by Howe, Violet
"I'm hanging in there." I declined to mention I'd lost nine pounds in the past week, hadn't had solid food since last Monday, and had cried so much I'd acquired what seemed to be a permanent fog filter over my vision.
We were both silent for a long pause, and then we spoke at the same time.
"Go ahead," Cabe said.
"No, no. You go."
We were silent again, and then we both spoke together again. We laughed, and I told him I would listen and he should go first.
"I need to talk to you about something. Could we meet somewhere?"
My heart screamed ‘Yes!’ pretty much before he finished asking, but my battered self-defense system shrieked ‘Oh hell no!’ in the back of my head. I paused to decide which voice to go with.
"Ty?"
My heart won out. "Yeah. Where do you wanna meet?"
He picked a restaurant near my house, one we'd been to several times. I went home first to change clothes, but I couldn't decide on an appropriate outfit for the occasion. I don’t own heart-protecting armor or a straitjacket.
He looked awful, and I'm not just saying that because I was hoping he would. There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, his hair was tangled mess, and his shirt looked like he'd slept in it. For days. He was seated at the bar, and he rose to give me a half-assed hug when I walked up to him.
"Hey, Ty. You okay?"
I glared at him and swallowed the vile string of words that came to mind in answer. Why would I be okay, jerk? You broke up with me a week ago, haven't called since then, and now you casually ask if I'm okay?
I liked the strength the anger gave me, so I decided to try and focus on that instead of throwing myself in his arms and begging him to never let go.
They seated us right away, and we both stared at the menu and laid it aside.
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Nope."
"Me neither. So I guess I'll get right to it. I'm not sure what to do with this, but I got the travel packet for Paris on Friday."
My heart fluttered, and my stomach flipped. I'd forgotten all about Paris. How does anyone forget about Paris? Tears sprang to my eyes, and I dabbed at them with the linen napkin as he talked.
"I need to know what you wanna do. Do you want me to cancel the whole thing? Do you want to take someone else? I'll pay to transfer my tickets over."
The napkin proved completely ineffective at keeping the steady stream of tears from seeping down my face. "I don't want to go with anyone else."
"Okay. I'll tell her to cancel it then."
I nodded and swallowed hard. "Will you be able to get your money back?"
"I don't know. Don't worry about that. It's my problem."
I nodded again and more tears flowed. Was this why he called? To tell me he would cancel the trip? Did I need to know that? Did he really think I would just up and take someone else on our trip to Paris? I grabbed hold of the anger and used it to push myself from the table and stand up. "I can't do this, Cabe. I'm gonna go."
He followed me to my car. He walked silently behind me, his presence pulling the pressure from the air around me like a storm system. He grabbed my elbow as I reached the car door, spinning me to face him and lifting me into his arms and against his mouth before I knew what was happening.
His lips covered mine, rough and demanding, as his tongue plundered and his hips pushed me back against the car. I clung to the front of his shirt, hanging on for dear life as my knees weakened and my heart soared. Just when I thought I may actually pass out, he released my mouth and held me tight against his chest.
"I'm sorry, Ty. I'm so sorry."
I stood motionless, afraid if I moved he would pull away and the moment would be gone. I could have stood there forever. Cabe's arms around me, his voice against my hair, his heart beating against mine. Both pounding faster than I ever thought possible.
"It kills me to see you in pain, Ty. I'm sorry. I don't know what to do. I can't stand being away from you."
His voice cracked, and I looked up. Tears shimmered in his eyes and one huge drop rolled slowly down his cheek as he looked toward the sky. My shattered, wounded heart exploded into a million jagged pieces.
"Then don't," I pleaded, my voice so quiet I'm surprised he heard me at all.
More tears rolled as he shook his head. "I know I need to slow this down. That makes sense in my head, but my heart just wants to be with you. I'm sorry."
He leaned forward and kissed me again, slower this time. Gentler. The tip of his tongue rolled against mine, and any straggling shreds of anger I had mustered up before deserted me. But I had to ask the question raging in my head.
