There's Cake in My Future (13 page)

Speaking of cake charms: I’ve also spent the week watching everyone around me have their cake charms come true. First, there was Ginger’s engagement. Then our pregnant friend Joyce, the one who got the Noah’s Ark, found out that she was having twins. Finally our screenwriter friend Jean, who pulled the wishing well, had jokingly said aloud that she wished she’d sell one of her scripts to Disney. She sold one to Disney on Monday, then a different script to Paramount on Wednesday.

And now I am at Nic’s rehearsal dinner, standing in the middle of the restaurant with Nic and Mel, and talking to Nic’s friend Carolyn.

And I may have a stroke from her news.

“So you actually
won
the lottery?” I ask Carolyn.

“I know!” Carolyn exclaims. “It was the strangest thing. I never play. I mean, never. But I was driving home after the shower and just thinking about how kooky it would be if I bought a lottery ticket that won a buck. You know, like I got one number of the six. I thought it would be funny. I didn’t even know how you played, picked numbers, anything. So I just picked the birth dates of me, my brother, and my sister, bought the ticket, and here I am!”

“What are you going to do with all that money?” Mel asks her, with a smile that looks genuine to the untrained eye.

Carolyn beams as she tells her, “I leave for Paris first thing Sunday morning. Gonna just hang out for a few months in Europe with my boyfriend at all the five-star hotels, come home, buy a house, then figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. No more fucking newspaper jobs. I am
done
!”

I smile. “That’s awesome,” I lie. “I’m so happy for you.”

“I know! Isn’t it amazing!” Carolyn exclaims. “I’m gonna go find a drink. Got a limo tonight, so I can have whatever I want! Can I get anyone anything?”

We all answer with versions of “No” and “I’m good.”

The moment Carolyn is out of hearing range, my smile drops, and I turn to the girls. “She’s begging us to push her face in the cake tomorrow.”

“It’s a cry for help really,” Nic says dryly.

A thought occurs to me. “Maybe the shovel I pulled is the weapon I am supposed to use on all these bitches with their perfect runs of luck.”

“Oh, come on,” Mel chastises us. “How can you guys not be happy for her? Someone had to win the lottery. Might as well be one of your friends, right?”

Nic and I turn to each other to think about Mel’s statement. True: someone did have to win the lottery. And, logically, it doesn’t really affect my life one way or another if Carolyn won, and I should be happy for Nic’s friend.

Nic starts to shake her head. “Nah, I’m still jealous as hell.”

I nod. “It’s amazing how petty and small I can be,” I concur.

We hear Pink belt out “So What” on Mel’s cell phone. Fred. Mel reaches into her purse, yanks out the phone, and begins her latest tirade. “May you rot in Hell. What is it now, Fuckface?”

Nic looks at me in surprise. “You told her you called him that?”

“Of course not,” I say quickly. “I told her
we
called him that.”

This is followed by Nic’s phone chiming “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want to” by Lesley Gore. She picks up. “If you tell me one more kind of flower has frozen in the middle of August, I swear to God I’m going to climb through the phone and strangle you.”

Over the years, I’ve learned to hate the ubiquitous cell phone. I mean, besides the obvious: oh goody, I get to perpetually wait by the phone since if the bastard was interested in me at all he would call, e-mail, text, or Facebook me, all of which I can access now on my phone. (Side note: not feeling constantly rejected—is there an app for that?)

But, also, because it just encourages people to ignore you.

Even if you are a much more supportive and pleasant person than the dipshit on the phone.

“Oh no!” Mel yells into her phone. “The Britney Spears CDs are mine! You gave them to me! This is just your pathetic attempt to blackmail me into seeing you again.… Because heterosexual men
look at
Britney Spears. They don’t actually
listen to
Britney Spears!”

I shake my head. “Mel, just let him have the CDs. You can get all the hits you want on iTunes for twenty bucks,” I advise, as I snag a flute of Taltarni Brut Taché from a passing waiter.

Nic covers the phone. “Are you talking to me?” she asks me distractedly.

“No.”

“Because I’m on with my florist,” Nicole tells me. “Just give me one more minute.” Then she returns to her latest wedding adversary. “But I didn’t order the Biedermeier bouquet, I ordered the Cascade bouquet. It’s in the contract.”

Mel covers the phone to answer me. “I don’t want to go on iTunes, because I don’t just want her hits. The whole point of an album is to hear the lesser known, more artistic songs.”

