The Wedding Beat

by Devan Sipher

  The paramedics were quickly at my side, carrying me to the gurney. There was blood—I wasn’t sure whose—on my hands. I wiped my arm across my mouth and it came away with more blood. That pretty much answered the question.

  “Melinda,” I called out as I was wheeled away. There was so much I wanted to say. So many things I wanted to explain. “I’m sorry for messing up your wedding.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Sanity Is in the Eye of the Beholder

  The siren continued to blare as we careened through the streets of the city. I lay on the gurney, painfully aware of each bump in the road. Hope stabbed me with the third needle in as many minutes, and Liam moved his camera in for a close-up.

  “Will you turn that thing off?” I grunted.

  He shook his head.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “That’s good,” he said. “Show some emotion. The lying-inert stuff’s kind of lame.”

  Hope shushed him. He turned the camera on her, and she blushed. “Don’t get Gavin riled up,” she said, talking like I wasn’t there. “I just gave him a sedative.”

  “I don’t need a sedative,” I said, “and I don’t need to go to the hospital.” I tried to sit up, but a crippling pain in my side convinced me to abandon that plan of action.

  “Hulk Hogan here’s ready to go another round,” said Liam.

  My phone rang, and I fumbled with it. My fingers were moving in slow motion, but I was determined to answer in anticipation of hearing Melinda’s voice.

  “Gavin, why didn’t you return your brother’s calls?” It wasn’t Melinda. “He said he left you three messages about potential wedding venues.” Ever since Gary and Leslie announced their engagement, my mother had become their unofficial event coordinator. The surprising part was that Leslie claimed to be enjoying her help.

  “They’re thinking about getting married in New York, and you’re the expert. Why do I hear a siren?”

  “I’m kind of in an ambulance.” I braced myself for a shriek that didn’t come.

  “Did you have an accident?”

  The simplest answer was “Yes.” Still no shriek. “I’m fine,” I added.

  “Make sure the doctors know you’re allergic to chlorine.”

  “I don’t think they’ll be taking me swimming.”

  I thought I heard her laugh, but it could have been the drugs.

  “Will you call me from the hospital?” Her voice was calm. And soothing. I’d forgotten how good she always was at dealing with emergencies. When I was a kid, I had broken arms and I had totaled cars, one time simultaneously, and she was Supermom, riding to the rescue without question or complaint.

  “I’ll call,” I heard myself promising.

  “I love you, Gavin,” she said before hanging up. Those were precisely the words I wanted to hear. I just wished there was someone other than my mother saying them to me.

  I turned to Hope as a dark thought percolated in my groggy mind. “You don’t think Melinda will go through with the wedding, do you?”

  I could hear Alexander begging for forgiveness. Worse, Melinda offering it. I watched them walk down the bloodstained aisle. Then I opened my eyes.

  There were fluorescent lights overhead, and daylight streamed in through a small window. I was in a hospital bed, attached to an IV. I had a throbbing headache. I went to rub behind my ear and found gauze wrapped around my head. There was more wrapped around my rib cage.

  A young nursing student stood at the foot of my bed, holding my chart. She smiled at me and said, “You just missed your girlfriend.”

  I saw Hope’s writing on a Post-it note beside the bed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  The note said “Good morning, Hulk. I’ll come by again on my break.”

  I noticed she had also left me a get-well-soon card. I opened it up. “They don’t really make an appropriate greeting for this kind of situation, but I hope you feel better.” It was signed “Melinda.”

  I bolted up in the bed, ignoring my body’s protestations. “When did she leave?” I asked the nursing student.

  “Who?”

  “Melinda,” I nearly shouted. No response. “My girlfriend.”

  “You said she wasn’t your girlfriend.”

  “Did you see someone leave this card?” I waved it spastically.

  “I just told you, she walked out about a minute before you woke up.”

  I swung my legs out of the bed.

  “What are you doing?” she asked me.

