“What are you doing June first?” Pete asked Tony, who pretended to be thinking. Cole cleared his throat and gave me a warning look.
“I believe I will be rocking out at the wedding of my very good friend Cole Parker,” Tony said with a smile, causing Cole to roll his eyes.
“That seems like providence, don’t you think, Parker?” Pete asked with a chuckle. “Cole is looking for someone to officiate his upcoming nuptials.”
“And naturally you thought of me,” Tony stated, drawing himself up a little taller. “I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be, because you’re being pawned off on me,” Cole stated defiantly. “I cannot believe I even have to say out loud that this is a bad idea. Are you people living in an alternate universe? Come on, Tony, even you know better.”
“I’ve officiated weddings before,” Tony told Cole boldly. “Well, one wedding, anyway. And yeah, it was my cousin, but I was exemplary, if I do say so myself.” Cole was staring at me with his mouth in a tight line, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“Please wipe that grin off your face,” Cole whispered, but I could tell my smile was breaking down his objections. “Camdyn, this is not happening. Get it out of your mind right now.”
“Am I that bad?” Tony asked, pretending to be hurt as I laughed out loud.
“This is my wedding, Tony,” Cole stated emphatically. “It’s serious to me, and it’s kind of a big deal.”
“I can be serious,” Tony said, gesturing at Pete, who nodded along with him. I understood Cole’s objections, but in my head I was imagining a wedding with Tony at the helm. It might be wild and unhinged, but it would probably also be unforgettable.
“Camdyn,” Cole moaned, “please back me up here.” I entwined my fingers with his and gazed up into his eyes, and I could see the turmoil growing there.
“Maybe taking myself seriously is a bad idea, anyway,” I suggested. “I mean, the chances of me tripping or doing something equally clumsy are pretty high. Why not just give in and start off with a laid back attitude in the first place?”
“You’re letting them pull you over to the dark side!” Cole stated, plunging his hand deep into his hair in exasperation. I smiled up at him and he shook his head, a smile playing about his lips. “Do you think this is a good start, Pete? She already has me wrapped around her finger.”
“I’d say that’s a perfect start,” Pete told me with a wink.
“Okay, Tony, I give in,” Cole relented, “but I’m not repeating anything after you, period. I will write my own vows, and no funny business, got it?”
“Of course, no funny business,” Tony repeated, smirking in my direction. I put my arm around Cole’s waist, and he looked down at me with a weary smile and let out a huge sigh.
“Crap.”
-§-
Cole reiterated the fact that he thought the choice of Tony was a monumentally bad decision at least three times in the truck on the way to his parents’ house. Honestly, the more I thought about Tony officiating, the cooler I found the idea. The last wedding I had been to was Charlie and Trina’s, and when people talked about their wedding, they didn’t discuss the lovely ceremony or the beautiful bride. The most memorable part of that wedding had been the ill-advised drunken proposal during the toasts at the reception. If people were going to remember the craziest moment, I might as well harness it into the actual main event, right?
Cole definitely did not agree with this logic, but he was handling it in a very gentlemanlike manner.
When we sat down at the dining room table across from Liz and Rosalie, I gave Cole a huge smile, which he returned with an extremely exaggerated eye roll. I laughed but didn’t say anything, because they had already been holding lunch for us and I didn’t want to make them postpone it any longer. As soon as the food had been passed around, though, Rachel started staring at me.
“Come on, what’s the secret?” Rachel queried, tapping her fork on the table. Cole raised his eyebrows in my direction but said nothing.
“Cole is slightly annoyed with me,” I offered. Ted pushed his chair back from the table and folded his arms across his chest, gazing over at us with a slight grin on his face.
“What are you doing, Dad?” Cole asked.
“Getting ready for the fireworks,” Ted stated matter-of-factly. Rosalie hid a smile behind her hand, but I noticed that Liz looked mildly worried.
“Fireworks?!” Charlotte asked excitedly, causing me to giggle.
