The Marriage Pact (1) (6 page)

Mom
and Nicole both looked like poster children for caffeine overdose as they waved
to her from the top of the baggage claim escalator. Until she fell into their
joint embrace, Marci didn’t realize how much she had been missing her family.

Wiping
away tears, Marci collected her duffel and listened to Nicole chatter nonstop
about the wedding plans as they schlepped out to the parking deck and drove to
the Flying Biscuit for breakfast. Apparently Ravi’s mother was still boycotting
their nuptials, angry that Ravi had chosen Nicole over the woman from Mumbai
she had arranged for him to marry. Much of the rest of Ravi’s family had
relented, however, including his brother and sister who also lived in the
States, and they were helping Nicole create an Indian-Presbyterian blended
ceremony.

Marci
pushed eggs and black bean cakes around on her plate as she listened to Nicole.
“...the reception hall was damaged in a fire two weeks ago, so of course I’m
completely freaking out about that. Plus, it’s so hard to find a reliable
rental company with enough of the right kind of tents. There are all these
different parts of the ceremony, and they require so many tents. But wait until
you see the dresses!”

As
a concession to Ravi’s family, Nicole had decided to wear a traditional white
wedding dress for the ceremony and a custom-made sari for the reception. With
Nicole’s amazing but expensive tastes, Marci could only imagine what the bill
would be for those two items alone.

As
though reading her mind, Mom shook her head. “Four thousand dollars for two
dresses. I think that was the cost of mine and your dad’s whole wedding!” She
glanced at Nicole and hastily added, “Worth every penny, of course, honey. It’s
just a good thing your sister has no wedding plans on the horizon or we’d have
to sell the house!”

Thanks,
Mom.

She
spent the day trailing behind her baby sister through a slew of department
stores, alterations shops, and various coordinators’ offices. Somehow Nicole
had mysteriously evolved into a self-assured, gorgeous woman in the last
several months. She spoke to sales clerks and catering managers with an
assertiveness that might have been demanding from someone less radiant, and yet
no one seemed to respond to her with anything but an increased desire to make
her happy. It reminded Marci of her best friend Suzanne, whose self-assuredness
was legendary. Marci watched Nicole with a touch of awe and just the slightest
hint of jealousy.

She
worked hard to control the urge to check her cell phone every few minutes for
something from Doug. She knew it was silly to expect anything—he was at work,
and they’d seen each other just hours before—yet she longed to hear from him.
Around lunch, she turned the phone off entirely to force herself to be more
present for Nicole.
Let him be the one to wait for her this weekend.

By
the end of the day, the tired ache in Marci’s knees and back had eclipsed
nearly everything else. She was beyond relieved when they piled into their
mother’s sedan for the last time and steered toward home. Marci’s dad and Ravi
met them in the driveway. She was so happy to see her dad she could hardly
stand it. He gave her a desperately needed hug as she entered the house. The
five of them ordered pizza and spent the rest of the evening playing cards and
drinking beer.

The
next evening, Nicole’s local friends had scheduled a combination
engagement/bachelor party/shower for her and Ravi. Living in DC meant that many
of her old Atlanta friends had not met Ravi, so Nicole’s childhood best friends
Ellie and Rachel had combined everything into one huge party at an upscale
restaurant/bar in midtown Atlanta. Because Marci’s presence was non-negotiable,
Nicole had allowed her to add Suzanne, Jake, and her longtime friend Beth to
the invitation list as well.

After
nearly two hours of musical banquet chairs, dinner, and seemingly endless weepy
toasts from Nicole’s sorority sisters, the party broke into smaller groups at
the bar. Marci and the other three were finally able to get a small table to
themselves to catch up.

