That Touch of Magic (6 page)

Desmond smiled and held his arm out, walking me to the door. “Drive safely, and don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Des.” I made it to the open door, then suddenly turned to face him. “Hey. What are you doing Saturday?”

He blinked in surprise. “Do you think you’ll need more before then? I could make another batch and get it you by tomorrow, if you’d like.”

“No, I mean…” I let out a breath. “It’s my brother’s wedding. Peach, my new sister-in-law, is making us wear pink satin halter tops with white polka dots and enough crinoline to lift a zeppelin. I wasn’t going to bring a date because it’s a really awful dress and being the date of a bridesmaid just sucks. But now Leo’s going to be there and I’m gonna be on the volatile stuff and you look like you’d clean up good, and I was just thinking, if you weren’t doing anything…” I trailed off, feeling like an idiot. “You know what? I’m sorry. Forget it. I’m just being—”

“Tell me where to be and when,” he said, smiling. “If for nothing else, how frequently does one get the chance to see a polka-dotted zeppelin?”

Chapter 4

“Well, I guess it’s my turn,” Leo said, pushing up from one of the red vinyl chairs that made CCB’s famous. He looked at Nick and smiled. “Nick … wow, I can’t believe anyone is actually gonna marry this guy, let alone someone so beautiful.”

Everyone laughed.

This is what an alternate universe feels like,
I thought as I sat at my table in a cleared-out Crazy Cousin Betty’s, Peach’s natural choice for her fifties-themed rehearsal dinner. I stared down at my plate, good food prepared by a real caterer but put in those separated triangles in classic metal TV-dinner trays, and I chuckled.

Only Peach would plan an evening like this.

I glanced up just as everyone laughed at something brilliant and charming that Leo had said—I hadn’t heard it, I was trying to shut him out because even the sound of his voice wedged into the cracks in my heart and expanded painfully—but it was Leo, so I knew it was brilliant and charming.

He continued talking, and I stared down at my TV-dinner plate, trying to distract myself with wondering where in the hell Peach had found them, although the distraction wasn’t working that well. Even not looking at Leo, I could still feel him, and it was like having an itch on your back you couldn’t scratch; it was making me crazy. At least Peach had had the foresight to seat him at the table farthest from mine, with the rest of Nick’s guys. I was with Liv, Liv’s significant other Tobias, and my mother at the table nearest the door, giving me an easy exit if I needed it.

Liv leaned in closer to me, her fork still hovering over the TV-dinner plate. “You okay?”

I smiled in her direction, noticing that Tobias was also watching me with protective eyes. If Liv was a warrior goddess, Tobias was the god of thunder: dark, looming, and quiet until the moment came for you to hear and feel nothing but his wrath. Both of them magic, both of them gentle until pushed, and then watch out. If I said the word, they’d have Leo trussed up like a Sunday pig and on the next bus out of town. I can’t say the idea didn’t have its appeal, but.…

I glanced at the special table facing the rest of us, where my brother sat beaming at Leo, one arm around his bride-to-be’s chair, as happy as I’d ever seen him.

“I’m fine. Stand down.” I lifted my champagne flute and smiled, and they relaxed. Leo continued his speech, and everyone laughed, and I cursed my stupidity. I should have taken the damn dose that Desmond had given me, and just asked him to bring me more for the wedding. But no; I wanted to test myself in Leo’s presence, I wanted to show up tonight only to find that he didn’t affect me at all, that I was over it, that it was just the shock of seeing him again that had laid me out flat, and that I would be able to bear his leaving after the wedding without so much as a sigh.

I was delusional.

Everyone laughed at Leo’s final joke, and he raised his glass.

“You’re the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had, Nick,” he said. “You’re a good man, and Peach is an amazing woman, and I know you two will be very happy.”

We all lifted our glasses as he finished up, and I raised mine as well, and then our eyes met for the first time since he’d crashed back into my life, and the cracks in my heart expanded some more.

Bastard,
I thought, and sipped my champagne, holding his gaze like some kind of dog scrambling for dominance. I wasn’t going to look away first, wasn’t going to let him see what he was doing to me. In the end, after a nanosecond that felt like days, he glanced away and I was dominant and you know what?