“No, no fireworks today,” Cole told Charlotte, “and I’m not annoyed. Confused perhaps, a little apprehensive…”
“What’s he talking about?” Liz demanded. I looked at her sympathetically, sensing that she didn’t catch the sarcasm in our voices.
“Pete’s not going to be available for the wedding, so we’re going with the Associate Pastor,” I explained to Liz, smiling at Cole so she would know that I was mostly teasing. I figured he probably was a little annoyed with me, but he wouldn’t say so in front of his mother.
“You mean Tony?” Jeff asked incredulously while Ted leaned back in his chair and chuckled.
“Oh my heavens,” Liz muttered.
“That’s Mom’s version of a swear,” Cole told me then, shooting an I-told-you-so stare in my direction. “You have shocked my mother into swearing on a Sunday.”
“He certainly is a bit eccentric,” Rosalie added to Cole’s point. “He’s liable to make things…interesting.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too!” I cheerily agreed, sending Rachel into a choking fit over her glass of sweet tea.
“Mommy, you okay?” Charlotte asked sweetly. Rachel nodded as she tried to catch her breath.
“Yup, I’m good,” she sputtered. “I can’t believe Cole let you talk him into that.”
“Yeah, didn’t you get a say in this?” Ted teased Cole with a big grin, rocking his chair back on two legs. “What happened to your backbone, son?”
“I don’t know, I thought I had it under control, and then suddenly she was looking at me all, ‘aren’t I beautiful,’ and things got hazy after that.” Even I had to laugh at that one, and Ted let his chair fall back to the ground as he moved back toward the table, evidently convinced that the fireworks wouldn’t be happening after all.
“Well, I guess if the ceremony gets kind of iffy, you can just look at Camdyn, since you can’t think when she’s standing near you anyway,” Ted shot at Cole, sending the whole table into a chorus of laughter. I smiled over at Cole, and although he was pretending to be miffed, his eyes told me that everything was absolutely fine.
-§-
After lunch Cole suggested that we go back to his house so I could move some of my things inside. Right when I was getting ready to show my surprise at his intention of being alone with me, he asked Rachel if we could take Charlotte along. Her excitement at being asked to come to “Unca Cole’s” was adorable, and when I hooked her booster seat into Cole’s truck, she beamed as though she were getting ready to go to Disneyland. Moving boxes into Cole’s house probably shouldn’t have been exciting to me, either, but inside I was totally giddy and trying desperately to hide my shameless enthusiasm. Judging by the fact that he smirked at me while he was starting the truck, I believed my efforts to appear uninterested were futile.
Charlotte asked what we were going to do in a sing-song voice, and Cole told her we were going to move some boxes. When she complained that moving boxes didn’t sound like fun, he mentioned stealthily that Pop could probably help us too, and her mood brightened considerably. I promptly added that we could have a tea party after everything else, and she was back to being overly excited again.
Charlotte being appeased enough to stop asking questions for the moment, Cole asked what I wanted to move. Almost before I could formulate the thought in my mind, the two of us blurted the same answer at the same time: Books. I bit my lip as I looked at him sheepishly, and he flashed a flawless smile.
“Does that mean I’m completely predictable?” I asked wit
h a sigh. Charlotte retrieved a sucker from her pocket and started pulling on the plastic protective wrap until I took it from her and popped it loose.
“I knew that the den was your favorite room, so I figured you would want to start there,” Cole admitted. “Plus, you have a lot of books, so that will be most of the boxes.”
We pulled into the driveway and Pop greeted the truck in his usual boisterous fashion. Cole lifted Charlotte out of her seat, and she wasn’t on the ground for more than thirty seconds before she started screaming. I hurriedly grabbed her to see what was wrong, and once I was satisfied that she wasn’t hurt, I waited for her explanation.
“Pop. Took. My. Sucker.” She sniffed and watched helplessly as Pop made a mad dash for the woods. Cole was chuckling silently behind her, which was not assisting matters in the least.
