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I drop my arms from her. “Shari,” I say. “Luke and I talk to each other about a million times a day.” This is a slight exaggeration. But whatever. “And we always ask each other how our day went when we get home.”
“Yeah,” Shari says. “But I bet Luke doesn’t spend the whole day you’re gone lying around the apartment reading Wittgenstein, then going grocery shopping, cleaning the apartment, and making oatmeal cookies.”
My jaw drops. “Chaz goes grocery shopping, cleans, and makes oatmeal cookies while you’re at work?”
“Yes,” Shari says. “And does the laundry. Can you believe that? He does the laundry while I’m at work! And folds everything up into these perfect squares! Even my underwear!”
I am looking at Shari with suspicion now. Something is wrong. Very wrong.
“Share,” I say. “Are you even listening to yourself? You’re mad at your boyfriend because he calls you regularly, cleans your apartment, does the grocery shopping, makes you cookies, and does your laundry. Do you realize that you’ve basically just described the most perfect man in the world?”
Shari scowls at me. “That may sound like the perfect man to some people, but it isn’t to me. You know what would be the perfect man to me? One who was around less. Oh, and get this: he wants sex.Every day. I mean, that was all right back when we were in France. But we were on vacation. Now we’ve got responsibilities—well, some of us do, anyway. Who has time for sex every day? Sometimes he even wants it twice a day, morning and then again at night. I can’t take it, Lizzie. That’s just… that’s just too much. Oh my God… can you believe I just said that?”
I’m glad she asked that, because the answer is no, I can’t. Shari’s always been more sexually aggressive—and adventurous—than me. It looks like the tables have finally turned. I have to keep myself from blurting out that Luke and I often have sex twice a day—and that I quite enjoy it.
“But you and Chaz used to, um, do it that much all the time,” I say. “I mean, when you first started going out. And you liked it then. What’s changed?”
“That’s just it,” Shari says. She looks truly upset. “I don’t know! God, what kind of counselor am I, when I can’t even figure out my own problems? How can I help people with theirs?”
“Well, sometimes it’s easier to help other people with their problems than deal with your own,” I say in what I hope is a soothing voice. “Have you talked about all of this with Chaz? I mean, maybe if you told him what was bothering you—”
“Oh, right,” Shari says sarcastically. “You want me to tell my boyfriend that he’s too perfect?”
“Well,” I say. “You don’t have to put it quite like that. But maybe if you—”
“Lizzie, I am perfectly aware that I sound like a lunatic. There’s something wrong with me. I know it.”
“No,” I cry. “Shari, it’s just… it’s hard. It’s my fault, really. Maybe you guys weren’t ready to move in together. I should never have bailed on you like I did and moved in with Luke. I deserved to have beer poured on me. I deserve to have a lot worse than that done to me—”
“Oh, Lizzie,” Shari says, looking up at me with her dark eyes filled with tears again. “Don’t you get it? It has nothing to do with you. It’s me. There’s something wrong with me. Or at least with the concept of Chaz and me. The truth is… I just don’t know anymore, Lizzie.”
I stare at her. “Know what?”
“I mean, I look at you and Luke, and how perfect you two are together—”
“We’re not perfect,” I interrupt quickly. I don’t want to remind her about the woodland creature thing. Or the fact that I’m pretty sure Luke’s mom is having—or was having, anyway—an affair, and I haven’t told him. “Seriously, Shari. We—”
“But you seem so happy together,” Shari says. “The way Chaz and I used to be… but for some reason, it’s gone.”
“Oh, Shari.” I chew my lower lip, frantically trying to think of the right thing to say. “Maybe if you two got couples counseling… ”
“I don’t know,” Shari says. She looks—and sounds—hopeless. “I don’t know if it would even be worth it.”
“Shari!” I can’t believe she would say that. About Chaz, of all people!
“Lizzie?” Someone bangs on the door. A woman’s voice calls my name again. “You’re up!”
I realize it’s the waitress and that my song’s waiting to be played—and performed.
“Oh no,” I say. “Shari, I… I don’t know what to say. I really think maybe you and Chaz are just going through a weird phase right now. I mean, Chaz is a great guy, and I know he really loves you… I’m sure things will get better with time.”
“They won’t,” Shari says. “But thanks for letting me unload on you. Literally. Sorry about the beer.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “It was kind of refreshing, in a way. It was getting hot out there.”
“Are you coming?” the waitress demands. “Or not?”
“Coming,” I call. Then I appeal to Shari. “Will you sing with me?”
“Not a chance,” she says with a smile.
Which is how I find myself all alone on the stage at Honey’s, assuring the bachelorettes, who are drunkenly catcalling me, the dwarf, who is glaring at me angrily for robbing him of yet more time in the spotlight, and Chaz, Shari, and Luke that young girls do get weary of wearing that same old shaggy… and that when they get weary, it would behoove everyone to try a little tenderness.
A piece of advice that, sadly, Chaz seems to have already employed… with less than satisfying results.
Fittings
Ensuring that your gown fits properly is one of the many duties of your certified wedding-gown specialist. You can help by bringing with you to your fittings the shoes, the headdress, and the kind of support or undergarments you plan on wearing on your special day. Too often a bride has not tried on her gown with the bra or shoes she plans to wear at her wedding, only to discover her straps are showing or that her gown is too long or short!
It’s important as well to be at or very close to whatever weight you want to be on your wedding day at your first fitting. Gowns can of course be taken in… but the less your seamstress has to do so, the better. And don’t even talk about letting gowns out… that’s a whole other story, and you don’t want to go there.
Generally only two fittings are necessary, but of course more can be scheduled if necessary… so long as you don’t wait too long! Not even the most brilliant certified wedding-gown specialist can work wonders overnight. Plan on having your last fitting about three weeks prior to your wedding day—and lay off the Krispy Kremes!
LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™
Chapter 12
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
— John Tudor (b. 1954), American Major League baseball player
“So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Tiffany wants to know.
Even though her shift doesn’t start until two, Tiffany has been showing up every day at noon, and hanging out with me at the reception desk until I go home… sometimes even bringing lunch for both of us to nibble on surreptitiously beneath the desktop, since food is ba
At first I just thought this was an odd habit of Tiffany’s—showing up two hours early to work every day, I mean. Until Daryl, the “fax and copy supervisor” (he’s in charge of making sure all the office fax and copy machines are fully stocked and in working order, and the faxes delivered promptly to their addressees), informed me that I had only myself to thank for Tiffany’s new and improved work ethic.
“She likes hanging out with you,” he said. “She thinks you’re fu