He leans over my side of the bed and kisses me on the forehead. “Be back before you know it,” he whispers.
“Not true,” I whisper back. “I already miss you so you can’t be back before I know it. Because I know it right now.”
“What am I gonna do with you?” he says, assaulting me in an onslaught of kisses to my cheek, neck, shoulder and lips.
I giggle profusely, twisting left and right because he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days and his scraggly facial hair tickles like crazy. When he stops, I catch my breath and push him away. “Go get your friend,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Ya’ll better bring me back a cheeseburger.”
“It’s six in the morning,” Jace says. “What do you want a cheeseburger for?”
I sit up on my elbows and give him the most serious look I can muster. “Are you seriously going to question your pregnant fiancé’s food cravings?” I stick out my tongue.
“You are the biggest dork in the world, but I love you so much.”
“I love you, too,” I say, rolling back over in bed, pulling the covers up to my neck as sleep starts to fall over me again. “Cheeseburger,” I whisper as I snuggle under the covers some more. I’m pretty sure I feel him plant a kiss on my cheek one more time before he slips out the door. I think I smile, but I’m too sleepy to know for sure.
I slip on an oven mitt and pull out the tray of cinnamon rolls a few seconds before the timer goes off. My phone still hasn’t rang since this morning when Becca called to let me know she was leaving her house and would be here soon. We have a whole day of last minute wedding prep to do, and she was supposed to arrive like, right now. That’s why I timed the cinnamon rolls perfectly.
With the cinnamon rolls on the counter and the oven mitt off my hand, I grab my phone to check it for any missed messages. No word from Becca. I frown and begin frosting our breakfast, hoping she gets here soon. I don’t know if it’s because I’ll be a mother soon, or if I’m just going crazy, but I hate waiting on people. All I can ever think about is that they probably got in some horrific wreck and are lying dead on the road right now, unable to tell me.
There’s a knock at my door, and I leap off the barstool, running toward the door at full speed. I swing open the door without checking the peephole first. “Thank God you’re not dead!” I say in a voice that’s terrifyingly like my mother’s.
Becca rolls her eyes and pushes through the door with about six big bags in tow. “Why would I be dead?”
“Because you took so long to get here,” I say, helping her with the bags.
“You’re ridiculous. Do I smell breakfast?”
“Yep. You’ll be happy to know I didn’t burn the bottoms this time.”
“Woohoo!” She high-fives me. “You’re going to be an excellent wife one of these days. Now we just need to teach you the super tricky skill of boiling water.”
Now I’m the one rolling my eyes. “I know how to boil water.”
She slaps a hand to her chest in surprise. “Jace is such a lucky man!”
I grab a frosted cinnamon roll and shove it in her mouth. “Here, eat this so I don’t have to keep listening to you talk.”
Becca helps herself to two cups of coffee while I drink hot chocolate in order to avoid caffeine for the baby. I never knew she was such a huge coffee drinker until lately. She claims she picked up the habit at the place where she works. Apparently they all drink coffee like fiends over there. I’m a little jealous of her job because when she talks about it, you can tell she really loves it. I hope I will love my job just as much when I’m working full time at the motocross track.
“So what all did you bring me?” I ask after we’ve eaten. I drop to the floor and start digging through the bags. One is a paper shopping bag made of pearly thick paper with satin ribbon handles.
“Oooh!” Becca swoons, darting to the floor next to me. “Those are the RSVPs! Every single person we invited has replied. That has to be some kind of world record or something.”
I dig into the bag and pull out about fifty envelopes, all addressed to Jace and me in Becca’s lovely cursive handwriting. The RSVP cards are printed on the same cardstock and in the same elegant style as the invitations, but I never got to see them because the invitations had the address of the venue. The paper is hand dyed with turquoise at the top and purple on the bottom, the colors fading between the two in a beautiful ombre.