"So what do we do now?"
He brushed my hair behind my ear and caressed my cheek. "I don't know." His eyes were clouded, troubled, and I feared he might turn and walk away at any minute.
I struggled to think of a solution. Anything to keep him from bolting and shutting me out again.
"Well, let's slow it down if that's what you need."
He sighed and let his head flop forward to meet mine. "Can we do that? Are we able to see each other and talk to each other without it going all nuts?"
I didn't know what he meant by nuts, but I didn't really care as long as I could see him and talk to him.
"I don't see why not. Just communicate with me, dude. Let me know what the hell's going on in your head."
He nodded and swallowed, his Adam's apple rolling against the collar of his shirt. Amazing what weird-ass details you notice when you're trying to freeze everything happening and commit it to memory.
"You have no idea what you do to me, girl."
I had no response for that. The way he said it could have gone either way as to a good effect or a bad one. He let go of me and dropped his hands down to hold mine. His thumbs slowly caressed the backs of my hands, and I shivered at the sensations it caused.
"You're cold. Here, get in your car. I'm sorry. I should have realized it was cold out here." He kissed me once more and then brought each of my hands to his lips as well. "Have a good night, Buttercup."
I wish I could have told him I wasn't cold at all. In fact, quite the opposite.
He opened my car door and waited until I was buckled in before shutting it. He backed away, and his eyes didn't leave mine until he was dangerously close to bumping into another car across the parking lane.
I feel numb now. Like I should be relieved or happy or something. I mean, he wants to see me. To talk to me. He obviously wants to kiss me. But we're not okay.
Friday, February 7th
I am so damned confused. I have no idea what to do about this man.
We had that tearful, sappy-ass moment in the parking lot of the restaurant Tuesday night where he asked if we could slow things down, and then he ends up coming over the past two nights.
What the hell?
Am I supposed to be policing our speed limit? Should I be telling him to stay at home and reminding him he had a problem with everything moving too fast?
Wednesday he called to say he had free movie tickets for an advanced screening. Then last night he called to say his buddy Dean had brought him a bunch of shrimp from the coast and asked if I wanted to boil shrimp and cook together.
Luckily, I have a rehearsal dinner and dessert party I'm helping Chaz with tonight and then the wedding tomorrow night. Otherwise I may have to say, "Look dude, for someone who wants to slow down, you sure are showing up a lot."
Not that I'm complaining. Not at all. I don't mind him being here everyday. I don't want to go anywhere near the pain I felt last week without him. But that's exactly the reason I'm concerned. If he keeps coming over every night, isn't he just going to wig out again like he did last time?
I'd rather see him less than not see him at all. So should I say something?
It's so nerve-wracking. Like I'm scared I'm going to make a mistake or do something wrong and he's going to bolt. I'm on edge, and I have so many questions I want to ask him, but I don't dare.
Not yet.
Saturday, February 8th
Let me just start by saying I don't think Chaz Bryant could plan his way out of a paper bag. Why that man has the title of Senior Event Planner is beyond my understanding. I get that he worked with Lillian back in her hotel days, and they're tight. But I swear he couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a flashlight. Even if Lillian has blinders on when it comes to Chaz, I don't see how Laura could possibly not see through him. They're equal partners and owners in the business. Shouldn't both of them need to approve of an employee?
Oh, he's a charmer and a half in the office, though. Sugar wouldn't melt in his mouth he's so sweet. I've never seen anyone so skilled in the finer arts of ass-kissery. He can't trip over himself fast enough to bring Lillian her tea every morning, or to drop the latest Vera Bradley bag on Laura's desk. He volunteers for coffee runs, brings in brownies he supposedly bakes himself, and he is an absolute whiz at creating complex PowerPoint demonstrations for the various plans and ideas he proposes. Of course, I'd like to point out that if he was actually servicing his clients and taking care of the necessary paperwork for their weddings, he wouldn't have time to be doing PowerPoints and running out for coffee. He'd be sitting at his desk working like the rest of us.
