The Chapel Wars (11 page)

“Especially now that Holly is hanging on the guy at the chapel across the street. Proximity.”

I considered poking out his eyes with sprinkles.

“Now this makes sense!” Grant slapped his leg. “Let’s stuff us some envelopes then. Save her business so she can get up in this guy’s biz-nass!”

“Who is this guy?” Mike said defensively. “Were you ever going to tell us about him?”

Camille clapped her hands together. “This is so great! Is he adorbs? We can go on a double date.”

I’d rather go on a double date with my parents.

Sam was getting a pay cut for this. The last thing I needed when things were just barely starting with Dax was having my friends made aware. What if they told my family? What was there even to tell so far? We’d kissed twice. We’d exchanged a few texts. I thought about him constantly. I’d named our first three children.

So what?

“A double date would be fun.” Sam kissed Camille on the cheek. “I’d love to get to know Dax better.”

“Great, say his name, why don’t you,” I said.

“Ooh, she’s getting angry.” Porter took a swig of the Kahlúa straight out of the bottle and nearly choked. “Nasty.”

Sam laughed. “I think my dad poured all the leftover alcohol in there. He was going to throw it out.”

Porter spit into the sink. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Because this was more fun,” Sam said.

They worked for another half hour, and we were almost done when a hockey game came on and I lost them. Camille hovered next to me by the table until I finally set my marker down. “Can I do something for you?”

“Look,” she whispered, shooting a look toward the boys. She didn’t need to worry. Except for Sam, they never listened to what she said. “I know why you don’t want to talk to the guys about this. They are so antirelationship it’s amazing they haven’t faked Sam’s death so I would stay away.”

There had actually been a discussion on this before. Grant had offered his bedroom. They figured Camille would move on in two weeks, then they could release Sam back into the world.

“But all I’m saying is, if you do want to talk to anyone about this Dax guy, or any guy, talk to me. Or Sam, but only when he’s alone, because we both know Sam isn’t always Sam when the Penis Parade starts.”

I stared at Camille. This was not the high-voiced, frail puppet Sam had been dating the last fifteen months. Who was this relatable, foul-mouthed creature? Is this why he loved her? “Uh, yeah. I guess …”

“Now? Let’s talk now!” Camille pulled me into the guest bedroom, which was a little dramatic, but whatever.

She perched on the edge of the plaid bedspread and primly crossed her legs. “Okay. So tell me about Dax.”

This is the weird part. I did. I told her the little stuff, the details I’d been holding to my heart, like this little tick he had where he nodded his head when he was excited and how unbelievable his jaw was and how he made jokes about dead relatives in a sensitive way. And I told her about the Boneyard and the kiss and how I liked him so hard I was physically hurting from it.

“This sounds amazing,” she said.

“Or awful.” I rubbed my forehead. “What do I do?”

“Okay. So he works at the gross chapel across the street and your families hate each other. Which is, you know, Shakespearean. Whatever.” She sighed. “Love doesn’t always follow the rules. I mean, look at Sam and me. Do you know what he does for fun? Goes up to Mount Charleston and shoots cans. My parents are gun-control activists, I’m not even kidding. If they didn’t already forbid me from dating
any
guy, they would forbid me from dating
him
.”

“But you
are
dating him,” I said.

“Exactly. Because I love him. Maybe I’ll tell my parents about him someday, and we’ll have a big blowup, and we might have to run away together to Detroit, or wherever you go when you run away with a boyfriend.”

“So you’re saying I should tell my parents soon so we don’t get so far from the truth that we can’t go back.”

“No, I didn’t say that. If you tell them, they’ll try to get in the way and your relationship will be dead before it starts.”

“But you just said you’re going to have to run away with Sam someday,” I said.

“Or break up. Someday. The point is that now I want to be with Sam, and my parents can’t know. Just like you and Dax.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. Why not just get it over with and tell your parents?”

Camille gave me a weird look. “They would totally ground me.”

“But you’ll have to at some point, right? Like, when you get married.”

Camille refolded a blanket on the bed. “Well, that’s all a big ‘if.’ I was only kidding about Detroit. I’m sixteen. I’m not committing to forever yet. Sam talks like that sometimes, but that’s only because we work in a wedding chapel, you know?”