It didn’t make me feel any better.

“I’d like to say something now, if that’s okay.”

To my left, the Widow Lillith Easter stood up, black silk clinging tight to her bony limbs. I reached to pull her back down—after all, I had one job at tonight’s dinner, and keeping my crazy mother quiet was it—but Nick held up his hand to allow it. I almost overruled him; he always gave everyone second, third, eighteenth chances. The triumph of optimism over experience, that was my brother. But then Peach gave me a nod indicating I should give my mother her shot. With great reluctance, I let my hand fall back to my champagne flute and took a hearty sip.

“To my son, my darling firstborn, Nicholas. I am so proud of you…”

The Widow began her gushing. I caught movement at the other table out of the corner of my eye; Leo was pushing up from his seat. I gave a quick shake of my head—
I’ve got it
—but he quietly moved to position himself a few feet behind our table, standing on guard, just in case a tackle was necessary. Even he knew my mother better than Nick did.

Poor, sweet, naive Nick.

“And to Bernadette…”

The Widow raised one skinny arm holding the champagne flute a little higher as she locked her eyes on Peach. Even through the black silk of her dress, I could see my mother’s muscles tense as though preparing for attack, and for a moment, I thought she was going to throw her champagne flute at her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. I wasn’t the only one who saw it, either; at the front table, Peach visibly tensed as my mother spoke, and who could blame her? The Widow spit her name out as though she were saying,
And to the whore of Babylon …

The Widow forced a smile on her pale face. “To Bernadette … You are a beautiful woman.”

Nick had one arm draped around the back of Peach’s chair, and he smiled as, for the moment, his faith in our mother seemed to have been rewarded. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Peach sat at their table with Grandma Peach, looking happy and oblivious. They’d moved to Florida some years back, and had apparently forgotten the kind of woman my mother was.

The rest of us hadn’t been so lucky.

“You have captured my son’s heart, and he’s a good man, so there must be some great virtue in you.”

Nick’s smile dimmed and his eyes closed for a moment, then he shifted as though to stand. I stood up and made a subtle motion with one hand; my job was to throw myself on the grenade, and I was happy to do it if it got me out of there without having to be polite and awkward with Leo. Besides, Nick was going to have to defend his wife from our mother for the rest of his life; he should get this one night off. Also, the Widow was all of ninety-eight pounds dripping wet; I could toss her over my shoulder and haul her out if I had to, and Nick knew I would. He relaxed back in his chair, a little.

“I do question some of the choices you two have made. We all know that cohabitating before marriage is a sin before God, but—”

I put my hand on her shoulder, digging my fingers into her flesh, hard. She didn’t flinch.

“Wish them the best, Widow,” I said quietly into her ear, “and sit the hell down.”

The Widow met my eye with steel and raised her voice. “—I believe that God forgives the genuine heart…”

I glanced at Peach, who kept a stiff smile on her face, and nodded for me to let the Widow continue. My spidey-sense was telling me to haul the Widow out
now,
but I stepped back and shared a weary look with Liv.

The Widow’s eyes glittered with her victory, and she turned her attention back to Peach. “Bernadette, it is my sincere hope that you will find your way back to Jesus, and repent of the poison you have injected into my good boy with your whorish ways—”

“Yeah, I’m calling it,” I said, and started toward the Widow.

“—and find a home in the Heaven He has promised us all.” The Widow turned to me as I took the flute out of her hand and placed it on the table, her eyes wide with something that couldn’t possibly have been surprise.

“What?” she said, blinking innocence. “I’m not done.”

“You are so very done.” I grabbed my purse in one hand and the Widow’s wrist in the other.

She tried to yank herself out of my grip. “You need to let me finish. I was about to get to the part where I talk about how Jesus forgave the whores and loved them anyway!”

“Thanks so much everyone, had a great time.” I waved to the Peaches, blew a kiss to Nick and Peach, and yanked on my mother’s arm. “Show’s over, Tammy Faye.” I glanced back at Liv and Tobias. “You’re on.”

Liv stood up and lifted her glass, clanging her knife against it with fervor to drown out the Widow’s objections as I yanked on her arm, dragging her bodily from the premises.

