Getting Married (28 page)
Authors: Theresa Alan
“The cloth is pricey, but how do you know that it won’t fall apart while I’m wearing it?”
“This is a well-made dress. Look at how carefully it was put together.” She runs her fingers along the top edges of the dress and along the sides. “If you have quality material and take the time to put it together right, the results can be spectacular.”
I don’t know why I can’t just accept that the perfect dress has fallen from heaven into my lap, but I just keep worrying about what could go wrong. “What if I spill something on it? What if I catch it on something and it tears?”
“Then you’ll have a gorgeous dress that fits you like a glove with a stain or tear in it. I can’t sprinkle fairy dust on it and guarantee that nothing will happen to it, but I can say that as an amateur fashion maven, this dress was made for you.”
“You’re right. Thank you so much, Rachel. Thank you so much.” I hug her tightly. She smiles. I feel immensely relieved to have something to wear for my wedding at last. I change and we return to the storefront and sit on our stools behind the counter.
“Hey, so has anything ever happened with your email flirtation with Shane?” I ask.
“I finally told him I had to stop. I deleted every last email. I learned my lesson when Julia landed in the hospital. My family is the most important thing in the world to me. I’m not going to do anything to mess that up.”
“Are you going to tell Jon about it?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t want to hurt him if I don’t have to.”
“How did Shane react?”
“I think he was disappointed, but not surprised. He knew I didn’t want to leave my husband.”
“I have to say I’m relieved. I think you’re making the right decision.”
“I know.”
W
hen I get home from Rachel’s store, I call Sienna. “Guess what? Will and I are going to get married after all.”
“That’s wonderful! What changed your mind?”
“He knocked me up. No, I’m just kidding.” I tell her about Julia’s accident and how watching Jon and Rachel get through it together made me realize that marriage is what I want after all. “I’m thinking we’ll still have it on the original day we planned, but I kind of just want to do it without thinking about it anymore. It’s not very romantic to say this, but I just want to get it over with. I’m sorry if you have to cancel any performances…”
“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll be there. I can’t wait to see you. Are you going to have a party afterward?”
“I thought maybe we’d grab some food and some beers some place. Something casual. It’ll just be Will and my closest friends, you and Mark, Will’s Mom, and Mom and Dad and their significant others.”
“Mom and Dad are coming out?”
“They are. Mom and Dad in the same room—that hasn’t happened since you graduated from college six years ago.”
“And boy was that fun.”
“Wasn’t it though? I think I’m more afraid of the two of them together than pledging to spend my life with Will.”
“Well, I can’t wait. Congratulations again. I’m really happy for you.”
T
he Saturday afternoon that Will and I vow to spend our lives together is a warm, sunny, beautiful day. We head down to the county clerk’s office accompanied by Gabrielle and Richard, Rachel and Jon, Sienna and Mark, Mom and Frank, Abby and Jerry, Dad and Annabella, and Will’s mom. We all troop to the justice of the peace office to sign the marriage license. Sienna is taking pictures like mad. She is a cheap, but perfectly adequate photographer.
It’s nearly two when we’ve finished the paperwork rigmarole and have posed for about seven million pictures.
“So, I was thinking we could head over to this bar called Mickie’s…” I say to everyone. “It’s located at, um, it’s right on, where is it again?” I ask Will. Luckily, unlike me, Will is able to think straight, despite just signing his life away to a psychopath such as myself, and gives everybody directions.
“We’ll all meet over there, okay?” I say.
After getting about a thousand more hugs and congratulations, Will and I pile into his car.
“I want to stop at home for just a second,” he says.
“Okay.” I’m too nervous to argue. I clutch his free hand as if my life depended on it and don’t say a word the entire way home. I just keeping thinking the words,
I’m married, I’m married, I’m married, I’m married!
I feel nervous, but I actually think I’m doing pretty well considering the enormity of what we’ve just done. In fact, I feel pretty good, happy even. I look over at Will and smile, he smiles back and gives my hand a squeeze.
He pulls into the driveway. “I’ll wait for you here,” I say.
“No, why don’t you come in.”
“Why?”
“Ah…I sort of got you a present.”
“Oh.” I’m beaming like an idiot.