I cannot even count the number of times I have covered for that imbecile on wedding days. Like the time he forgot to send the limo company the itinerary and I had to call up a driver on his day off and beg him to come pick up the wedding party. Or the day he forgot to order a cake and I talked the bakery supervisor at Publix into giving me a display cake to use with a real bottom layer for the bride and groom to cut into and a sheet cake in the back to serve to guests. Or the time he failed to realize the menu cards Charlotte printed in the office had the wrong groom's name on them and I had to scramble to run to Staples and pay a fortune to have more printed. (Which, by the way, I just realized I forgot to expense. Dang it!)
But today, today just took the cake and the plate it was sitting on. He had a huge wedding ceremony planned at a nature park in Orlando, a ludicrous location for such a large party since there's no rain back-up. But Chaz doesn't like confrontation, so he didn't want to talk the bride out of it. The forecast this morning said thirty percent chance of rain, so we should have been fine. But sure enough, just as the rental company finished unloading the ceremony chairs, the sky darkened and the wind picked up. We had an hour and half to go, plenty of time to call the wedding to a back-up location if we had one. The hallmark of good planning is to always have a Plan B. Especially when you have an outdoor ceremony location and the B stands for back-up.
Did I mention Chaz had no back-up?
I was pinning on corsages and distributing bouquets in the bride's dressing room at the reception hall when the videographer came in and asked to speak with me. I excused myself and followed him into the hallway.
"You might want to head over to the ceremony site and check on your buddy."
"What do you mean? My buddy?"
"Um, yeah. Chase or Chaz or whatever his name is. He's crying in the men's room and refusing to come out."
"What?" I immediately dialed Chaz's cell phone but it went straight to voice mail. "Did he say what was wrong?"
The videographer shook his head and chuckled. "He mumbled something, but I couldn't make it out. He's sitting on the floor in the men's room. Just thought you should know."
"Okay, thanks." I told the bride I needed to check on a few things and then promptly broke several traffic laws to get to the ceremony site as quickly as possible.
The temperature had dropped noticeably between the time I got in my car and the time I got out ten minutes later. Trees swayed to and fro at the mercy of the wind, and loose limbs and branches torpedoed through the air like projectile missiles as dark clouds swirled and churned above the treetops. The cold air sat damp and heavy on my skin, and I could tell it wouldn't be long before the sky could no longer contain the moisture and it would have to open up.
I tried Chaz's cell phone again with the same result. I got no answer to my knock on the men's room door, so I glanced around to find any available male to send in for reconnaissance. There wasn't a soul in sight, and time being of the essence, I had no choice but to barge in. I did hold my hand up to shield my eyes just in case someone occupied it other than a tearful Chaz.
I found him just as the videographer said I would. Sitting on the bathroom floor with his back against the wall between two urinals, his head bowed in his hands.
"Chaz?" I asked, carefully looking around to make sure we were alone. The two stall doors were closed with no feet visible beneath, so I dropped my hand shield and relaxed.
I tried to kneel beside him, which pretty much put my face at eye level with the basin of the urinal, so I stood back up and bent at the waist. Which also put my face closer to a urinal than I've ever thought it would be. I stifled a cough at the stench of urine and air freshener and called his name again.
He didn't look up at me, but when I spoke he started crying again. Mumbling something about the rain, weddings, and how he should have taken the job offer in Colorado.
I bit the bullet and knelt on the bathroom floor, praying the impending wedding had prompted the custodians to mop and my bare knees wouldn't catch some terrible bathroom fungus.
"Chaz, buddy, what's wrong? Did something happen?"
Now, let me just add here I am not a cold and heartless person. If I truly thought something was wrong with Chaz, or that something terrible had happened to him, I would have been showing the compassion, empathy, and concern it warranted. But from the moment the videographer told me Chaz was crying in the men's room, I knew what was going on. I've seen him sit on the floor and cry before. Any time life, or work, or responsibility became overwhelming. Which happened more often than you might think with Chaz.
