Last-Minute Love (Year of the Chick series) (7 page)

I burst into laughter. This cackle interrupted the quiet reflection of others. The dirty looks told me they were not impressed.

“You’re not as innocent and nerdy as you seem, are you?” I didn’t look back but I heard him laugh. It was the perfect decoy, because the next thing I knew his fingers traced around my hand, moving along until they found my fingertips. He gave them a gentle squeeze. The moonlight and Liberty’s torch were not enough to light the boat, so no one observed our secret indiscretion. I didn’t have time to react, because as soon as the tremor of excitement hit my body, he let go. A second later the boat started up again, leaving Liberty and the moment behind…

***

From the thirtieth floor terrace of Erik’s apartment building, the East River seemed lit up like Christmas; bright lights were on the bridge, across the docks, and on the vessels themselves.

The Empire State Building was a glowing beacon.

Six lounge chairs were arranged side by side on the terrace. Dave and Laura disregarded the chairs, taking in the view instead. Erik was nowhere to be found, but his cousins Anna and Sylvia were sprawled out on the two middle chairs, acting like they owned the place.

I didn’t feel comfortable taking a seat beside the cou
sins who potentially hated me, so I stood in a corner instead, slightly obscured by a potted tree as I watched.
Hiding behind a plant? Sure, that seems normal.

The mousy Sylvia spoke first. “Erik will sit beside me. It’s cool out and he can keep me warm!” She rubbed her
bare forearms and smirked in my direction.

I was still trying to process
why she wanted to snuggle with her cousin, as I quickly made my way to Laura.

“She’s gonna get all cuddly with her cousin?” I whispered. “What kind of creepy retarded shit is that?”

Laura narrowed her eyes. “Tell me again why you even care?”

“’Cause incest leads to birth defects. I’m concerned for society’s future.”

Dave overhearing, shook his head and chuckled, while Laura, eyes still narrowed, tried her very best not to laugh.

I think this night’s about to
get very weird...

***

Dave and Laura sat side-by-side, sipping wine and sharing ice cream. Erik lay on a chair with eyes closed, as two silver spoons pecked away at the carton of ice cream on his chest.

Neither of those spoon-peckers was me.

And I was pissed about it.

I swigged my wine and smirked for all to see.

No one saw.

I didn’t even know why I was p
issed in the first place. In fact the only thing I should’ve been pissed about was why I wasn’t with James. He was the one who’d been on a date with me, who’d gotten me a Christmas present, who’d kissed me…who was Erik? Just some guy with a girlfriend on a temporary work visa, who came from a weird family where cousins fell in love with each other.

Gross!

So why did I care again?

I didn’t, but as an Aries I was very competitive, so I had to play this out.

***

Sylvia, sitting behind Erik who was upright now, had her arms wrapped around his stomach. He didn’t seem to mind th
is cousin-ly gesture of love a single bit.

I felt like I was going to puke
and/or call social services.

Instead I rolled my eyes for all to see.

No one saw.

Dammit!

***

The chairs had now been moved to form a circle of communal discussion. Everyone was a little tipsy now, burping ice-cream-flavoured wine without restraint.

“Romi,” Erik began, “when you walked into the club last night in that royal blue top…it was perfect.” He sighed. “You knew it was my favourite colour.”

Mr
. Number-Crunching-Investment-Dork had clearly gotten deep into the wine, but I enjoyed his public lack of restraint.

Take that, you mousy cousin!

Oh my god, why am I competing with a cousin
? I shooed away the voices in my head long enough to reply. “That’s right. I was in Toronto packing, and I said to myself: ‘I better take this royal blue shirt, so I can wear it for that non-existent guy!’”

We both started giggling, which the cousins seem
ed to find revolting and which Laura seemed to find disturbing.

The giggling stopped as soon as Anna and Sylvia started yammering
away in Danish. Either they were angry, or Danish sounded angry all the time. It must’ve been anger as Erik yammered back, and then started to avert my gaze.

Beat out by a couple of cousins. I g
uess blood is thicker than...wine.

***

At almost two a.m. we made our way to Erik’s apartment, readying ourselves to say goodbye.

Wh
en he opened the door and switched on the light I let out a tiny gasp.