Instead of going inside, he opens the fence gate and I follow him around the side of the house to the backyard. My jaw falls open.
“Surprise!”
About fifty people—friends, acquaintances, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and various coworkers are milling about in a backyard decorated with flowers and ribbons and bows. A long table overflowing with food lines one side of the yard.
“A surprise wedding reception?” I say.
“I didn’t want you to be stressed out by the wedding plans,” Will says, “but what did you think, I was going to marry the girl of my dreams and not loudly let the whole world know?”
“How the hell did you get everybody here on such short notice?”
“Never underestimate the superhuman powers of a man in love. Do you like the flowers?” he asks. “I was worried about choosing the wrong ones.”
“You could have decorated the place with swamp algae and I would have loved it. The flowers are perfect. Everything is perfect. And it’s quite a spread you got there,” I say, nodding in the direction of the buffet. “I bet there isn’t a single nut on the menu.”
“Not a one.”
Tears pool in my eyes as I look across the lawn at the people I love most in the world. In all of their dazzling imperfection are my mother, my father, Sienna, Gabrielle, Rachel, Richard, Jerry, Abby, all of my extended family and friends, and, of course, the love of my life, Will.
And I feel profoundly blessed.
Sometimes in this life, it’s hard to remember to love yourself. Sometimes, it’s easier to hate yourself, to focus on your faults, on the ten pounds you still haven’t lost, the scars, the cellulite, the creeping signs of age. And because you don’t always remember, it’s imperative to surround yourself with people who love you, even when you can’t manage it yourself.
In this world, having someone there to look out for you, to love you, to catch you when you fall, to remind you that you’re pretty damn special, not despite of, but because of the flaws and imperfections that make you, you—that is no small thing.
That is everything.
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak
peek of Theresa Alan’s next novel
SPA VACATION
coming in 2008!
Chapter 1
The Tuesday before the trip
A
my Harrington had never been the kind of woman who was consumed by lust. Desire was a messy and fickle thing. Amy didn’t act recklessly or hastily. She wasn’t a big fan of spontaneity. She liked making rational decisions based on the best information available. She was a sensible girl, always had been.
That was why what was happening to her now was throwing her world into a frenzied, baffling orbit. She had never experienced such an immediate carnal reaction to anyone before, and the feelings were making her thinking blurry and confused.
Amy couldn’t focus on what he was saying. She watched his lips moving as he sat behind the desk in his tastefully decorated office, but she couldn’t seem to actually put together what the words coming our of his mouth
meant.
He was good-looking, certainly, but that wasn’t enough to explain what was causing this reaction in her. She’d encountered hundreds of sexy, handsome men in her life and none of them had turned her insides into quivering mush like Brent Meyer did.
Amy’s friend Caitlyn, the poet, would be able to find a turn of phrase that could explain exactly what it was about his smile that was so captivating. She would have the words to describe the precise bright green shade of his eyes. Stoplight green maybe? No, that conjured traffic and headaches, not beautiful, brilliant Oz-emerald eyes. Amy didn’t have Caitlyn’s gift with words, that was obvious.
Amy’s friend Leah, the scientist, would be able to explain the exact chemical and physical reactions that were happening in Amy’s body. It involved an increase in adrenaline, probably, and maybe something about pheromones, but Amy didn’t know about that sort of thing. She knew about financial planning and making budgets and ensuring that all the numbers at the bottom of the spreadsheet added up. Love? Attraction? Lust? These simply weren’t her areas of expertise.
Amy imagined that their meeting would run long and he would ask her to dinner. The meal would go on for several hours and many drinks. She’d have a little too much alcohol, and he would offer to drive her home. She would say that was very generous of him. She would get in his car and relax in the comfortable leather seats. He would say he needed to stop by the office for just a moment. She would accompany him in. In the empty office building of the software company he’d founded, they would sit beside each other on the comfortable gray couch in the reception area. He would put his hand on her leg. She’d pretend to protest, but only for a moment. He would slide his hand up her leg, beneath her skirt…
Amy realized suddenly that he’d asked her for something, and she had no idea what, since she’d been too busy fantasizing about an illicit tryst with him. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” she asked.
“I asked when you’re getting married.”
