Save the Date (15 page)

“Need some help?” he says.

“Leo!” I cry, throwing my arms around his neck. He hugs me to him, pressing his face into my neck and breathing deeply.

“I hope it’s all right that I’m a little early,” he says.

“Of course.” I step back and smile at him.

“Although you do run the risk of being corralled into helping.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he says with a grin. He bends to pick up a place card and waves it at me. “A classic problem. Not to worry.” We gather the rest of the runaways and I put them back in alphabetical order while he brings over two of the wildflower-filled Mason jars, artfully
arranging them to block the wind. He also drops a corner flap of the tent to shelter the table a bit more, and of course, this totally works, because he’s a miracle worker.

“Thank you,” I say, surveying our work. “If it weren’t for you, no one would know where to sit.”

“And that would be a catastrophe,” he says, smoothing my hair.

“Brace yourself for several more,” I say as I take the front of his shirt and pull him closer to me. “Because I plan to do
this
no matter what happens.” I kiss him on the lips, and he kisses me back. Joy fills me from tip to toe.

Wild honking from the parking lot announces the arrival of Mom, Carolina, Alex, Sydney, and the two servers Carolina insisted on hiring for the day to help with the food, carrying the chocolate fountain that Paris demanded. Leo and I hurry to help set out the dishes, and nobody comments on his presence, although Sofia gives me a grin and a thumbs-up.

Not long after that, Jiro and his family arrive,
and then the guests start appearing one by one. There’s no sign of Paris, although Mom assures me that she was putting on her wedding gown when they left the house, so presumably she was still planning on coming at that point. I glance at Jiro, who is fidgeting nervously in the suit that Paris picked out for him. As much as I wouldn’t want to be saddled with Paris for a wife, I wouldn’t want to be ditched at the altar by her, either. I hope that’s not what she’s going to do to him.

One of Paris’s friends—a tall, reedy, bearded guy who calls himself a poet—got ordained on the Internet, so he’s performing the ceremony. He shepherds us all down to the water’s edge and has us sit out in the hot sun for about ten minutes while he stands in his white robe in front of us, looking peacefully zoned out.

Then another of Paris’s friends—the one who claims to be able to play the harp, so she got drafted into being the ceremony musician—suddenly thrums her strings dramatically, and we all turn around.

Paris is standing at the top of the hill from the parking lot, looking gorgeous in a short white satin dress. She is barefoot and has a miniature sunflower tucked behind one ear, matching the brightly dyed color of her hair and the bouquet of sunflowers in her hands. Her nose ring gleams in the sunlight, and she is smiling wider than I’ve ever seen her smile before.

She comes slowly through the sand toward us, walking more or less in rhythm with the music from the harp, which actually is harder than it sounds because her friend seems to be playing all the strings at once, with no discernible beat that we can hear.

“Wow, look,” Leo whispers to me, pointing out to sea. On the far horizon, there’s a dark gray line of clouds. Right now it just looks like a thread, but even as I watch, it gets thicker and longer, coming closer and closer.

“It’s the hurricane,” I whisper back. He looks at me nervously, and I take his hand. “It’s okay. Let it come.”

Paris must be able to see it, too, but there
isn’t a flicker of worry on her serene, beaming face. She walks slowly up to Jiro and takes his hand. The bearded poet pauses, then launches into his speech.

Unlike my other sisters’ ceremonies, this one is mercifully short. I wonder if the officiant can feel the storm creeping up behind him, because he seems to hurry through all the boring bits. It’s really very dramatic-looking—where we are sitting, there’s bright sunshine and sparkling waves, but off in the distance, the long dark cloud rolls closer and closer.

The funniest part of the ceremony is that Jiro has written his wedding vows in Taiwanese. Paris looks bewildered when he first starts talking, but his voice is so earnest and his eyes are so intent on her that we don’t really need to understand the words to guess what he means. So, actually, it’s kind of sweet.

