Notes from the Blender (17 page)

MY DAD WAS PACING NERVOUSLY IN THE BACK OF AUNT
Sarah’s crazy little church—pretty much where this whole story started—by the time we got there.

“Neilly!” he exclaimed, running his fingers through what was left of his thinning hair. “Where’ve you been? I was so worried—”

“I’m here now, Dad. You know I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

While my mom, Thomas, Dec, and the rest of the stragglers found seats in the crowded pews, I stayed behind in the vestibule with my father. He’d asked me to be his person of honor, and, quite frankly, I was extremely honored by his asking me to do so.

I could feel a lump rising up in my throat as the opening bars of Pachelbel’s Canon rang out, but I tried to joke my way out of totally losing it. “So how’d you get to be the bride in this equation?” I whispered to my dad as we step-together-step-togethered down the aisle.

“Have you seen my husband-to-be?” he whispered back, and we both had to stifle really inappropriate giggles.

Roger stood waiting for my dad at the front of the church, looking like he was about to faint. And so
his
person of honor—Griffin—put an arm around his dad to steady him, and I thought it was the sweetest gesture an unconventional wedding had ever seen. Especially knowing how long it had taken both of us to get where we were, emotionally speaking, about the whole thing.

When we finally made it to where they stood, my dad and Roger fell into this huge embrace. And when the hug ended, Roger held both my dad’s cheeks and gave him a kiss. That’s when everyone in the church kind of exploded in applause, hooting and hollering and woo-hoo-ing.

“Love makes a family!” I heard someone yell.

“Go Dad and Roger!” Lulu piped in. She’d known my dad since we were little, so she was entitled to call him that.

“Down with labels, up with love!” her date, Andy, the SOI guitarist, added.

Dec put two fingers in either side of his mouth and whistled.

“And I didn’t even say, ‘You may kiss your spouse’ yet,” Aunt Sarah quipped.

Things calmed down considerably after that. Aunt Sarah said all the usual great stuff, like how God loves everyone regardless of race, creed, nationality, or sexual orientation—she was preaching to the choir here, as probably three-quarters of the church was packed with same-sex couples—and how special my dad and Roger’s love was. And then she really
did
say “You may kiss your spouse,” and then they smooched, and everyone went crazy again, and it was just the coolest thing ever.

At the reception, Dec and I were dancing to some totally corny eighties song when I just had to get back to the subject of his ink. I felt like his moment of glory had been cut short in the car, and he deserved some serious props. Well, he and my mom, that is.

“Dude, have I told you lately how awesome that tattoo is?” I asked, patting his arm more gently this time.

Dec just grinned. “Uh, I don’t know if you know this, but my mom’s name was Patience. So it kind of means a lot to me. Like, I know I won’t ever forget her, ’cause she’ll always be here with me.”

I nodded, the tat even cooler now that I knew how much meaning was behind it. “You know, I’ve been thinking. Would you mind it very much if I copied you?”

“I wouldn’t mind, but I also don’t think you’d look very good with a flowered tattoo that says ‘Patience’ on your bicep,” he said.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got my own message and spot in mind,” I told him. “You’re just the inspiration.”

“So you’re saying I inspire you?”

I nodded. “I guess I am.”

“If you had asked me at the beginning of this year what one thing I never thought I’d hear you say, that would’ve been it,” he said. “Come to think of it, I guess I never thought I’d hear you say anything. To me, that is.”

“Well, I’m glad I did.”

“Me, too.”

Bret Michaels was just about taking it home, singing about some chick who had a thorn in her rose, when Griffin tapped Dec on the shoulder. “May I?”

It was déjà vu all over again. Except this time Dec surprised me by agreeing to bow out with a smile.

But I shook my head. “We’ll finish out this dance, and then I’ll come find you, okay?”

Griffin nodded. “I’ll be out on the balcony.”

“You didn’t have to do that, Neilly,” Dec said once Griffin had walked away.

“Yes, I did,” I told him. “You ripped me a new one about not being a good friend last week, and I don’t want to make the same mistake twice.”

Dec opened his mouth and closed it a few times, but nothing came out.

“What?” I asked him.

“Uh, except when it comes to Sam, I guess,” he finally spit out, totally cracking himself up.

“Huh?”

“He was the same mistake twice, wasn’t he?”

“Touché, brother. Touché. I won’t do it again.”

“Don’t,” Dec said. “He doesn’t deserve a great girl like you.”

I smiled up at my new stepbro. “Thanks. For everything.”

“Right back at ya, sista.”

When I finally found my way back to Griffin much later on, things were just about wrapping up at the reception. “Sorry we didn’t get to talk much tonight,” I told him. “It was so crazy in there with my dad wanting to introduce me to all his friends, you know.…”

“Totally. So maybe we can hang out tomorrow afternoon instead? Grab a coffee or something?”

“Sure,” I said. But then remembered I already had afternoon plans. “Actually, can we make it tomorrow night?”

By the time I met my very hot, not-really-stepbrother-since-gay-unions-are-still-not-legally-recognized-in-the-backward state-I-live-in the next night for coffee, I was a changed woman. And I couldn’t wait to show Griffin the new me. So right after giving him a big hug hello, I peeled back the gauze protecting the new tat I’d just gotten inked on the inside of my wrist.

Griffin broke out into a huge smile when he saw what it was: a delicate little pink heart surrounded by the words
Love will find a way
in fancy script.

