by Julia Kent
Hamish’s golden eyebrows turn down. “I play football, Marie.” Jason stifles a laugh.
“Oh. Tight end, then?” She cranes her neck around behind him to check out his tight end.
“No—not American football. I play soccer.” His voice is filled with a frustrated resignation, as if he’s had this same conversation far too often for his liking.
“Point guard?” she tries.
Jason hands the poor Scot another shot and claps him on the back. “Just give up, man.”
“Americans,” Hamish mutters before downing the drink.
Where in the hell is Andrew?
I shouldn’t care. I know I shouldn’t care. I blew it. But he could have told me. We’re grown-ups. We each have the ability to exchange emotional truths in an honest way.
Barring that, would it kill the man to send a basic text?
While Amy sulks and Marie and Carol moon over Hamish, I try to find Shannon. She’s disappeared. I grab two glasses of wine from an increasingly-attractive male waiter who walks by with a tray of poured Pinot Grigio. I work on drinking part of my second? third? glass of wine.
After searching everywhere, I finally find her in the bedroom, in a walk-in closet, trying not to cry.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. She’s holding a tartan garter in her hands and just standing there, staring at Declan’s shoehorn, which hangs from a hook behind his suits.
“I’m not sure I can do this.”
There is a point in every maid of honor’s stretch of time in this role where we expect the bride to get cold feet. If you’re a woman in modern America, you’ve been steeped in the wedding articles since you were about nine or so, and could read the Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines your mom left all over the house. You know Ten Ways To Make Her Wedding Rock and Five Mistakes Bridesmaids Make and Why Good Friends Throw Naughty Bachelorette Parties.
Cold feet are just a part of the wedding process.
“You love Declan. Being Mrs. McCormick is going to be awesome,” I assure her. I offer her the untouched wine goblet.
She looks at me like I just ate a Madagascar hissing cockroach in front of her. “I know that! I’m not talking about the wedding. I’m talking about this stupid dinner party!” She ignores the wine I’m offering.
That’s how I really know she’s upset.
“Oh.”
“And where’s Andrew?” she snaps.
I finish my third glass (definitely third) and start in on her reject.
“No clue,” I say.
Bzzz.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and gently guide Shannon back into the living room. She pivots at the doorway and tosses the garter onto her bed.
I haven’t seen Andrew since the night he stole Mr. Wiffles and we fought nearly a month ago. He texted a half-hearted apology and I texted back a lame half-acceptance. After that, his assistant has asked me a few wedding-related questions regarding schedules. No other contact.
And Declan won’t reveal what Andrew told him that night they worked out. He’s been in New York on business, then in Paris, and finally he’s back—for this party. Andrew and Declan made it clear that he has to leave early and board the helicopter to go back to New York again.
I look at my phone and bark out a weird laugh.
“Is that him?” Shannon asks.
“Oh, my God!” I hold up my phone so she can read this.
She gives me a knowing look. “I know he’s traveling so much these days, and he’s only in town for a few hours, but you guys have to talk this out—”
Chug. Hmm. That fourth glass went down well.
“Does that text say what I think it says?” Shannon looks gut-punched. “Did he seriously just text you with, Only here for the party. Not even time for a quickie.”
“Yep.”
Andrew walks in the living room at that precise moment. The force of our glares should have propelled him right through the wall, but instead he lurches slightly to the right, one hand in his pocket, the other on the wood counter near the kitchen.
He gives me a wave.
“A wave?” she hisses. “You get a wave? That’s it?”
“Yep. A fight, a month of mostly silence, a bizarre text and a wave.”
We contemplate that one by stewing in the silence of the outraged. It has a very bitter taste.
“What man doesn’t make time for a quickie?” she huffs.
“A gay man?”
Her eyes go wide. “He’s gay?”
That question makes me remember the last time we made love. “No. Definitely not gay. Just sayin’. There are two kinds of men who aren’t interested in quickies: gay men and dead men.”