His walls were covered in f
ramed posters from eighties and nineties rock bands. But that was the least of it. Against these walls were multiple guitars and some complicated-looking recording equipment, in an otherwise minimalist space.

I waited patiently for the cousins to stroll inside and pl
op themselves on the futon. Once certain that the beasts were at rest, I quickly grabbed Erik by the arm. “So you just brought your guitars here to ‘practice’?” I whispered. “You’re such a liar. Obviously you make music and probably even...songs!”

“Well that’s the hard part,” he whispered back. “I come to New York thinking I’ll find all this inspiration, and then I realize: oh wait, there was a reason why our drummer wrote all the songs. Because I can’t write for shit.”

I smiled. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“No it truly is. Which is why the more I learned about you, the more I
wanted to ask you to write me some lyrics.”

My face turned ten shades of red and I almost fell back against the wall.
A singer/songwriter duo?
Before I could react to this amazing moment, the biggest of buzz-kills started yammering away from the futon.

Damn the
Danish language!

The next
thing I knew, Erik was sitting beside his cousins, trying his best to calm them down. When he finally had them settled he walked right past me, heading straight for his bromance instead.

Dave patted
Erik on the shoulder. “Best business trip yet, man.”

“Come back any time!” said Erik
. “Even if it’s not for business, fly down here and you always have a place to stay.” Erik took great care to stare directly at Dave as he said these words. This was not a Romi-included invitation, and he was really making sure I knew it.

I looked around the apartment to find the cousins still glaring. There was nothing I could do except absorb the
evil death stares like a lady and smile.

“Nice meeting you girls!” I said.

Each mustered up a smile and a lazy nod, but their eyes still spoke of murderous intent.

I was so focused
in on their madness, that I nearly jumped when someone gently touched my forearm.

It was Erik.

His pale blue eyes soaked me in for maybe the final time. “I guess we say goodbye now,” he said. “It was nice meeting you.” His smile was as warm as that apple pie Jason Biggs’s character had sex with in “American Pie.” The smile must’ve cracked some code in me, because for once my expression was demure.

“It was really nice meeting you
too,” I said softly.

The bathroom door opened and Laura appeared, with a struggling-to-flush-properl
y toilet as her soundtrack. She immediately blushed. “Let’s go guys!” she quickly said. “Morning flight!”

That wa
s our cue, so Erik began with his final round of hugs.

First a precious
man-hug for Dave.

Then a warm embrace for Laura.

And last but not least it was me.

B
efore Erik could face me, I hastily straightened my hair and moistened my lips. I had to be ready.

In reality
, nothing about our hug lived up to any of the nervous preparation. In fact, three inches of distance was the highlight of this brotherly embrace.
No clothing-buffered-penis-on-vagina tonight.

“Goodbye Romi.” His whispered words lingered in my ear, but by now he had already pushed me away.

He ushered us all to the door, and we slowly filed out one by one.

Out in
the corridor, I shuffled alongside Laura as slowly as I could, with Dave ten or so feet ahead.

I turned back slowly, for one last longing look at the man I may never see again.
By the time my eyes met the mark, however, the door had already slammed shut.

That closing door marked the end of a
failed “no-man” trip. Instead it was a trip about a man I had never planned to meet, and a man that could never be mine…

Chapter Six

They were popping up everywhere.

Or maybe they had been here all along, these visually-impaired men in glasses. They’d probably just been background décor to me before. That was then, but in the time since I’d returned from New York, these four-eyed wonders were all I could see. It’s like the world had become one giant LensCrafters fashion show. It was all I had left after saying goodbye to a man I couldn’t contact by reality’s rules. He must’ve agreed or simply chalked it up to random flirting, because almost a month later, he hadn’t once tried to get in touch.

Erik in his super-sexy glasses.

I wondered what would’ve happened if he’d been wearing a shiny gold vest and “MC Hammer pants” when I met him. Would I have ended up obsessed with that?
Or maybe my vacation ends up differently in that scenario.

Even here, in this arts and
crafts superstore, I was mesmerized by the glasses-wearing man, as he frantically searched for gemstones in the “bedazzling aisle.” I noticed his large-and-in-charge ten-year-old daughter reading the needed items off the list. Her voice commanded the attention of everyone around her, and if it wasn’t for the fruit punch stain across her lips, I would’ve thought she was a mini grown up.

