Always the Last to Know (Always the Bridesmaid) (22 page)

       I sit back at the table, scooting my chair closer to Riley.  I put the washcloth filled with ice cubes against his lip.  He winces in pain.

        “Riley, no offense, but you do know that Evan could easily kick your ass, right?  You’re taller but Evan’s stout.  He’s like Rudy.”  I smirk, “But, if I were you, I would be more afraid of Carla right now.  She’s a tiny woman but she’s feisty, and super pissed at you.”

        “I made a mistake and I’ll apologize to both of them.”  He manages to say audibly with a rag full of ice pressed against his mouth.

        “Yeah, you may not want to face Carla until we see if Evan’s eye is okay.  You know that if her husband has a black eye, caused by her brother no less, in all their wedding photos, Carla will kill you.  She will kill you dead.”

       Riley laughs, even though I wasn’t joking at all, and looks me in the eyes.  And, I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s like he’s looking right through my eyes, and I’m unable to avert my gaze from his.  We’re silent as we continue to stare at each other like that, like we’re competing in some freaky staring contest, while I hold a rag full of ice to his lips.

       Something is happening here and I don’t know what it is.  All I know is that all the fears and scenarios that have been plaguing me just kind of disappear from my mind.  Before my brain can even comprehend what my body is doing, I drop the compress and suddenly my lips are on Riley’s.  His hands go in my hair and trace along my back and his lips are still cold from the compress… 

       I’m kissing Riley.  And he’s kissing me back.

       Why is he kissing me back?  Oh my God, is he kissing me back out of pity?  He totally is, isn’t he?  He feels sorry for me because my best friend is getting married and he thinks that ‘I’m the bridesmaid and never the bride’ and he’s all, ‘Well, I have a hangover but she’s clearly unstable.  I’ll just have to suck it up and kiss her to make her feel like she’s still wanted by the opposite sex.’

       No, he can’t be thinking that.  But why is he kissing me then?                          

       I pull away from him and make it a point to not meet his gaze.  I take up the task of getting the ice cubes back on the dish towel.

        “Jess,” he starts to say.  Oh great, here it comes, the ‘You’re a great girl but I think we should just be friends’ speech.  He takes my hand in his and rubs his thumb over the top of it, “I’ve been wanting to do that since your senior prom.”

       I have to look at him now, “What?”

        “Remember the night of your prom when you snuck in my window?”  I nod slowly, not even angry that he’s brought up that night again, and he continues his story.  “It was around three in the morning.  I wasn’t able to sleep that night anyway and then I heard you open my bedroom window and climb in in that ungraceful fashion of yours.  Your hair was everywhere and you still had on your prom dress.  Without even asking, you opened my sock drawer, pulled out a t-shirt and boxers and changed right there in front of me.  Then you got in bed with me.  After you cried yourself to sleep, I put my arm around you and just watched you sleep.  That was the moment.  With your tear-stained face and bobby pins poking out all over your head; that was it.  And all I’ve ever wanted since is for you to crawl into my bedroom window and lie down next to me.”

       Oh my God.  This may be the sweetest thing that I’ve ever heard.  And it’s coming out of Riley Callahan’s mouth.  And it’s about me!

       I can’t believe that he was awake that night.  I thought I was super stealth sneaking into his room.  That was the night that Cliff and I had sex.  He dropped me off at my house at three in the morning; he didn’t even walk me to my door.  I knew that there was no way I could just walk in my house in my condition, my hair everywhere and my dress torn.  I remember looking next door and seeing Riley’s window barely ajar.  It looked like my sanctuary.

       I had no idea he was awake.  Or that he felt this way.  Or that he really is my sanctuary.

        “Riley, I don’t know what to say.  I can’t even. . .”  Oh, screw talking.  All we ever do is talk.  I kiss him again, a more serious kiss.  One of those kisses that can only mean that more is to come.

       It’s not long before we’re stumbling to Riley’s bedroom, shedding clothes as we walk lip-locked down the hall.

       When we fall on Riley’s bed, I’m down to only my bra and panties that say. . .

       Oh my God.  The panties say “Tuesday” and it is definitely Friday.  They’re clean, I just didn’t think that anyone, especially Riley
(never Riley)
would see them.  He smiles at them and runs his thumb over the word Tuesday.

