Queen of Babble Gets Hitched (31 page)

LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS
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He is at my apartment in fifteen minutes. It’s amazing how fast a taxi can travel seventy blocks uptown along First Avenue after midnight.

“I want to know everything,” he says, slinging his backpack—we have not progressed to the point where either of us has a drawer at the other’s apartment yet—onto my couch. “But first… how did it go at Ava’s parents’ place?”

“Oh, Chaz… ”

And the next thing I know, I’m in his arms, and it’s—I don’t know how to describe it. It’s completely different from being in my former fiancé’s arms. Instead of feeling self-conscious and strange and awkward, the way I had when Luke and I hugged a little while ago, I feel safe and comforted and, most important of all, loved—completely and wholeheartedly loved—when Chaz’s arms are around me. I close my eyes, letting his warmth envelope me, and suddenly the tears that hadn’t been there with Luke show up.

“Whoa,” Chaz says with a gentle laugh, kissing my cheeks. “It was that bad? They didn’t like your drawings? How could they not have liked them? I’ve always loved your little stick women. Did you put top hats on them? I love it when you put top hats on them.”

“N-no,” I stammer, shaking my head as he grips my waist. “Th-they l-loved the top hats! Well, I mean, I didn’t put top hats on any of them. But they loved the drawings.”

“They did? Then what’s the problem?”

“I–I’m just so happy!”

It’s true. I feel so happy, standing there in my living room slash dining room slash kitchen, with Chaz’s arms around me, and—now that I’m no longer engaged—my status on the Bad Girl Scale back to negative, I think my heart might burst.

“So the Gecks are buying your designs,” Chaz says.

I nod. “I’m in charge of design and quality control. Ava’s doing marketing. Her dad’s taking care of everything else. Chaz… I think this could be really great. It’s not going to be crappy. It’s really not. Because Ava’s super-invested in it. Because her name’s going to be on it. She’s actually taking it seriously. I’ve never seen her take anything this seriously. It helps that she’s so into this DJ Tippycat guy, and he turns out to have a business degree from Syracuse. His real name is Joshua Rubenstein. He was there tonight too.”

Chaz looks impressed. “And what about the shop? Tiffany and Monique, and Sylvia and Marisol?”

I chew my lip. “I have a plan for them too,” I say. “But… it’s going to involve some driving.”

“Driving?” he echoes. “Driving where?”

“To New Jersey,” I say, taking his hand and pulling him down onto the couch. “But first… Chaz, seriously… and no joking around. Just tell me. I need to know. What did you mean when you said that stuff about Luke not being a Boy Scout while were dating? Because when we broke up just now… he insisted on my keeping this.” I lean over and pick up the ring from where I’ve hidden it beneath a copy of People. “Chaz, this is an expensive ring. Why would he insist on my keeping it unless he felt super-guilty about something? Huh? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Chaz looks down at the ring and shakes his head.

“God,” he says. “I can’t believe he didn’t take it back. Did he cry?”

“When we broke up?” I look at him in surprise. “Yeah, he did, a little. How did you know?”

Chaz takes a deep breath. Then he lets it out in a whoosh.

“Luke wasn’t exactly Mr. Innocence himself the whole time you two were going out, all right?” Chaz lifts his gaze from the ring and locks it onto mine. “Did you really think he was studying all those nights he said he was at the library? Because that’s not what he was doing.”

I blink. “I knew it,” I say. “Shari was right! He really was too perfect. There was something creepy about it.” Then I add, “Wait. You’d better not be making this up to make me feel better about what we’ve been doing… ”

“Better?” Chaz echoes. “Hell, all this time, I’ve been afraid to tell you. I thought you’d have a nervous breakdown if you found out.”

“If this is a joke,” I threaten, still not sure whether or not I believe him, “to make me feel less like a two on the Bad Girl Scale, it really isn’t very funny… ”

“I’m not joking,” Chaz says gravely. “And I don’t know what a Bad Girl Scale is. It was that girl Sophie, from his class, all right? The one who knew the guy who got us a table at the Spotted Pig that night. He was doing her behind your back all last semester. You should have seen her. You’d have flipped out. She wore that Juicy Couture stuff you hate. And those giant sunglasses with Dolce & Gabbana written on the side?”