One part of me absolutely loves that Jace planned the location of our wedding in secret and the other part of me is going completely crazy, dying to know where it’ll be. It is supposed to be a small wedding with a small venue, that’s all I know. We both didn’t want some crazy big location, but when I search online for small wedding places in Texas, nothing quite looks like something Jace would choose.
We open all of the RSVPs and take note of who is coming and who “regretfully declined” by checking that box on the paper. Some of Jace’s older relatives who aren’t healthy enough to make the trip declined as we already knew they would. When I open the RSVP from Becca’s mom, I start laughing.
The checkbox for Regretfully Decline was checked and then scratched out and the box for Joyfully Accepts was checked. In small lettering at the bottom of the paper, Becca’s mom had written: SHIT I’m sorry, I checked the wrong box on mistake. Of course I am coming! Love you!
“Your mom is so scatterbrained,” I say, placing her RSVP to the side. It is definitely going into the wedding memories scrapbook that I swear I’ll get around to making one of these days.
“Tell me about it,” Becca says. “She bought you a wedding card the other day and was totally confused when I told her she already bought a card for you like two months ago. Now she’ll probably give you both of them since she can’t choose which one is her favorite.”
My phone rings and since Becca is closer to the coffee table, she hands it to me, sing-songing the words, “It’s your lover-boy.”
I’m laughing at how stupid she is when I answer the phone.
“Hey,” Jace says. He sighs. “I’m at the airport and I’m confused as shit.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve been waiting for his flight, number 4572, and it just landed but I can’t find Park. I watched everyone who came out of the plane and then I’ve been standing by the baggage claim and he’s not here.”
“Did you try calling him?” I ask.
“Like a million times. His phone goes straight to voicemail.”
“Are you sure you have the right flight?” I know my questions are pointless because I’m sure Jace has already thought of them, but I ask anyway.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice dejected. “He had emailed me his flight information. This is definitely the right place he should have landed. I even asked some of the other passengers who walked by. I don’t know where he is, but I’m thinking he never got on this plane.”
“Wow…” I gnaw on my bottom lip and Becca gives me a curious look. “What are you going to do?”
“I guess I’ll stay around a little longer. Maybe I missed him somehow. I’ll keep trying his phone. Part of the reason I called you was to make sure my phone is still working because I was starting to think maybe the problem was on my end.”
“Good luck, babe.” I try to think of something comforting to say. Jace isn’t like me. He’s not going to jump to the conclusion that Park is dead, lying in a ditch somewhere outside of the airport in California. “I’m sure he’ll show up.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you later and let you know what’s up. I love you.”
“I love you more,” I say, smiling in an attempt to make him feel better.
“You wish!” he says right before he hangs up.
Becca frowns when I tell her what just happened. “I know he’s Jace’s best friend and all, but what kind of friend just doesn’t show up when they’re supposed to?”
“Maybe he missed his flight?” I say with a shrug.
“I don’t know who this dude is, but he better get her
e in time for the wedding or I’ll have to kick his ass for ruining my best friend’s big day.”
“You look scary when you’re making threats,” I say. “Remind me not to be late to my own wedding.”
“You better not be late. I’d hate to have to kick your ass on your wedding day.” She pulls out a folded piece of poster board and flattens it on the floor. Five circles with ten squares around each circle have been drawn on what I now recognize as a handmade seating chart. “Now that we have the RSVPs, we can seat your guests.”
“I’ve always thought this was kind of weird,” I say, looking over the hand drawn layout and trying to picture what the venue would look like. “Can’t we just let people sit where they want to?”
“Apparently not,” she says, pointing at the wedding planning binder I had left on the coffee table. “It seems stupid to me too, but we have to do it.”
After the pointless endeavor of placing people in chairs based on how well they know and/or like each other, we sit back and admire our seating chart. There’s a head table at the front of the other tables and that’s where we’ll sit. It’s small, with only room for me and Jace in the middle and then Park and Becca on either side of us. I like having a short wedding party. We haven’t decided where to put my brother. I think he’d like sitting at the head table with us, but I also think he’d rather sit next to Mom and David. I make a note of it so I can call and ask him later. But for now, we’ve knocked out one more task in the great list of things to do for a wedding.