They
moved from the wine that had been served with dinner to beer and cocktails.
They talked about Beth and her kids, Suzanne’s big event in Chicago, and Jake’s
recent move to freelance video production. He had managed to secure an in with
Atlanta’s professional hockey team for a couple of their promotional videos,
and was hoping this would lead to bigger things with the other major sports
franchises down the road. He was also shooting footage for a couple of local
hip-hop artists, but documentaries and sports were his real loves.

Suzanne
related the latest man-drama in her life, a conversational staple since
college. Suzanne was an acknowledged serial dater; she went through
relationships as fast as most women went through bottles of shampoo. Her latest
victim was a nice, funny stockbroker named Reggie who Marci and Jake had both
met. Though she always tried not to get too invested in Suzanne’s love life,
Marci had been quietly rooting for Reggie, who was handsome and self-effacing
and—maybe to his detriment—seemed to see through the smartass Southern-girl
veneer Suzanne wore as protection.

“What
happened to Reggie, anyway?” Jake said, when Beth opened the door by asking
about Suzanne’s single status. “I liked that guy.”

“Ugh,”
she said dramatically. “Let’s just say it was a hygiene issue, okay?”

“What?
Did he have crabs or something?” Jake probed, grinning. Marci, who knew the story,
snickered.

“Ew!
No, nothing like that. Never mind. Let’s move on, okay?”

“No,”
Beth pleaded. “I never get to hear the gossip! Please tell.”

“Alright,”
Suzanne relented, and Marci knew that she was only half sorry to have all the
attention focused on her. “As y’all know, Reggie and I had dated for about
three months, so he was staying at my place pretty often by the end, a few
times a week when we were both in town. Anyway, I started noticing that he
didn’t seem to wash thoroughly after, um...” She hesitated here, looking for
the words.

“After
sex
?” Beth asked. A few cocktails before, it probably would have
occurred to Beth that Suzanne would not have hesitated to discuss intimate details
of her love life. Other base human functions, however, were another story. In
high school, she had once maintained for
weeks
that she had never
farted, holding her ridiculous ground against a persistent onslaught of teasing
from a couple of football players who sat at her table in chemistry class.

A
trace of that childish discomfort appeared now. “No, after using the bathroom.
You know,
Number Two
.” The other three exchanged smiles at the fact that
Suzanne actually whispered the last two words. “I started noticing that he’d
come out of the bathroom really quickly after he’d been in there a while, and
that his hands were usually really dry.”

“It
couldn’t be that he dried them, like maybe using the towel?” Jake teased.

“No,
I checked,” she answered seriously. “I mean, sometimes the towel was damp, but
not always.”

“Yuck,”
Beth said sympathetically. “That is pretty gross.”

“Yes,”
Marci said. “But tell them what you did next.”

Color
rose in Suzanne’s face and she shot Marci the tiniest glare before going on.
“Well, I didn’t want to just dismiss him for no good reason…”

“Because
that would be
totally
unlike you.”

“So
I went in one morning and made a tiny mark on the back of the soap container
where the level of the soap was. He was over for a whole weekend, and when he
left I went back and checked. No change.”

“Wait,”
Jake said. “Wouldn’t it be lower from you using it? You do wash your hands,
don’t you? Or have you given up going to the bathroom altogether?”

“Of
course I thought of that,” she said resentfully. “I bought a second bottle of
soap and kept it under the sink for me to use during the experiment. At the end
of the weekend, I told him it wasn’t working out.”

By
this time, Jake and Marci were both in stitches. Beth was some combination of
amused, grossed out, and impressed that Suzanne went to such lengths to
discover whether her boyfriend washed his hands after pooping. “Did you explain
why you ended it?” she asked.

“I
said we had different interests.”

“Yeah,”
Marci snorted. “Like how you’re interested in not getting some weird bacterial
infection and he’s interested in shaving thirty seconds off his dump time.”

Suzanne
held her serious face for as long as she could, and then threw the straw from
her drink at Marci before breaking. The laughter of her three best friends
washed over Marci like a healing salve, and for the first time in weeks, she
felt at home and completely free.