I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “Nice try. But you’d never have kept something like that a secret this long. You’d have told me.”

“Actually,” Chaz says, sounding dead serious for a change, “I couldn’t tell you, Liz. How could I have told you about Luke sleeping with another woman behind your back when you were still so in love with him—or at least when I thought you were still so in love with him? How would that have looked? Consider my position, being in love with you, and wanting you for myself. Had I come to you before I’d actually, ahem, managed to win you over, as I apparently have now, and suggested to you that your fiancé was sleeping around behind your back, what, exactly, would I have accomplished? Yeah, you might have broken up with Luke, and yeah, you might have slept with me. But how would I know that I wouldn’t have been just some revenge screw—some way for you to get back at Luke for what he’d done to you?”

I blink at him.

The thing is, I believe him. Mostly because of the details—he couldn’t make up that Dolce & Gabbana thing. Chaz doesn’t know anything about designers—look at his shorts. But also because of the incredibly coarse way he was putting it.

What he was actually saying is incredible.

But, given his bluntness, it might just be true.

“That’s not what I wanted,” Chaz goes on. There isn’t a hint of sarcasm or laughter in his tone now. His blue eyes look almost pained. “That’s the last thing I wanted. For the longest time—since way before New Year’s, since the day I helped you move into this place—I wanted you any way I could get you. And that’s the truth. But I wanted you for keeps, Lizzie. And you weren’t going to stick around if that’s all I was to you, a revenge screw, a way to hurt Luke. So… yeah, I didn’t tell you. Until now. So sue me.”

Then, his shoulders still hunched, he whips out his cell phone. “Besides. I can prove it to you.”

The next thing I know, he’s pressed a button on his keypad. A second later, he’s saying, “Luke?”

“Chaz,” I cry. “No—”

But it’s too late.

“Oh, hey, man,” Chaz says conversationally, into the phone. “Oh, sorry, did I wake you? Oh no? You’re in town? What are you doing in town?”

I cannot believe this is happening. I flop back against the couch, slapping my hands over my eyes. I can’t watch.

“Oh, you did? Really? Oh yeah? Oh, she did? Oh, really. Oh, that’s too bad.” Chaz leans over and pokes me, but I don’t take my hands from my eyes. Finally, after a few more “really”s, I hear Chaz say, “Yeah, so, if you and Lizzie are splitting up, I guess that means things are really going to heat up with Sophie.”

Chaz must have put the phone close to my ear, because I hear Luke’s voice saying, “Well, you know, I’m going to be moving to France, so I guess I won’t be seeing as much of Sophie. But you know there’s this fantastic woman I’ve been seeing in my new office, that one I was telling you about, Marie… ”

I take my hands away from my eyes and just look at him. Chaz’s expression is a beguiling mixture of anxiety—that my feelings are hurt—and laughter. It is kind of hard not to see the humor in the situation. It’s not as if I care who Luke’s been doing behind my back.

I just hope he, like me, has been using a condom.

When he sees that I’m smiling too, Chaz puts the phone back to his ear and says, “Uh, Luke? So, listen, since you and Lizzie aren’t seeing each other anymore, I was wondering… how would you feel if I asked her out? Because, you know, I think she’s a great girl, and I’ve always sort of—”

Even from where I’m sitting, three feet away, I can hear Luke’s voice curtly cutting Chaz off.

Chaz’s grin grows more broad.

“Oh,” he says, his blue eyes twinkling at me. “You don’t think that would be a very good idea? Why? You think you’re such a sex god you should just have all the great girls for yourself, even after you’re done with them, is that it?”

Laughing, I gasp, “Chaz, don’t!” and reach out to wrestle the phone away from him.

“No?” Chaz is saying into the phone, even as he wraps an arm around my waist and wrestles me noisily to the floor. “Oh, because she’s in a very fragile state right now? I don’t think she’s in quite as fragile a state as you might think. What was that noise? Oh, I think that was just… my upstairs neighbor. Yeah, he just brought home another trannie from that bar down the street. Hey, Johnny”—Chaz takes the phone away from his face and yells at the walls as he tickles me mercilessly, while I try not to blow our cover by laughing—“it’s called abstinence! You should give it try! Oops, Luke, I gotta go, he’s puking in the hallway. Yeah, he’s sliding around in his puke. I’ll call you later.”