Jace gets home around lunchtime. To our disappointment, he arrives alone. His phone is clutched in his hand and I’ve no doubt that he’s been trying to reach Park for the whole drive back.
“I wonder what happened to him?” I ask, barely getting the words out before Jace plants a kiss on my lips.
“Something must have happened. Maybe his truck broke down on the way to the airport. And I guess his phone broke at the same time. He wouldn’t just ditch...something happened.” He moves past me toward the kitchen and grabs a slice of leftover pizza from the fridge. I cringe when he bites into it cold. I so can’t eat cold pizza, but Jace loves it. “What are you girls up to?”
“How are you being so casual about this? Aren’t you afraid your friend is dead?”
He gives me a look like I’m crazy. “He’s not dead. Something obviously came up, but it wasn’t death.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, hands on my hips.
He takes a huge bite of pizza. “Because I have faith that things will work out just fine. They always do.”
As much as I want to argue his logic by bringing up every possible bad thing that could have happened to prevent Park from catching his flight, I decide to keep my mouth shut. If we still haven’t heard from Park in twenty four hours then I’ll allow myself to freak out. After all, Jace knows his parents and would probably be the first person they called if something bad had happened to him. This comforts me a little.
Just before the three of us are about to leave to get dinner, Jace asks me to leave the room. He has this sneaky smile on his face so I know he isn’t mad at me, but I frown and question him anyway. “Why do I have to leave?”
“Because the maid of honor and I have some wedding plans to discuss,” he says, not missing a beat. “I’d totally let you stay if you weren’t the bride but...alas, you are.”
“Fine, fine,” I say, pushing myself out of Jace’s lap. “Don’t take too long. I’m starving.”
“Love ya,” Becca says, grinning like a goofball.
I make a big show of slumping out of the room and into my bedroom. I think seriously about pressing my ear to the door to eavesdrop on any information I can overhear, but then Jace is one step ahead of me. He turns up the volume on the television until all I can hear is an incredibly loud episode of The Simpsons.
While I wait, I slip into the closet and admire my wedding dress. It stays locked up in a black garment bag, but sometimes when Jace isn’t around, I take it out and stare at it on the hanger. I’m too scared to touch it or mess with it, so I leave it on the hanger. The last thing I need is to smudge dirt on it, or snag it on a hangnail or rip off sparkles or something.
As I stare at the folds of fabric, I try to imagine myself wearing the gown in exactly six days from now. My hair will be fixed, my makeup will be flawless. I stare down at my raggedy nails–I’ve been neglecting my cuticles like crazy. But soon, they’ll also be perfectly manicured. I will be all fixed up and painted and primed into the most beautiful version of myself.
Then I’ll get to marry Jace.
This is all so freaking surreal.
“Knock, knock,” Jace says from somewhere just outside of the closet. “Are you staring at your wedding dress again?”
“Yes! Go away!” I shout, frantically grabbing the garment bag and zipping it closed. “You can’t see it!”
I hear him slump against the wall next to the closet door. “That thing must be really pretty with how often you stare at it.”
“It is,” I say, emerging from the closet and shutting the door quickly behind me. “It is absolutely stunning. And I don’t look at it that much.”
“Yeah right,” he says with a little psh. “You look at that dress more than you look at me.”
“That’s because it’s clean and smells good,” I snap back.
“Ouch,” he says, grabbing me by the waist. “Why you gotta be so mean?”
“You think I’m mean? I’ll show you mean.” I grab the neckline of my tank top and pull it down low, squeezing my elbows together at the same time so it makes my cleavage burst out. “I bet you want to touch these,” I tease, taking a step backward.
