Last Call (Cocktail #5) (12 page)

“Hit me.”

“What was that about spending a night in a pod?”

“Seriously? I ask you to marry me, and that’s the line you picked out?”

“Technically, I asked you to marry me first. Let us never forget this very important bit of information.”

“So noted.”

“Can I ask another question?”

“Just one more, and then I’ll need an answer.”

“Is this even legal?”

I laughed, then pulled him down to me for a soft kiss. “Not in the slightest. This is just for us.”

“You realize you own me, don’t you, Nightie Girl?”

“Is that a yes?”

“Hell yes it’s a yes, let’s get hitched,” he whispered, and I threw my arms around his neck. “Watch the rib, okay?”

“Shit!” I exclaimed, and then I heard Benjamin clearing his throat. “Dammit, I just swore at my own wedding. Dammit, I did it again.”

“That’s three times.”

“Can it, Wallbanger.”

And with those revered words, we walked ourselves down the aisle. Spoke the simplest of vows. Promised each other everything we could. Kissed under the stars. High-fived our witnesses on the way back down the aisle. Cut the strings on about fifty sky lanterns and set them loose towards the stars. Then headed inside for garlic foam.

Because that’s what my husband wanted.

Later that night, in the honeymoon bed . . .

“T
hat feels amazing. Don’t stop what you’re doing there, please don’t stop. Right there. Right there. That’s it . . . mmmm.”

“How many is that?”

“I’ve lost count.”

“This is the big one.”

“I can feel it. Jesus that’s good . . . more . . . more . . . more.”

“We’re going to run out of calamine lotion at this rate.”

Here’s the thing about getting married outside in the tropics. Mosquitos. Big fuckers. We spent our wedding night scratching each other’s bites and applying calamine
lotion by the gallon. And with Simon still on the disabled list sexy-times-wise, we spooned, scratched, and watched
Goonies
. With subtitles.

Best. Wedding. Night. Ever.

“D
o you, Caroline, take this man, Simon, to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do.”

“And do you, Simon, take this woman, Caroline, to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do.”

And so we made it legal. Simon and I had our very best friends and our very favorite family members over to our house in Sausalito, along with a judge I’d done a remodel for. Simon wore jeans, I wore a sundress, and we got married for a second time. This one recognized by the U.S. government. Were my parents disappointed they didn’t get to throw me the huge splashy wedding they’d been planning? Maybe a little, but ultimately they understood. As did Mimi and Sophia, and why they didn’t even know about our Vietnamese wedding until after we’d flown home.

We kept our original wedding date, slashed the
guest list by two-thirds, and with the exception of Simon’s friends from Pennsylvania and his old neighbors the Whites, everyone was local. At least local to Northern California. Viv and Clark were there, with Will in attendance as well, cute as a button in a tuxedo onesie. And Chloe and Lucas were there too, in town visiting Sophia and Neil. And get this, Chloe and Clark were cousins. How’s that for six degrees of Wallbanger? I was happy to have them all here on this very special day. This very special
casual
day. Because in the end, it wasn’t the lace and the tulle that made a wedding—it was about the couple saying their I do’s, and their friends and family being there to celebrate it with them. We threw a barbecue, opened up a bunch of wine and cold beer, set up a makeshift soda fountain to make egg creams and sundaes, and had a party. We dragged Simon’s old record player out onto the terrace, he did some audio nerd stuff with the speakers, and big-band music filled the Sausalito night.

Instead of having a wedding cake, I’d spent two solid days this week in the kitchen with my mom, my girlfriends, my aunts, and my cousins, and we made pans and pans of Ina’s Outrageous Brownies. She would have been proud. But for Simon, I made him is very own apple pie, which he smeared all over my face in place of wedding cake. We had wedding pie. Fitting.

I sat on a bench at the edge of our lawn, eating brownies with Mimi and Sophia and watched as our
guys played Frisbee with Benjamin and Simon’s high school crew. I’d been holding Mary Jane until Sophia had to take over. Someone was hungry.

“Not really the wedding I pictured you having, Caroline,” Sophia said, switching boobs. “But it’s pretty fun.”

