Indelible Love - Emily's Story (43 page)

We all continued to eat as I thought
about how much fun it would be to go and learn to cook. This was
definitely a viable and exciting option. The two doctors began
talking about their afternoon rounds and I looked at Uncle Henry,
hoping this lunch put me in his good graces and could get some time
off for my fiancé.

“Uncle Henry,” I asked in the most
polite voice.

“Yes, soon-to-be niece?”

“Any chance Jake could get off at a
decent hour so we can spend some time together tonight? As you
know, we don’t spend any time together deep into the night so our
evenings are cut real short if he comes home at
midnight.”

The chief snickered at Jake, Jake
grinned at me, and I stared hopefully at the chief.

“Sorry, Emily. He’s been on vacation
for a week and he’ll be off for two more soon. The other doctors
will accuse me of nepotism if I don’t work your fiancé. I promise
you, though, I’ll lighten his schedule after you get married. We’re
in the process of hiring another surgeon.”

I sighed, “Ok,” for the first half of
his explanation, but mouthed a “thank you,” with a sigh of relief,
for the latter part of his explanation. Chief Reid hugged and
kissed me as he left to go back to his office.

“I tried,” I said, shrugging my
shoulders.

“I know. I’ll try to leave the
hospital as early as possible,” Jake promised. “You want to come
back at dinnertime?” Jake was the hopeful one this time.

“No. The ladies here aren’t too
friendly. I don’t think they want to see me and my massive
engagement ring twice in one day. You have quite a fan club here,”
I said bitingly.

“You can be so silly at times,” he
answered with a guffaw. “See you at home.”

I packed up all my belongings and left
the hospital.

When I got back home, nothing had
changed. It was if the two ladies hadn’t moved all afternoon. They
were sitting in the same position from hours ago. They sat on the
couch deciding which floral arrangement would look best on the
table with the linen they chose earlier. They looked to me to be
the tie breaker and realized that my only desire was to say, “I
do,” and be Mrs. Jake Reid. Fortunately, they were more than happy
to fill in for my mental absence and continued on without
me.

I walked into my / Jake’s room and
called my soon-to-be-sister.

“Hello, Sis. What are you up to right
now?”

“Emily. Hi. How are you? I’m swamped
with work. All the senior partners are dumping their busy work on
me. I get in by six in the morning and don’t leave till close to
midnight. I eat all three meals at the firm.”

She sounded terribly
unhappy.

“Your work schedule sounds like your
brother’s. I can’t see him unless I go to the hospital.”

I, too, wasn’t happy with his
schedule.

“How are the wedding preparations
going? What’s been done?”

“Honestly, I’m not quite sure. Mom and
Aunt Barbara are downstairs making all the decisions. I’m happy to
just show up on the day of and say, ‘I do.’”

“I talked to Mom briefly today, and
she and Aunt Babs were really happy being your wedding planners.
They’re living their vicarious wedding dreams through you. Are you
OK with all of their decisions?”

“Yeah, they both have exquisite taste.
I do hold veto power so if something isn’t to my liking, I’ll let
them know. Anyhow, when can you come home? I miss you.”

“I know, I miss you and the whole
family. I hear you’ve been quite the Martha Stewart every
morning.”

“My eyes open at 4:00 a.m., and I have
nothing else to do but cook. So, can you make it home this
weekend?”

“I begged my boss so we’ll see. I
won’t know till the last minute. I’ll call as soon as I know.
Emily, my boss is calling. I have to go. Bye.”

“Bye, take care.”

I missed Jane and was hoping to catch
up with her, but her new job kept her extremely busy. I milled
around the room contemplating a nap when Sandy called me
down.

“Emily, Sarah’s here.”

Excellent. It would give us a chance
to catch up.

I gave Sarah a tour of the house and
showed her where the wedding and reception would take place. Sandy
and Barbara were more than happy to show her all that they
accomplished today, and Sarah in turn was more than happy to give
opinions of what she liked and didn’t like about their choices. I
took Sarah up to my room when the two ladies were done with
her.

“This room is almost as big as your
engagement ring,” she commented.

After appraising the room, she added,
“I think this room is actually bigger than the apartment Charlie
and I are living in right now.”

“I know. All the rooms are big in this
house. I guess it’s only fitting since the house is so big. So,
tell me what’s been going on. We haven’t talked in
months.”

“Well, Charlie and I are now
transferring next spring so I’ll be around a bit
longer.”

“Yay! You have to give me pointers on
married life.”

“Are you excited that you’ll finally
have sex? Or, maybe I should ask, are you scared?”

“Sarah!”

“Well, it’s a reasonable
question.”

I was quite scared about my wedding
night, but I tried not to think about it. It’s not like I didn’t
know about the birds and the bees. I knew what would happen, but
that didn’t discount the butterflies that fluttered in my stomach
every time I thought about the topic.

Sarah continued her
inquisition.

“Are you prepared?”

“What do you mean prepared?” I
asked.

“Do you have lingerie?”

“Yeah, Gram bought me many in London.”
I felt my cheeks flush as I thought of all the lingerie that sat in
Jake’s closet right now.

“What about birth control?”

“Huh? I haven’t really thought about
that,” I confessed.

“Are you planning on having kids right
away?”

“No.” We hadn’t discussed this, but
Jake probably didn’t want kids right away either.

“Then you better decide what you want
to do about birth control. Go see your doctor immediately and get
on something.”

“OK,” I answered. “I guess I should’ve
thought of this earlier, but I kept pushing it off. I’ll talk to
Jake when he gets home. How are you and Charlie doing?” I asked,
trying to change the subject.