I concentrated harder on her glasses-wearing father, as it was just the right stuff to kick off another daydream.

As my mind drifted off to lands full of four-eyed hotties, a shopping cart rammed into the back of my feet.

“Ahhh!” I winced in pain and when I finally opened my tear-filled eyes she was in front of me,
the fully-formed Bridezilla older sister, her brown eyes burning with “a week until the wedding!” fire. The fire went alight for any reason these days, but for now it was focused on how we would decorate the house.

She gestured to the aisles up ahead. “Let’s go.”

Suddenly I was doing my best to stay on pace with her awkward jog-walk, weaving my cart between aisles in pursuit of her whims.

She stopped in an aisle filled with dozens of rolls of fabric, her head turning left and right
in search of who-knows-what. I waited patiently for her head to explode, then leave behind a bunch of frayed robot-wires.

“We need roses,”
she said. “Like a thousand fake roses!” I could see her sweating through her pale blue T-shirt, but I could tell it wasn’t the time to make fun of her pit stains.

“A thousand? What do you even
need them for again?” She wasn’t listening, so I started comparing my tan to a brown roll of fabric.
Hmm…not bad.
I was almost at the level of colour I’d need in order to pull off a half-gold saree, and I’d been wearing little tank tops exclusively to help the cause.

“W
hat are you doing?!” she cried, as she caught me admiring my tan.

I was relieved
we were in a public place so she couldn’t punch me. On the other hand, I had no idea what she was capable of these days.

“It
’s all good,” I calmly said. “I’m ready to go. So where do we find these roses?”

She glared at no one in particular.
“I don’t know where the hell they are. I’m gonna try asking that guy.”

Neema
hurried towards a greasy teenage guy wearing the standard “arts and crafts” uniform (or apron over a T-shirt and faded jeans).

He pushed his shoulder-length hair which his mom probably hated behind his ears, to reveal a patchy
, barely-there beard, one that his father was probably disappointed in.

“Where are your artificial roses?” she asked.

He scratched his greasy scalp. “Like the long stem? Are you making a fake bouquet? We get a lot of those on Valentine’s Day.” He chuckled. “Girls don’t like them.”

“It doesn’t matter what stem, we’re cutting them off anyway.”

We are?
I wondered what kind of decorating hell she had in store.

“Okay…like do you just want the petals then? We have bags of petals.”

“No, I need the fake fucking flowers in full fucking bloom!”

The worker
looked frightened, but there was nothing I could do to help.
At least you don’t have to go home with her.

He eventually led us to aisle twelve or “fake flower heaven,” and from there my sister went nuts. She picked
roses, big fat flowers I didn’t know the name of, little white lilies which did not bode well for me (
manual flower arrangement?!
), and some green leaves in various shapes. She also picked up a whole roll of white tulle (which also scared the crap out of me, manual labour wise), and when we rung it all up her credit card felt the full force.

The total
damage was several hundred dollars but she didn’t even blink.
Most important day of your life, after all.

On the way home
, Neema stopped at a drive-thru for a light lemonade (to maintain her skinny body that was in perfect wedding form), whereas I treated myself to a java-chip frappuccino. The calories were of little concern, as I’d already lost a couple pounds from prior slave work, and would lose a couple more from all the decorating. Meanwhile as I took slow sips and stared out the car window, my mind drifted off to weddings for a minute too long. In that moment I realized that after last year’s quest to find a man, I found myself more single than ever before...

***

My mom’s voice carried over from the fancy living room...if by fancy one meant the ugly mustard floral-printed couches. She was calling one relative after the next, convincing each one how they should skip the hotel and stay with us for the wedding. Her hard sell was the enormous number of cots that could fit in the basement.
Good god.
I was out in the hallway with a mess of decorations before me, having no idea where to start. Just then my black-and-white pudgy cat Tommy snuck up behind me. He started cuddling against my leg, but I quickly picked him up and looked him square in the eyes. “Just so you know, old-school Indian people are scared of cats,” I said. “And do you know what that means?” His eyes became larger. “That means when the wedding comes...they’re gonna lock you in the furnace room.” He furrowed his eyebrows and meowed.