“Of Britney Spears?!” I blurt out.

Mel takes my flute, gulps a huge mouthful of sparkling wine, then continues yelling at Fred, “No we are not talking about this in person … Fred, you show up at the wedding tomorrow, and I swear to God, I’ll castrate you with a butter knife.”

“Yes, I know the difference!” Nic yells in exasperation while grabbing a sourdough roll from a nearby table and stress eating. “How do I know the difference?” she says incredulously through a mouthful of bread. “Because up until today I’d never heard of a Biedermeier bouquet!”

“You miss me?!” Mel says incredulously.
“Fan ta dig!”
she hisses in Swedish.

“No, no. Not lilacs—lilies!” Nic says urgently into her phone. “What do you mean, ‘There’s really no difference’? I’m sorry: are you a gay man or a straight man? Because a man who sucks cock knows the difference!”

I jolt at that.

“You know what? Suck my cock!” Mel growls at Fred.

And I jolt at that. (I thought I was the one in this group who said raunchy, shocking things.)

Nic slams her phone shut. “Honestly, if you had asked me anything about bouquets six months ago, I would have said, ‘I don’t know. They’re pretty, and they usually come with a plastic thing you can hold when you’re walking down the aisle.’ Now suddenly I’m arguing about lilies freezing in summer.”

“Oh yeah, right!” Mel yells into her phone. “That’s about as likely to happen as lilies freezing in summer.”

Nic grabs my flute from Mel and downs the rest of my drink. She turns to me. “You know, for some stupid reason, I always thought my wedding week would be romantic. I pictured being so in love with my Prince Charming that we would spend the week making plans about our future: talking about our future babies, our future jobs, where we wanted to buy a house, dreaming of where we’d live in retirement. Maybe picking out a new sofa: our sofa. Instead, I have spent the entire week stressing out over stupid things like whether my parents can be in the same room together without killing each other and if anyone will notice if I’m carrying a Biedermeier bouquet.”

Mel covers the mouthpiece of her phone and returns to her normal voice. “That’s why I told you to get a wedding planner.”

“Do you have any idea how much a wedding planner charges in Los Angeles?” Nic tells her. “We’re already spending way too much on this wedding. Besides, it would be one thing if I had a job filling my days. But ever since I became a lady of leisure—a term I’m quite sure a man coined, by the way—I apparently have nothing better to do with my life than discuss fondant and fillings with cake bakers, argue with the caterer about the differences between crab cakes and ahi tuna sushi appetizers, and wonder why the Hell I ever agreed to go on a cruise.”

I eye Nic in confusion. “I’m sorry. Is the team going on some basketball cruise?”

“No,” Nic says, shaking her head. “We are. We’re not going to Italy. The honeymoon has been canceled. Or redirected or … something.”

Mel turns around to Nic in alarm. “I have to call you back,” she says to Fred, as she immediately flips her phone shut.

The two of us shoot a barrage of questions at Nic: “What? Why? When?” and “Wait. Does that mean you’re eloping on the ship, and we don’t have to wear the dresses?”

Nic glares at me for my last question, then tries to rush through her answers so that we can move on to another topic. “Seven days ago. It’s not Jason’s fault. And yes, you still have to wear the fucking dresses. Do you think ahi tuna is an appropriate appetizer?”

“I didn’t say ‘fucking,’ ” I point out.

“It was implied,” she assures me.

“Actually, it was inferred,” I say.

“No. What I said was inferred. What you said was implied. The difference is—”

“Are you two seriously deflecting the real issue here with a grammatical argument?” Mel chastises. “What happened? Why aren’t you going to Italy?”

Nic eyes the other guests mingling about in the room. She takes a new glass of bubbly from a passing waiter, then gestures with her head for us to follow her to a quiet corner, away from everyone. We each grab a glass of champagne as well, and follow her.

Once everyone is out of hearing range, Nic whispers to us, “Jacquie—she of the typewriter charm—got a job as a junior speechwriter for the governor. He’ll be announcing that he’s running for the Senate in the next few days, so she had to go to Sacramento immediately. Jason and she agreed that they didn’t want to pull the girls out of their school in Los Angeles. So we now have them full time. The plan is we’ll take them on weekdays, and she’ll fly home on Friday nights, and have them on weekends.”