  I grabbed the IV stand and headed for the door.

  “Get back in bed.”

  That wasn’t about to happen. But neither was running down the hallway. A piercing pain made me grab hold of my right side.

  “You have two broken ribs and cranial contusions,” she scolded while nervously shadowing me. “Where are you going?”

  I wished I knew. I half shuffled, half stumbled down the hallway. Until I came to a crossroads. Well, cross corridors. Melinda could have gone any of three directions.

  “I’m going to call security,” the nurse threatened.

  Melinda had a head start on me, and she wasn’t tethered to a medical apparatus. Two orderlies approached, looking ready to tackle me. It was time to turn around.

  And there she was. In the doorway of my room.

  If I couldn’t run, I could at least hobble at an accelerated pace. Melinda didn’t back away at the sight of a rampaging bandaged man dragging an IV stand. She was smiling the way I remembered when I first saw her. And then she was in my arms.

  It was the moment I’d been dreaming of for months, the kind I’d seen in cheesy films where a camera pirouettes around a couple as violins swell. Our lips eagerly met and our bodies melded together as I held her to me. Aside from the hospital gown and abdominal pain, it was everything I could have wished for.

  Minutes passed. Maybe millennia. My fingers massaged a soft spot between her shoulder blades as we momentarily paused to catch our breath.

  “I haven’t forgiven you,” she said quietly. “I don’t know if I ever can.”

  The violins squealed to a halt.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate knowing Alexander is a lying bastard. I just find it hard to believe that an experienced reporter couldn’t have found a better time and place to inform me.”

  I nodded my head. Though the movement came with a sharp pain. I couldn’t really dispute her point.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, moving in to kiss her again. Things were going much better when we were kissing.

  “Why weren’t you attracted to me before my wedding?” she said, pulling away.

  “I was attracted to you from the moment we met.”

  “That’s what you say now.”

  “I wanted to say it to you then.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  I was going to regret that for the rest of my life.

  “I’m sorry about that too.” I took her hand in both of mine and traced the contours of her palm. When I looked up there were tears in her eyes.

  She withdrew her hand and wiped at her eyes. “I came here to say good-bye.” That’s when I noticed the large rucksack propped against the door. “I have a nonrefundable ticket to Thailand, and I decided to still use it.”

  I didn’t know how I was going to convince her of my sincerity if she was on the other side of the planet, but I was going to be supportive if it killed me. And it felt like it might, given how much my body was aching. “Getting some time to yourself sounds like a good thing.”

  “Jamie’s going with me,” she said, looking away. “Then we’re heading back to Nepal. Going to volunteer at the same orphanage I worked at a year ago. Also do some more research for my book. Might also spend some time in India. We’re going to play things by ear.”

  My headache was getting worse, and I wasn’t entirely following what she was saying.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be coming back.”

  That part I understood.

  “
I’m sorry, Gavin, but I just don’t want to deal with …”

  “Me?” I asked. My head and ribs pulsated in syncopated spasms, and I had to sit down on the bed.

  “What you did last night was the most humiliating thing anyone’s ever done to me.” She came toward me, and I anticipated getting slapped again. Instead, she kissed me. On the lips. “And maybe the most wonderful.”

  She picked her pack off the floor as she ran out of the room, and, once again, she was gone.

  Epilogue

  Another Week, Another Wedding

  The downtown skyline glistened across the harbor as I waited alone at a sun-bleached driftwood bar in the August heat.

  “Gin and tonic,” said the bartender, handing me the filled-to-the-brim glass.

  I focused on keeping my hands steady and making it back to my table with the contents of the tumbler intact. Walking barefoot in the warm sand, it didn’t feel like I was at a wedding, which was precisely what Gary and Leslie had in mind.

  Leslie, a New York native, had wanted a city wedding but without the expense or formality. So it was lobster rolls and fried clams at the Water Taxi Beach, an urban oasis on an island off the tip of Manhattan reached by canary yellow speedboat taxis.