Her eyes narrow.
“Gay men like quickies.”
“Not with Vulvatron.” I gesture vaguely at my crotch and realize my wine glass is empty. Hmm. Have to remedy that.
“Vulva-what?”
“Never mind.”
“Declan would rappel down from a helicopter with his pants off in a hurricane if we went weeks without sex and he was in town for a few hours and it were the only way to fit in a quickie.”
I throw my hands up in the air and brush lightly against that fine, fine waiter who is carrying my sweet love juice. Ah, Pinot Grigio. How have I never cozied up to a bottle of you between my breasts? I grab another glass of wine.
“That is because you’re marrying Superbillionaire.”
Shannon eyes my wine. “Time to slow down?”
I take a gulp. “I’m just getting started.”
Andrew’s walking toward me with a determined look in his eye and oh, sweet mercy, I go loose and wet and fuzzy inside as he reaches for me, planting a kiss on either cheek. He just flew back from Paris, so maybe that’s the drill.
As I go in for a kiss on the lips, though, he grazes my cheek again.
My blood stops pumping.
What
Fresh
Hell
Is
This?
Mixed signals is one thing. Andrew’s confusing set of clues is more like a computer system short circuiting.
I look around, my hands out in a gesture of WTF? and I scan the crowd as if I’ll catch someone’s eye and we can share in our disbelief that my boyfriend just dodged a kiss from me after a month of nothing. Nada. I actually resorted to my nightstand collection for the first time in months and let me tell you, they need to put little speakers on vibrators with audio recordings of men sighing and groaning at appropriate intervals, because bzzz bzzz bzzz is not sexy.
It just isn’t.
The first sex toy company who designs a vibrator that says, “I love when you just let go like that,” or “Your O face is so hot,” or groans, “Have you lost weight? Because I need more to grab” will dominate the industry and blow up the stock market.
Especially if the voices are programmable, like GPS systems. Male, female, British, Irish, Spanish, French, Shrek—imagine the possibilities. Mr. Darcy could be your vibrator’s voice. You could have tie-ins with major video game characters.
Thor.
Thor could utter phrases from down below, like, “This mortal form requires orgasms.”
You could even have your significant other record special messages to be played at intervals of their choosing (or yours). If your partner dies, you’d cherish the memory of them forever.
I may be on to something here. I come up with some amazing ideas sometimes. Man, this Pinot Grigio is some good stuff.
While I contemplate these philosophical questions about the meaning of life and finish my fifth (I’m not counting) glass of wine, Marie calls everyone to attention.
“Dinner is served!” she announces.
Declan hands Andrew and Hamish a shot of something amber. The two clink glasses and down the alcohol. Then Hamish pours another. By the time we’re all assembled at the table, I count three rounds.
Fine, then. I pluck a sixth glass of wine from the hot waiter and take my seat.
Next to
Andrew.
Before my ass is even in the chair Marie is banging on her wine glass with a salad fork like it’s a dinner bell at a dude ranch and we’re all cows out to pasture who need to come home.
Get along little dogie.
“Kiss! Kiss!” she calls out, smiling at Declan and Shannon.
In response, Jason bends over Marie and gives her one hell of a hot, probing scorcher that she starts to fight off, then melts into. After a while, we all start to shift in our seats as it goes on and on...
“I don’t think that’s quite what Marie was going for,” James says dryly.
“You don’t know my mom and dad,” Amy replies.
“A typical kiss contains more than two hundred strains of bacteria,” my mom announces.
Jason pulls away.
“Research,” my mom says awkwardly.
“What do you do for a living? Work on a porn set?” Marie jokes.
“Actuary.”
“Oh.” Marie frowns. “That’s like the opposite of porn.”
“I compute premium rates for various high-risk pools. Just did a kissing evaluation last year for some Hollywood projects.” Mom shudders. “You wouldn’t believe how much herpes there is in that population.”
And with a single sentence, my mother silences even Marie.