“Fun, I’ll take. Fancy, I’ll leave to you. How’s the planning coming along?”

“It’s coming along great! The binder is really filling out nicely,” Mimi said, interrupting. She was seriously considering starting a second business, and she should. She was damn good at it. “Speaking of the binder, I’ve got pictures to go through with you on ideas I had for your hair, Sophia. I’ve been cutting out stuff from magazines for weeks now. Did you know that Grace Sheridan has your exact same hair color and length? Hers is a little more curly than yours, but it’s essentially the same.”

“Who’s Grace Sheridan?” Sophia asked, and Mimi and I both looked at her in surprise.

“You totally know who she is,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s on that TV show.”

“I totally do
not
know who she is.
Sesame Street
and Neil’s broadcasts, that’s all I ever watch anymore. My brain is mush,” Sophia said, shaking her head right back at me.

“Okay, I got this,” Mimi said. “She’s Jack Hamilton’s girlfriend. You know, the—”

“—the Brit? Hello, now I’m right there with you. Holy shit, he is hot. We have to go see the new
Time
movie when it comes out; we’ll let the boys stay home with
Mary Jane while we go have some sweet British hunky time,” Sophia said, already plotting her girls’ night out.

“Yes yes, she’s with Jack Hamilton, but more importantly, she’s got great hair. And it’s exactly the same shade of red as yours. So I found this picture of her on the red carpet and—”

Sophia interrupted Mimi again, unable to stop herself. “—when she walked with Jack down the red carpet? Ahhh! I fucking loved that! Remember how everyone was gossiping about who he was dating?”

“But wait, we were talking about her hair! Listen to me, I’ve got the perfect updo based on—”

“Oh updo this, let’s talk about Jack Hamilton’s hair instead. It always looks freshly fucked, you know what I mean? I wonder if they do it in the limo on the way to appearances . . .”

“Stop it—just stop it! We’re talking wedding hair here, dammit, and—”

I tuned them out mostly, drinking my beer and listening with one ear as Sophia and Mimi began a heated conversation about updos versus long and flouncy. The other ear was tuned to the Glenn Miller currently crackling through the speakers. And within seconds, Simon appeared.

“Mrs. Parker?” he said, extending his hand.

“Mr. Reynolds.” I winked and stood. “Bye, girls.”

“Bye,” they said in unison as I followed my husband out onto the impromptu dance floor. Taking a cue from our original, if not technically legal, ceremony we had
lanterns hung all over the backyard, bringing a little bit of fairy tale home with us from Ha Long Bay.

“Are you happy?” he asked as he spun me across the brick patio.

“Ecstatically. You?”

“Oh yeah. Especially since I got some news from my doctor today.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, babe. I’m good to go,” he whispered, pulling me tighter into his body. Oh boy. He wasn’t lying.

“Well lookie here,” I murmured, sneaking a hand down to cop a feel around what was pressing into my thigh. “Um. Wow. You’re, like, really, really hard, Simon.”

“Hmm? Oh jeez, that’s a bottle in my pocket. Literally.” He laughed, pulling out a glass bottle from his front pocket and showing it to me. Thank goodness. Not only was he frighteningly hard, the bottle was also . . . hmm . . . how do I say . . . considerably thinner than Simon was.

“Why are you carrying around a bottle?” I asked.

“I thought I’d grab some dirt, maybe from the edge of the dance floor over there, put it with our other bottles. I know it’s technically not sand, but there should be something there for tonight.”

I grinned and told him it was a very sweet idea. Years ago, Simon had started collecting sand from the beaches he’d visited all over the world, storing them in little labeled bottles and displaying them on a narrow
shelf. We’d started a second shelf for beaches we’d visited together. I’d brought some home from the beach where we were married in Vietnam, and I was touched that he’d thought to commemorate tonight as well. But back to his pocket. . . .

“I’m liking where this night is going,” I said, deliberately bumping my hips into his, where there was something else taking shape. Definitely bigger than a bottle. “How fast do you think we can get everybody out of here?” I asked, only half joking.

“As soon as the ribs run out they’ll leave, right?”

“We are so classy. Serving ribs at our wedding.”

“And potato salad. Don’t forget the potato salad.”

