“It was more like eight days. Bad idea?”
“Just ballsy, man. Very ballsy. Look, I love my sister with all my heart, and she’s the greatest woman alive. But she’s on the rebound now. She got her heart smashed up pretty bad and her pride. Might take her more than a couple weeks to get over that, you know?”
“I know. I do know. Just wishful thinking, I guess.”
“Give her time. She’s smart and you’re the second best guy I know. She’ll come around eventually.” Dillon squeezed the back of Chris’s shoulder. “Now, excuse me. I need to go marry the first best guy I know, and if my sister misses it, her loss. I’m not waiting another second.”
Dillon walked away, and despite his dark mood, Chris couldn’t help but smile. He remembered too many nights in high school when Dillon confessed his fears that not only would he never find anyone to love or anyone to love him, but that he might not even survive to adulthood to even give love a shot. And here he was, getting married. Legally married surrounded by friends and family and nothing but love. It gave Chris hope and he could use a little hope tonight. Joey left tomorrow. Hope was all he had.
Chris needed a drink. He walked past two John McClanes in bloody T-shirts and gray slacks, one Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years in a vintage Jets jacket, the entire cast of The Facts of Life as played by guys in drag—Tutti even had her roller skates on—and four women dressed as The Golden Girls. They were probably coworkers of Oscar’s. Dillon and Joey’s pretty, young-looking mom was dressed as Andy from The Goonies. Their dad had on plaid pants and a Hawaiian shirt—not a good look for anyone but a spot-on Chunk costume. One woman walked passed him wearing a suit with shoulder pads so massive they almost reached her ears. She either had to be the blonde lady from Night Court or Cagney and/or Lacey. He couldn’t recognize all the other costumes except maybe a Ghostbuster by the wedding cake and Baby from Dirty Dancing. Oddly enough Baby was in the corner. Seemingly by choice. Someone must have put her there.
Just then President Ronald Reagan—or a reasonable facsimile—tapped a fork on a champagne flute. The room fell silent.
“Mr. Gorbachev,” Reagan said in a very good Reagan voice, “marry these two men.”
A man in a fake bald wig with a painted-on forehead birthmark and a gray suit stepped into the center of the floor.
Ferris/Dillon and Cameron/Oscar stepped into the center of the circle created by the guests. They were smiling so broadly it made Chris’s cheeks ache just looking at them. He wanted this for himself. Maybe not a wedding where half the guests were dressed as members of the A-Team but he wanted this—his friends everywhere, his parents, Joey’s parents and a life together with her. Four days ago he’d strained a muscle in his shoulder while climbing a cottonwood to cut down some dead and overhanging branches. When Joey caught him taking ibuprofen, she’d put him on the bed and rubbed his shoulders and back for two hours.
Two hours.
It hadn’t even been foreplay, although they did have sex later than night. Joey had felt that he was hurt and she’d spent two hours trying to make him feel better. How could he not fall in love with a woman who was that sweet? And she gave damn good backrubs, too. God, he missed her.
With an instrumental version of “Time After Time” playing softly in the background, Dillon and Oscar exchanged their vows. Out of t
he corner of his eye he saw Angela and Tony from Who’s the Boss? wiping tears off their cheeks. And when the couple kissed, “The Final Countdown” by Europe began to play. It was all strangely moving. And movingly strange. And mostly just strange. Everyone clapped at the kiss, even Chris, who still wasn’t sold on Dillon’s theory that Ferris and Cameron had been secretly in love with each other. Although if they had been, that would have made for one hell of a sequel.
With the ceremony over, Dolly Parton once again walked the room distributing drinks. Chris grabbed a glass of champagne and turned around, intending to head for the deck.
And standing by the door to the club was a girl dressed in a green sweater vest and jeans.
A green sweater vest and jeans.
A green sweater vest...
Wait.
The girl raised her hand and waved at him. Chris laughed. He laughed so hard it hurt.
Joey shook her head and walked over to him.
“You’re messing up the scene, you know,” she said, reaching out and grabbing on to the lapels of his pink Oxford shirt. “You’re supposed to say your line.”
“If you remember correctly, when we watched the movie last week, we didn’t get to the end because someone started chewing on my earlobe and we know where that always ends. You have to remind me—what’s my line?”
“After the wedding, Sam sees Jake Ryan standing outside his car waiting for her and she points at herself and mouths, ‘Me?’ And Jake whispers back, ‘Yeah, you.’”
“But if I remember right, doesn’t Jake come and get Sam after the wedding? Not Farmer Ted?”
“We’re starring in the sexy gender swap remake of Sixteen Candles called Twenty-Six Candles, where Joey Ryan tells Farmer Chris she’s sorry for flipping out when Farmer Chris said he loved her.”
“This is a much better version of the movie.”
“I hope so,” she said. “I hope I’m not screwing everything up here. But I—”
“What? Tell me,” Chris said.
When Joey took his hand in hers, Chris’s heart balled up in his chest like a fist and hit the inside of his rib cage. Talk about good pain.