“You are just a wealth of interesting facts,” James says. I do a double-take as I realize James is holding Spritzy in his lap, rubbing his little head with affection. He’s smiling at my mother with a look that makes me understand why people call him The Grey Wolf, though lately they’re calling him The Silver Wolf. Not sure what the difference is.
Andrew’s hand lands on my knee.
Oh.
It’s The Asshole Wolf.
I turn to face him. He is, basically, James. Only three and a half decades younger and a little lighter.
“Would you help me get Hamish’s attention?” Andrew asks, the hand withdrawing quickly.
I pick up a bread roll and pull my arm back to throw it across the table, but Andrew’s faster.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting Hamish’s attention.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No,” I lie. I take the opportunity to really look at him. He has five o’clock shadow, a genetic trait that runs through the McCormick men even at noon, and his tie is loose. His eyes are floating in his head and he’s staring at my boobs like they talk.
“Are you?”
He ignores my question.
I put down the dinner roll and reach down, pressing my breasts together to form the Grand Canyon.
“Why Andrew, well fiddle-dee-dee,” I say in my best Scarlett O'Hara imitation. “How nice of you to drop by.”
Hamish is watching us from across the table and nudges Amy, pointing. “Is this a party trick in the U.S.? Do women actually make their breasts talk?”
She gives him a hard look. “No. Most of us just double knot a cherry stem with our tongues.”
Hamish sprays a fine mist of what I now realize is Glenfiddich scotch whisky all over his arm.
“I need to spend more time with my American cousins,” he mutters, eyeing Amy with renewed interest as she reaches for the Maraschino cherry in her amaretto sour.
And promptly bites down, hard, on the fruit’s flesh, tearing it in half with her teeth.
Hamish flinches.
“Or not,” he declares.
“Why are you making your boobs sound like one of the women in Duck Dynasty?” Andrew says with a sad little look. “I’ve lost respect for them.”
“You apologize to my boobs,” I demand. Maybe a little too loudly, because suddenly everyone is looking at me.
Shannon’s face ripples with horror. Her eyes skip to my wine. She makes a throat-cutting gesture with her finger.
“She wants you to stop drinking,” Andrew hisses in my ear.
“Or cut off your balls,” I say pleasantly. “It’s hard to tell which one would make the world a better place.” I reach for my butter knife and Andrew shifts away from me, turning to try to speak with no one, because he’s at the end of the table.
I overhear Terry saying something about Farmington Country Club to Carol.
“Last time I was there was for my mother’s funeral.”
She flinches and puts her hand on his wrist. “I’m so sorry. Is the location going to be hard for your brothers and your dad? Because I can talk to my mother and—”
Terry’s deep laugh makes his eyebrows go up, and he sits back in his chair, stretching out, like he and Carol are old friends.
“We’re all fine. Farmington isn’t ruined for us. And you’re about as likely to change your mother’s mind as you are to find my dad dating someone who was born before Reagan was president.”
Declan stands abruptly, Carol interrupting her own laughter as his movement catches her eye.
“Well,” says Declan, in a voice I can’t read. Either he’s overcome with emotion, barely holding himself back from strangling Marie, or pissed as hell.
Sometimes you just can’t tell the difference with him.
Most of the time you can’t tell the difference with him.
“I found the perfect woman for me,” he chokes out as the toast ends and we all smile.
Overcome. I see. I’ll learn to read him eventually.
He and Shannon share a sweet kiss. Marie looks like she’s a split second away from chiming her wine glass with a spoon again. I catch her attention and give her a wide-eyed stare that I hope looks earnest like Thumper the rabbit in Bambi, but also deathly, like one of those scary prison women from Orange is the New Black.
It works.
My hairstylist shops are back, and I’ve returned to my onyx hair color. I need to rock this black hair look more. When you look like a dominatrix and walk like an Ice Queen Warrior, people defer to you.
Especially Jason, which is kind of disturbing.
