Ava wants a Caesar salad and fettuccine Alfredo from Sistina, which is a four-star Italian restaurant on Second Avenue that doesn’t deliver…except apparently for Ava.

  I’m on the phone with the restaurant’s maître d’ when the buzzer to my apartment goes off, causing Snow White to burst into a cacophony of yips and Ava to squeal excitedly, “The food’s here!”

  “The food can’t be here,” I say. “I’m still on hold with Guiseppe.”

  Ava throws me a panicked look. She’s changed from her rubber lederhosen into a pink velour sweatsuit. Although she has the word “Juicy” written across her rear end, I find this preferable to her many outfits that actually reveal her rear end, or at least the brown-cheeked moons of it. And so I am allowing her to wear it. But only indoors.

  “It’s the paparazzi!” she cries. “They’ve found me! Already!”

  “It can’t be the paparazzi,” I say. “Unless you told someone you’re here.”

  “Only my mom,” Ava says. “And Tippy. And he wouldn’t tell anyone. He knows what it’s like to be hounded mercilessly by the press.”

  I still don’t have the slightest idea who DJ Tippycat is, but I take her word for it that he wouldn’t rat her out. I hand her the phone and go to the wall intercom and push the TALK button. “Who is it?” I ask in my meanest voice, which I reserve only for answering the intercom.

  “Lizzie, it’s me,” Luke says. “Can I come up?”

  I stare at the intercom as if live snakes have suddenly come bursting out of it. Luke? In all the excitement with Ava, I’d completely forgotten about my fight with him.

  Ava hasn’t, however. She bolts upright. “Is that Luke?” she asks, her bright eyes wide. “Are you gonna buzz him in? I can totally make myself scarce. You won’t even know I’m here. I’ll hide in the bathroom.”

  I continue to stare at the intercom, uncertain what to do. On the one hand, I’m still really, really mad at him. On the other hand…it’s Luke. I love him.

  At least…I think I do.

  And yet…could he have been a bigger jerk?

  “Unless you want me to pour water on his head,” Ava offers generously. She’s gotten up from the couch and gone to the window, where you can look down and see whoever is standing in the doorway—providing they aren’t hiding beneath the awning, as the UPS man is wont to do when it’s raining. “Because I could totally do that for you, if you want me to. Or pee. I could pour pee on him. I haven’t gone yet. I could go in a cup and dump it—”

  “That’s okay,” I say quickly. “I—I’ll just go talk to him outside. You go ahead and order. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  Ava looks dubious. “Are you sure? Because I’ve been holding it all day—”

  “I’m sure,” I sa
y. “And you really shouldn’t hold it, Ava. You could give yourself a urinary tract infection that way. I’ll be right back.”

  I grab my keys and hurry out of the apartment and down the stairs, a little leery of leaving Ava to her own devices in my place…but also a little relieved to have a moment to myself. Even if, the next minute, I know I’m going to have to be dealing with Luke.

  Who says, “Oh,” when I undo the many locks to the outside door and step onto the stoop into the warm evening air beside him. “I thought…I thought you might buzz me up.”

  “I can’t,” I say unsmilingly. “I have company.”

  Luke looks surprised. I’m pleased to see he isn’t smiling, either. At least he’s taking this thing seriously. So often, when we argue, he seems to think my anger is amusing, as if I’m a kitten who’s upset about someone hiding her catnip mouse. I’m not a kitten.

  And I’m tired of being treated like one.

  “Company?” he echoes. Now he’s smiling. “What, did you and that girl from the limo go and pick up some sailors while you were out cruising around or something?”

  “No,” I say, still not smiling. “Ava’s going to be spending a few days at my place. She and her fiancé just broke up, and she can’t go back to her place because it’s being staked out by the paparazzi.”

  Luke’s smile vanishes. “Lizzie,” he says. “Jesus. So, you’re just letting her stay with you? Why can’t she stay in a hotel?”

  “Because—” I break off and glare at him. “You know what? Who cares? She’s not. She’s staying with me. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal,” Luke says, “is that she’s a client. And you’re treating her like she’s a friend. You can’t get business mixed up with your personal life, Lizzie. This is exactly what we were just talking about, back at the restaurant.”

  “Oh, really,” I say. I’m ignoring, with effort, a man who is walking by with an Italian greyhound on a leash. The man is pretending he’s not listening to our conversation, but he totally is. I don’t care, really, except that the dog is distracting. It’s so…skinny. I know it was born that way, but it’s still freakish. How does it digest its food with such a tiny stomach? “And just what does my grandmother’s drinking problem have to do with the fact that I refurbish wedding gowns for a living?”

  Luke reaches out to grab both my shoulders in his hands and gives me a gentle shake.

  “Hey,” he says in a gentler tone than he’s used until now. “I’m sorry about that. Okay? I know I was out of line, and I apologize. I tried to apologize there in the restaurant—I chased after you and would have told you so right there, but you jumped into that limo and were gone. If everyone standing out there hadn’t told me that was Ava Geck you were with, I would have…well, I totally would have thought you’d been kidnapped or something.”

  “No, I wasn’t kidnapped, Luke,” I say, trying not to notice how good his hands feel on my skin. I can’t let sensations like that distract me. “I just…we just…I want…”

  What am I saying? What do I want?

  Where am I going with this?

  Why won’t that man take his dog and go somewhere else? Seventy-eighth Street is really long. Does his dog have to pee right there in front of my shop?

  “Luke…I’ve been thinking. And I think…” The next thing I know, words are coming out of my mouth that I honestly don’t remember thinking. They just come out of my mouth. Like air.