       Riley’s down to one sock and a pair of University of Kentucky boxers and, as he leans down to kiss me more deeply than before, I can feel, you know, Knudsen pressing against me.

       In a place I never thought Knudsen would go!

       Wait a second.

        “Riley, do you have, you know, um. . .”  I can’t say the word ‘condom’ to Riley, I just can’t, “you know, protection?”

       Riley looks at me and smiles, “Yeah, I think.  Check the nightstand.”  He gives me a quick peck on the lips before rolling off of me to look in the nightstand on the left side of the bed while I check the one on the right side.

       The bottom drawer just has a VCR instruction guide and a small alarm clock.  The top drawer is more clustered.  I rummage through old receipts, but find no condoms.  Instead I find a small stack of pictures in the back corner of the drawer.  I pull them out of their hiding spot and flip through them.  They’re all pictures of me and Riley.  The oldest one is of us sitting on the balcony of the tree house, just like we did at Carla and Evan’s engagement party.  Only we can’t be any older than nine and seven in this picture.  The most recent picture is from a night out.  Riley and I both look a little bit past tipsy and, judging from the empty beer bottles on the table, we probably were well on our way to becoming drunk.  We’re just sitting next to each other at a table and making goofy faces at the camera.

       Thank God this picture never made it onto Facebook.

        “Did you find any over there?”  Riley asks, rolling over, his head finding a spot on my shoulder.  He peers over me to see what I’m looking at.  When he realizes what I’m holding, he laughs, “Shit, I forgot those were in there.”

        “You’ve got quite a collection.”  I comment and sit the pictures back in the drawer and close it shut.

        “I just like to look at you.”  Before he can totally melt my heart, he adds, “And, in pictures, you can’t talk back to me.”

       I elbow him in the stomach, “Jerk.”

        “See? This is exactly what I’m talking about.”  He laughs before planting a kiss on my bare shoulder.

       I turn toward him and kiss him gently and am amazed at how well our bodies mold together.  Since he is lacking protection, we’re going to have to wait to see how perfectly we really mold together.

       Dammit.

       I put a hand on his chest and gently push him away.

        “I want this to happen, Riley, but not without the proper precautions.”  Seriously, why can’t I just say the word “condom”?  I’m lying here, half-naked, and the thing that embarrasses me is a stupid word.  Maybe I can learn how to say it in Spanish.  I’ll be working at a hospital; I’ll probably have to learn words like condom and all kinds of other medical terminology, like defibrillator because, really, what kind of Spanish professor teaches a class how to say defibrillator?

       Riley nods and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, “This was kind of rushed, wasn’t it?”

        “I’ve known you for twenty-two years.  This wasn’t rushed.  It was extremely overdue.”

***

        “Well, what did my sorry ass brother have to say for himself?”

       Okay, Carla is definitely too angry to notice that I almost had sex with her brother.  She’s also too angry to offer up a nice greeting like “Hey Jess, thanks for picking up the vegetable tray and eating all the celery so that I won’t get sick from its nonexistent smell” or “Hi Jess, your hair looks a little mussed.  Were you making out with someone?”  or even “So, is it true that you’re actually going to get a sex life?”

       Instead of any of these things, I’m greeted by Carla who has her arms crossed and is glaring me down like I was a puppy who just chewed up and peed on a pair of her knock-off Christian Louboutins.  I don’t know why she’s leering at me; I’m not the one who hit her fiancé.  I am, however, the one who almost had sex with the guy who hit her fiancé’.

       God, I’m the worst Maid of Honor ever.

       I’m also greeted by Evan, who is sitting at the kitchen table with an icepack against his face, and Carla’s mom, who seems to have taken great interest in what I assume is another wedding binder of Carla’s.  The poor woman is probably just trying to stay out of this huge mess.  Ms. Callahan didn’t even know what was going on when she came over.  Carla called her, shrieking inaudible noises into the phone, similar to the ones that she woke me up with, and Ms. Callahan, thinking that her only daughter had cut off a hand the day before her wedding or something, rushed over to find Carla in good health
(minus the morning sickness)
and cursing worse than Jay in
Dogma
.

        “You have a hole in your dress.”  Evan says, pointing at the side zipper on my dress.  I look at the spot he’s pointing to and, sure enough, there’s a decent size hole right below the zipper.

       I blush, “I must have snagged it on something.”  Or, you know, Riley could have been taking on that zipper at warp speed and ripped my dress, whatever.

