Between You and Me (20 page)

“Hey,” I say nervously. “Cute suit.”

“Well, I’m meeting your parents.” He looks around, rising on the balls of his feet.

“No, they’re not coming.”

“They’re not? I assumed—”

“Nope! No. Another long story. How about I push you into the path of everyone my mother might get a postmortem from?”

“You’re on. I had to lie to Travis about where I was going—he’s still waiting by the phone for Kelsey.”

I shake my head. “Wow, only in Hollywood could he think he made a good impression.”

“When you get paid ten million to play the dick who gets the girl, it’s hard for him to remember that dropping someone in a fountain isn’t the thing that happens at the top of Act Two that she just has to ‘get past.’”

This resonates with something about today I haven’t been able to quell, and I nod, lowering my voice. “Singing about true love day after day hoisted into the air on a giant silk rocking horse can’t be good for your sense of—reality.”

“Now you’re just being cynical. I proposed to my last four wives riding a giant silk rocking horse.” He steps back to take me in. “You don’t look like a bridesmaid.”

“Because I’m the maid of honor, bitch.” I do a spin in the dress that Kelsey spotted in the window of Dallas’s Roberto Cavalli boutique (in tie-dyed satin) and had them make for me (in two days) in yellow silk. “You like?”

Another group approaches before he can answer. “There’s a picnic table with place cards if you just take a right at the—”

“Go. Work,” he urges gently. “I’m totally fine.”

I rest my head on his shoulder for a nanosecond. “Thank you.”

“Only one request.”

“Sure!” I look up at him.

“If you plan to ditch me in another hotel room, don’t.”

“Well, look at this,” Michelle
says, as she forces herself behind me into the manager’s office serving as Kelsey’s staging area. “It’s like when you two used to come to my post-office shift and set up your own store in the supply closet.”

“You’re so right!” I feel myself puff to fill the narrow aisle. “I’m just seeing to a last few things if you want to have a quick drink with Aunt—”

“Momma?”

Shit.

Michelle squeezes past me, and I follow her around the rented rolling mirror. Kelsey turns in her gown, her eyes wide in anticipation.

“Oh, Kel,” I say, my hands on my heart. “You look beautiful.”

Michelle places her champagne on a filing cabinet but doesn’t say anything. Which I’ll totally take. The silent treatment is best-case scenario at this point.

“Momma, don’t you recognize it?”

“The Cartier Daddy got you for the Dollhouse Tour, that’s sweet. He’ll be so touched—”

“Yes, but this.” Kelsey spreads her fingers across her beaded bodice.

Michelle pulls back. “Seed pearls?” she guesses.

“It’s an exact copy of your corset.” Except not polyester.

“Oh, my gosh,” Michelle murmurs, bending for a closer inspection.

“Do you love it? Do you love everything?”

“It’s a real party . . . ”

“Does Daddy love it?” Kelsey asks. “It’s just like Grandma Ruth’s yard.”

“Oh, you know Daddy, he’s just happy to have a TV to check the score.”

“There’s a flat screen in the groom’s lounge,” she says eagerly.

Michelle takes in her daughter’s expression and pulls her around the mirror. I brace myself.

“Kelsey, sweet girl.” To my surprise, her tone is suddenly free of the acid that’s spattered off it the last few weeks. “Life is long,” Michelle continues. “The years are long.”

“Okay . . . ”

“You do not have to go through with this,” she says carefully. “Everyone was expecting a birthday party. Let’s get you changed, wheel out that cake, and dance the night away.”

“Momma.”

“Kel, I’m giving you the chance I never had. You don’t need to rush.”

“I’m not rushing.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“What?”

“Because that’s different. If you’re pregnant, I will shut the hell up here and now, and Daddy and I will stand behind you one hundred percent.”

“I—I’m not.”

There’s a pause.

“Then do what I couldn’t. Have fun, and don’t nail yourself to this cross.”

“Did I . . . ”

I can barely hear Kelsey, her voice is so quiet. I step closer.

“Did I nail you to a cross?”

“Oh, come now, we’re not talking about the past. I always said Jesus wanted you to be here—the universe had a big plan for you. Just remember, if you run out the exit, we’ll follow.” We hear the door open, the music crisp and then muffled again as it closes.

Binky and I wait, but there’s no sound of petticoats rustling.

“Kel?” I ask.

She comes around the mirror, tears marring Binky’s makeup. “I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.” She turns to me, her hands trembling against the pristine fabric.

