Last Call (Cocktail 5)

“Yes, Simon! I want this, I want you,” I cried out, frantic now for the feel of him inside me. “I always want you.”

With one hand still tangled in my hair, keeping me against the wall, his other hand now dipped below, finding me slick and hot and ready for him by his words alone. He groaned at the feel of me on his fingers, and then let out the sexiest groan as he sank inside, inch by perfect inch. I reached back with my hands, trying to bring him closer, to get him further inside, but he placed my hands back on the wall, pulling my hips out farther.

“Look at you—Jesus, just look at you,” he moaned, pulling out almost all the way and then slamming inside almost instantly, bowing my back and making me gasp. “So hot like this, you’re so sexy . . .”

“When you’re fucking me?” I asked, blinking innocently over my shoulder. Which he then bit down on . . . hard. Then he pulled out. Which I barely had time to process, because the next thing I knew he was on the floor between my legs, with his back to the wall, pulling me against his mouth. Hard.

Here’s the thing about my fiancé. He loves to take a taste.

His mouth was furious as his tongue licked and lapped at me. One hand was firm against my backside, holding me against his beautiful face as I rocked my hips into him. The other hand held me open to him, keeping me open as the room began to blur and the colors began to run . . .

“Don’t stop, don’t you dare stop,” I chanted as he circled his tongue against me, his lips and his mouth covering me, sucking and biting and licking and kissing and loving and . . .

I exploded. He stayed until I exploded again. And then once more for good measure. And when I was boneless and unable to stand, he pulled me down onto the floor, lifted my legs onto his shoulders, and absolutely wrecked me for any other man.

It’s very possible that I passed out on the kitchen floor. Because when I woke moments or hours later, I was covered by a pea green and orange afghan, and Simon was standing at the kitchen island eating a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. Naked.

The week after Simon and I got engaged went by in a blur. I worked, he worked, we told everyone we knew our exciting news and our phones filled with congratulatory emoticons and best wishes. Jillian even had the outgoing message on the overnight answering service at the office changed to announce my engagement. At the end of the message of course, after our address and operating hours were given.

I’d always spoken to my mother often, usually two to three times a week typically. Now she called me every day, multiple times. As early as 7 a.m. and once as late as eleven thirty, when I just had to turn on Jimmy Fallon to see an outfit that Drew Barrymore was wearing and wouldn’t it make for a pretty bridesmaid dress? Mimi was unrelenting as well. In her typical bulldog sensibilities, she’d brought every single bridal magazine that was currently in print to my office Monday afternoon, along with her back issues of Martha Stewart Weddings, starting around 2002. Took her two hand trucks and three rides in the elevator to bring them all up, but by god she did it.

I was beginning work on a redesign for an existing client of mine over in Dolores Heights, and the time I was supposed to be working on her kitchen remodel I found myself running interference on a Skype call between my mother and Mimi debating the hotly contested topic of full or partial veils and why a forehead such as mine was able to pull off a more ornate lace fall. I didn’t have a clue what any of these things meant, but it was exciting and fun and overwhelming and wonderful all that the same time.

By Friday night I was exhausted, and over take-out Thai food eaten on our living room couch, I told Simon that I absolutely refused to let the planning of our wedding overtake the actual moment that we were celebrating. Our marriage. With a curry-scented kiss on my forehead, Simon shook his head at my naïveté and simply smiled.

Famous last curry.

Chapter five

Months later . . .

“Mom, you can’t put the Royers by the Boccis, they hate each other. Ever since Mr. Bocci ran over Mrs. Royer’s cat. How can you not remember this? Golden Graham got smushed under the front wheel of the Royers’ new Mercedes. It was all Mrs. Bocci talked about all summer long, it’s why we stopped inviting them to pool parties, because all she wanted to do was talk about her dead cat . . . Yes . . . Yes, summer before I went to college . . . Yes, it’s gone on that long . . . Yep, you got it. Put them by the Schaefers, everyone likes them . . . Okay . . . talk to you tomorrow . . . Bye . . . Bye . . . Bye . . .”

I hung up the phone, rubbing my ear. It was hot. It should be. I’d been fielding calls from my mother for the last thirty minutes, after spending the last thirty hours with her in our home.

Our home, which had turned into Wedding Central. My mother had come in for a weekend blitz of wedding details, the likes of which I’d not been the least bit prepared for. My mother, Simon, Mimi, and I, along with Jillian and Sophia for certain portions, had been shuttling across the bay and back again for two days of cake sampling, menu tastings, flower designing, dress fittings, and big band listening. The listening had been my favorite part, actually. The rest? For. The. Birds.

How do people get married without losing their minds? Without losing their wallets? Without being convicted for assault by petticoat? I’d now been front and center for two weddings that I’d been directly involved with, first Jillian and then Mimi. And I’d thought from the outside, even as involved as I’d been, I’d be prepared for the onslaught of decisions and complications and the sheer terror of putting a foot wrong on our important day.