An
hour or so after dinner, two minivan taxis arrived outside the restaurant to
transport the party to a trendy new place in the Virginia Highlands. “You’re
coming, right?” Nicole tottered as she approached their table, now sporting a
bridal veil hanging from a plastic tiara. Marci was glad Ellie and Rachel had
sense enough to reserve hotel rooms and obviously intended to use taxis for
their bar-hopping. She looked at her table for a verdict; but her own friends’
faces indicated a less than strong interest in following along. Suzanne’s head
gave a nearly imperceptible shake to the side.

“I
think us old folks are going to find a quiet place to hang out. Like a nursing
home.”

“Noo...”
Nicole pleaded, though Marci was positive their presence would not be missed in
the slightest. “You have to come; it’s going to be So! Much! Fun!”

Ellie
was pulling on Nicole’s arm, urging her toward the door and giving Marci a
farewell wave. Ravi had obviously already been hustled into the cab by some of
the guys in the group.

“Go
ahead,” Marci said. “Be safe, okay?”

“I
love you,” Nicole slurred. “You know that? I love my sister! And my sister’s
friends!” She moved around the table and launched herself at Suzanne and Beth,
throwing an arm roughly around each of them. “You guys are like, my other big
sisters!”

“Thanks,
Nick,” said Jake.

“Oh,
Jakie! And my big brother!” She turned to the entire bar behind her. “Everyone,
this is my big brother Jake and I will fight anyone who messes with him.
Anyone!!”  She balled up her petite fists in what was clearly supposed to
be a menacing gesture. Even ridiculously drunk, Nicole managed to be adorable.
Marci was gratified that the composed, businesslike woman she had experienced
the previous day had not entirely eclipsed her silly little sister.

When
no one at the bar seemed interested in challenging Jake’s honor in any way,
Nicole turned back to the table and became suddenly solemn. “Seriously, Jake,
when are you going to make it official and really be my brother?’

Marci
laughed uncomfortably and pushed her drunken sister toward Ellie. “Go! Love
you.”

She
could not help but hear, however, that Jake’s answer had already floated past
her: “As soon as your sister will let me.”

As
Jake flagged down a server for another round, Beth excused herself. “Ray is
going fishing early tomorrow and the kids are not going to let me sleep in.
Marci, it’s been amazing to see you.” She blew kisses all around and was out
the door.

Suzanne,
Jake, and Marci made it through two more rounds before finally winding down the
evening. By 1:00, the bar was so thick with people and noise it was difficult
to believe it was the same restaurant where they’d sat at the beginning of the
evening. Suzanne went to call a cab and wait in line for the restroom while
Marci and Jake pushed their way through the crowd to settle up at the bar. He
held her hand as they walked.

The
young bartender looked completely overwhelmed. They signaled to her and waited
while she poured a line of six cosmopolitans, maybe for another bachelorette
party. “Hey,” Jake said, turning Marci around by her hips and placing his hand beneath
her chin. His skin looked ruddy and healthy as always, his thick brown hair
rebelling against his attempts to slick it down. He still had a few faint
freckles on the bridge of his nose. “Look at me.”

She
knew where this was going. She supposed she had always known.

“You
know I would do anything for you, don’t you?”

She
nodded. “Jake, I –”

But
before she could even formulate the next words in her mind, Jake was kissing
her. It was soft and wet and familiar. Nice. He pressed against her, pushing
her into the bar a little as they were jostled by the crowd. She allowed
herself to push back against him, to kiss him back. She felt familiar warmth
spreading through her as the bar and the crowd and even thoughts of Doug
receded. For a moment, she wanted to allow herself to be carried away by this
kiss.

But
he pulled away, looking serious. “So are you going to tell me about it?”

“What?”

“Whatever
it is you’re hiding from everyone.”

Marci
could think of nothing to say. His brown eyes gazed at her patiently and
waited. She shook her head pathetically.