He looked up at me, his face red and splotchy, his eyes puffy and swollen with tears. "I can't, Tyler. I can't. It's going to rain. It's going to pour. It's never rained on one of my weddings before."
"Never?" I asked, sure he was exaggerating.
"No! Never! I don't know what to do. I can't tell her. I can't. I never should have taken this job. I had a job offer, for more money even, out in Colorado at a big ski resort. But I hate snow. I hate cold. I couldn't leave Florida. And now it's going to rain." He wailed loudly and buried his face in his hands again.
I rubbed my hand across my face and resisted the urge to tell him to man up and get his ass off the bathroom floor.
"Chaz, honey. We can't do anything about the rain, but we can figure out another way to have the ceremony. It'll be fine."
"No, it won't! She wanted her wedding in the gardens, surrounded by nature and blue skies. Now it's all ruined. Her pictures won't be as pretty, and her guests won't see her walking down the pathway through the trees. I just can't." Sobs overcame him again, wearing my patience thin. I mean, you would have thought he was the bride, and it was his wedding that was ruined.
"Did you really say it's never rained on one of your weddings? How is that even possible?"
"I know. It's crazy. But I've just had this incredible luck, and it's never happened. I always tell my brides they'll have sunny weather because it doesn't rain on my weddings."
He sniffled, and I got up to get him a handful of paper towels. I tried not to gag as he blew a mountain of snot from his nose and wiped his tears.
"Until today, buddy. 'Cause it's gonna rain. No doubt about it. In fact, it may be raining already, so you've got to pull yourself together. That bride is counting on you to have a plan in place. It sucks, but we have no control over the weather. We have to work with what we can control. If she sees you falling apart, how the hell is she going to hold it together? You need to be calm and tell her everything will be okay. She needs to believe you."
He tossed the nasty tissue in the trashcan but made no move to get up.
"You don't understand, Tyler. I'm not cut out for this. This ain't my thing. I never wanted t
o be a wedding planner. I didn't want to deal with crazy brides and their emotions and their expectations. I can't do this."
I squatted beside him and sighed. "Chaz, we all feel like that sometimes. This job carries a lot of responsibility. A lot of stress. It's kind of like the pack mule position, ya know? We don't bake the cake, we don't play the music, and we don't make the bouquets. But if any of it goes wrong—even the weather—we get blamed for it. It's just the nature of the business. But you wouldn't be this upset if you didn't care about the bride and her special day. Look, we do whatever we can to make it absolutely perfect. But when something goes wrong, the bride depends on us to be behind the scenes fixing it or working around it. Making it right. You owe it to your bride to get up and figure out the next best thing for her. So she doesn't get the gardens and the blue skies! What else can we do to make it just as memorable and just as fantastic?"
He cocked his head to the side and arched a thin eyebrow. "Tyler, there ain't a thing you or I can do to make this mess fantastic. We have no ceremony back-up. We're screwed."
Oh, how badly I wanted to tell him that we weren't screwed. He was screwed because he believed his own hype and didn't book a back-up plan. But we're a team. A reluctant team, but a team. My mind had already been churning all the possibilities since last night when I found out today's forecast and learned he had no back-up. I tossed out my best idea to him.
"Okay. The reception hall has a stage on one end. Let's just have the caterer adjust the tables to give us a center aisle, and we'll go ahead and seat all the guests at the tables and have the ceremony on the stage. We have about an hour before ceremony time, so if we call the caterer now, they should be able to have all the tables set with linens. They can always place silverware and water glasses after the guests are seated if need be. Wine glasses can be poured and passed. So we just need to get the florist to move everything from here to there, and we need to have someone stationed here to direct arriving guests over to the reception area. Maybe a park staff member could do that for us. I'll call the minister and let him know. He's probably already in the parking lot, actually. I saw the violinist in her car, so I'll tell her on my way out. I've got to try to find the chair guys to get them to load those chairs before they get soaked. Now, you have to get up off your ass and dry your tears so you can go present a big ole smile to the bride and let her know the new plan."