I couldn’t tell if the situation was awkward because it was more than I’d come here for, or if it was because I didn’t want to feel sympathy for Valerie when she’d just admitted that she loved my fiancé.
“And between then and Christmas.” She held up her hands.
“Neil and I were already together.” The sympathy I felt for her was weird. “I’m sorry things couldn’t work out for you.”
“No, you aren’t,” she said, catching the sentiment I’d accidentally expressed.
“You’re right, I’m not.” It had been insensitive of me to blurt out something I hadn’t thought through “But I wish…I wish there was a way that I could be happy, and you wouldn’t be hurt.”
“I’m not hurt. Neil’s divorce wasn’t my second chance. I had to accept that. We’ve known each other . We both had plenty of opportunities.” She shrugged. “I’m not proud of the way I treated you.”
“Well.” There was so much I could have said, but nothing seemed right. “I appreciate that.”
Her expression hardened a little. “But, in the interest of us getting along in the future, let me recommend that you never bring personal business into my professional setting again.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Would you have agreed to meet me somewhere else? Somewhere you couldn’t lie about having a busy schedule?”
“I do have a busy schedule, Sophie. So, I’ll have to see you out.”
Since the queen had dismissed me from her throne room, I got up and walked ahead of her. She stopped me at the outer office doors that led to the lobby. “Wait.”
I turned, wondering what parting barb she would try to sink me with.
“Thank you. For thinking better of me than anyone would expect you to.”
I nodded. “Well. It’s my pleasure.”
What I didn’t tell her was that someone did expect me to think well of her, or least, wanted me to.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
You
know how you can be waiting a long time for something you’re really excited about, but as the countdown to the thing becomes shorter, your anticipation grows, negating any sense of passing time? And, then, the moment you get the thing, it’s crept the fuck up on you, and you’re so startled that you can barely enjoy it, and you feel like you and your fiancé should just abandon your millions of dollars wedding and go to City Hall before anyone can stop you?
Thursday arrived like a rock hurled without warning through the window of my life. It was the first day of the three-week leave I’d taken. To my horror, I’d actually gotten up and started getting ready for work out of habit.
As I stumbled to the bathroom, Neil asked groggily, “Your family isn’t arriving this early, are they?”
“My what?” I scratched the side of my head. “Oh, god. Is it Thursday already?”
I slipped back into bed beside him, and he flung out one arm to pull me against him. I rolled over to be the little spoon and wiggled my bottom against him. “So, it’s finally here.”
“Two more days.” He buried his face in my neck. “Two more days until you are Mrs. Neil Elwood.”
“Sophie Scaife,” I corrected him, not for the first time.
“I promise I’ll stop after the honeymoon. I’m annoying myself now.” He yawned beside my ear. “What time do we need to be in the city?”
Now that my brain was more awake and I knew what day of the week it was, I could remember my schedule a little better. “Okay, the flight gets in at two, and we’ve got cars meeting them at the airport…” I squinted as I considered. “I’d like to be at the apartment at least a little early, so we can make sure Sue got everything under control.”
Sue, Neil’s former housekeeper, had graciously agreed to come back for the wedding weekend, even though she had another job with another family already. She knew the place better than our once-a-week cleaning lady did and would be better equipped to take care of all the family who would be staying in the apartment.
“Why aren’t more of them staying at the Plaza?” Neil asked, still bewildered by my family’s disdain of “putting on airs”. We would have my grandma, my mom, my aunt Marie, Marie’s two kids and their significant others, and my cousin Leanne all staying at the apartment with us. The rest of the family would stay in our block of reserved rooms at the hotel, but I expected them to pile into the apartment for meals and to meet up for sightseeing.
This was an entirely alien concept to Neil, whose past experience with weddings and family boiled down to “find out what time Mum is flying in and hope she knows enough Italian to get her to the hotel”.
“They don’t want to stay at the Plaza. They want to be on hand to be helpful.” I would have made air quotes, but I was too tired.
We arrived at the apartment at two-thirty, and I went through my checklist of things to have prepared, four sheets of paper laid out neatly side-by-side on the kitchen island.
“Okay,” I said, in what was meant to be a decisive tone, but came across as frazzled nerves. “I’ve got Mom and Grandma in the guest room, Marie and Leanne in Emma’s room, Carrie and Dean in Sue’s old room, and John and Beth in the TV room. You put a password on the porn, right?”