“I—I can’t answer this for you.”

Kelsey takes a deep breath before looking up at her reflection. “All
I know is Aaron never makes me feel like this.” Her eyes narrow with resolve as she stares back at herself. “Binky?”

“Yes, Kel.”

She lowers herself in the chair and lifts her face. “Let’s get my pretty back on.”

After so much epic-scaled preparation
for this event, the ceremony at its heart is surprisingly small. When they repeat their vows, Kelsey and Aaron are as locked in on each other as they’d been in St. Paul’s. And whatever smothered reservations I’ve had about the speed of their courtship, it’s impossible to deny their connection as they embrace in the glow of the projected sunset.

Later, everyone but Uncle Herb with his bad knee gets up to do the Electric Slide. His blazer abandoned, Finn throws himself endearingly into the moves. I think it’s safe to say, as she pivots and spins alongside Michelle and Aaron, that Kelsey has never looked so genuinely happy. Even Andy is doing the white man’s overbite on the dance floor’s periphery with an older guy I can’t place. Kelsey was adamant that there be no industry here, just family and close friends, but he’s been at Andy’s side all night.

As we’re walking out to the tented driveway at the evening’s end, Kelsey pulls me into a hug. “Oh, Lo, you did it! It was perfect! Wasn’t it perfect?” she asks Michelle.

“Perfect,” Michelle says with the hint of a slur as she leans on Aaron’s steadying arm, puckering the wool of his tux.

“Happily ever after!” Kelsey lifts her shoulders and squeals.

“Yes!” I cheer.

“I, uh, was kinda hoping to talk to you and Andy before we left. Just to say how much I respect your daughter and feel honored to join your family—”

“Aren’t you the cutest.” Michelle dismisses him, patting at her own hand.

“Where is Daddy?” Kelsey asks.

“You’ll see him when you get home from Hawaii. Go on, now.”

“But Aaron wants to talk to him. Logan, can you go grab him?”

“Oh, Kelsey.”

“Just to say what I missed the chance for—” Aaron jumps in. “In not properly asking for Kelsey’s hand.”

“Daddy’s busy.”

“Who’s that man with him?” Kelsey asks.

“His sponsor.” Michelle feels pointlessly for a diamond-crusted comb that was a Bon Jovi head-banging casualty. “Daddy thought he might need the extra support. This was a real trial for him,” Michelle states with bleary finality.

The car honks.

“Okay, well, see you in a week!” she says, her usual smile back in place, the one that stops just beneath her eyes. I pack in the swaths of satin and carefully shut the door. As we wave them off, I notice that some guests, heedless of the waiting paparazzi, have jerry-rigged cans of bowling-shoe polish to the rear fender.

And of all the night’s artful sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that could have lodged themselves in my memory, it’s the clank of metal bouncing on the asphalt that rings in my ears for days.

Sitting on the edge of
Travis Moynihan’s pool, I’m still unsure if Finn inviting me to “crash” at the guesthouse where he resides while Kelsey is on her honeymoon was the kind of spontaneous request that leads to a charming story for the grandkids or an annoyed boyfriend finding a stray Tampax wrapper and announcing he was just kidding. The two-story casita is predominantly occupied by a pool table custom-fitted with a felt mural of its owner’s tanned chest. The kitchenette’s equipped to make a mean margarita and nothing else, and the upstairs is essentially a giant bed beneath a retractable ceiling, which is initially super-sexy until you realize that those are not birds circling between you and the stars but bats. Another libidinous challenge is that the walls are covered in posters for Travis’s movies in every language you can think of. Essentially, the house is a sun-filled storage locker for the Travis Moynihan memorabilia that people have either bestowed upon him (the pool table) or he has come across and can’t resist ordering (toilet paper bearing his image).

My phone rings, and, and hoping the blocked number is Kelsey, I lunge for it. “Oh, I was just going to leave you a voice mail,” Lauren says, sounding put out that I answered.

“No, I wanted to talk to you!” I say, glad she’s finally returned my calls. “How are you?”

“Good. You’re probably lying by the pool in some Hollywood mansion.”

“Well, funnily, yes—but this is the first break I’ve had since I started. Usually, I’m lounging by the Formica in some sub-basement,” I hasten to add. How was the honeymoon?”

“Mexico’s the gift that keeps on giving, if you know what I mean.”

“Oof. Good to know. I’m heading there this fall.”