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said, and proceeded to plant the most warm and soft, sweet and lingering kiss in the world on me.

And let me tell you, it was totally smokin’.

THINGS DIDN’T EXACTLY WORK OUT WITH ANASTASIA.
Somebody got a little too clingy after things got physical. And yeah, that somebody was me. I may have professed my undying love. The details are a bit hazy. Or, anyway, I’m trying to make them get hazy, because otherwise I can still feel the humiliation.

But it wasn’t all bad. For one thing, please note that I said
after
things got physical. Five times. The fourth and fifth of which actually lasted longer than thirty seconds. For another, we had a great time together for the couple of months we were together, and being seen in public with a girl, especially one as completely smokin’ hot as Anastasia, announced to the world that I was boyfriend material. Neilly tried to explain this to me, but I didn’t understand it at all because it has to do with the way the female brain works. But in a nutshell, if a guy sees a girl with another guy, he gets annoyed because she’s off-limits. If a girl sees a guy with another girl, he automatically goes into the potential boyfriend file.

I know. I don’t get it, either.

But it doesn’t matter because once Anastasia and I broke up (Okay, after she dumped me. There may have been tears. There may have been some rather embarrassing and unmanly pleading.…), I had like three girls suddenly sending me messages on the old social networks. Even Chantelle started talking to me again. Too bad for her—she had her chance.

So I’ve got three prospects right now, or four, I guess, if you count Chantelle, which I don’t, probably, and I don’t feel particularly desperate to have a girlfriend right now, which probably will attract even more girls.

I will now stop talking about girls because it’s about to lead to me bragging about some of the various activities Anastasia and I engaged in, particularly on occasion four, and apparently people get really annoyed and/or disgusted when you brag about such things.

And, anyway, there was another big event that took place after Neilly’s dad’s wedding.

I got this text from Dad during fifth period:
Carmen’s in labor. Come to the hospital after school.

This was followed almost immediately by one from Neilly:
No f-n way are we waiting till after school. Meet me in the hall.

So we excused ourselves from class and went straight to the hospital. I figured we could probably talk our way out of it, and if not, detention was better than sitting in biology class trying to memorize the stupid photosynthesis formula while my little sibling was entering the world.

But of course we got to the hospital and nothing much was happening. Dad popped out of the delivery room and announced that Carmen was fully dilated. “Like, her pupils or something?” I asked.

“Her cervix, idiot,” Neilly said, and, I mean, I like Carmen a lot—I may even love her in a totally parental kind of way—but I really wasn’t interested in any more updates on her lady parts.

Which was good, because Dad then disappeared for an hour and a half. Neilly and I sat there doing nothing, bored out of our minds from waiting and yet too excited to focus on anything. Here’s how bad it was: I couldn’t even read the sex columns in the women’s magazines.

I worried and fretted until Neilly got sick of it and barked, “Will you stop pacing, sit down, and shut the hell up? Everything is fine!”

And it was. Dad came out looking as haggard as I can remember seeing him, tears running down his face, and said, his voice breaking with emotion, “So do you guys want to meet your little sister, or what?”

“Ha!” Neilly said. “Sister! In your face!”

We went into the room and Carmen, all flushed and sweaty, was holding our baby sister. Who was, of course, perfect and beautiful. “Dec, Neilly, this is Ramona.”

“Oh my God, Mom! That is so sweet!” Neilly said, then turned to me and said, “We read every single Ramona book together when I was little. Mom used to read them to me at bedtime.”

Well. She could think what she wanted, but I knew my little sister was named after a Ramones song. The only thing cooler would have been if they had named her Lemmy, but you really can’t do that to a girl.

Neilly held her for a while, then passed her over to me. “Support her head, Dec,” Dad coached. I figured he’d just been through a lot, so I did not remind him that he’d instructed me on the proper way to hold a baby, like, eight million times in the last two weeks.

I held my baby sister in my arms, and she was so light and warm and sweet and perfect, and at that moment I really just wanted to protect her from everything in the whole world—from hurt and fear and pain and grief and everything bad.

But, of course, you can’t protect anybody from everything bad. Not even my little sister Ramona. All you can do is hope she’s tough enough to get through the bad stuff. I figured Ramona might need the toughness more than I did at that point, so I pulled the pin off my shirt and stuck it on Ramona’s onesie, while Dad squealed about a sharp object being so near to her.

I handed Ramona back to Carmen, and there she was, my little sister, badass-in-training, named after a Ramones song and sporting a Minor Threat pin before she was even an hour old.

We hung out for a while, but then Dad and Carmen and sweet, sweet little Ramona needed some sleep, so they booted Neilly and me out.

We argued in a good-natured way about whether Ramona was named after some girl in books or a Ramones song, and about whether she was going to be a badass or a girly-girl, but since I knew I was right on both counts, I let it drop.

We stopped at the store, got some mango smoothie ingredients, and went back to the Mansion of Metal. Or, as our family likes to call it, home.

Steve-o, for being my lifelong partner in crime; Courtney, for being such an inspiration; Kelsey, for always making me laugh; my mama, for always being on my side; Charlotte, for being my twin from another mother; Holly, for being cool like that; Greg, for his enthusiastic support; and Suzanne, for being my BFF all these years and encouraging me to write with her awesome and awesomely talented husband Brendan (and a special shout-out to both of them for letting me play guitar at their wedding).