“I am not done!” the Widow said.

“Yeah, you are.”

Leo was at the door without missing a beat, holding it open for us. I met his eye quickly, and that stupid pain shot through me again. I was close enough to smell the Ivory soap on his skin, and I cursed myself again for being so cocky about the Anwei Xing.

“Need any help?” he asked sotto voce as I pushed the Widow out the door ahead of me.

“No.” I met his eye again, and it hurt again, and then I added, “Thanks,” and moved out after her, grateful to hear the ringing bells on the door jingle as it shut behind me.

I dragged the Widow to the street where I’d parked my bright yellow VW Bug, pulled the door open, and pointed to the passenger seat. “Get in.”

“I will
not
!” She started back toward CCB’s, and I darted in front of her, blocking her. Then she turned on her heel and tried to go the other way; I blocked her again.

“Watch yourself, Widow. I’m younger, faster, and I’ve got rage issues. I can do this all night.”

She stomped one foot. “I wasn’t done. If you had just let me finish—!”

“You called the bride a whore,” I said. “There’s nowhere you can go from there but down, and she’s Nick’s girl and my best friend. You want to get to Peach? You’re gonna have to go through me first, and there’s no way that’s happening.”

“If you think I’m going to be dragged out of my son’s first rehearsal dinner—”

“
Only
rehearsal dinner,” I said, advancing on her, “and that’s exactly what is happening. Nick loves Peach, and I love Peach, and you’ve already used up what grace you got by giving us life, so if you think that pushing us to make a choice is going to end in your favor, lady, then you’re gonna want to take a moment to think again.”

The Widow’s thin nostrils flared in fury. “
You.
You’re no better than she is. Sleeping with anyone and everyone, not caring how it makes
me
look, how it makes
me
feel. I have to go into that confessional every week and unload
your
sins as though they are
my
shame! How do you think that makes me feel?”

“I don’t give a crap how you feel. I spend time with you for Nick’s sake. He was the one who protected me from your crazy when Dad left—”

“Died,”
the Widow said.

“Eddie Easter is a drag queen in Brooklyn.”

She gasped, her face going white with horror. “Who told you that?”

“No one. He tried to Facebook friend me a few years back,” I said. “But don’t worry. I haven’t told anyone.”

She visibly relaxed, her face impassive as she tried to resuscitate her fiction. “The man is dead. You were at his funeral.”

“Throwing a party doesn’t make it someone’s birthday,” I said. “He called us two days after that funeral to ask for money.”

Her eyes widened, and she pointed her index finger at me. “Well, if he’s so alive, why isn’t he coming to his only son’s wedding?”

“I don’t know … because he abandoned us to the care of a crazy woman, let us believe he was dead for two days, and then called asking for money?”

The Widow rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Well … he’s dead to
me.
”

“And the whole world revolves around you,” I said. “I know. But to the point: Are you going to behave yourself tomorrow, or am I going to chain you to the radiator in your bedroom?”

She gasped, her eyes wide. “You wouldn’t!”

“Wow,” I said, shaking my head in mock surprise. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

I heard the bells jingle again and tensed, expecting Leo, but when I looked up, Peach was standing at the door of CCB’s, arms wrapped around her tiny middle as her pearl-blue dress swayed around her knees. She started down the sidewalk, heels clicking on the cement, and I put my hand on the Widow’s puffy blond coiffure.

Her black eyes glittered with fury. “Stacy Imogen Easter, stop this right—”

“You have the right to remain
silent,
” I hissed, and pushed down on her head until she collapsed into the open seat. I kicked her legs in, slammed the door, and clicked my key fob to lock it, then turned to face Peach as the Widow cursed at me and banged her fists on my passenger-side window.

Peach had tried to wipe off the mascara trails, but I’d known this girl my whole life, and I knew when she’d been crying.

“I’m so sorry, Peach,” I said. “Go back inside and enjoy your night. Don’t let her ruin it.”

Peach sniffed and nodded, but still looked miserable. “I just need a minute.”

“If it helps, she still likes you better than she likes me.” I heard movement in the car and looked down just in time to see the Widow trying to unlock the driver’s-side door. The second she succeeded, I hit the fob again and relocked it.