  Or vomit.

  “Luke,” I hear myself say. “I think we need to take a break.”

  Oh. My. God.

  A HISTORY of WEDDINGS

  The first hand-printed wedding invitations in the Middle Ages were done in calligraphy by monks, who were commissioned to do so by royalty. By the time metal plate engraving had been invented, engraved invitations—the kind that come with a fancy sheet of tissue paper on top, to keep the print from smudging—became more popular than calligraphy. This same kind of engraving is still used today (and is why you still get tissue paper with fancier wedding invitations). The traditional double envelope in which wedding invitations are so often sent stems from the fact that in olden times, mail was delivered via horse, and no one wanted the dainty hands of the recipient to be dirtied as she opened her invitation. It was assumed a butler would open the icky outer envelope and hand the clean inner envelope to his mistress.

  How sad for us modern, butler-less mail openers, daily soiling our hands on germy outside envelopes!

  Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster

  Remember, your wedding invitations should never be mailed at the last minute…but you don’t want to mail them out too early, either! The ideal time is somewhere between eight weeks and one month before the actual wedding day. Six weeks in advance is perfect.

  And please, never use a laser-printed address label on your invitations. That’s considered beyond tacky. Handwritten only! Yes, you can advertise for and hire an engineering student with impeccable handwriting for this task.

  LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™

  • Chapter 12 •

  A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.

  —Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), German poet

  Luke stares at me. “You think we need to what?” he says, his grip on my shoulders loosening.

  “Oh!”

  I let out the sound in a whoosh. At least I think it was me. I realize I can’t even be sure what sounds are coming out of my mouth anymore. That’s how little control I have.

  I sink down onto the top step of the stoop and hug my knees to my chest. The man with the dog, I notice, has hurried away. Apparently, he is no longer enjoying the show—the show of a girl in vintage Shaheen going crazy right in front of him.

  “Lizzie.” Luke sits down on the step beside me. “What do you mean, you think we need to take a break?”

  “I don’t know,” I groan into my knees. God, what is happening to me? “I just…I mean, you’re going to France for three months anyway…so we’re kind of taking a break, whether we want one or not.”

  What am I saying? What is coming out of my mouth? I do not want a break from Luke. I do not. I love Luke.

  Don’t I?

  “It’s just,” I hear myself saying, though at no point did I formulate the words in my head beforehand, “I know that you love me, Luke. But I don’t always feel like you respect me. Or at least…not my job. It’s like you think it’s just this hobby I have that I’m doing for fun until something more serious comes along. But that’s not what it is. This is really what I do. What I want to do for the rest of my life.”

  Luke blinks down at me with his gorgeous, sleepy eyes. “Lizzie, I know that. And of course I respect what you do. I don’t know what would ever have given you the impression that I don’t. All I meant, when I said that about Ava, was that I’ve worked in the business world for a lot of years, and we just never let our clients take advantage of us the way I think you sometimes do.”

  “It’s not what you said about Ava,” I explain. “It’s the way you just thought I could leave with you to go to Paris for the summer. You know. When you brought it up.”

  Luke stares at me. “Last January? You’re bringing up something I said in January? Now?”

  I nod. “And maybe I do business a different way than you do,” I point out. “But I’m not you. Different doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

  “Point taken,” Luke says. “Listen, Lizzie—”

  “And,” my mouth goes on. Why, oh, why, won’t it just shut up? “I don’t think you respect my family very much, either. I know they aren’t as sophisticated as your family is. But you’ve never even met them. So how do you even know? And that’s another thing. You’ve been going out with me for a year. For six months of that year we’ve been engaged. And you’ve never met anyone in my family. And yet you make remarks like the one you did tonight—”

  “I apologized for that already,” Luke says, moving to put his arm around me. “I know what yo
ur grandmother means to you. And if I hadn’t—well, let me tell you, Chaz really let me know, back at the restaurant. But, Lizzie, you have to admit, you complain about your sisters a lot. And your grandmother…well, everyone talks about her drinking problem. And you know the only reason I haven’t met your family is because I’ve been busy with school—”

  “You could have come home with me at Christmas,” I interrupt, “instead of going to France with your family. Or at spring break. But instead, you went to Houston to see your mother. And my family isn’t rich like yours. It’s not like they can go jetting off to New York to meet you like yours can.”

  I glance at him to see how he reacts to this. He isn’t looking at me, however. He’s looking at the Honda Accord parked across the sidewalk in front of us.

  “Yes,” he says in a quiet voice. “You’re right. I probably should have.”

  “Because meeting my family isn’t important to you,” I say. I don’t want to say it. It’s like the words are being wrenched out of me. Like Gran, that time she got completely wasted on cooking sherry and decided to finally go after that balky kitchen pipe with Dad’s giant wrench. The sherry had given her superhuman strength, and she’d managed to loosen the joint and remove all this gunk that had been trapped inside for six months. It just started spilling out.

  Just like all this gunk is pouring out of me. Gunk that probably should have come out of me last January. It’s all spilling out now. Even though I don’t want it to. I really don’t. Not on my nice clean relationship.

  But I guess that’s what gunk is. Stuff that sort of has to come out eventually.

  “That’s not true,” Luke begins to protest, but I cut him off.

  “Don’t say you didn’t have time,” I say. “If it had been important to you, you could have made the time. It was important to me,” I go on. “And it’s important to them. They keep asking me when they’re going to meet you. It would be nice if they could meet you before the wedding.”