by Botts, Liz
Chapter Twenty-‐-two
For the pre wedding luncheon, Mom had reserved a room in a local Mexican restaurant that Grandma loved for their strange-‐-
flavored margaritas.
Grandma insisted on ordering me and Hayley our own virgin cotton candy margaritas. They tasted awful. It was literally like pouring flavored high fructose corn syrup into my mouth. Still, Grandma looked so pleased with herself that Hayley and I struggled through the drinks, taking a tiny sip here and there, followed by a long swig of water. The waitress got so sick of us asking for water refills that she eventually brought each of us a pitcher of our own.
By the time the other guests arrived, I was pretty sure my teeth were beyond rotted. Somehow, everyone had gotten off work or school for this auspicious occasion. While Grandma ordered the appetizers—Nachos Ole, also known as chips with cheese, although Grandma insisted on replacing the tortilla chips with Cheetos and some meat dish that sounded like we would be breathing fire after eating it—I got a text from Josh asking how things were going. I texted back about the drinks and the appetizers. When he replied with a howling, laughing emoticon, I knew I’d have to keep a running commentary going for the rest of the luncheon.
I settled back to wait for the games and the speeches. Hayley didn’t look much inclined to join in the boisterous conversation going around the table either. I worried briefly that we were experiencing some negative side effects from the cotton candy virgin margaritas. Then I wondered if Grandma had really ordered them without alcohol after all, which definitely seemed like a possibility knowing Grandma.
The restaurant began to fill up with lunch patrons, and the noise of the main dining area began to spill into our cozy private room, creating a real party atmosphere. Someone turned on some rollicking fiesta music, and soon Grandma and Duke were up dancing a polka, wildly out of time with the music. I captured a twenty second video and sent it to Josh.
While I waited for his reply, I snuck a glance at Mom and Aunt Mel, both were smiling a little wistfully at Grandma. I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe they were beginning to see what I was seeing in Duke. He made our normally vivacious Grandma completely effervescent in her abandon for living. She really did love him, and as weird as it was, he totally loved her.
Maybe it was just because I was in love now, but I had no idea why it hadn’t been so readily apparent to me before.
I leaned over to Hayley and whispered my thoughts to her, and she nodded in reply, tears shimmering in her pretty hazel eyes.
That’s when I became sure that Grandma had essentially spiked our virgin margaritas. I texted my thoughts to Josh, careful to be somewhat selective in my word choice given the fact that he was at school and you never could tell who might be reading over his shoulder.
Just as my phone vibrated with his reply, the door to our private room flew open, and Harlow waltzed in. Talk about trying to arrive fashionably late. She made sure that everyone noticed her before she actually entered the room. There was an empty seat by me and one by Duke, and as jerky as it sounds, I sent a thousand small prayers out into the universe that she’d choose the seat next to Duke. Miracle of all miracles, she did. Duke gave her a polite smile and turned back to his conversation with Grandma about dryer sheet brands because, apparently, there was no better time to discuss the various changes that would occur after they started living together full time. Grandma sounded so domestic. I thought it was cute.
Harlow seemed to realize that no one was paying her the least bit of attention, and I could tell that was bothering her. Maybe it was my slightly woozy, tipsy state, or maybe it was my newfound bravery, but it bugged me enough to mention it to Hayley. We both watched as Harlow glanced around the table with her fierce determination trying to figure out who to target with either her faux adoration or her very real wrath. I averted my gaze and assumed Hayley was doing the same, before her eyes swept over us.
She barely missed a beat before she settled on poor Duke.
“Can you pass the menu?” She asked sweetly, tapping him on the shoulder.
He handed her the menu without so much as a second look, despite Harlow’s best efforts of batting her eyes, showing her cleavage, and pouting her lips. Silently I cheered for him. Not many guys could resist Harlow’s attention because, quite frankly, it was just so blatant. But when they did, man did it piss her off. And the fact that he was turning his attention back to Grandma, whoa boy, did I expect to see the fireworks fly.