“And Shannon looks great naked,” Andrew adds with a smile and a voice that carries.
All movement, all breathing, all linear thought halts. Splat. Like dropping a watermelon from James McCormick’s office window.
All the air leaves the room like a (c’mon, you knew this was coming) New England Patriots football.
Shannon’s face contorts like something out of a circus show. Declan looks like he’s about to leap across the table and give Andrew a vasectomy with a shrimp skewer.
This is my best friend. My bestie. The woman I can call at 5:47 a.m. on my way to a 7 a.m. appointment and beg to bring me tampons after my period makes an inelegant appearance mid-night. The woman who knows my secret passion for marshmallow treats made with Cheetos instead of Rice Krispies. The friend who I could, seriously, call to help me move a body and who would dance on the grave if the person was bad enough.
She may help me move Andrew McCormick’s body at this rate. And not in some male fantasy FMF kind of way.
No one makes a sound. All eyes are on Andrew, who is obliviously chowing through his salad. He stabs a pecan and eats it, then reaches for his glass of white wine. My white wine, in fact.
I imagine Andrew’s ankle is his crotch.
And then I jab it, hard, with my high heel.
He yelps, wine spilling down his wrist.
You know that one note in The Star Spangled Banner? The one no one can ever quite nail when they sing it before a Red Sox or Patriots game?
Yeah. He should change careers, because that sound is pitch perfect.
“You’ve seen Shannon naked?” James asks Andrew, who is reaching under the table to rub his ankle and muttering curses in three different languages. Ah, the rich. They even curse better.
“Who hasn’t?” Marie says in a too-chipper voice.
Terry’s eyebrows hit a CNN satellite orbiting in space. He’s been quiet so far, the only McCormick brother at the table who seems to avoid power or attention. I like him the most. He is my new best friend.
Marie continues, very obviously cou
nting heads at the table. Me. Andrew. Declan. Marie. Jason. Amy. Terry. Carol. Hamish. James. Shannon. Declan. “By my count,” she adds, “about seventy-five percent of the room has.”
“Who else here hasn’t seen Shannon naked?” James replies. It dawns on me that he’s not shocked by this conversation.
He’s pissed to be an outsider.
Hamish starts to raise his hand and wiggles his fingers. Amy smacks his hand down.
“You’ve seen her naked?” Andrew growls at me from a position half under the table. Is he snarling?
“Yes,” I whisper back.
“Hmph,” he grunts, sounding remarkably like his Scottish cousin. “That’s kind of hot.”
I stab the back of his neck with my dessert fork.
A strong hand reaches up, grabs my wrist, and I find myself yanked, hard, under the table. My face is inches from Andrew’s, and he’s hissing at me in that voice only men can do. The low, deep vibrating baritone that makes hissing sound like pure sex in vocal form.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he growls at me.
His eyes are red and floating. “Did you show up here drunk?” I ask, my voice full of accusation. “Is that what your quickie text is all about? You’re drunk texting?”
He’s very, very angry. Which makes him even hotter, which makes me tingle in places that feel like they’re vibrating from pure animal magnetism. He’s the magnet and I have iron shavings running through my bloodstream.
“Raise your hand if you haven’t seen Shannon naked,” I hear James say above us. “Apparently, there’s a club and some of us are excluded.”
“DAD!” Declan shouts, his voice filled with warning.
I don’t know what happens next, because Andrew’s mouth takes mine, hard and furious, the kiss more like retaliation for my neck stab.
Retaliate away, bud. And do it a little more to the left like that. Oh, and that.
And...oh.
A month’s worth of lust comes pouring out between us. If my panties hadn’t already melted off from listening to Hamish recite the MBTA Red Line station list, they would melt off again.
“Are you two making out down there?” Shannon cries out. Her beautiful Tom Ford high heel turns into a weapon, jabbing at us like a toothpick going after a jumbo piece of shrimp at a cocktail party.