Chaz hangs up, throws his cell phone over his shoulder, then dives on top of me, burying his face in my neck. I can barely breathe I’m laughing so hard.

And I realize something: I’ve never had such a good time in my entire life.

Which is a lot to say, considering the day I’ve had.

Anyone familiar with her historical romances knows that any young bride worth her salt went to Scotland to elope in nineteenth-century Europe (even back then girls under eighteen weren’t allowed to wed without their parents’ permission). Even Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice despairs when she learns her flighty sister Lydia has not gone to Gretna Green with her lover, Wickham, for it meant he had no intention of marrying her.

Scotland is still a popular wedding destination for Americans, and many travel packages for that purpose can be purchased. Although care should be taken to fill out the necessary paperwork stateside before going, or the unwary bride could find herself in the same situation as poor, unhappy Lydia.

Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster

Eloping doesn’t necessarily mean a couple has to miss out on the fun of wedding gifts! The couple’s parents or other relatives or friends can still choose to host a reception for them upon their return. They can even still register for gifts and be within the confines of good taste and etiquette. With weddings growing to be so costly these days, some parents are finding it less expensive to pay their daughters to elope.

We should all be so lucky.

LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS
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I find Monsieur Henri in his back garden the next morning, precisely where his wife said he’d be: practicing on his homemade pétanque lane.

He seems surprised to see me.

Well, I don’t suppose it’s often he receives visitors from Manhattan to his suburban Cranbury, New Jersey, home.

Especially while he’s still in his terrycloth bathrobe.

“Elizabeth!” he cries, dropping the pétanque ball in the dust and hurrying to close his robe. He casts an indignant look at his wife, coming up behind us with a tray of iced tea.

“I’m sorry, Jean,” she says. But if you ask me, she doesn’t look the least bit sorry. “Elizabeth phoned earlier this morning to say she was coming with something important to discuss with us. I did call out to you. But I suppose you didn’t hear me.”

Monsieur Henri watches, dumbfounded, as his wife sets the tray down on the small metal table beneath the rose-covered arbor at the end of his pétanque lane, then takes a seat on the bench beside it. Always a large man, her husband has lost a lot of weight since his surgery. But he is still sweating in the summer heat, even in the shade of the arbor. He looks down at the three glasses of iced tea before him.

“Well,” he says. “I suppose I can take a break. For a moment.”

“That would be nice,” I say. I flick a glance toward the house. Chaz is driving around the neighborhood, having assured me he’d be back in half an hour to pick me up in the car we rented from Avis that morning. “I’ll just cruise the strip malls,” he’d said. “Pick you up a thong from Victoria’s Secret. I’ve never seen you in a thong. Or anything from Victoria’s Secret, for that matter.”

There’s a reason for that, I’d assured him.

I take a seat on the bench beside Madame Henri, after carefully tucking my vintage Lilly Pulitzer wraparound skirt beneath me, waiting until Monsieur Henri has lowered himself carefully into the teak Adirondack chair opposite us before I speak.

“I’m so sorry to bother you here at your home, Monsieur Henri,” I say. “But it’s about the building—”

“Now, Elizabeth,” Monsieur Henri says with hearty kindness as he reaches for one of the glasses of iced tea and swirls around the twig of mint his wife has plopped into it. “I really don’t think there’s anything more we can say about that. We’re listing it with Goldmark, and that’s that. I’m very sorry about your having to find another job and an apartment, but like we said, we’ll put in a good word for you with Maurice—you’ll have the best references there are… you’ll have no trouble at all finding a job—and you will just have to be satisfied with that. Really, this begging… it’s not attractive. I’m rather surprised at you, I must say.”

“Actually,” I say, reaching for my own glass of iced tea, pleased to see that my hand isn’t shaking at all as I hold it. Way to go, Lizzie! “I’m not here to beg for my job, Monsieur Henri. I’ve found another job. I’m here to make an offer on your building.”