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And everyone turned out to be fine. Even the baby, who was delivered by the cops on the building’s front stoop when the wife went into early labor. Eight pounds, six ounces! And okay, his dad is locked up in a prison cell on Rikers Island. But still. Welcome to New York, little Julio!
In fact, if you ask me, Chaz is sort of secretly hoping we won’t find a place, and Shari will have to move in with him. Because Chaz is romantic that way.
And seriously, how fun would that be? Then Luke and I could come over, and the four of us could hang out just like we did back at Luke’s place in France, with Chaz mixing kir royales and Shari bossing everyone around and me making baguette-and-Hershey-bar sandwiches for everyone, and Luke in charge of the music, or something?
And it could really happen, because Shari and I have had no luck on the apartment front. I mean, we’ve answered about a thousand ads, and so far the places are either snapped up before one of us can get there to look at them (if they’re at all decent), or they’re so hideous no one in their right mind would want to live there (I saw a toilet that was balanced on wooden blocks over an OPEN HOLE in the floor. And that was in a studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen for twenty-two hundred dollars a month).
But it will be all right. We’ll find a place eventually. Just like I’ll find a job eventually. I’m not going to freak out.
Yet.
Oh! It’s eight o’clock! I’d better wake up Luke. Today is his first day of orientation at New York University. He’ll be attending the post-baccalaureate premedical program there, so he can study to be a doctor. He wouldn’t want to be late.
But he looks so sweet lying there. With no shirt on. And his tan so dark against his mother’s cream-colored, thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets (I read the tag). How can I—
Ack! Oh, my goodness!
Um, I guess he’s already awake. Considering that he’s now lying on top of me.
“Good morning,” he says. He hasn’t even opened his eyes. His lips are nuzzling my neck. And other parts of him are nuzzling other parts of me.
“It’s eight o’clock,” I cry. Even though of course I don’t want to. What could be more heavenly than just lying here all morning making sweet sweet love to my man? Especially in a bed under a real Renoir, in an apartment across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NEW YORK CITY!
But he’s going to be a doctor. He’s going to cure children of cancer someday! I can’t let him be late for his first day of orientation. Think of the children!
“Luke,” I say, as his mouth moves toward mine. Oh! He doesn’t even have morning breath! How does he do that? And why didn’t I jump up first thing and hurry into the bathroom to brush my teeth?
“What?” he asks, lazily touching his tongue to my lips. Which I’m not opening, because I don’t want him to smell what’s going on inside my mouth. Which appears to be a small party given by the aftertaste of the chicken tikka masala and shrimp curry from Baluchi’s that we had delivered last night, which was apparently impervious to both the Listerine and Crest with which I attempted to combat them eight hours ago.
“You have orientation this morning,” I say. Which isn’t an easy thing to say when you don’t want to open your lips. Also when there are a hundred and eighty pounds of delicious naked man lying on top of you. “You’re going to be late!”
“I don’t care,” he says, and presses his lips to mine.
But it’s no good. I’m not opening my mouth.
Except to say, “Well, what about me? I have to get up and go look for a job and a place to live. I have fifteen boxes of stuff sitting in my parents’ garage that they’re waiting to send me as soon as I can give them an address. If I don’t get it all out of there soon, I just know Mom’s going to have a garage sale, and I’ll never see any of it again.”
“It would be more expedient,” Luke says, as he plucks at the straps to my vintage teddy, “if you would just sleep naked, like I do.”
Only I couldn’t even get mad at him for not listening to a word I’ve said, because he manages to get the teddy off with an alacrity that really is breathtaking, and the next thing I know, his being late for orientation—my job and apartment search—and even those boxes sitting in my parents’ garage are the last things on my mind.
A little while later he lifts his head to look at the clock and says, in some surprise, “Oh. I’m going to be late.”
I am lying in a damp puddle of sweat in the middle of the bed. I feel like I’ve been flattened by a steamroller.
And I love it.
“I told you so,” I say, mostly to the girl in the Renoir above my head.
“Hey,” Luke says, getting up to head to the bathroom. “I have an idea.”
“You’re going to hire a helicopter to pick you up here and take you downtown?” I ask. “Because that’s the only way you’re going to make it to your orientation on time.”
“No,” Luke says. Now he’s in the bathroom. I hear the shower turn on. “Why don’t you just move in here with me? Then all you’ll have to do today is look for a job.”
He pops his head—his thick dark hair adorably mussed from our recent activities—around the bathroom door and looks at me inquisitively. “What do you think about that?”
Only I can’t reply, because I’m pretty sure my heart has just exploded with happiness.
There are many different styles and cuts of gowns for brides who choose a traditional long dress, but the five most common are:
The Ballgown
The Empire Waist
The Column or Sheath
The A-line
The Fishtail
LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™
But which shape gown is right for you?
That is the universal question, asked by every bride in the history of time.
Chapter 2
A gossip goes about telling secrets, but one who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a confidence.
— Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 11:13
One Week Earlier
“Well, at least you’re not moving in with him,” my older sister Rose says, as ten shrieking five-year-old girls take turns whacking a pony-shaped piñata hanging from a tree limb behind us.
This stings. Rose’s remark, I mean. The five-year-olds I can’t do anything about.
“You know,” I say, irritated, “maybe if you had lived with Angelo for a while before you got married, you’d have figured out he wasn’t your perfect soul mate after all.”
Rose glares at me from across the picnic table.
“I was pregnant, ” she says. “It’s not like I had much of a choice.”
“Uh,” I say, eyeing the five-year-old who is shrieking the loudest, the birthday girl, my niece Maggie. “It’s called birth control.”
“You know, some of us actually take pleasure in the moment,” Rose says, “instead of obsessing over the future all the time. So birth control is not the first thing that springs to mind when a handsome man begins making love to us.”
I think of lots of ways to reply to this, as I sit there watching Maggie decide that whacking the piñata with her stick is less interesting than whacking her father with it. But for once, I keep my mouth shut.
“I mean, God, Lizzie,” Rose goes on. “You go off to Europe for a couple of months and come back thinking you know everything. Well, you don’t. Especially about men. He won’t buy the cow if he can get the milk for free.”
I blink at her. “Wow,” I say. “Could you be getting more like Mom every day?”
My other sister, Sarah, can’t keep from snorting into her plastic margarita glass at that one. Rose glares at her.
“Oh,” she says. “You’re one to talk, Sarah.”
Sarah looks shocked. “Me? I’m nothing like Mom.”
“Not Mom,” Rose says. “But don’t tell me that wasn’t Kahlúa you were pouring into your coffee this morning. At nine-fifteen.”