He gestured to her left hand. She followed his gaze and saw that she’d been spinning her engagement ring around and around her thumb.
“Two months.”
“Still getting used to the ring, huh?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
And still getting used to the idea of being married, apparently.
Amy suspected that it wasn’t a good sign to be daydreaming about having sex with other men when she wasn’t even married yet.
It’s just a fantasy
, Amy assured herself. She could
think
about anything she wanted. She just couldn’t
act
on those feelings. And she didn’t
want
to act on the feelings anyway because she loved Eric. He was the love of her life.
Right?
Amy and Brent continued discussing budgets and economic forecasts for another hour or so, with Amy struggling to focus on doing her job and trying to keep her lust toward a man she’d only met a couple hours ago in check.
When the meeting with Brent was over at last, Amy put on her winter coat and her leather gloves. She picked up her briefcase, gave Brent a big, confident smile good-bye, and exited the Meyer Technologies building into the cold March air of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
She got into her car, turned on the ignition, and sat for a few minutes as the car warmed up, staring blankly at her dashboard in a daze of confusion.
What was wrong with her? She
never
fantasized about hurling a strange man across his desk and doing X-rated things to him.
Amy just didn’t do things like that.
Maybe that was her problem. Maybe that’s why things had fallen into such a rut at home. Sex between Eric and her was always so…
polite.
It had always been like that. When they first dated, she thought of Eric as clitoral heroin. They use to have sex for hours; there had been a time when they couldn’t get enough of each other.
That time was long gone.
It wasn’t that she was having problems with her husband-to-be. Not exactly. On the surface, everything was perfect. They’d moved in together eight months ago and they rarely fought. They were comfortable financially and lived within their means. Neither of them gambled or drank to excess. In other words, their lives were unbelievably boring. And Amy had no idea what to do about it.
Lately, Amy’s life felt hallow, empty. A husk. A shell. Something barren of substance. Her life was a memory. An aftertaste. Something that could be imagined, but was not actually there.
She knew this was not how a bride-to-be was supposed to feel. The truth was that even amid all the hubbub of planning her wedding, her days were gauzy.
As she pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic, she thought for the millionth time of how much she was looking forward to her trip and getting away from the prewedding insanity.
Amy had arranged to meet her college girlfriends Caitlyn and Leah at a spa in Mexico for two weeks. She wanted some sort of aerobic dominatrix to force her to get in shape for her wedding pictures. This way, she could get in shape while catching up with her two best friends. Caitlyn and Leah were going to be her bridesmaids, but she knew they wouldn’t have any time to talk at the wedding. Things would be much too crazy for that. They’d been drifting apart ever since graduation—when Leah took a job as a biologist in Portland; Caitlyn had returned to Chicago where she’d grown up; and Amy accepted a position as a financial consultant in Denver. Amy supposed that there was no way to help the fact that they weren’t as close as they’d been in school, but that didn’t mean she liked it. On this trip they’d be able to relax and catch up and become skinny, sexy vixens while they were at it. It would be great.
Sun. Exercise. Friends. She would be feeling like herself again in no time.
When she got back to her office, Amy dropped off her coat and briefcase and went to the kitchen to heat up a low-calorie, taste-free frozen meal. She brought it back to her office in time to hear her extension ringing. She figured it was her wedding planner calling yet again to ask her about yet another detail. Amy had done the financing on major corporate mergers that were less stressful and time-consuming than planning a wedding. It was just one more reason she couldn’t wait to get away.
“Hello?” She sat in her chair, setting her lunch on the desk in front of her.
“Hey, babe.” Eric’s voice sent a jolt of guilt through her.
“Hi. What’s up?” She attempted to sound casual; she wondered if she was pulling it off.
“Christine and Adam want to know if we want to go to dinner Thursday night before you leave for your trip.”
“Oh,” Amy said, disappointed. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Christine and Adam, she did, it was just that every time she and Eric got together with them, they talked about how they’d spent their weekend sky-diving or hang-gliding or deep-sea diving or engaged in some other life-threatening activity. Amy never had any desire to do any of the potentially deadly or injurious things they did, but it made her feel dull by comparison. All Amy could add to the conversation was,
Well, this weekend Eric and I ordered in pizza and watched a NetFlix movie so we didn’t have to leave the house even once. It’s not quite as thrilling as parasailing or hiking up Kilimanjaro, but we live a full life anyway as you can plainly see.