       Carla watches me, her eyes mere slits, as I sit the groceries down on the counter and begin unloading the bags.  She’s really pissed.  And, if she knew that instead of scolding Riley like I was supposed to, I made out with him, I have every belief that she would claw my eyes out. 

        “Well, what did he say?”

       I sigh, “He said he was sorry.”

        “Sorry?”  Carla cackles, “He said he was sorry?  That’s great.  The bastard said he was sorry.  Well, that’s just fucking peachy.  Did he have anything else to say?”

       Now is definitely not the time to tell Carla what all Riley said.

        “Er, yeah.  He offered to take Evan out to lunch after they moved my bed over to Riley’s.”  Judging by the way things are going, however, I may not need to move my bed over at Riley’s.  I can just sleep in Riley’s bed. With Riley. And we can do things other than sleep.

       Carla snorts as she stalks back and forth across the kitchen, “He punches my soon-to-be husband in the face and he thinks that lunch at some steakhouse is going to make up for it?”

        “Actually, steak sounds pretty. . .”

       At Carla’s glare, Evan stops talking and, with his uncovered eye, focuses intently on the small centerpiece sitting in front of him.

       The room is quiet for a few minutes as Evan shifts around uncomfortably in his seat while Ms. Callahan continues to read through the binder and Carla mutters to herself in a way that is not unlike Joe Pesci in
Home Alone
.  I busy myself with emptying out the contents of the grocery bag and placing the vegetable tray and dip in the fridge.

       After two hours of silence
(well, okay, more like two minutes, but it feels like years),
Carla groans and turns to her mother, “Can you believe Riley did that?”

       Ms. Callahan doesn’t even look up, “Yes.”

        “Well, are you going to do anything about it?”

       Ms. Callahan makes eye contact with Carla now, “He said he was sorry, Carla.  If you want anything else, you’ll probably have to beat it out of him.”

        “And don’t think that I won’t.”  Carla states gravely before stomping off to her bedroom and slamming the door behind her.  Evan, with his right eye still covered with an ice pack, looks at Ms. Callahan, then at me.  I just shrug.  If he thinks I’m going in there to comfort Carla, he must have got hit harder than I gave Riley credit for.

       He sighs heavily and heads for the bedroom.  I take Evan’s vacated seat at the kitchen table across from Ms. Callahan.  She’s still reading from that binder. . .

       Oh my God, she’s reading from the
Cosmo
Sex Binder that Annie gave me.  Shit shit shit.  Why don’t I hide things like that?  Maybe she thinks that it’s Carla’s.  I mean, after all, she’s the one who’s pregnant.  Oh God, I’m dumb.

       She turns a page of the binder, not even looking at me, “Just between you and me, Evan deserved that punch.”

       I smile, “I agree entirely.”

       Ms. Callahan closes the binder and smiles at me, “Carla has always hated that Riley tries to protect her.  He was protective before their father died.  And then after Joe passed away, Riley took his over-protectiveness to a new high.  It drives Carla up a wall.”

        “I think it’s sweet what Riley did.  Sure, it could have been under better circumstances with them not throwing drunken punches in a strip club and all.  It’s just. . . he stood up for her and that’s really admirable.”

       Ms. Callahan raises an eyebrow, “Are you paying my son a compliment?  Jess, are you feeling okay?”

       I laugh, hoping that my blushing isn’t too obvious.  “Yeah, I’m fine.  I’ve just never had anyone stand up for me in that way.  It’s sweet.”

        “Riley always knew better than to protect you out loud.  He could boss Carla around because he’s her big brother.  He knew he couldn’t pull that with you.  Riley has always been so careful with you.”

       I raise an eyebrow, “Careful?  He pushed me out of a tree house, got me banned from the Home Depot. . .”  He may have also filled me with false hopes of having sex this morning, but it’s probably best not to mention that to his mother.

       Ms. Callahan rolls her eyes and gets up from the table.  She fills a mug full of coffee as she talks, “Riley corrected Carla on her mistakes, or stopped her from doing them altogether.  With you, though, he could only watch you.  It broke his heart when you started dating that boy you went to prom with.  Riley hated that boy and said he didn’t trust him.”  Ms. Callahan smiles, “I still think it was more than just Riley’s over-protectiveness talking.”