  “Gavin,” Hope called to me, with Liam by her side. “I was so touched when your parents said they considered me part of your family.”

  “As opposed to scared?” I asked.

  She ignored me. “It was very nice of them to include me, and thanks for getting Liam an invite.”

  “Does this mean I now have to do your laundry?” he asked me.

  He owed me a lot more than laundry. My life had become a public Rorschach test since his video of Melinda’s wedding went viral. Everyone from The Huffington Post to The Daily Show had weighed in on my antics. The notoriety killed my short-lived career at Today. They dropped me before they even aired my first piece.

  Fortunately, there’s a place that welcomes the radioactive casualties of tabloid fame. They call that place Fox Broadcasting Company. Within a week, Liam and I were asked to be co-producers of a new reality show, Brides Gone Bad.

  I was only a little jealous that he also got a girlfriend out of the deal, but he seemed to be a good match for Hope. Before they headed toward the bar, she asked, “Did you know he used to work for Reporters Without Borders?”

  They strolled off arm in arm, and I quickened my pace, smiling at distant relatives and trying not to seem agitated.

  “Could I have everyone’s attention?” It was Gary, holding the DJ’s microphone while standing on the beachfront dance floor. I felt obligated to stop where I was.

  “We’re obviously not big on tradition,” said my brother. With his open-collared shirt and linen pants rolled to his knees, he looked more like a J.Crew ad than a bridegroom. “But I wanted to say a few words about this amazing woman I just married.” Leslie blushed, her white sundress billowing in the light breeze. “As Adam Sandler said in 50 First Dates, ‘Love is not a feeling. It’s an ability.’”

  “It wasn’t Adam Sandler,” Leslie interjected. “It was Steve Carell in Dan in Real Life.”

  “No, it wasn’t Steve Carell,” said Gary. “It was the girl who played his daughter.”

  “It wasn’t the daughter. It was the daughter’s boyfriend.”

  “To hell with the speech,” he said. As he swept her into his sunburned arms, the Beach Boys crooned in recorded harmony, “God only knows what I’d be without you.”

  Watching them together, I felt a familiar yearning. I hurried toward the picnic table where my family was seated, putting the dripping drink down on a napkin.

  Melinda looked up at me with a grateful smile.

  I wanted to remember forever the way she looked with the late-day light bathing her face in golden shadows. But I wanted to remember every moment with her. Spending even a few minutes away from her, getting a drink, made me eager to return to her side.

  She was wearing a coral-colored sarong she had brought back from Nepal, and as I sat down, I let my fingers linger along the curve of her bare arm. Her grandfather winked at me. Or I should say Max. Since that’s what he insisted I call him. Gary had invited him as a favor to me and as potential company for our grandmother, but she had barely spoken to him.

  “How about we trip the light fantastic?” Max asked her, rising to his feet.

  “I don’t think that would be appropriate,” she replied, smoothing her black cotton dress.

  “Mom, who cares what’s appropriate?” my mother said. “It’s a beautiful summer day.”

  “Enjoy it,” my father added as he helped my mother up from the table.

  My parents had turned into aliens. Friendly, cuddly aliens. All weekend they’d been holding hands and giggling. It was freaking me out.

  “I don’t know.” My grandmother was wavering.

  “I’m asking for a dance, not a date,” Max teased.

  “Well, then, you’re not very ambitious,” she shot back, gingerly taking his arm.

  “Is there a reason we’re the only ones still sitting?” Melinda asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m a terrible dancer.”

  “That’s a terrible excuse.” She got up and led me to the dance floor. Watching the sway of her shoulders and the swish of her hips, I was a happy man.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to live together?” sang the Beach Boys, and as the medley continued I took Melinda’s hand in mine, the way I had done so briefly the day we had met.

  “Your parents are sweet,” she said.

  “Those aren’t my parents.”

  “Well, whoever they are, I like them.”

