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But that didn’t mean I was in the wrong place, exactly.
“Next,” Chaz says, signaling the bartender, “I’m going to have another drink. And I suggest you do the same. Because there’s a lady I know who deserves to have her memory toasted, and not with Diet Coke.”
I give him a somewhat watery smile. “I’m not good at not knowing what’s going to happen,” I say when our screwdrivers arrive, and we lift them to clink.
“Are you kidding?” Chaz says. “That’s what you’re best at. You take the road less traveled and turn it into gold every single time. Why do you think Luke’s still hanging on so tight when he’s half a world away? You’ve got the magic touch. And everyone knows it.”
“I don’t know,” I say uncertainly.
“Lizzie.” Chaz looks me dead in the eye. “Why do you think it was you, out of all the people in your family, your grandmother co
I do, chewing my lower lip a little.
“To Gran,” Chaz says, clinking the rim of his glass to mine. “A fine old drunk with some damn good taste.”
“To Gran,” I say, blinking back sudden tears. But they’re happy tears. Because finally someone is saying what I’ve been wanting to say about Gran all along.
Gran, I know, would approve of what Chaz and I are doing. Whatever that is, exactly.
I lift my glass. And I drink.
To Gran.
The first toasts were performed back in the sixth century B.C., when the ancient Greeks would pour wine for their di
At a traditional modern reception, the first toast is always to the bride, usually by the best man. The last toast is generally from the father of the bride. After he has made a weepy spectacle of himself, the reception can officially begin. Only at a nontraditional modern reception does the bride get to give her own toast, thanking her wedding party and guests (who, after sitting through so many toasts, truly deserve thanking).
Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster
Keep your toasts short. Please, no crib sheets. The point of the toast is to wish the happy couple well and invite all the other guests to join you in doing so, not to embarrass the couple or show how witty you are. You should also thank the parents for hosting the wedding and the couple for bestowing the honor of allowing you to be their best whatever-you-are. Lift your glass, ask others to do so as well, congratulate them, then get your butt back in the seat, for the love of God, so the rest of us can eat our cold rubbery chicken.
LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™
• Chapter 18 •
To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu, fourth century B.C., Taoist philosopher
I’m late for work Monday morning.
There is only one explanation for how I can be late to work in a place that is precisely two floors below where I live: Chaz.
It turns out there is a disadvantage to living two floors up from where you work… if you don’t want the people you’re working with to know you’re sleeping around behind your fiancé’s back, anyway.
I told Chaz that if he wanted to spend the night at my place he had to get out before anyone else showed up at the shop in the morning. I couldn’t have Tiffany and the other ladies seeing him leaving. Which meant he had to be out of there before nine… preferably before eight thirty.
He would have made it too, if it hadn’t been for my own insufferable weakness when it comes to men who bring girls breakfast in bed. It isn’t a weakness I ever knew I had before. Because no guy has ever brought me breakfast in bed before.
And it wasn’t just that he brought me breakfast in bed, either, but that he got up way before I did and must have crept around super-quietly so as not to wake me, and gone to the store—since there was seriously nothing in my refrigerator—and then made scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and brought it all in on a tray with a single red rose in a bud vase next to an icy cold Diet Coke still in the can… just the way I like it.
What girl wouldn’t have melted? And then jumped his bones (as soon as she was done with her eggs… I didn’t want them to get cold, after all)?
So I’m a little bit… frazzled… when I finally get downstairs to work. Frazzled in a good way. A highly relaxed, but still slightly disoriented and dazed way. It’s how I’ve been feeling since I first kissed Chaz… good, but almost as if I had gone ahead and started taking those pills Shari’s dad had given me, instead of flushing them down the toilet back at the Knight’s I
And I didn’t even think about buying a Ci
Something is happening to me. I’ve even stopped wearing Spanx. I just don’t care if my bulges show. Maybe because Chaz actually likes my bulges?
I never have to worry about being on top with him, or making sure I walk backward out of the room when I’m naked so my butt doesn’t show. In fact, I’m pretty sure if I did this, Chaz would ask me what the hell I was doing, something Luke never seemed to notice. Or wonder about.
Maybe this is what comes from being a loose woman. When you give up your morals, they all just go, inhibitions too.
Anyway, I’m not the first person into the shop. Sylvia and Marisol are already there, working on the lace-and-tulle I. Magnin & Co. 1950s cocktail-style number we’d gotten from a punky bride whose mother had worn it and who wanted to squeeze into it as well… only she was a size 12 and her mother had been a size 8. We’d assured her we could handle it.
But from the way Sylvia and Marisol start staring, their mouths hanging open, when I walk in, I’m not sure we can handle much of anything, let alone retrofitting a size 12 I. Magnin cocktail dress to an 8.
“What?” I demand, staring right back at them.
They know. I don’t know how they know, but it’s obvious they do. I might as well be wearing a big scarlet letter A on my chest.
Great. The boss is a slut. In an hour, when Tiffany gets here, everyone in Manhattan (and parts of North Dakota, where Tiffany is from) will know it.
How do I handle this? There was never an article about this in Fortune Small Business. What to do when all your employees know that you’re sleeping with your fiancé’s best friend. At least I don’t think so. Damn, I knew I should have paid more attention to that magazine and less to Us Weekly.
“This is looking good,” I say about the dress the two women are working on. They’ve ripped all the stitching from the waist and bodice and will be inserting stretchy lace panels—the big girl’s friend—in discreet locations. Yeah, that’s it. Maybe I can distract them by complimenting their work!
The two women exchange glances.