The Chapel Wars (23 page)

Patrick sidled over. “How much?”

“One hundred twenty.”

Patrick balked.

“But it is so perfect, sweetie.” Julia flipped open the brochure. “It’s family run, one of the oldest chapels.” She pouted her lips like a pro. “It’s our wedding we’re buying, not a used car. Can’t we spend more and make it special? Please.”

Patrick scratched the back of his neck. It was a difference of forty dollars and
their wedding day
. I would never understand some people. “But I wanted to save some money to see Donnie and Marie tonight.”

“Did you get two-for-one tickets?” I asked. Really, I was so good at this. “My mom is at the chapel. She can show you a website where the tickets are cheap.”

Patrick brightened at this idea and took Julia’s hand. “Then I’m sold, little lady. You should go into car sales, know that?”

“Thanks. I think?” I gave them directions to the chapel, and Julia had already convinced Patrick to go up a package size before they walked around the corner, holding hands. Oh, I just
wanted to squeeze them. I totally understood the rush Mom always talked about, selling someone on a place that I loved myself. I turned back to the crowd to celebrate with James, but the pushy hand biller was right in front of me.

A zit bulged in the middle of his sallow forehead. What hair he had glistened with grease. “You think you can just swoop in and steal my customer like that?”

“No one is stealing customers.”

He got up in my face and started poking me hard on my shoulder. “This is my territory, got that? If I don’t sell weddings, I don’t eat. This is the first job I’ve had in five months, and I’m not going to let some fancy slut come in and tell everyone lies.”

The other hand billers kind of shuffled back, a noble gesture that truly spoke to the quality of men who worked out here.

James pushed past them and grabbed the arm of my assailant. “That’s my sister. Back off, man.”

“James, it’s fine.”

“Oh, this is your sister?” The man threw his arm around me and squeezed me close. He smelled like pot and BO. “She’s pretty. Pretty girls are good at selling love, aren’t they?”

James’s eyes went dark. I knew that look. This was not the look I wanted in the eyes of my thirteen-year-old brother against a man four times his age who clearly had no problem with trouble.

James didn’t say a word before he attacked, just lunged at the guy, who was so surprised he fell down on the concrete. I fell too, but he lost his grip on me and I caught myself on my knee. I ripped a hole in my tights, but that was nothing. James
and handbiller guy started punching each other, really punching each other, and the rest of the crowd finally stepped in and tore them apart. Handbiller guy had a black eye and a swollen nose; James was cut up all over his face and holding his hand.

Dax was over me, cursing and holding me and yelling at the other hand billers for not doing anything. A cop car pulled up onto the curb. I started crying and tried to get to James, but a cop was already questioning him. The hand-biller guy was still flailing around and screeching. It took two cops to get him into the backseat of the car.

“Miss? Mind telling me what happened?” the cop asked.

All I saw was James holding his hand. “That guy. He attacked me. My little brother was trying … he saved me.”

James didn’t look up at me, but he was sniffling. I wondered how bad his hand hurt.

The policeman had to fill out a police report, but since all the other hand billers agreed that James was protecting me, he didn’t get a ticket or in trouble or whatever happens to thirteen-year-olds with cops. The hand billers seemed pleased—one guy was leaving in a cop car, and three more competitors, one costumed, left in cupid’s ride.

“Don’t tell Mom and Dad,” James said as Dax turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

“What, that you win the Brother of the Year award? You’re not going to get in trouble. How is your hand?”

James grimaced. “Throbbing. Mostly the two middle fingers and the knuckles.”

Dax and I exchanged a look. He drove like we were in an ambulance and everything was touch and go.

We made it to the chapel. I’d never seen my parents more shocked then when we came through the front door, their banged-up children and a half-naked cupid. Dad took James to the hospital straightaway, and then I sort of looked around and realized. Oh. Boyfriend. Shirtless. Mother.

“So, Mom. This, um … this is Dax Cranston.”

Dax wiped his hand on his diaper and held it out. “This is exactly how I always pictured meeting Holly’s mom.”

Mom took his hand feebly. “We met. At Jim’s funeral.”

“Oh.” Dax’s smile faded. “Right.”

Mom clasped her hands together. “Well, I have a bride in the Bridal suite to attend to. Dax, thank you for giving my son and daughter a ride back. I imagine you need to get back to work?”