“There has always been a password on the porn,” Neil reminded me. “How on Earth are we supposed to live with this many people here?”
“This many people? Our apartment has more square footage than my grandma’s house, and she hosts twice as many people for Christmas. Just thank god some of my family was content to stay at the hotel. There would be people sleeping on the couches and on blow up mattresses in your library.”
“No one, absolutely no one, may go into my library.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “For any reason.”
“Oh, because you’re so protective of all those books you’ve never read?” I snapped.
His expression hardened. “No, because it will be my only escape.”
Okay, that was officially it. “Why are you being such a prick, all of a sudden?”
“Because it’s two days before our wedding and you’re flooding my apartment with people who are practically strangers—”
“Your apartment?” I shrieked. “And they’re not strangers! They’re my family.”
“Well, they’re certainly strange!” he shouted back.
“Fuck you!” I stormed from the kitchen. I hoped he followed me and that the swinging door would hit him in his stupid face. We were two days from getting married, and I didn’t even want to look at him.
Oh god, was that a sign?
I went into our bedroom and slammed the door, because it was the most satisfying thing I could do at the time. The worst part about fighting with Neil was that the only person I wanted comfort from was him.
He knocked on the door and said, softly, “Sophie? Can I apologize?”
I went over and pushed down the handle, opening the door just a crack. “I don’t know, can you?”
I opened the door and let him in. It felt good to act like it was an invitation, after what he’d said about “his” apartment.
“I’m not ready,” he went on, and my heart and stomach tangled together. It must have registered on my face, because he quickly amended, “Not about marriage! I’m ready for that. But I know it’s going to be a very busy weekend, and I’m not quite ready to embrace the chaos, as it were.”
“You should have said this whole arrangement was bothering you. Like, way before my family was en route,” I pointed out. But I understood what he meant. Having a big wedding had sounded so awesome when we were planning it, but now that it was here, I just wanted all the stressful parts to be over.
“I should have. And I’m sorry I called your family strange.” He tilted his head and grimaced. “I mean, they are quite strange—”
My stony glare stopped him.
He sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry, darling. I’m exhausted and nervous and overwhelmed. But I’m so looking forward to marrying you. And, besides, staying with your family will only be for one night.”
“Exactly. Tomorrow, you’ll be at the Plaza.” I wrinkled my nose. “And at your bachelor party.”
“Nothing untoward will happen,” he assured me. With the tension broken, he reached for my hand and pulled me in to stand between his knees. Gazing up at me adoringly was a good way to defuse the rest of my anger. “Rudy is planning it, for God’s sake.”
Oh yeah, like Rudy was going to run the most chaste party in New York. “That doesn’t mean anything. There are male strippers in New York, you know.”
“I do know.” He grinned widely. “Rudy planned my last bachelor party, too.”
“When I was in Vegas, I didn’t do anything ‘untoward’ either, you know. So, hands to yourself.”
“You did
nothing
untoward?” Neil asked incredulously. “Not even grinding on the dance floor with some virile young specimen before signing your life away to a doddering old man?”
“Well, I did get a massage from a very, very attractive guy. But he was a legit massage therapist.” I sighed in mock disappointment. I grinned and looped my arms around Neil’s neck as I climbed onto his lap to straddle him. “I don’t know how you’ll resist the temptation. All those well-hung young hard bodies, gyrating their way through law school.”
“Law school is expensive. You should praise me for my altruism.” He wiggled his eyebrows, and I laughed and cradled his head against my boobs
“Seriously, though,” I said, kissing the top of his head before I released him. “I’m not worried about what you get up to tomorrow night.”
“I can’t see myself indulging any salacious whims when I’ve got you waiting for me at home.” His fingers dug into my ass to pull me up tight against his groin. “And I don’t plan to drink, so there will be no impaired judgment.”
“Just as long as you get to the altar on time.” A lump seized my throat. “You know. Don’t…leave me there.”
His brow crinkled, and he squinted as he looked up at me. “Why on Earth would I ever do something like that?”
Big left Carrie at the altar once
, my pop-culture addled brain reminded me. “No reason.”
“Sophie, I cannot imagine any place I would more like to be than waiting for you to come down that aisle.” He drew me down for a kiss, and I let myself linger in it, despite my strong urge to run around the house checking for dust. My grandma was in her seventies, but her eyes were like a cleaning-obsessed bald eagle’s.
