Emma rolled her eyes as she tapped the screen. “Oh, am I getting married? Because you wouldn’t know it, to talk to her.”
“She just wants everything to be perfect.” It was no use defending Valerie. I knew well enough how contentious the relationship could be between a daughter and her single mother. When my wedding was approaching, my mom would probably be just as bad.
I hoped she would be just as bad. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but she might not want to have anything to do with my wedding. She was super mad about my relationship with Neil, and I hadn’t spoken to her since the phone call where I’d broken the news of our engagement.
Suddenly, grilled todok didn’t sound as appetizing as it had in the car on the way over.
“Sophie, are you okay? You’ve gone quite pale.” She squinted at me over the top of her iPad.
I waved a hand. “It’s fine. I was just thinking about your problem.”
“Honestly, the woman acts as though it isn’t my job to orchestrate full-scale events for a massive not-for-profit organization.” She turned the tablet to face me. “This is where I think we should do it.”
My heart stuck in my throat. 1 OAK was one of the fabled New York lounges. I’d never been, but Holli had, and she’d said the place had been wall-to-wall celebs at the time. “Isn’t that going to be…um. I don’t think nightclubs are really your father’s scene.”
“No, and for god’s sake, we don’t want him dancing,” Emma said, and I had the internal American-hearing-an-English-accent squee at the way she pronounced it, “dawncing.” She flicked the screen again and showed me a seating and floor plan. “This is what they came up with. I was thinking we should keep it intimate.”
I frowned at the circles and lines. “Intimate? This looks like seating for two hundred.”
“I know. So we will have to be very cautious about who does and does not receive an invitation.” She clucked her tongue and turned the iPad around, frowning. “Do you think we should go with a larger venue?”
“Emma, the last party I threw was like, twenty people in my apartment. This is…huge.” Sudden panic gripped me. “Do you know who we’re supposed to invite? When we did the party before his transplant, Neil said Valerie knew who to invite. But I don’t have a list or anything. And I really, really don’t want to involve your mother in this.”
There. I’d said it. I didn’t want Valerie to be in charge of stuff for the party. This was my boyfriend’s fiftieth birthday party, and I wanted to be the one planning it. I didn’t want to make it a joint effort with his ex.
“Believe me, I don’t want her coming in and taking this over, too. It’s a miracle I got to pick out my own bloody wedding gown,” she said with a weary sigh. “But in this, we might have to make a concession. We’ve only got two months to send out invites.”
I drummed my fingers on the tabletop. “You know what? Let me figure something out. Give me like, two days.”
“You have two days. After that, you have to call my mother.”
Emma was a great party planner, which was fortunate, since I was used to throwing the kind of shindigs where ice was dumped into the sink to store beverages. She had ideas about traffic flow, table decorations, dance floor space, number of servers… No wonder she and her mother had the entire wedding wrapped up. The only thing I could really contribute was a suggestion about the music. We opted for a DJ, rather than a live band, so we could play songs from all five decades of Neil’s life as the evening progressed.
We were nearly finished making our plans—and eating our lunch—when Emma snapped her fingers. “I almost forgot! If you guys end up moving before the party, you’ll need to make reservations to stay in the city overnight. You won’t want to go all the way back to Sagaponack late at night.”
“You’re right.” The solution came to me in flash of uncensored inspiration. “Oh my gosh! I’ll get the Wow suite!”
“Oh, that ugly place Dad was staying after the divorce? Why?” She wrinkled her nose.
“It was where we had our first date. Or…unofficial first date, I guess?” I waved off the further explanation she wouldn’t want. “It’s a part of our history.”
A part of our history in which I had waited for him on the sofa, fingering myself, so that when he’d arrived he’d found me with my legs spread and my hand in my panties. I could still vividly hear him
ordering me to take them off, could see him lifting them to his nose and sniffing deeply.
Okay, I would get the Wow suite for the night after his birthday, since I was sure we’d be drunk as hell after the party.
“That’s quite sweet,” Emma said, surprising me. She usually turned up her nose at anything having to do with her father and romance. She put her iPad back into her bag. “Okay, so you’ll check on the addresses and come up with a DJ?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what Neil likes, music wise.” I shrugged. “And I can always ‘accidentally’ mix up our phones and check out what’s he’s listening to lately.”
“Wonderful. I’ll confirm with the venue, and then all that’s left is you getting him to the party. How do you plan to do that?”
“I thought I could tell him we’re going out for dinner, and you could text me while we’re in the car. Say you’re at the club and you’ve forgotten your wallet. And we’ll have to swing by and pay your tab…” I raised my eyebrows and nodded to gently urge her in my direction.
She remained unimpressed. “He’s going to see right through that. Tell him Michael forgot his wallet. He’ll be so excited at the chance to rescue me from my fiancé’s incompetence he won’t question it for a moment.”
“Ooh, good idea,” I agreed. Then I thought of what Valerie and I had talked about the other night. “You know…I think your dad is slowly warming up to Michael. I don’t think they’ll ever be best friends—”