Dax gave me a lost look.

“Mom … Dax is my boyfriend.” I sucked in a strong breath. “We’ve been … dating. Since, like, the funeral.”

“But not
at
the funeral,” Dax added.

Mom swore under her breath. She never swore. Why wasn’t I the one who broke my hand?

“Dax has been wanting to meet you,” I rushed on. “But things have been so busy. He helped with the chapel too, he has really good manners, he’s respectful and usually wears a shirt.”

“I see,” Mom said. “Well, Dax, I wish the circumstances of our meeting were better. But given the craziness of today, I’m
going to cancel this one out and ask you to come over another time. Maybe for some coffee.”

Dax beamed. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Holly? Later.” Mom’s eyes were ice. “We talk.”

She marched into the Bridal suite. I took Dax into the office. As soon as I closed the door, I shimmied out of my tights.

“Did you get nicked by one of my arrows? This really isn’t the place.”

“Ha-ha.” I checked my knee. There was a good three-inch cut and a bruise already blossoming. I got a water bottle out of the fridge and a first-aid kit from the cupboard and set to work cleaning myself up.

“So you’re okay?”

“As long as James’s hand isn’t broken, yeah.” I poured hydrogen peroxide over the wound and winced. “My brother plays piano. That was such a stupid move. I totally provoked that guy. The whole cupid thing threw me off.”

“That guy attacked you because I was dressed like cupid?”

“No, I was … I was just too happy that I wasn’t thinking straight.” I glanced up at Dax and saw all skin and hair again. “Maybe you should put a shirt on.”

Dax shuffled toward the door. “If you really are okay, I have to go. Is that all right?”

“Cupid duty?”

Dax’s face clouded over. “No. I have to go back to Cupid’s Dream. Something came up.”

I rifled through the box of Band-Aids. “Does this have
anything to do with that fight yesterday? I thought you weren’t going to work. Now you’re dressed like cupid.”

“I’ll let you know about it later.”

“Tonight?” We hadn’t planned a meet-up, but I’d hoped for something, maybe a quick make out in the rose garden. With the cupid outfit still on.

“I don’t know. Maybe. You have to work late, and I don’t know how long this will take. I’ll call you, okay?”

“I’m sorry.” I hobbled up and gave him a squeeze. “About my mom. And James.”

“Don’t worry. In the grand scheme of life, meeting your mom while wearing a diaper isn’t a big deal.” Dax gave me a salute and closed the door behind him.

Fifteen minutes later, I got the call from Dad I didn’t want to get.

Two fingers. Broken.

There went James’s solo at the Smith Center. There went his spring concert schedule. There went his therapy, his outlet.

I squeezed my own hand into a fist and thumped my thigh. This was something I couldn’t fix.

Donna and I closed at eleven. We hadn’t had a huge rush of late-night weddings, but our day hours had seen back-to-back ceremonies. There was one of those giant thermometers in my head, the kind they put on school billboards during a fund-raiser, and with each couple, I raised the mental barometer that much closer to our goal.

Donna hunched over the books as I paced behind her, mumbling things about James and cupid and Grandpa.

“That one couple got the deluxe package. And he tipped me, I don’t know why he tipped me, I just handed her the bouquet, but that’s another twenty.”

“Holly. Relax.” Donna readjusted the ceramic Alpaca figurine on her desk. Apparently, he resembled Herbert the alpaca. Herbert. If I ever saw an alpaca baby-naming book, I would pick it up for Donna.

“Relax? My brother broke his hand and my boyfriend hasn’t called and—”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yes, Donna. He was in here earlier. Spoiler alert: it’s Dax Cranston. Don’t say a word.”

Donna puckered her lips. “First you bring in Elvis, now this.”

“I know. I know. It’s chaos and anarchy at the chapel.” I slapped my hands down on her desk. “Now, will you please tell me if the chapel is going to stay? With us?”

“You almost knocked over Herbert.”

I slid the alpaca to the center of the desk. “Better?”

“I don’t know how much better I can be after hearing that you’re dating a Cranston.”

“Donna—”

She held up a hand. “But I can’t talk. Victor and I had a little whirlwind affair back in 2002.”

“Ew, gross.”