“It’s been heavenly. Married life is
definitely better than dating life. There’s more work and
compromise, but the love and commitment we feel toward one another
is absolutely at its highest level.”

This was wonderful to hear that
married life would be an even greater extension of what Jake and I
had right now. I didn’t know how I could possibly love him more,
but I looked forward to finding out.

Sarah also carefully brought up the
subject of Max during her stay. I knew that this was inevitable, as
he did not seem happy when I saw him at dinner.

“Emily, did Max say anything to you
when he drove you home?”

“No, but he didn’t seem happy. What’s
going on with him?”

“He’s happy for you, but not happy for
himself, is the best explanation I can think of. He thinks of you
as the one who got away. He still believes that if he proposed on
graduation night, you’d be his bride and not Jake’s.”

My heart broke for Max. What he was
thinking could have been true, but it wasn’t, and there was no
point in beating himself over what could’ve been.

“Did you try to knock some sense into
him?” My voice turned irritated. “What’s the point in thinking
about what could’ve been?”

“I know…Charlie and I have had many
conversations with him but he can’t shake off what’s in his
heart.”

“Wait, wasn’t he the one who led Jake
back into my life? Jake told me that Max encouraged him to pursue
me again. Why did he do that if he felt this way?”

Absolutely, I was forever grateful
that Max helped me find Jake again.

“Emily, don’t you see? Max loves you.
He always has. He loves you enough to let you go to the man you
love. That’s what bothers him more than anything—the fact that you
love Jake and not him. Know that he’s happy that you’re happy—that
you’ve found your true love. He just wishes it were
him.”

I exhaled an uncomfortable breath. I
thought Max was in a good place and now I felt this burden to make
sure he would be OK.

“Let me think about this, Sarah. I
don’t know what I should do.”

“There’s not much for you to do. He’ll
get over it.”

Sarah looked at her watch and it was
already 8:00 p.m.

“I gotta go. Charlie’s waiting for me
at home.”

“Thanks for coming by.” We walked
toward the front door together. “I’ll come by and visit you at work
again so we can have lunch.”

I opened the front door to let Sarah
out and simultaneously, Jake walked in and surprised us.

“Jake, you’re home early!” My heart
and face beamed.

“Hi, Jake,” Sarah said. “Look at your
fiancée’s ridiculous grin.” Sarah giggled and rolled her
eyes.

“Hey, Sarah,” Jake said, giving her a
hug and a peck on the cheek. “You’re leaving already? Stick
around.”

“Look at Emily. Does she look like she
wants me to stick around? I have to go. My hubby is waiting for
me.” Her face glowed talking about Charlie, but it couldn’t rival
my delight. “See you soon.”

“Bye,” we both said.

We entered the house and Jake picked
me up again and repeated last night’s steps. We kissed all the way
up in one piece, but did not make it to the bed as I wriggled down
and pulled Jake to the couch. I had much to discuss with
him.

“How’d you get home so
early?”

“Your lunch must have put the chief in
a good mood. As he was leaving, he told me that I could leave if
there wasn’t much going on. So, after checking on all the patients,
I bolted.”

“I’m glad you’re home early,” I
uttered, making another mental note to be even nicer to the
chief.

“Me too,” he said between
kisses.

I pushed Jake away so that we could
talk over more wedding details, as well as a few other matters that
he may not care to talk about. He sat on one end of the couch and I
moved to the other end, with my legs stretched out and my feet on
his thigh. He started massaging my feet.

“We need to talk wedding.”

“OK. I thought I deferred all
decisions to you.” I could tell he too just wanted to say “I do,”
without any of this fuss.

“You did, and I gave your mom our
proxy, but there are a few matters I’d like for us to decide.
First, where are we going for our honeymoon?”

Jake’s face pondered that question for
a long time. Neither of us had a preference as long as we were
together.

“Do you want to go more toward an
island honeymoon or a city honeymoon?” I added to help in the
decision-making process.

“I don’t care. What do you
prefer?”

“I don’t really care either, but I
don’t want to spend the entire time at a beach, plus we were in
Hawaii not too long ago. I think it might be boring. I don’t know
if I want to go back to Europe since we were just there as well.
Honestly, we could just stay home all day for two weeks, and I’d be
OK with that.” Anywhere with Jake sounded heavenly.

“How about we go to an
island in Southeast Asia for about five days and stay in one of
those huts you mentioned on your list? I have to keep pecking away
at your list. Then, let’s go to Japan for the rest of the
honeymoon. You can eat a formal
kaiseki
meal this time without any
tears, and even take some cooking classes. I’d love to get a better
sense of where you lived. There are many hot springs we can visit
and we can also stay in Tokyo and enjoy the city life.”

“That’s a fantastic idea! My students
would love to meet you. I’ll call the travel agent and make all the
necessary arrangements.”

“OK, what’s next?” he asked, trying to
get up from his corner to come toward my corner. I stopped him and
told him we needed to finish our discussion first.

“Dinner menu. What do you want to eat?
I’m not crazy about the usual steak and potato meal, but I also
don’t want to have all fish just in case our guests may not like
fish.”

Jake had no problem coming up with an
answer for this quandary.

“Emily, that one is easy. Let’s not do
a sit-down dinner. Let’s have different food stations and hire
local restaurant chefs. For example, we can call your dream sushi
chef—you know the one who studied under Masa—and have his crew come
and do a sushi and sashimi station. We can also have a pizza
station, and a tapas station. I’ll have Dad call his connections,
and there will be a nice steak and veggie station. Oh, we should
also call Gram’s favorite Italian restaurant and have the chef come
over and do a pasta station.”