Last Call (Cocktail 5)

I’d been blissfully ignorant. Not this time. I was full metal jacket in the middle of this tulle and lace torture extravaganza and it was going to drive me to the nuthouse. When my mother finally left to drive back home, leaving me in a house stacked with early wedding gifts, seating charts, and maps of the immediate areas surrounding both the church and the reception to help Mimi predict the traffic patterns on our important day, I’d closed the front door with a cheery wave and collapsed right there in the entryway. Simon found me there several minutes later when he handed me a cell phone.

“Your mother,” he mouthed.

“I turned my phone off!” I mouthed back.

“That explains why she’s calling my phone, then, doesn’t it?”

“Shit!” I whispered, then took the phone from him. “Hi, Mom, what’s up?” I said as he picked up my left ankle and dragged me into the living room. Luckily we’d just had the floor waxed and polished.

Once I hung up the phone, I looked up at him from where he’d left me, just next to the couch where he sat, looking exhausted and more than a little confused.

“She didn’t even make it onto the freeway before she thought of more seating chart issues,” I explained, handing him back his phone.

“I got that. How can it be so hard to put all these people in the same room? Hi. You’re our loved ones. We’d like you to be here with us while we make things official and all that. You’re our favorite people in the entire world. We’re going to feed you roasted beef tenderloin with new baby potatoes dotted with a mushroom sauce made from mushrooms foraged in the hills above San Francisco. And you can’t forget about a dead cat long enough to enjoy the Atlantic prawns served over a bed of sautéed arugula accented with a garlic foam?”

“We had to eighty-six the prawns, babe. Too many people have a shellfish allergy.”

“But I loved the garlic foam!”

“I know, babe.”

“This is getting out of hand.” He sighed, covering his face. I crawled from the floor up onto his lap and pried his hands back.

“I hear that. Want to elope?”

“Tomorrow,” he said, looking at me to see if I was serious. When I shook my head, he sighed again. “It’s fine. It’ll be good. Then I get you all to myself on a beach in Spain for three weeks.”

“You’re right about that. I’m so glad you were able to get that same house in Nerja. It’s the perfect place for a honeymoon. And it’s only a month away.”

“A month. Only a month. Only a month,” he repeated like a mantra. “I thought I’d get some time to pack this weekend for my trip, but taste testing cakes took precedence.”

“They were really good cakes; don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that part of it.”

“They were good, but nothing’s as good as what you make for me. If I had my way, we’d be having your apple pie instead of wedding cake,” he said, his hands resting on my hips.

“That’s sweet, babe. But the triple coconut with raspberry cream was pretty damn good.”

“Agreed. Want to come help me pack?”

I said yes, and then hung off the back of the couch until he picked me up and carried me upstairs piggyback. He had his last trip before the wedding, a two-week shoot in Vietnam. I hated that I couldn’t come along. National Geographic was sending him to do a study on the newly developed cave system in Son Doong, just opened for tours in the last two years or so, and the hottest ticket in Vietnamese tourism right now. There were entire sections that hadn’t been photographed yet, underground rain forests and rivers that hadn’t been seen by hardly anyone. Rappelling down rocky slippery cliffs, wading through dark rushing water, dodging bats and bugs the size of dinner plates—it was exactly the kind of thing Simon loved. And he’d capture it on film in his unique way, taking viewers along with him to the deepest, darkest recesses under the earth.

“I still can’t believe you can’t put this trip off until after the wedding.” I sighed, still perched on his back as he navigated the upstairs hallway.

“I think it’s more that you can’t believe you aren’t coming with me,” he replied.

“True, but mostly I just wish you were here to help me finish up this last little bit of planning.”

“Babe, you’ve got Frick and Frack the planning twins competing to alphabetize your favors. I think you’ll be okay,” he said, grabbing his duffel bag from his closet and dropping it onto the bed. He dropped me onto the bed a moment later.

It was true, my mother and Mimi were running things pretty well at this point. And as busy as I’d stayed at work, I was glad for the help. But still, there were last-minute things still to do and he was getting to skip out on some of them.

“Remember when we said this wedding would be about us, and what we wanted?” I asked, watching as T-shirts and shorts went into the bag.

“I think we waved bye-bye to that a few months ago, babe, when we had three separate discussions about Jordan almonds and what color netting they needed to be wrapped in.”

“I know, I know. I don’t even like almonds. But it’s . . . I mean . . . it’s still us, right?”

“Yes, it’s still us. Us, and three hundred of our closest friends.”

“Ugh. Three hundred. It sounds insane when I say it, but when I go through the list, I don’t know who we’d cut out at this point,” I cried, laying back against the pillows. The guest list had ballooned up and up until it was beyond ridiculous. Most of Simon’s old school pals and their wives were coming west for the wedding, which was wonderful to see. His childhood neighbors, the Whites, were coming as well. He was very happy when he saw their RSVP.