I felt bad for the little guy
, but I had problems of my own. Almost as if on cue, the biggest problem of all thudded down the stairs, and when I saw her I almost screamed. It wasn’t a monster though, just the usual Neema in a green mud facial mask.

I tightened my ponytail and gestured to the mess. “What am I supposed to do with all of this?”

She clasped her hands together and smiled. “Here’s what I’m envisioning. You hang the tulle from every archway between the entrance and the kitchen.” She counted with her fingers. “So that’s four. And you should probably do two loops for each one.” She moved past me and grabbed a few flowers. “And then you’ll put the big flower in the middle, add some leaves, and a few lilies. That’s how each bunch should look.”

“Am I supposed to glue them together?”

“No, use a wire.” She paused for a second to think. “So you’ll need twelve of those…”

I grabbed the bunch of flowers. “This is pretty heavy, how
am I supposed to make it hang without dragging down the tulle?” I stared at the roll of tulle with contempt, the useless white netting that it was.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. Use those hook thing
s with the sticky on the back. Or use a staple gun…”

“Uhh, I
don’t think Dad wants us stapling things to the wall, dumbass.”

“Well I don’t know!” she yelled. “Figure it out!”

I tried to remain calm. “Okay…is that it?”

“Actually one more thing. With all the extra roses
we have, rip off all the petals individually, and drop them in the hanging tulle. Won’t that look pretty?” She smiled sweetly, as the mud mask strained and cracked at different places.

I wasn’t s
miling back, as I considered the insanity of her plan. “Rip off every petal…one by one? Why didn’t you just buy a bag of fake petals? The guy at the store said they sold them!”

S
he rolled her eyes. “Because I didn’t think of the idea ‘til now, obviously. So how long will all this take? Because I need you to help with the parting gifts we’re gonna leave at every chair.” She looked off into the distance. “That could take a while too; we need like four hundred and fifty...”

I clenched my teeth harder than I’d ever
clenched them since I first grew my pearly whites (
or off-whites, let’s be serious
). “Okay...fine. Just get out of my face so I can do it.” She stood there staring. “I said...GET OUT!”

Her eyes widened. “Fine, fine. Just make sure you don’t screw it up.”

She thudded back up the stairs as I contemplated ways to murder her. Then with a sigh, I began my biggest slave-work task…

***

With three days left until the big day, the pre-wedding functions were set to begin in twenty-four hours, along with an influx of relatives. I’d thought my biggest slave-work task would be the decorating (which looked amazing, by the way), but boy was I wrong.

A few minutes
ago, my sister had come to the basement and handed me a box that was almost my height. Inside this box was a beautiful pre-lit archway, one that you’d dig into the ground, and crown with an arrangement of flowers. The only tricky parts were A: how the archway came unassembled in a million different pieces, B: how the lights were not attached, and C: how the beautiful arrangement of flowers would be manually arranged...by me.

I was appropriately wearing my gym cl
othes, since this one would be a sweat-fest.

Here we go.

I cut open the box and let all the pieces fall out.

There were zillions, complete with tiny little screws to drive me crazy. My brother’s bedroom was just down the hallway, and I noticed the faintest bit of light. His door was also slightly ajar.
Hmm...

“H
elp me put this together,” I said, as I started to search for the instruction manual.

Not a word.

“I said help me build this stupid thing!”

“I’m busy!” he replied
.

I rose
to my feet, walked towards his room and flung the door wide open. The image inside was priceless. With lights dimmed, Sonny was wrapped in a Snuggie as he watched an old Albert Brooks movie, like the wannabe filmmaker that he was.

“So y
ou’re wearing a Snuggie…at two p.m…in the middle of SUMMER?!”

“It’s cold in t
he basement,” he said calmly.

I
wouldn’t even bother telling my parents he should help me, since their casual “
Go help your sister
” prompts had no force in them at all. And why would they? Sons were treated like kings, for reasons I would never comprehend, since it was always the daughters who did all the work.

“If I
ever have a son,” I muttered to myself, “I’m gonna make him my monkey-butler.”

I pushed the hair out of my face and began, counting down the days, hours
, and minutes until this stupid wedding was over…