The house phone rang, I got up so Neil could reach his nightstand to answer. He hit in the intercom button and said “Yes, Benjamin?”
Benjamin, the doorman, cleared his throat audibly over the speaker. “Good afternoon, Mr. Elwood. Were you expecting some…guests?”
I gave Neil my best warning face.
“Yes, they’re Ms. Scaife’s family. Please send them up.”
When he disconnected the call, I snorted. “You’d tell just anybody your whole life story just to avoid being associated with my family, wouldn’t you?”
“Come on. Let’s not fight. We can get through this together.”
We weren’t waiting in the foyer for very long before the elevator doors dinged and my aunt Marie spilled out, covered in luggage. “Holy shit! This is
not
where you live. Is it? Is this where you live?”
“Some of the time,” Neil said, moving to take the suitcase from her hand.
“If I don’t get off this damned elevator, I’m going to lose my mind!” Grandma pushed her way past Marie. She dropped a pink nylon duffle bag on the floor and put out her arms. “I get to hug the bride first.”
“Grandma!” I hugged her hard. “I’m so glad you came.”
“My granddaughter is getting married, of course I’m coming!” She turned to Neil. “Hug your grandmother.”
He gave me a panicked glance, but it was too late. My tiny little grandma threw her arms around him and squeezed him hard.
“You know, I think my mother was older than you,” he said as he managed to disentangle himself.
My mom stepped into the foyer and looked around, wide-eyed. She’d been staying with us in Sagaponack for so long that I’d forgotten she’d never actually been to the apartment. “So, this is where you go to hide from me.”
“Well, here and various other places,” Neil said, and Mom pursed her lips angrily.
My cousin, Leanne—tall, willowy, with long black hair and Robert Smith’s eyeliner—came off the elevator just as the doors closed behind her. She didn’t look up from her phone as she said, “Hey Sophie, where can I charge this?”
Marie rolled her eyes. “Can you believe this one? All the way here. ‘I need a charger, I need some place I can charge this.’ It’s like an artificial heart. If it stops working, she dies.”
“Yeah, let me show you where you’re going to be staying.” I motioned to everyone to follow me and called back to Neil, “You stay there. The rest will be coming up.”
He raised his hand and stuttered something. I pretended not to notice. “Okay, Leanne and Marie, you’re going to stay in Emma’s room—”
“Who’s Emma?” Leanne pushed her gum from one side of her open mouth to the other.
“Emma is Neil’s adult daughter,” Mom said with a forced smile. “Who is exactly the same age as Sophie.”
“Okay, we’ll put a pin in that and come back to it later.” My own smile was just as forced. I opened the door to Emma’s room. The queen-sized bed was big enough for sharing.
Leanna looked up for the first time and wrinkled her nose. “Wow. Frilly.”
Emma’s room
was
pretty frilly, but nothing like the bright pink nursery in the London house. She’d lived out the last of her at-home years in the New York apartment, so the pale pink walls and rose-colored carpet weren’t quite as little-girl obnoxious as they could have been.
“Come on, Mom, Grandma. You’ll be down here.” I waved them on to the guest room, which was a lot less pink and had a king-sized bed. Neil had argued that we couldn’t have so many people sharing rooms; he clearly didn’t know country families that well.
“Where’s the bathroom? My back teeth are floating,” Grandma said, dumping her duffel bag on the bed.
“It’s over there.” I gestured to the en suite restroom and put my hands on my hips as I faced my mother. “What was that about?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her forehead crinkling in mock confusion.
“The crack about Emma’s age,” I hissed in a low voice. “What happened to, ‘I see you as an adult getting married to another adult?’”
“I still mean that,” she insisted. “I was just trying to be funny.”
“Well, it wasn’t!” I pressed my fingertips to my forehead. “Mom, Neil is really stressed out about the wedding. I’m really stressed out about the wedding. We’ve been sniping at each other, and… I just don’t need the little digs, okay?”
She sighed. “Sophie, you have to give me some leeway here—”
“No, I don’t.” Having the same argument over and over was tiring. I deserved a candy bar after this. “I’m getting married. You’ve known this was coming for a while now. If you needed to come to terms with it, that’s on you, not me. I’m sorry you didn’t take care of whatever this is that you’re feeling until right this very moment, but this wedding isn’t about you. It’s about Neil and me, and us merging our families together. Don’t ruin it for me by putting this…parental disappointment or whatever all over it.”