“The man could kiss. My God, that man could kiss.” She readjusted the cuff of her grass-green suit. “I’m sure it contributed to the animosity your grandfather had. Jim could get very jealous.”

I thought I might dry heave. “You’re killing me.”

Donna threw back her head and laughed. “You did it, Holly. With all your cheesy wedding packages and hand billing and kissing the enemy, you somehow did it.”

“Did what?”

“Saved it. Saved us. We’re three thousand over our goal. Twenty away from the payment. Now all we have to do is go to that meeting with the bank in a couple of weeks, pay them half of the balloon, ask to refinance the rest, and our loan should be extended another three years. Five if we’re lucky.”

“We did it!” I threw up my arms and collided into a hug with Donna. “We did it!”

I tried to make her jump up and down with me, but she kept her arms at her sides. “Holly. Please. My suit.”

“I’ll buy you a new suit.” I smacked a kiss on Herbert the alpaca. “I will buy everyone in this chapel a new suit.”

“Or you could just start paying us.”

“That too.”

I ran into the parking lot and danced. The lights were on at Dax’s chapel, but he didn’t come out and join me. I would tell him the news when he called after work. For now, I had to let my family know.

If Grandpa Jim was sitting on a cloud right now, he had to be smiling.

Mom was asleep when I got home, so I wrote a sign and put it on her door as a surprise when she woke up. Lenore texted me some inspirational quotes from her female icons, things like, “Try and you can succeed. Stay pensive and you fail.”

I appreciated the gesture, but Bono was so much better.

Dad and James called me on speaker from Dad’s house.

“So I broke my hand for nothing?” James asked.

“You broke your hand for everything.”

“I got a black cast—you have to sign it with white or gold pen.”

“It’s the cast of a hero,” I said.

“Maybe not hero,” Dad said. “Let’s not glorify violence.”

“Did you see that other dude’s face?” James asked. “I effed him up pretty good.”

“But what did we learn from this?” Dad asked in the standard parental monotone.

“Kick instead of punch?”

Dad groaned. “James.”

“Guess what. Dad said now that my hand is broken and my piano career has gone up in flames—”

“Your career has not ended.” My stomach twisted with guilt.

“Stalled. Whatever. I needed a break from piano anyway. Mrs. Georgia always smells like eggs.” He sniffed. “So I was thinking, I want to take photography classes. I can still take pictures with my pointer finger. Dad said he’d do it with me.”

Lenore would point out that this is the first thing they have done together postdivorce and was thus some pivotal moment in the overall dynamic of our family structure.

I was not Lenore. “That’ll be cool. Hey, James?”

“What?”

“Thank you for saving me today.”

“Whatever. Oh, hey, I told Dad about Dax.”

“You what?”

“He wanted to know who the guy in the diaper was.”

“We need to talk about that,” Dad said.

“Absolutely.” I yawned. “Just not tonight. Let’s save some excitement.”

“But we will talk.”

“Can’t wait.”

“I saw you making out on the street corner,” James said. “I almost punched Dax before I punched that other dude. But it takes some balls to wear a diaper like that, so it’s cool.”

“Okay, this kid needs to sleep,” Dad said. “I’m keeping him here for a few days.”

This would also be the first time James had slept over when it wasn’t Dad’s weekend. And the first time James hadn’t yelled at Dad during the conversation. And the first time we all saved a wedding chapel.

“Proud of you, Holly!” Dad said before hanging up.

I tried calling Dax too, but his phone just went to voice mail. He was supposed to call me, right? We were maybe even going to get together. Even if we’d celebrated the holiday unofficially the day before, a little “Way to save your chapel” would have been nice.

I changed into my duck pj’s and old cross-country shirt. The Space seemed bigger tonight, the couch more comfortable. Despite the niggling feelings about Dax, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this relaxed. Actually, I could. It was before Grandpa died. I’d been bearing that chapel-sized burden for almost three months.

Sam called me after midnight to say he was coming over.

“Tonight?” I was semidozing on the couch, semiwatching a rerun of
The Office
. “No, I’m too tired.”

“Too late. I’m at the door.”

“What are you doing?” I asked when Sam pushed past me with a pizza under his arm.

“I’m here to offer you congratulations on saving all our jobs.”

“Thanks. But a text could have done that.”