Then they are pronounced husband and wife, and we all traipse back up the beach to the tent as the sky gradually turns from bright blue to dark, seething green with gray
clouds creeping across it.

“Is it safe?” I ask Dad as we’re walking. “I mean, with the hurricane coming?”

“It’s not a hurricane anymore,” he says. “It got downgraded to a regular storm. So…we’ll probably get wet, but we should be fine.”

“And it’s not going to stop us from partying!” Paris cries, overhearing. “Woo! I’m married! WOOO!”

Leo and I hurry under the tent and stand near the dance floor, watching everyone else crowd under as well. Paris has coerced Yolanda into being the DJ, which seems appropriate, since she is the only person I’ve ever met who can match Paris for volume. Yolanda grabs the mike and booms, “Hey guys, what’s happening? We have kind of a cool situation today. I want you to welcome for the first time as a married couple, Paris and Jiro—and for the
second
time, her sister Victoria and her husband, Kevin!”

My jaw drops. So does Sofia’s. So does Mom’s, and Sydney’s, and Alex’s. Paris and Jiro sweep onto the floor, hand in hand, and then, as
if they just popped out from the trees (which we later find out they basically did), Victoria and Kevin join them, in full wedding regalia, and both couples put their arms around each other and start swaying to Paris’s favorite slow song, “Lucky,” by Bif Naked.

“I guess that explains why she was wearing her wedding dress this morning,” Sofia says to me.

“And who Paris’s only ‘real sister’ is,” I joke.

It turns out that while Sofia and I were in Vegas, Paris and Victoria had a reconciliation. Victoria listened to Paris complain about her wayward bridesmaids, and out of gratitude, Paris offered to let Victoria share her wedding reception, since Vicky’s was cut short by a certain someone getting set on fire. (And I’m sure Paris said, “That is
so
typical of Jack” as they talked about it, too.)

The next song is the father-daughter dance, a song called “When My Little Girl Is Smiling,” by the Drifters, which Dad picked out to surprise Paris with. The lyrics go: “When my little girl is smiling, it’s the greatest thrill there can be. She
gets her way, it’s true—but I know I won’t be blue, as long as she just smiles for me.” And from the look on Dad’s face, I can see it’s true. No matter how ridiculous or impulsive or crazy Paris is, she’s still his daughter, and he can’t stay mad at her when she’s this happy.

At last the third song comes on, and Yolanda invites us all onto the dance floor. I grab Leo’s hand and pull him forward as “In Your Eyes” starts playing.

“Finally,” I say, leaning my head on his shoulder. Outside, thunder rumbles and the heavens open up. Rain pours down from the sky, and Paris’s friends run around rolling down the sides of the tent to keep us dry. But the song keeps playing, and I look up at Leo with a smile. Smiling back, he whirls me around, dips me, and then starts to step back.

Suddenly I realize the chocolate fountain is on the table right behind him. If he moves back another step, he’ll crash right into it—meaning chocolate all over his suit, all over me, and all over everything except the actual things we
were supposed to dip into it.

I lunge forward, grab his lapels, and yank him out of the way just in time. A gust of wind sweeps through, scattering chocolate droplets on the tablecloth below the fountain. But we are chocolate-free, and disaster has been averted.

“You saved me,” he says with a grin, touching my face. “Maybe this wedding isn’t so cursed after all.”

“It’s not,” I say, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. “It’s perfect.” He lifts me off my feet and spins me slowly as we kiss, lightning and thunder crashing outside. Bring on the seagulls and the mumps and the chaos. As long as I’m with Leo, I know we can handle anything.

So maybe being a bridesmaid four times (nearly five!) in three years wasn’t so bad. If all that insanity hadn’t happened, I would never have met Leo. And if anyone can make me reconsider my position on weddings…well, ask me again in, like, ten years, and we’ll see.

“In Your Eyes” would make a pretty good first dance song, though….