“Is that all?” I ask. “You don’t need to cancel your honeymoon. Just take the girls with you to Italy.”

“I can’t,” Nic tells me. “The girls have to be back in school soon. And they’ve been promised this particular family cruise for the last year, followed by a trip to Disney World, which Jacquie now can’t take them on, because she’s already started her job in Sacramento. So we have to take them. No Venice. No Florence. Instead I’m going to be retching my guts out for seven days, then taking pictures with Mickey Mouse. We leave for Florida tomorrow night, right after the wedding.”

I shake my head. “Honey, I’m sorry their mom flaked on a trip she promised them, but this is your honeymoon. Their needs don’t automatically trump your needs.”

“Spoken like a single woman,” Nic retorts. “What kind of parent would cancel their kids’ trip to Disney World?” she asks me harshly.

“Um … their mom, off the top of my head,” I rebut.

Mel, of course, tries to play diplomat. “I think what Seema is trying to say is that this is only a few weeks out of everyone’s lives, but that these few weeks are crucial to you. You only get one honeymoon.”

“Familymoon,” Nic corrects her.

“Fam…” Mel begins. “I’m sorry. What is that??”

“It’s a honeymoon for blended families,” Nic explains.

I snort a suppressed laugh.

Nic gives me the stink eye. “Oh come on! What was I supposed to say? ‘I’m sorry, Jason. I know you would kill to have the girls live with you full time, and that we have this amazing opportunity that’s been handed to us on a silver platter. But I have to go see Italy, and I’m afraid that’s much more important than you getting to be a full-time dad, your daughters getting to continue in the school they love, and your ex-wife getting the dream job she’s been shooting for these past ten years.’ ”

“You still do all those things,” Mel points out gently. “And it’s great that you want to. But you have to insist on your honeymoon. You can’t let a man walk all over you.”

“Whoa,” Nic snaps. “Did I judge you when you got back together with Fred?”

“No,” Mel concedes, a little surprised by Nic’s outburst.

“Even when getting back together with him was a really
stupid
idea?” Nic continues.

Mel looks down at the carpet sheepishly. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

I open my mouth. “We’re not being judgmental. We’re merely pointing out—”

“Five words for you,” Nic tells me sternly, as she puts out her fist, thumb up. “Michael,” and then up come the rest of her fingers. “Ken, Greg, Paulo, Pierre. Did I ever say
one
bad word about them when you were dating?”

Well, that’s just harsh, bringing up my worst five choices in men so succinctly like that.

I shut my mouth immediately.

“Nic!” we hear Jason call from across the room. Nic smiles, and waves to him. “I have to mingle. Please, guys, I’m sorry I’m being a bitch right now, but I just need your unconditional support for the next two days.”

And she’s off. Mel turns to me sympathetically. “Pierre wasn’t so bad. You know, other than the bisexual thing.” Before I can respond, Mel’s eyes bug open. “Wow. I
so
need to leave you two alone tonight.”

I follow her gaze to see Scott walking into the room.

My jaw drops.

I’m not kidding, my jaw is dropped. I am stunned.

I have never seen him look so fucking sexy. Mr. Jeans-and-a-T-shirt is wearing a gray wool suit, with subtle pinstripes, a matching gray-and-white shirt, and a purple tie.

He has figuratively and literally taken my breath away. All I can think about is pulling off his jacket, undoing his tie, undoing those buttons, and getting him naked as quickly as possible, because he is just so spectacular, I can’t wait one minute longer.

I stare at him, dumbfounded, as he rushes up and kisses me on the cheek. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”

“It’s okay,” I say, barely able to put words together. “You look AMAZING.”

He smiles as he looks down at this outfit. “You think? I feel kind of silly in it.”

“Don’t,” I assure him. “You look … the best I’ve ever seen you.”

Scott smiles, and looks away from me in an uncharacteristically bashful way. “Thanks. You look really good too.”

I walk around him, my jaw still in dropped position. I put out my hand to feel his gray suit. “Seriously. I can’t get over how amazing you look. Have you always had this suit?”

“No. I just bought it today at Nordstrom. Britney helped me pick it out. I’ve been so busy with work this week, I totally forgot to go clothes shopping. When Britney called this morning to ask me what I was doing today, I told her in a panic, ‘I have this rehearsal dinner tonight, and I need to impress my date by wearing a great suit.’ So we hit the malls, and I got this.”