I ducked my head. This is how I wanted her to react, because you shouldn’t plan a wedding before a graduation party. But Sam had been so assured at Bridal Spectacular, like there was no question that they’d get married someday. I did not want that
kid to get his heart broken by a girl who spoke in circles. “We don’t talk about that.”

“Good.” She patted my shoulder. “Besides, you and Dax are forever away from that. You’ve had a kiss and an accidental date. Let’s get you into more solid territory before you start strategizing.”

“But that’s what I do, Camille. I strategize. It’s like an online dating site is constantly running in my head. I have rules and boundaries and I like to have an idea what the ultimate outcome is going to be.”

“Not every relationship is an equation,” she said.

No. But adding some logic to the mix didn’t hurt. If my parents had done the math, maybe they would be together still. Or maybe they wouldn’t have been together at all. They always told us this story of a whirlwind romance during a college spring break trip. I couldn’t picture them in college, or at spring break, but there the story is. Dad’s friends heckled him into some nineties MTV dating contest, which he lost, but when he was walking off the stage, he bumped into my mom, who had just broken up with Lenore’s dad and was in Mexico alone to find herself. And then they went out to eat and got food poisoning and stayed sick together and fell in love and Mom moved to Vegas for Dad. They would end the story with “And two kids later, here we are.”

And that’s where my family was, for quite a while, with parents who didn’t fight, still told how-we-met stories, and finished each other’s sentences. Which is why the divorce was so completely unexpected for James and me. Not like Porter’s parents,
who’d been fighting forever, house-shaking arguments that made divorce such an inevitability that Sam actually threw him a party when Porter’s dad moved out.

When my mom picked me up from school one day and casually said she had something to talk about, I thought some greatuncle had died or that my room was too dirty. No. The only explanation I got was, “Your dad and I totally respect each other and love you kids, but we feel like staying married isn’t the best for either of us, so we’re getting a divorce.” She’d glanced in the rearview mirror right then, like she was checking if I had on my seat belt. Safe? Good. Emotionally sound? Swell.

I was so shocked in that moment, dumbfounded really, that I’d only asked if she was sure. “We’ve already signed papers,” Mom had said, which was a double blow. This wasn’t a night-before decision. This had been in the works for months, while meanwhile we’re having family dinners and going to James’s piano recitals like everything was ordinary and fine.

James reacted very differently from me, and maybe that’s why I never pried more into the matter. They had his outbursts to deal with, and Lenore’s … Lenoreness. All I did was count—the holidays since the divorce (three), the weekends I’d slept at my dad’s (eight), and the days it took for Dad to move out (five). And still I was haunted by one question.

Why?

“Holly?” Camille touched my arm, bringing me back. “I know you’re new to girl talk, but you’re supposed to respond when I say something.”

“What if this ends badly?”

Camille shrugged. “A lot of things end badly. But that doesn’t mean you don’t start something anyway.”

“That was profound,” I said.

Camille tapped her head. “It happens, every once in a while.”

Someone burped so loudly we heard it from the other room.

“So I’m going to go out with him and not tell my parents,” I said.

“Right. And go into the date with an open mind. Be emotional. Be passionate. Think about … what did you first like about him?”

“Besides his lips?”

Camille grinned. “Nice lips can get you pretty far.”

We went back into the game room. I grabbed Grant’s Kahlúa and dumped it down the sink. Porter threw a foam football at my head, which actually kind of hurt, but I didn’t say anything. Camille snuggled right back into the crook of Sam’s arm. And I wondered if any of them could tell how different I was from a few days ago, or a few weeks ago. I’d experienced heavy loss and extreme like and I didn’t know how long both sets of emotions could take up residence in one girl.

