Love on the Rocks (with Salt) (6 page)

“
You’re a bad boy,” I purr as I
push him away.

“
I’d like to be,” he flirts. He
puts ice in a glass and reaches for the bottle of Costco pre-made
margaritas. He calls them shortcut margaritas; I call them
delicious. He tops off my glass before filling his own.

“
How was work today?” he asks,
leaning against the counter.

“
Oh, you know, another day,
another bride.”

“
Anything juicy?”

I smile. Kyle loves shop
gossip, and Gabriella’s has plenty of it. While I tend to shy away
from drama, Kyle is drawn to it. Once a maid-of-honor and a
matron-of-honor (because the bride couldn’t choose which friend she
loved best) had a full-on brawl in the middle of the shop over
whether the bridesmaid dresses should be lavender or periwinkle.
(
Um, neither!
)
Kim and I had to pull them apart, which resulted in me getting
elbowed in the nose (that bitch is lucky it didn’t break) and Kim
getting a scratch across her cheek that was visible for weeks. Kyle
practically clapped his hands with glee at that story. (After
making sure my nose was OK, of course.)

I walk to the counter and take a sip of my
salty delight. “No drama today, my love. Sorry to disappoint.” I
set my drink down and kiss him.

He puts his hands on my hips and
pulls me to him. “Guess you’ll have to make it up to me.” He kisses
me like he means business.

As hard as it is, I push away. “The tacos,
remember?”

“
Hmm.” He sighs.

“
Why don’t you make yourself
useful and put the taco shells in the toaster oven?”

“
Yes, ma’am,” he says, saluting
me.

“
I’m pretty sure it’s still
‘miss.’ At least until we’re married. Which reminds me, maybe we
can look at our calendars again this weekend?”

He takes a sip of his drink. “That
sounds great,” he says, but he seems a bit tentative. Weddings and
trials are planned well in advance and between my weddings and a
couple of cases he’s working on, we haven’t been able to pin down a
date for our nuptials.

I walk to the fridge and
start pulling out the sour cream, shredded cheese and salsa with
shaking hands, suddenly nervous. “Your words don’t match your tone.
Not getting cold feet, are you?” I hope it comes off in a jokey way
and not a pathetic
Oh-my-God-my-fiancé-has-changed-his-mind-my-life-is-over
way.

“
Not on your life. I can’t wait
until the day I make you Mrs. Helaina Williams.”

My given name sounds so
foreign to me. Nobody ever calls me that. Not even my parents when
I was in trouble growing up. It was never,
Helaina
Anaïs
Delaney, get over here right now!
It
was always
Laney
Anaïs, now!

“I wonder if I’ll have to use my
real name when we say our vows. Probably half the people at the
wedding will be thinking to themselves, ‘Who in the hell is
Helaina?’”

“Only the most
beautiful girl in the world. And my future wife.” He pulls me back
to him and bites my ear again. “I love the way that sounds:
wife
.”

I almost give in this time—screw
the tacos—but I remain strong. “Dinner first. Then dessert.” I hand
him a plate.

We assemble our tacos and sit at
our small table perpendicular to each other, our knees touching. We
usually get home around seven or even later, so we often order in
or go out, but I like cooking. I look forward to the day I can do
it more often for him. And our kids.

“I did receive an interesting
phone call today,” he says, biting into his taco.

“Interesting good or interesting
bad?” The way he said it, almost too casually, makes me think
something’s up.

“Not sure yet, but definitely not
bad.”

I chew longer than I need to and
wait for him to go on.

“Do you remember Paul, my friend
from law school?”

“The one you never see any more
because he works eighty hours a week for that big firm
downtown?”

Kyle puts his elbow on the table
and rubs his chin. “Well…” he says. “It’s probably more like sixty.
Anyway, his firm is looking for a litigator. Someone who’s familiar
with environmental.”

“And, what, he wanted to know if
you knew anyone who’d be interested in selling their soul?” I say a
bit too sarcastically, not liking where this conversation is
going.

“That seems a little
dramatic.”

“I thought you loved
drama.”

“Only other people’s,” he says,
trying to lighten the mood.

“So you’re telling me you’d leave
The Mother Nature Foundation to work for big law?”

He reaches across the table and
takes my hand. “No one’s offered me a job, but they do want to talk
to me. I’m willing to have a conversation with them. I love my job,
but you know there’s no money in the nonprofit sector.”

“I thought you cared about the
environment, not money,” I say, pulling my hand away.

“I’d expect a comment like that
from your mother, but not from you, Muffin.” Kyle no longer eats
red meat because it’s bad for the environment. He had two EPA
internships in college and now works as legal counsel for an
environmental nonprofit that saves open space from developers. He
is my hippie mother’s wet dream of a son-in-law. “I don’t even know
if anything will come of it. But it would be an amazing
opportunity. I could pay off my loans faster, and we could buy a
house. Start a family.”

He takes my hand again and kisses
my fingers. “It’s just a conversation, Laney. And if they make me
an offer, which odds are they won’t, we’ll decide together. You are
the most important thing in the world to me. You, and our
future.”

Then he takes my face in his
hands, which he knows makes me melt, and leans across the table and
kisses me. I surrender to it. To him. And then he pulls me up and
leads me into the bedroom, our half-eaten tacos left on the
table.

“
Gabriella should be here any
minute,” I say to the bride sitting in the waiting area. “She’s
just on her way back from a meeting.”

“
Is it with a fashion editor?” she
asks, eyes wide.

Not unless she knows a fashion
editor who injects Botox.

I smile and nod at the
pretty brunette in front of me. Tammy. Newly engaged and full of
hope and excitement. “
Vogue
, I think.”