“And pie.”

“That pie was great. Never stop making that pie. Dammit, I should have written that into the vows,” he said, dipping me low and making me giggle upside down. And there, in our own backyard surrounded by everyone we loved, he kissed me. My husband.”

“W
hat a mess.”

“I think one of the wedding presents should be cleaning up after,” Simon groaned, surveying the damage in the kitchen.

“I don’t think that was on our registry, babe,” I said sadly, patting him on the shoulder as I walked by to the dining room. Which was still wedding gift central.
“We do, however, have the latest in immersion blenders, electric carving knives, and . . . what the hell is this?” I asked, holding up a white box.

“That’s the Mr. Bacon.” Simon said proudly.

“Who is mister bacon?”

“No no, Mr. Bacon. You cook bacon in it.”

“I gathered that. Why is this necessary?” Every cat in the house had gathered either on the dining room table or underneath. They knew the word
bacon
. They understood the word
bacon
. They loved the bacon.

“You use it to cook bacon in the microwave, easy as pie. Which is appropriate, because if you drape the bacon over this little cup here, you can microwave it into the shape of a little pie. Now you’ve got a bacon pie thingie that you can fill with other stuff!”

“Who the hell bought us this?”

“Trevor and Megan.”

“No way. No way that Megan, a former Food Network gal, gave us this for our wedding.”

“Actually, they gave us two presents. They also got us the new white serving dishes you had to have from Williams-Sonoma.”

“Atta girl,” I praised, and looked once more at the box Simon was now cradling. “Trevor must have gone rogue with that one.”

“Keep making fun of my Mr. Bacon. It still doesn’t solve the problem of this mess.”

“How about a post-wedding-party party? Where we invite many of the same people and put them to work
cleaning up? That way we don’t have to spend our honeymoon working,” I suggested, and Simon’s eyes lit up.

“Yeah, why are we spending our wedding night talking about bacon?”

“Well, you were the one that—”

I was silenced by a kiss as Simon crossed the kitchen in two strides, gathered me against him, and pressed his mouth to mine. I ignited instantly.

“You sure about this?” I asked, breathless as he kissed the stuffing out of me.

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked, his voice thick and impossibly sexy as he trailed kissed down along my jawline, headed for my neck. Once those lips hit below the chin, I was pretty much done for. “I missed our first wedding night, I’m not missing the second.”

“Let’s go slow though, okay?” I insisted as he backed me toward the stairs. His doctor had cleared him, sure, but that didn’t mean we needed to swing from the chandeliers.

“I like slow,” he murmured, gathering a handful of backside.

“We started out slow, you know . . .” I sighed as his lips found my sweet spot just below my ear. We were walking up the stairs now, shutting off lights as we went and kissing like teenagers.

“That’s not how I recall it,” he said, turning me at the top of the stairs, positioning me in front of him as he walked me down the hallway. His arms were wrapped around my waist and his lips tickled at my ear, making
me giggle a bit. I was a little tipsy from beer, but not so tipsy that I was going to be railroaded.

“We did
so
start out slow—we were friends first. Friends for a while, actually,” I reminded him, stopping just outside our bedroom door. I leaned in the doorway, keeping him from going inside.

“I don’t recall us being friends first. I recall us being something else entirely at first.” He nipped at my earlobe. More specifically, at what was hanging from my earlobe. His wedding present to me.

That morning when I woke up, there was a jewelry box sitting on top of the pillow where Simon’s head usually was. I could hear him brushing his teeth in the bathroom as I looked around, wondering what he was up to. Since we already felt we’d been married on that beach, there was no “can’t see the bride before the wedding,” today and I wanted him next to me in our bed.

“What’s this?” I asked, scrunching back down into the pillows, tugging the comforter up around me.

“Sahfing for mah brud,” was the answer I got.

“I’ll wait until you spit, babe,” was the answer I gave.

He spit.

He joined me on the bed.

“Just a little something for my bride,” he repeated.

“But I thought we weren’t doing presents,” I protested. We’d discussed it before and agreed that we weren’t doing anything special.

“Oh hush up, will you, and open it,” he instructed, and I did as I was told.