The thing about a loved one dying is that everything that person touched becomes a part of who they were, leaving this trail of emotional land mines along the landscape of their life. You expect this immediately after the death, when you’re cleaning out their room and find reading glasses perched on the pages of an open book, pages that will never be read, at least not by the deceased. But other times, you see someone on TV wearing a beanie, and you’re reminded that The Edge from U2 always wore beanies, and that your recently deceased grandfather loved U2, and you loved him, and so on, day after day, week after week. Scents, songs, street corners … a day filled with razor-edged reminders that tear open your heart. Maybe the moments fizzle out after time, maybe the pain dulls. For me, each whisper of my grandpa wasn’t a jab; it was a jolt.

That feeling was the reason I waited outside the Golden Steer. I chose this place for my date with Dax because, as the sign stated, it was the oldest restaurant in Las Vegas, full of historical intrigue. It was also close to our chapels and easy to sneak away to. But now I was reconsidering the recommendation. Grandpa Jim took me here when I “graduated” middle school, told me how it had survived decades of hotels going up and crumbling down. “It doesn’t look like much on the outside,” he’d said, peering up at the cheesy gold-spray-painted statue and mustard-yellow sign. “But this is about as close to preserving history as we get in Vegas.”

The waiting room had a bar along one wall. Dax sat at a hightop table, sipping a soda, his eyes glued to a football game on the small TV. He had on a fitted polo, cracked loafers, and … reddish-pink pants. For serious.

“You wore your pink party pants,” I said.

Dax looked up. “They’re salmon.”

My friends were already shouting taunts in my head. “Then salmon’s your color.”

“I know, they’re loud.” Dax laughed. “You can take the boy out of the South, but not the—”

“Salmon pants out of the boy.”

“I’m trying to decide if it’s your beauty or kindness that I like more, Holly Nolan.”

“Who’s playing?” I slid onto the stool next to him. I wasn’t arguing the pants. He pulled off the look. Then again, Dax would look sexy in overalls and rain boots.

“Crimson Tide and Georgia Bulldogs. SEC championship. It’s un-American that we’re missing this game. In Birmingham, the whole town shuts down.”

“I hate the Crimson Tide.”

“Do you even know who they are?”

I rolled my eyes. “University of Alabama. In Tuscaloosa. They’re a dynasty. Won three or four National Titles in the past few years. Always bullying everyone in the SEC.”

“I would have been excited if you could tell me the state they are from, but … wow. That was otherworldly. Are you a cyborg or something, sent here disguised as the perfect girl?”

“I am a human,” I said in a robot voice. “Pay no attention to my perfection. Alabama football is evil.”

The hostess called my name and led us to our table. Dax slid his hand along the small of my back like it was the most natural gesture in the world. I usually wasn’t so physical with the guys I dated. Nathan Gulliver took me out six times without touching me once.

“You know, I’m sad that you don’t roll tide,” he whispered. “Alabama is my favorite school. My dad went there. So did my poppy.”

“Are you going there?”

“I was … but I doubt it.” He straightened his shoulders. “I’m West Coast now.”

“West Coast football sucks even more than Alabama.”

“Not Oregon.”

“Do not even get me
started
on Oregon.”

“So we don’t agree on football teams. Got it.” He made a fake check in the air. “Anything else we should veto?”

“Besides our wedding chapels? Rats. I hate rats. And spaghetti.”

“And rats
in
spaghetti. But who doesn’t?” He stared at me then, like he was trying to find a good quality, and by the way he lingered, I’m sure he found a few. “I like your hair like that.”

I touched the little braid that I’d managed to twist my bangs into. Camille had e-mailed me a hair tutorial. I’d used more hairspray on that spot than I had on the rest of my head all week, but at least I’d found a way to make my short hair look different.

“Thanks.”

“No compliments back?” he teased. “I bought new deodorant. Old Spice Mr. Swagger Sport Action-Hero Fresh, I think.”

“Are you asking me to sniff you now? You’re weird, know that?”

Most of the circular booths in the restaurant were named after dead celebrities who had eaten there at some time: Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, notorious members of the Mafia. I breathed a sigh of relief when the waiter sat us at the Sammy Davis Jr. booth, one that was usually reserved. The waiter gave us a quick backstory of the restaurant. This was the original leather booth that Sammy used to sit in. In the fifties and sixties, the other restaurants still wouldn’t serve a black man, so the whole rat pack ended up joining him here, and a Vegas institution was born.