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I blink at him. “What?”
“Yeah,” Luke says, giving me a squeeze. “I’ve thought it all through. You can come with me, to Paris. It’ll be much easier to coordinate the wedding at Château Mirac from there than it would be from here… ”
“Um,” I say. I can’t believe he’s serious. “I can’t just take the summer off and go to Paris, Luke.”
“Sure you can,” Luke says. Apparently, he thinks I’m the one who’s kidding. “They’ll give you time off from the shop. They’ll have to. You’re getting married!”
“Yeah,” I say. “Time off meaning two weeks… three, maybe. But not the whole summer.”
“Lizzie.” Luke looks disappointed in me. “Don’t you know anything about the business world? Don’t let the Henris tell you how much vacation time you get. You tell them. If they really want to keep you, they’ll let you take off as much time as you want.”
“Luke,” I say, trying to figure out how I can put this without offending him. “I don’t want to take the whole summer off. And I definitely don’t want to spend it with you in Paris.”
But no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I realize that I’ve done it again. Put my foot in my mouth, I mean. God, no matter how hard I try to be tactful, I just never seem to be able to say the right thing around this guy.
“Th-that didn’t come out the right way,” I stammer.
Fortunately, Luke is chuckling.
“I guess I never have to worry about your not being honest with me,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I hurry to say. “What I meant was—”
“You don’t want to spend the summer in Paris,” he says. “And you don’t have to apologize. I understand. You love your job, and you want to be here for it. That’s okay. The thing is, Gerald’s offer is really too good for me to turn down. Especially with the wedding to pay for. Look, it’s all right. We can do the long-distance thing. We’re already going to be doing the separate-apartment thing”—he gives me a mischievous smile, because I’d already warned him, before I’d said yes to his proposal, that I wouldn’t be moving back in with him until after the wedding; it just seems like the wisest thing to do, under the circumstances—“so I guess living in separate countries for a couple of months over the summer shouldn’t be that big a deal.”
I chew my lower lip. Am I insane? I probably am. I’ve got this amazing guy who’s finally proposed to me, and in the past hour I’ve turned down an invitation not only to move back in with him but also to spend a summer in Paris with him.
“He’s not the kind of guy who’s going to hitch his wagon to a star. He still thinks he’s the star. And you can’t have two stars in one relationship. Somebody has to be willing to be the wagon… at least some of the time.”
Oh! I can’t believe it! Even a session of hot and heavy makeup sex didn’t succeed in exorcising Chaz’s voice from my head! What am I going to have to do to get that guy out of there?
“Come on,” I say, reaching for my cell phone. “Let’s call people and tell them now.”
Luke looks amused. “Oh, now you want to call your family?”
You’d better believe it. Anything to make the voice of Chaz stop talking inside my head.
“Come on,” I say, dialing. “It’ll be fun. I’ll call my parents first. Because I’m the bride, so you have to do what I say. Hello, Mom?”
“No,” a childish voice says. “It’s me, Maggie.”
“Oh, Maggie,” I say to my niece. “Hi, it’s your aunt Lizzie. Could you put your grandma on the phone, please?”
“Okay,” Maggie says, and I hear the phone thunk to the floor as she goes off in search of my mother. I can hear the voices of my sisters and their husbands in the background as they enjoy my parents’ traditional Nichols Family New Year’s Day Brunch. Although “enjoy” might be a strong word. Maybe “endure” is more like it. I can hear my sister Rose’s husband, Angelo, bleating something about how he no longer eats eggs because of the hormones in them, and my sister firing back that maybe he could use more hormones… especially in bed.
“Who’s this?” Gran picks up the phone and barks.
“Oh,” I say, disappointed. “Gran. Hi. It’s me, Lizzie. I was just trying to reach Mom—”
“She’s busy,” Gran says. Whoever was assigned to make sure she imbibes only nonalcoholic beer has apparently failed in his or her mission. Gran is, as always, three sheets to the wind. “Somebody’s gotta feed this crew. God forbid one of your sisters should offer to host one of these things and dirty up her house someday.”
“Huh,” I say, giving Luke a su
“Jesus Christ,” Gran says. “You’re knocked up. Lizzie, I told you. Always use a rubber. I know the boys don’t like them, but it’s like I always say: no rubber, no way.”
“Uh,” I say. “No, Gran, that’s not it. Luke and I are engaged.”
“Luke?” Gran sounds like she’s choking on whatever drink she’s just knocked back. “That no-good-nik? What did you go and agree to marry him for? I thought you booted that loser to the curb before Christmas.”
I cough and give Luke another reassuring smile.
“Are they excited?” he mouths.
I give him a thumbs-up.
“Um, I did, Gran,” I say. “But now we’re engaged. Can you get Mom, please?”
“No, I am not going to get your mother,” Gran says. “Trust me, I’m doing you a favor, Lizzie. She did an aquaerobics class and a scrapbooking class at the Y yesterday, plus all the shopping for this brunch, with no help whatsoever from those sisters of yours. This news could kill her.”
“Gran.” I smile at Luke again. “If you don’t put Mom on the phone, I’m going to call her on her cell and tell her you’ve been hitting the cooking sherry. And don’t try to deny it. Because I can tell.”
“You ingrate,” Gran snarls. “What do you want to go and get engaged for anyway, Lizzie? Husbands don’t do anything but cramp your style. Believe me, I was saddled with one for fifty-five years. I would know. Get out now, while you still can.”
“Gran,” I warn.
“I’m getting her,” Gran says. I hear her shuffling off.
I can’t help noticing that Luke isn’t smiling anymore. I say, “It’s okay. Gran’s just a little tipsy.”
Luke looks at his watch. “It’s noon.”
“It’s a holiday,” I point out. Jeesh. Some people can be so picky.
Mom’s reception of the news that I’m getting married is much warmer than Gran’s. She screams and cries and calls for Dad and asks to speak to Luke and welcomes him to the family and wants to know when she’s going to get to meet him. Which reminds me that it is a little weird Luke hasn’t met my family yet. I’ve met all of his.
But oh well. They’ll meet soon enough, I guess. Mom wants to throw an engagement party… and the wedding, which Mom immediately offers the family backyard for, a suggestion I gently brush off, saying, “Well, we’ll see.” I’m not sure how to break it to her that Luke’s already suggested we get married at his seventeenth-century familial estate in the south of France, an offer that’s pretty hard to turn down.
Except that my family’s never been to Europe before… they’ve never been to New York before.
This might actually pose a problem.
But Luke says all the right things to them on the phone, and is as charming and gracious as if my parents were a king and queen and not a professor at the University of Michigan cyclotron and a housewife. Everything, I think, as I watch him proudly, is going to be fine. Just fine.
“This is like watching a lamb being led to slaughter. Is getting married really that important to you? It’s just a goddamned piece of paper.”
Okay, well, it’s going to be fine after a few more phone calls. And more sex.
A lot more sex.