  I pulled her close, trying to hide my lack of any discernible sense of rhythm.

  “And I like this song.”

  I murmured my agreement, whispering in her ear, “Anything else you like?”

  “A little more each day.”

  Kissing her was easy. The hard part was not stepping on her toes. There were so many couples around us. Moving to the same music. Melinda pressed against me, and I could feel the beat.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank everyone who ever said yes.

  There is so much opportunity for rejection in life. Especially as a writer. So I can’t overemphasize the debt I feel toward every person who has ever offered me encouragement.

  High on that list is Danielle Perez at Penguin, who took a chance on a first-time novelist. As did my agent, Deborah Schneider, who has been my wise and steadfast companion on this journey.

  I want to thank my parents for having faith in me and supporting my choices. My brother for telling me to write whatever I want and for meaning it. And my grandmother for being an inspiration (in real life she’s ninety-five and does indeed run every morning).

  I dislike when authors thank long lists of people most readers have never heard of, so please forgive what follows. But these are some wonderful writers whose names may soon be on your bookshelves or electronic devices—if they’re not already. They’ve shared their talent, taste and patience through my countless rewrites and kept their sense of humor every time I asked, “Is this better, worse or exactly the same?” (It’s amazing how many ways you can make something “exactly the same.”)

  So thank you to Stacey Luftig, Badria Jazairi, Jami Bernard, Stephen Gaydos, Kimberlee Auerbach Berlin, Andrea York, Frank Basloe, Nina Dec, Wendy Shanker, Amy Welsh-Hanning, Adam Szymkowicz, Janis Brody, Amy Klein, Anne Newgarden, and the entire Sunday writing group. And special thanks to Susan Shapiro (who will turn to this page before reading the rest of the book) for pushing and prodding and being the big sister I never had (and didn’t always want).

  There’s an additional list of people, without whom this book simply wouldn’t exist, starting with Robert Woletz at the Times, whose generosity as an editor and a person is matched only by his impeccable judgment. Thanks to Heidi Giovine and Erika Sommer, without whom I never would have worked at the Times in the first place, and to Lois Smith B
rady for setting an impossibly high standard in the art of writing wedding columns.

  To the extraordinary Elizabeth Hayes for believing I had this book in me long before I did. To Rich Green for believing it could be a movie. To Ken Sandler, the Medici of the medical advertising world, and Jean Banks at BMI for supporting me all these years (and to the late Allan Becker for championing a twenty-three-year-old kid with a big dream).

  To Julia Fleischaker, Erin Galloway, Katie McGowan, Cathy Gleason, Victoria Marini, Rosalind Parry and Adrian Garcia for all their effort on my behalf.

  To Ruth Andrew Ellenson, Julie Doughty, Nicki Wheir and Kelly Macmanus for not only offering but coming through with vital help when it was needed most.

  To June Cuddy, Vincent Mallozzi, LeAnn Wilcox and Nadine Brozan for welcoming me into the fraternity at 229 West Forty-third Street and educating me in its ways.

  To Dr. Bruce Yaffe, Dr. Craig Antell and Dr. Sandra Engelson for keeping me healthy.

  And to Stacey Luftig and Badria Jazairi for keeping me sane.

  There are so many more people in my life, both personal and professional, who have offered crucial support and made me the writer (and person) I am today. However, as Gavin says in the book, “Everything in life is a choice.” And I’m choosing to stop.

  READERS GUIDE

  Questions for Discussion

  1. The Wedding Beat begins with a cry of “Help!” as Gavin Greene contends he’s being held captive at a black-tie wedding. However, Gavin is both a skeptic and a romantic—sometimes in the same paragraph—and his romantic nature wins out time and again. What was it like reading a male’s perspective on romance? Can you think of other fictional male protagonists who are romantics? Is this a trait you expect more from a female character? How did you feel about a man sharing his inner feelings and vulnerabilities about dating?