“
Really?!” she asks with a huge
grin.

Crap. I should keep my lies
subtler. I forget that lots of people actually like
Vogue
. “Just one of the
social editors. Not Anna Wintour. Of course she knows Anna, but
she’s in New York. I mean… obviously.”
Shit, Gabriella, where the hell are you? How long does it
take to get freaking Botox?
For all the
lies I tell in this place, you’d think I’d be better at
it.

“
Would you like something to drink
while you’re waiting? Water? Coffee? Champagne?”

“
Are you serious?
Champagne?”

“
Sure, why not? Getting a designer
wedding dress is certainly a cause for celebration.”

Without waiting for an answer I
walk into the staff room next to Gabriella’s office and take a
bottle from the fridge. It’s actually sparkling wine, but I don’t
think she’ll care. I come back to the waiting area and extend the
glass to her with my left hand.

“
Your ring is beautiful,” she
says.

“
Thank you,” I say, holding out my
hand, realizing how badly I need a manicure. “It was his
grandmother’s.”

“
How did he propose?”

“
You’re not here to find out about
me. I want to know about you. How did you get engaged?”

Focus your attention on the
bride
, Gabriella always says. Let them get
lost in their fairytale rather than your nightmare. Or something
like that. A bridal shop is no place to tell someone you’ve been
engaged for five years, but due to your fiancé’s insane work
schedule, there is no wedding date in sight. If Gabriella heard me
tell a customer that she’d fire me on the spot. Fortunately, Tammy
takes the bait.

“
Oh, it was so romantic. He took
me to Paris for my twenty-fifth birthday last month and proposed
right in front of the Eiffel Tower under a full moon.” The memory
gives her a dreamy, faraway look. I remember when I still had that
look. She shakes her head, “Sorry, that probably sounds so
cliché.”

“
Not at all,” I tell her. “It
sounds lovely.”

“
Now tell me your story,” she
says, taking a sip of champagne. “I love to hear everyone’s
story.”

“
It was at a sunset picnic at the
beach,” I tell her.

“
Oh, that’s so nice,” she says,
but I can hear the superiority in her voice. I’ve been
out-proposed. She doesn’t know the half of it. At the pace my
engagement is going, she’ll have grandkids before I walk down the
aisle.

“
Is Gabriella designing your dress
too?”

It’s funny. No one’s ever
asked me that before. Dozens of brides have noticed my ring and
some will ask when my date is (
we haven’t
nailed it down, sometime in the
spring/summer/fall
) or how he proposed,
but no one has ever asked about
my
dress. The truth is my dress was designed years
ago, but no fabric has been purchased, not one stitch has been
started. A dress in limbo. Much like my life.

Before I can answer her, Gabriella
bursts into the waiting area, for once her timing
impeccable.

“
Ah, Gabriella,” I say. “Your
three o’clock is here. This is Tammy. I told her your meeting with
Tori Hendricks was running late.”

“
Yes, I do apologize,” she says to
Tammy, catching on quickly. “And excellent, I see Laney has already
given you some champagne. Please come into my office so we can get
started. And Laney dear, why don’t you come too so you can take
notes,” she says as if she’s just thought of it.

“
Of course, Gabriella,” I say and
follow them in. Another deception begins.

~~~~

“
The lady will have a margarita on
the rocks with salt and the carnitas with corn tortillas and a
salad with no beets. I’ll have the chicken fajitas with flour
tortillas and a salad also. I’ll take her beets. Oh, and a Corona
please.”

I used to love it when Kyle
ordered for me. It seemed so gentlemanly. So old-fashioned. But
tonight it bugs me.
He
bugs me. I deal with brides all day, every day, and I’m fine,
but there’s something about that bride today—Tammy. I don’t know if
it was the moony look in her eyes or her asking me about my dress,
but
something
makes me irritated with Kyle and the fact that he won’t pin
down a date.

“
You didn’t ask me what I wanted,”
I say when the waiter walks away.

“
Did you want something
different?” he asks, sounding surprised. “I’ll go chase him
down.”

I consider telling him I’d like
tofu enchiladas just to confuse him, except I don’t know if they
have tofu enchiladas. And then I’d have to eat them. Blech! Instead
I roll my eyes. “No, but it would be nice to be asked.”

He takes my hand and kisses it,
bites my finger. “I’m sorry, Muffin. What can I do to make it up to
you?”

That pout of his. Those puppy dog eyes. After
all these years he still knows how to make me want to jump across
the table. Even when I’m mad at him.

“
Take me away this
weekend!”

Kyle furrows his brow. “What?” he says as the
waiter sets our drinks in front of us.

“
I’m serious. When was the last
time we did anything spontaneous? Anything fun? Remember when we
used to drive down to Baja and drink margaritas and eat cheap
lobster and dance all night and have crazy hotel sex?”

“
I don’t think Baja is really safe
any more,” he says, taking a swig of his beer.

“
So, not Baja. San Diego. Or Santa
Barbara.”

“
Laney…”

“
Wait! I know!” I slam both hands
down on the table, startling the people next to us. “Vegas! When
was the last time we went to Vegas? I could wear that black dress
you like. And those red shoes.” I smile at him
seductively.

“
I do like those shoes,” he says,
filling me with hope. “But I’ve got to work this weekend, you know
that. Discovery is due Monday. And I thought you were spending
Sunday with Kim and Amanda. Rose Bowl Flea Market and a chick
flick.”

My heart sinks. I know he’s right,
but I’m so tired of this rut we’re in, and we’re not even married
yet. “I could cancel. They’d understand.”