“Sure, that would be fun.”
“Great. I’ll let them know. How’s your day?”
“My day? Oh, you know, the usual. And you?”
“It’s going well. Do you want me to cook tonight?”
“Cook? Yeah, that’d be great.”
“Okay. I’ll think of something good. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“See you tonight, hon.”
“Tonight,” she repeated dumbly before returning the phone to its cradle. She stared at the phone for a moment as her heart thumped painfully, as if Eric could somehow psychically know all the traitorous thoughts she’d been having.
Exhaling, she turned to her computer and opened an Excel file. Listlessly, she took bites of her chicken and vegetables, luckily not tasting any of it. When she dropped a sliver of a carrot into her keyboard, she turned the keyboard over and banged on the back of it as if she were attempting to make a baby burp, watching the food go flying out from her technological Heimlich maneuvers.
She tossed the rest of her lunch into the garbage and swiveled in her chair, her eyes taking on the glazed look of someone drooling at the asylum.
That glazed look was replaced with bright, alert eyes when her email pinged to let her know she had new mail and she saw the name on the
FROM
line. As she read the email, her heart raced.
From: [email protected]
I really enjoyed meeting you this morning. You’re an incredibly beautiful woman. And smart, too! Can I take you out for a drink after our meeting on Friday?
Strictly for pleasure, no business.
She blinked, then tentatively she hit
REPLY
.
From: [email protected]
Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think my fiancé would appreciate me going out for drinks with a handsome entrepreneur.
Before hitting
SEND
, she stared at the word “handsome.” She knew she was being deliberately flirty and provocative. She was never flirty and provocative. But just now, she didn’t want to be herself. She wanted to be daring. She wanted to be a risk-taker. As adrenaline surged through her veins, she hit
SEND
.
She stared at her computer screen for a full minute. Oh God. Had she stepped over the line? Had she…
Her email pinged again.
Amy swallowed and tried to get her breathing to return to normal. She clearly wasn’t cut out for a life of crime or high adventure if sending a few emails nearly gave her a heart attack.
From: [email protected]
It’s tempting, but I’m leaving for Mexico on Saturday and I need to pack.
She was already packed; the truth was that she didn’t trust herself alone with Brent and alcohol.
The ringing phone made her jump. She’d been so focused on watching her computer screen for a reply from Brent, that the shrill sound of the phone made her feel like a burglar who’d been caught, and the alarm was signaling the police. It was the reaction, she knew, of a guilty person. She wondered for a moment if it might be Brent calling her.
“Hello?”
“Amy, hi.” It was Gretchen, her wedding planner. “Listen, have you made any progress on the dress?”
Amy exhaled. “I told you, I’ll make my decision just as soon as I get back from the spa. I want to lose a few pounds before I make my final choice.”
“Amy, you know how important the dress is. The seamstress can always take it in when you lose a few pounds. I just don’t get you. You searched for three weeks straight so you could find the perfect periwinkle blue shade of tablecloths, but when it comes to something as vital as the dress, you leave it to the last second. I’ve never had a client with more exacting taste than you. I like it, I’m a perfectionist myself, so I appreciate a woman who knows what she wants, I’m just saying…”
“Gretchen, I appreciate your concern, I really do. I’ve narrowed it down to two dresses. I promise I’ll pick one just as soon as I get back.” One of the dresses was simple and conservative. It fit Amy perfectly, she felt comfortable in it, and it suited her personality completely. The other dress wasn’t Amy at all—it had elaborate beadwork and looked like something Cinderella would wear to the ball. It showed off Amy’s cleavage and Amy never showed her cleavage, even when she was home alone. But she’d fallen in love with the dress when she’d tried it on. Maybe it was that when she tried the dress on, she felt like the woman she wanted to be instead of the woman she was. “Look Gretchen, I really…”
“Wait, wait, I need to ask you about…”
Amy’s email pinged. “Sorry, I need to go. I’ll talk to you before I leave for Mexico, I promise.”
Amy hung up the phone and, before she could think, she wrote back.