Harlow held the menu and looked genuinely confused. She opened it and pretended to peruse the food selections, but I knew that she was formulating her evil plot to get Duke’s attention. Now it was a game for her. And if there was one thing I knew about Harlow, it was that she loved games, and more than that, she loved to win at games. Losing was not an option for her.
I texted Josh with an update of the situation. His immediate reaction was one of concern. He didn’t seem to know what Harlow was capable of, but he did realize that this could ruin Grandma’s luncheon. He asked me what I was going to do to stop her, and the question stopped me in my tracks and sobered me up pretty quickly. He was right, of course, I couldn’t very well let Harlow ruin Grandma’s wedding rehearsal luncheon. This was special for her.
My mind whirred, trying to throw off the fog induced by the not so virgin margaritas. I watched as Harlow undid a few more buttons on her shirt and then folded the menu and placed it on the table.
I stood up and glanced wildly around the table. My water pitcher was sitting in front of me, so I picked it up. I knew what I was going to do to stop Harlow from embarrassing Grandma and Duke on their special day.
“ʺHey, Harlow,”ʺ I said rather loudly. “ʺThe waitress hasn’ʹt filled your water glass yet. Here, have some of my water.”ʺ
And with that, I leaned across the table and dumped water all over Harlow. It soaked her shirt and skirt. She gasped and stared at me like she couldn’ʹt believe what I’d just done. Behind me, Hayley also gasped and then giggled. The entire table was quiet. “ʺHannah!”ʺ Mom admonished. Before she could say anything else, Harlow jumped up and sprinted to where I was sitting.
“ʺRun,”ʺ Hayley cried, shoving me in the opposite direction of Harlow’ʹs advance.
I didn’ʹt have time to get very far, though, because, dang, Harlow was fast. She grabbed me by the shoulder and held on tightly with one hand. Before I knew what happened, Harlow hauled off and punched me in the face. My eye to be exact. I winced in pain and crumpled back to my chair. Dad jumped up and grabbed Harlow.
That’ʹs when all the yelling started. Harlow was furious at me so she was screaming about that. Then Dad started screaming at Harlow about hitting me. Mom came over and she and Hayley helped me to the bathroom where we looked at my eye in the hideous fluorescent lights. It already looked terrible. Hayley went to the bar to get a washcloth full of ice, while Mom started patting the bruise with a cold paper towel.
“ʺThis is going to be a real shiner,”ʺ she said. “ʺHannah, what were you thinking?”ʺ
Tears were still rolling down my face as I replied, “ʺHarlow was going to embarrass Grandma and Duke. I just couldn’ʹt let her do that. It was all I could think of.”ʺ
“ʺShe deserved it,”ʺ Hayley said, coming back into the bathroom. “ʺI totally saw what she was doing, Mom. She was unbuttoning her freaking blouse. You know she was mad because Duke was paying attention to Grandma and not to her. She was going to make Duke look like an unfaithful guy. Hannah totally has balls for doing something about it.”ʺ
“ʺDon’ʹt use language like that,”ʺ Mom chided.
“ʺWhat? Balls?”ʺ
I took the ice from Hayley, trying not to laugh. Maybe Grandma was a little right about Mom being sort of a prude. Mom was still frowning at Hayley over her language choice when she said, “I don’t approve of what you did, but thank you for thinking of Grandma. I don’t suppose many of us have been thinking about Grandma’s happiness above our own lately. Well, I better g
et back out there and assess the damage.”
I pulled the ice away from my eye and stood up to look in the mirror. It was worse than I thought. The area around my eye was pink and puffy already, and the discoloration was starting.
Tears pricked my eyes. “ʺThis is awful,”ʺ I sniffled. “ʺHow can I go to prom looking this way?”ʺ
Immediately I felt so stupid. When had I become the girl who cared about how she looked so much that something as silly as a black eye would make me feel ugly? Hayley grimaced telling me that she understood.
“ʺLook, I can fix it well enough for pictures,”ʺ she promised.