“Well, you won’t have to worry—I’m sure the kind of place you’ll be staying hand-washes your fruit in Evian.”

“Only Kelsey’s. I’m also her taster.”

She doesn’t laugh.

“Oh, I saw the pictures on Facebook today—the reception looked
beautiful
.”

“It should. Scott’s been sitting with Quicken all night, telling me what we’re not doing for the next five years, which is pretty much everything.”

“Yeah,” I commiserate. “Weddings are crazy.”

She snorts. “What did
People
say your floral budget was—two hundred thousand—”

“Well, it wasn’t really
my
floral budget.”

“Right. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know we got your present.”

“They’re not floor seats,” I say apologetically.

“I know.”

Because I bought them on StubHub, along with the rest of America looking for tickets to a sold-out show. “But they were the best we had left. Listen, Lauren, I’m really sick about missing your wedding. There was just no way to fly back to New York the weekend before Kelsey’s—”

“No, I totally get it. Well, enjoy the pool!”

I toss my phone into the grass.

The pool filter gurgles nearby, and I close my eyes. After Kelsey
left when we were kids, when no one could tell me how to reach her, I rode my bike over there every day as soon as the doctor cleared it. I would stand across the street in the shade of the neighbor’s tree, and try to screw up the courage to ask Andy. I’d lean against the scratchy bark and then slide down and finally sit, doing sweaty battle with myself to just go over. Just go ring the bell. And then, one day, Andy was gone, too. And there was nothing to confront but the For Sale sign stuck into the browned lawn. Those last few weeks of August, there was nowhere to go that didn’t remind me of where she wasn’t. Finally, school started, and it was real. The drawn-out acceptance of her departure set fast into the shock that this was forever.

The door opens and Finn jogs out, pulling a fresh T-shirt over his wet hair. I drop back onto my elbows, trying to look relaxed. “Good shower?”

“Lonely.” He smiles. “I’m going to run out and get Supreme.” He refers to Travis’s pet iguana, who has just been groomed.

“Don’t forget to tip the shampoo girl,” I quip.

“I don’t know what the fuck one does to clean an iguana.” He swipes a fresh rolled towel from the terra-cotta urn and tosses it to me as he passes. “You’re getting crispy.”

“Thanks.” I wrap it around my reddening shoulders.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, totally.” I climb to my feet with purpose. “I’ll see you later.”

It’s not like I don’t have friends. Or even like I don’t have Finn. But if I could just call the bride, even for two seconds, and tell her I was spending her honeymoon wiping my ass with Travis’s face, she would just get it.

When Mr. and Mrs. Watts
arrive at LAX’s private hangar, they’re as rested as I’ve seen them. To my surprise, Michelle makes a beeline for her son-in-law. “Aaron, I downloaded
Ghostbusters
. Didn’t you say you’d never watched it? You’ll have to come sit next to me.” She hooks her arm through his, regaining its spot from when they last parted.

“We’re kinda tired from the flight.” Kelsey tries to intercede.

“He’s only watching a movie, not acting in it. If you’re sleepy, you take a nap.”

“Kel,” Andy says, “You can sit next to me. Tell me about Hawaii.”

“Logan and I haven’t talked in days, but I’ll catch you after the show.” She evades him.

“Actually, I have a bunch of stuff I need to go over. Logan, back of the plane,” he orders.

So the summer evolves with
our seating arrangements, Michelle Netflixing Aaron into an adopted son and Andy doubling down on the details. Finn and I are, as he predicted, on opposite schedules. I land, he departs. I wake, he goes to sleep. He did manage to meet me in Atlanta on a layover, where we got intimately acquainted with a janitor’s closet at the Philips Arena.

At the end of June, Kelsey, Aaron, and I fly home for a night so she can be a presenter at the MTV Movie Awards, their first red-carpet appearance as a couple.

With Aaron in the city, catching up with his friends for the day, I’m geekily excited to have a few hours together, just the two of us. I push open her bedroom door with a full breakfast tray to find the bed empty.

“Good morning!” I call, sliding it down on the chaise.

No answer.

“Kel?”

I don’t hear anything, no water running, no rifling of hangers—I think at this point, I even know what it sounds like when she tweezes. The door to the bathroom is open, but she isn’t there. “Kel?” I call again, walking into her dressing room. I’m about to push the panic button when I spot her bare feet sticking out from beneath a row of gowns. I crouch to find her sitting with her knees tucked up under one of Aaron’s T-shirts.