Jace’s eyes light up. “Touch them? I want to bury my face into them.”
“Oh you do?” I say slowly, leaning forward just a bit, getting my breasts ever-so-close to Jace’s now outstretched hands. He nods and wiggles his eyebrows at me. Then I stand up straight and let my shirt rise back into place. “Too bad. We have to go to dinner now.”
“Oh my God, you’re so mean to me,” he groans, his voice raspy with desire.
“Told ya,” I say, poking him in the stomach.
During dinner, Becca and I are a nonstop chatterbox of wedding talk. Jace doesn’t add much to the conversation. He doesn’t talk at all unless he’s asking the server for more root beer. I know he’s worried about Park, so I don’t call him out on being quiet. I just let him have time to himself to think. Besides, Becca and I have enough to talk about to keep us entertained all night.
“Okay, so,” Becca says, setting down her fork and splaying out her hand. She points to her thumb as she begins listing things. “Invitations are done and replied to, Cupcake cake is ordered, food is ordered, music is done, we all have our dresses and tuxedos…” She trails off when she reaches her pinky.
I pick up where she left off. “We’re getting flowers the day of, from some apparently awesome floral shop that I’m not allowed to know. And decorations have been either stored at our apartment or Mom’s house and you guys will have it set up beforehand since I still can’t see the venue of my own wedding.” I say that last part sarcastically enough to make Jace look up from his plate. He winks and then goes back to eating.
“Oh I almost forgot,” Becca says. “We also have to make that ring box from Pinterest.”
“What is Pinterest?” Jace asks.
We both look at him as if he’s missing a head or just sprouted a third eye. “You’re joking, right? We talk about it all the time.”
He shakes his head. “Ya’ll talk about everything all the time. There’s no way I can keep up.”
“Pinterest is that website with all the images in little squares. I’m constantly showing you stuff on it.”
“Ahh, okay.” Jace nods. “That’s a cool website.”
“Yeah it is,” Becca says. “We’ve pretty much planned her whole wedding with it.”
Jace startles suddenly and slides his chair back from the table. He reaches
into his pocket and takes out his phone, squinting when he sees the number calling him. “Nine sixteen. That’s a Sacramento area code,” he says right before the swipes and answers the call.
Becca’s eyes widen and we stare at each other in hopeful anticipation. My stomach crawls up into my throat as I listen to Jace’s end of the conversation.
“Hey, man. I’m glad you’re not dead.”
Relief floods over me, followed by more dread. If Park is alive and well, then why didn’t he show up? What’s if it’s because for some reason he doesn’t want to be in our wedding?
Jace’s features darken. “No shit. What the hell? How many people?”
Becca and I glance at each other. The moments that stretch between Jace’s replies seem to take hours instead of seconds. “I’m so sorry, man. Take care of yourself, okay? Seriously, don’t worry about us, worry about yourself first and we’ll see how you feel in a week.”
When he hangs up the call, Becca and I stare at him, but don’t dare ask him for information. Luckily, he tells us anyway. “Park was jumped on the way to the airport. A group of three guys. They stole his phone, his wallet, and his truck.”
“Holy shit,” Becca says. “Is he okay?”
“They bashed him with a baseball bat, he said. But he said he was okay, just bruised. Said one of the guys had a gun so he didn’t really fight back.” When Jace glances at me, I can tell he’s seeking support. Someone to tell him it’s going to be okay. And I wonder if this is what married life is like–having each other’s back for every situation, and just knowing what the other person wants you to say.
I wrap my arm around his and lean my head on his shoulder. “The good news is that he’s okay. It’s better that his stuff got stolen than his life, you know? I’m sure he has insurance and stuff for his truck.”
“Yeah, he does,” Jace says. “He’s not worried about all of that. He said he can’t get on an airplane without identification and he’s not sure how quickly the DMV can get him a new driver’s license.”
The Beginning of Forever (Summer Unplugged Book 5) Page 12