“ʺAnd Josh won’ʹt care. You know that. He thinks you’re gorgeous no matter what. I’ʹll bet he’ʹs even proud of you for standing up for yourself, and for Grandma and Duke.”ʺ
She was probably right. Still…I had her take a picture of my eye with the camera on my phone, and I sent it to Josh as a text with a brief explanation of what had happened. While I waited for his reply, I stuck the ice back on my eye in hopes that it would at least keep some of the swelling down. Hayley stayed with me. We talked about the time line for getting ready the next day, and I started to feel excited again.
Josh texted me back pretty quickly, and Hayley was right, he was proud of me for standing up to Harlow. He even said he wished that he could have seen her furious and drenched like a wet poodle with Dad hauling her off. Not that I had even seen that part, considering Dad had hauled her off while my eyes were slammed shut in intense pain.
Finally, Hayley and I peeked out the bathroom door.
Everything seemed calm again in the private dining room so we went back. Harlow was conspicuously gone, and everyone was trying to maintain the appearance that everything was normal. It almost made me want to laugh. When we sat back down, Grandma clinked her fork against her glass to get our attention.
She stood up and said, “ʺI want to make a toast. To my courageous granddaughter, Hannah, who only had our best interests at heart when she disrupted the party. It turns out that she isn’t jealous of my amazing sex life, rather she sees the beauty of my love for Duke. Thank you, Hannah, for truly making this a special day. I also wanted to say that Duke and I would be honored if you’d consider singing at our wedding in addition to taking care of my beloved little maltipoo.”ʺ
An upgrade. I laughed and agreed. How could I say no to that? The speech was a little bit embarrassing, but I felt the intended sweetness behind her words. So that’s what I tried to focus on rather than her overt references to my lack of a sex life.
The next day, my eye looked worse. It was black with little rims of purple and blue around the outside. I had no idea how on Earth Hayley intended to fix it for pictures without making me look like a clown.
I’d only been in one other fight. In the third grade, Lucy Carson had decked me because we liked the same boy. It had happened at lunchtime. We had assigned seats, and I sat next to a boy named Nathan Jones, who was in the other third grade class. I never would have known him otherwise. He wasn’ʹt super nice to me, but a couple of times a week he would share the cookies his mom packed in his lunch, and I would give him half of whatever sandwich Mom sent me. Plus all the girls in third grade thought he was super cute, so I thought he was super cute too.
Sometime after Christmas break, Lucy decided that she was in love with Nathan, and she announced that the two of them were going to get married. I didn’ʹt know what jealousy was yet, but I suppose that’s what I felt when Nathan started saving his cookies for Lucy to share on the playground. Then one day everything changed. Nathan declared that he was going to marry me because my mom packed better sandwiches than Lucy’ʹs mom.
Lucy had been furious and jumped me out on the playground. She gave me a bloody nose, which got me boatloads of sympathy from the school nurse. I got to go home early that day, and Mom took me out for ice cream while I described my traumatic recess experience. By the next day, nothing remained of Lucy’ʹs fury. My nose looked normal. Lucy and I were friends again. And Nathan had moved on to another girl whose mom sent soup for lunch.
Harlow’ʹs swing was good, but her love of theatrics was really what helped her inflict harm on me. She hated to look like a fool, and I thwarted her plan. Double whammy for me. I was just glad she only got one punch off on me. There was no telling what would have happened otherwise. And in a way, it was sort of cool to have a battle wound from doing my good deed. At least I had a story to tell.
Getting out of bed saved me from wallowing in the event too. I had a lot to get done before we started getting ready for prom. Our bags had to be packed for Las Vegas so that they could be stashed in Josh’s car for the sprint to the airport to catch the red eye. Mom and Dad were leaving after they took our pictures.
Josh’ʹs parents had promised to follow us to the airport to make sure we got there safely. Mike was bringing his bag over to our house later, and we would stash them in Josh’ʹs car. Josh was in charge of the tickets. I was in charge of keeping time.
I hadn’ʹt actually had a chance to process how much fun it was going to be to go dance and goof around with friends and then make a mad dash to the airport to catch a flight to Vegas. Who gets to do stuff like that in real life?
After a quick breakfast, Hayley announced that it was time to start getting ready and shooed me into the shower. We weren’ʹt wasting money on a salon to style our hair, so we were going to take a shot at doing each other’ʹs own. As the suds drained down the tub, I let all the stress of the past few months wash away.