“Maybe Uncle Cole has some candy in the house?” I half suggested and half asked. She looked up at him expectantly with a huge tear sliding down her face, and he bent to scoop her into his arms.
“I’m sure we could come up with something,” he told her, wiping the tear from her cheek. I followed the two of them up the steps and waited near the door while Cole searched through his cabinets to satisfy Charlotte’s sweet tooth. It was the first time I had been in the house in over a week, since Cole had started the kick of not wanting to be alone. At first I thought it was sweet and almost noble, but now it was starting to drive me a little crazy. Sitting on Rosalie’s couch the night before had been one thing, but now with Charlotte there we couldn’t even have an adult conversation.
This is what it’s going to be like when we’re parents, I thought. There will always be a kid hanging nearby, and we will never be alone. Maybe this is why people have long, drawn-out engagements – so they can spend plenty of time together before the alone phase vanishes.
Oh, who am I kidding? I don’t want a long engagement. I wish I had a measly five minutes of alone time. I would even accept two.
“Chocolate!” Cole exclaimed, handing it over to Charlotte and grinning. She had no trouble managing to rip the wrapper open and expose its contents, popping the candy into her mouth. Cole motioned for us to follow him, so we went through the doorway and down the hall into the den. Seeing it another time definitely did not damper my enthusiasm over the room. I knew instinctively I was going to be spending a lot of time in here.
“Hey, you set up my guitar!” I stated in surprise. Cole’s three guitars were still hanging against the wall, but he had placed mine on a stand underneath them. I walked over to where it sat and ran my finger across the top thinking of the time that guitar and I had spent in little one-bedroom apartments across the country. Now we were moving in, the both of us.
I heard Charlotte ask for more chocolate, so I turned to glance at her and managed to notice that the boxes of my books were already sitting next to the bookshelves. Since he hadn’t left us since we arrived at the house, I knew they must have already been there. It was then that I saw the two picture frames sitting on the bookshelves. One contained a picture of Charlie, Trina, Grandma, and me. The other one was of little Cooper all snuggled up inside a baseball glove. I pointed at it with my mouth gaped open, but instead of smiling like I thought he would, Cole looked slightly guilty.
“I hope you don’t mind that I took that picture of your grandma out of your stuff,” he hastily told me.
“No, of course not.”
Why would I even be thinking about where that picture of my grandma came from when there is a picture of my week-old nephew in a frame? Where in the world did that come from? I walked across the room and grabbed the picture of Cooper and held it out to him for an explanation.
“Charlie e-mailed that picture to me,” he explained.
“My brother e-mailed you a picture of my nephew,” I repeated slowly. “Why didn’t he send one to me? I am blood-related to the kid.”
“I don’t know, maybe he figured if he sent it to me you would get it too.”
“How often do you talk to Charlie, anyway?” I could tell by his sideways smile that it was often. “Just tell me it’s not more than you talk to me.”
“No, definitely not. Every other day, maybe.”
Okay, that’s kind of weird.
“Chock-lit, chock-lit, chock-lit,” Charlotte began to chant. Cole shook his head and made his way back to the kitchen.
“Charlotte, is there something you want to do?” I asked her, looking around the room for something kid-friendly. “Maybe Uncle Cole has some crayons or something?”
“Nope!” I heard him yell from the kitchen.
“Fairy tea party?” she excitedly wondered. I knew we wouldn’t be able to avoid that topic forever, but I hadn’t expected it to pop up again quite so soon.
“I don’t know about a fairy tea party, because we don’t have any wings,” I explained, watching her bottom lip turn into a pout. “We could still have a tea party, though. Would that be okay?”
“I guess so,” she said, twirling around and watching the bottom of her dress poof out around her legs. I was wondering how to improvise with what Cole had around the house when suddenly he returned with plates, cups, tea, and chocolate chip cookies. Maybe he did have this whole dad thing figured out, in which case I would probably be considered woefully inadequate. All I could do was hope there was a learning curve for such things.
Somehow through the course of five minutes of pretend tea time, Cole convinced Charlotte that we were searching for some type of hidden treasure that lurked in the boxes by the bookshelves. If she was able to find the treasure, he would give her a reward. (In other words, he bribed her with chocolate.) Yes, it seemed a little wrong, but it got the job done. In no time Charlotte was off examining the contents of the boxes, fairy tea party forgotten.
As Charlotte handed me the first book, I gingerly set it on a bookshelf with a smile at Cole. Rather than watching from a distance, he moved to where I was standing and looked at each book as it reached my hands. The first three or four she hauled out were huge volumes of United States history, followed by a collection of histories from different parts of the globe. I had amassed a wide variety of books over the years, and I could almost see the wheels in Cole’s head turning as he read each title.
“This seems out of place,” he said at one point, holding up a copy of Pride and Prejudice that had somehow worked its way between two books about colonial times. I smiled as I retrieved it from his hands.
“Yes, well, every well-educated female knows all about Mr. Darcy.” I tried to adopt a snobby accent, and Cole raised his eyebrows. “Never mind. You probably have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“On the contrary, I do have a sister. I’ve seen the movie, but I didn’t get what was supposed to be so great about it.”
“I couldn’t tell you exactly,” I laughed. “Maybe it taps into an embedded desire to believe that someday a rich, handsome man will fall in love with us simply because we speak our minds. Or maybe it’s just a good book.”
“I don’t see any treasure,” Charlotte sang in a loud voice, “just boring grown-up books.”
“What if the books are the treasure?” I offered lightly, but the disgusted look she gave me told me she wasn’t buying. “Okay, look a little harder; I’m sure you’ll find something soon.”
She opened another box and started handing me books I had written. I had become so accustomed to seeing everything stacked and scattered throughout whatever apartment I lived in that they looked rather special there in a prominent place on the bookshelf. I noticed that Cole set them next to the picture of my grandma, as though she was observing them with pride. He didn’t even look at me as he did it, but it definitely didn’t go unnoticed.
At that point Charlotte found a penny at the bottom of one of the boxes and went into a wild state of excitement. She was absolutely convinced that was the treasure, and since Cole hadn’t really specified what type of treasure was to be found, it was pretty convenient for him as well. He handed her a p
iece of chocolate and she pulled one of the boxes over on its side and decided to make a castle. I watched her in wonder as she crawled inside and poked her head out with a mischievous grin.
“I think this library book may be overdue,” I heard Cole say behind me, and I turned to see him holding a worn little green volume with the library markings on the spine. I took it from him carefully and rubbed my hand over the cover.
“It’s not a library book, actually,” I said with a twinge of sadness. “It’s a long story.”
“I got nothing but time.” He smiled broadly and sank into the chaise lounge, and I sat down next to him and held the book delicately between my hands.
“My dad had this book when I was really small, before I could read, but he always kept it on his nightstand. It had a picture of a little girl holding a doll, and she was staring out the window of her house at this man who was on his knees in the rain. That picture was always seared into my memory for some reason. I don’t remember my dad talking to me about it, but I know he must have, because I had this very decided idea of what the book was about. I knew it was called A Different Kind of Rain, and I thought it was about a little girl who had to fight to save the world from an evil sorcerer. I can only guess that my dad made that story up at one time, for me to have it set so clearly in my mind, but I don’t know for sure.”
“I wish you could remember your dad,” Cole stated with sympathy, which only made me smile.
“Me too,” I replied. “Anyway, when everything happened and we moved in with my grandma, somehow the book disappeared. I never saw it again, but I found this copy at the library when I was fourteen or fifteen. It just had the plain green cover, but when I was browsing through the titles, it caught my eye. After checking it out and taking it home, I was anxious to read what I could remember of the story in my head, but it wasn’t about a sorcerer. I know, big shocker, right? When I started reading it seemed like it must have been the wrong book, until I came upon a scene that perfectly described the little girl looking out the window on the front cover I remembered.”
A Reason to Be Alone (The Camdyn Series Book 2) Page 14