After Hayley took her shower, we set up shop in her room.
We sat on her thick plush carpet poring over magazines to see what styles we liked. Hayley wanted an up-‐-do, but I couldn’ʹt decide. My hair had gotten really long over the semester as I hadn’ʹt cut it at all during the musical. You never cut your hair during a show at our school if you were a girl, and boys had to try to keep their hair exactly the same the whole time, or else you risked freaking out Ms.
Bard. Then came the lectures about costume design and how hair was an integral part of costume design. So anyway, my hair was really long. An up-‐-do seemed like a lot of work to me, so I finally decided on something that was half up and half down. Hayley claimed she could make it look even better than the magazine.
Hayley had a lot of confidence in herself.
By the time we were done with our Barbie party as Hayley deemed it because that was exactly what we used to do with our Barbie dolls, we both looked remarkably good. My black eye was still visible but looked a whole lot less vicious.
I went back to my room to finish packing. I’d made a list earlier in the week so I’d be sure not to forget anything. But as I sifted through the contents of my bag, everything seemed wrong. I hadn’t counted on the fact that it would be so hard to go on vacation with my newly minted boyfriend.
By the time Josh and Mike arrived to take pictures next to the fireplace in our living room, I was a nervous wreck. Hayley was a calm and smooth as chocolate pudding. She let Mike kiss her cheek and slip her corsage over her wrist. His boutonniere was on before I could even blink. Josh lingered too long over a rather chaste kiss on my lips, so Mom actually cleared her throat. I stabbed him with the pin from the boutonniere. We did a strange little dance over which wrist to put the corsage on.
After pictures, we all piled into Josh’s car and drove to school. Once we were there, we were essentially locked in until they let us leave at eleven o’clock. We had to eat dinner in the decorated cafeteria. Then the actual dance was in the gym. I’d heard that at least the dessert would be good. Cheesecake.
Hayley and Mike immediately gravitated toward a huge group of friends with promises to find us at the end of the night.
Josh and I looked around uncomfortably for a table with people we knew. And liked. We finally located Kaylee and Maggie and their dates.
While they were serving the appetizer, Josh leaned over and whispered, “Relax. It’s just a dance.”
 
; I blushed. “I’ve never been to a dance before.”
Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. Freshman year I had gone stag to the Homecoming dance with Kaylee. We’d sat at a table all night drinking flat coke and not being able to talk to each other because the music was so loud. I didn’t count that experience as a dance. I just counted it as an unfortunate night in my high school career and filed it away with other bad memories.
“We eat, we dance, we kiss.” Josh grinned. “Easy as cheesecake.”
I laughed. “In that order?”
Josh leaned closer. “Not exactly in that order,” he said as he kissed me.
A teacher tapped Josh on the shoulder, and we jumped apart giggling. “We’ʹll have to be stealthier later.” Josh winked.
Dinner sucked. The pasta was slimy, and the chicken felt like rubber when I stuck my fork in to cut it into pieces, so I didn’ʹt even attempt to eat that. The broccoli was so limp and overcooked that one bite convinced me airplane food might actually be okay.
Dessert rocked, though. Cheesecake, as promised. Josh and I seemed to have a thing with cheesecake, and he actually fed me some of his. I didn’ʹt realize that anyone else was with us until Maggie and Kaylee started alternately giggling and gagging. I blushed, but Josh just kissed me again before leaning back with a very self-‐-satisfied grin on his face.
The dancing was what one would expect, even a little disappointing for a prom. The DJ played a lot of crap techno music and a lot of weird old country music. Josh and I danced in a little circle with Kaylee and Maggie and their dates to all of the fast music. We swayed in time with the slow songs. Those were my favorites because I was able to lay my head on his chest and inhale his intoxicating scent. During those dances, we snuck little kisses.
Before I knew it the dance was over, and we were sprinting to the car with Mike and Hayley to meet Josh’s parents at a McDonald’s on the edge of town for the forty-‐-five minute drive to the airport. Josh and Mike grabbed food while we waited for Josh’s parents to arrive.