Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? (13 page)

Noah was home. When I opened the door to our apartment, there he was, sprawled on the couch, watching a hockey game and reading
Newsweek,
a giant-size red-foil-wrapped pair of chocolate lips on the coffee table.

I ran into his arms. “But you’re in Colorado!”

“Actually, I’m right here,” he said as he took off my coat, trailing kisses down my neck and arms.

“But you’re on staking out aliens in the mayor’s backyard!”

“Ashley’s in the mayor’s backyard,” he corrected. “
I’m
in my yard.”

Mayor, my name’s Ashley, but you can call me Ash, because you’re the mayor and because I smolder…

I could see the headlines now:
Hot News Reporter Noah Benjamin investigating the scandalous love affair between his former colleague, known only as Call Me Ash, and the mayor. Call Me Ash torn between hot Hot News colleague and UFO-spotting local politician
.

“But I thought you weren’t coming home till Sunday night or even Monday night,” I said.

He pulled me next to him on the couch. “I wanted to be here when you got home. What you’re doing is tough stuff, and a phone call between us long-distance wasn’t going to cut it.”

“You came home just so you’d be here when I got home?”

He nodded. “And I got you this. Valentine’s Day goodies hit the stores early in the Midwest.”

He picked up the giant chocolate lips and pressed them to mine.

I laughed. “I don’t even know how to say thanks. Thanks isn’t enough.”

“It’s always enough,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not that selfless. I also came back because I missed you.”

Top Ten List for World’s Best Boyfriend and Fiancé and Husband-To-Be: #1: Noah Benjamin.

I kissed him. “I missed you, too.”

“How’d the trip go?” he asked.

“It didn’t. I mean, we didn’t even find the town he lives in. We never even left the highway, well, except for making wrong turns out of rest stops. We did get to experience many different McDonald’s, though.”

“How’d you and Emmett get along?”

“Like siblings,” I said.

He smiled. “I’ve never spent five agreeable minutes with Beth in a car. Not when we were kids and not now.”

I couldn’t imagine spending five agreeable minutes with Beth anywhere, and I wasn’t her sibling. Though I suppose soon enough, I sort of would be.

“Charla was a surprise, though,” I said. “I like her.”

“C’mere,” he said, massaging my shoulders. “Sit back and tell me all about it from start to finish.”

“You know what I would rather do?”

“What?”

I took off his T-shirt.

“And miss the hockey game?” he teased, grabbing the remote control and clicking off the TV.

“I love you, Noah,” I said. “I really, really love you.”

“Me, too,” he said, trailing kisses across my belly button.

I will stop twisting my ring on my finger. Noah is the man for me. Noah is the greatest boyfriend and fiancé in the world. It’s nice to come home to someone you love when you’ve spent the day with your stomach muscles clenched and your heart in your throat. It’s nice to come home to Valentine’s Day chocolate in January
.

The good news for me was that for the first time in a long time, I was scared of something else.

“F
ine. Whatever!” Philippa was muttering into her phone when I arrived at work on Monday morning. “Fine!” she yelled again. “Well then, I don’t care either!” She slammed down the phone, then picked it up and slammed it down three more times.

I poked my head over the rim of her cubicle. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, but her eyes filled with tears and her lips trembled.

I came around and sat down in her guest chair. “Did you and Parker just get into a fight?”

She shook her head.

I couldn’t imagine what else could have gone wrong in Philippa Wills’s charmed life. Barneys wasn’t having its semiannual sale? Her hairstylist was going on vacation and she needed a trim?

Devlin’s assistant poked her head in, said, “Hot off the
press!” and handed Philippa a manila folder. “Your father-daughter shots. They’re terrific. Devlin is showing them to Astrid right now.”

I expected Philippa to lunge for the folder and rip it open, but she didn’t budge. Neither did her expression. She was on the verge of tears again.

“Philippa, what’s wrong?” I asked.

She sniffled.

“Philippa, if you—”

Devlin’s assistant coughed. “Uh, Eloise, you’re needed in the conference room for a layout meeting.”

“Will you be all right till I come back?” I asked Philippa.

She managed a shaky nod, then stared down at her desk.

“You sure?”

She nodded. “I’m okay. Go ahead. Really.”

But the second I left her cubicle, I heard her try to stifle a squeaky sob.

Unless someone else on the
Wow Weddings
staff wore pink wingtip oxfords, Philippa Wills was in the middle stall of the women’s rest room, crying.

Whatever was bothering her was
really
bothering her. I’d been trapped in a design meeting on the Grooms-and-Fathers-To-Be feature for an hour and a half.

“Philippa, it’s me, Eloise.”

Silence. Rustle of toilet paper.

“Philippa? Are you okay?”

Sniffle. Nose blow. “Just allergies,” she finally said.

And then she burst into tears.

“Philippa, open up. Let me in.”

Silence.

A moment later, she unlatched the stall door, and I squeezed in. Her beautiful peaches-and-cream skin was ruddy, and her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. She was sitting on the lid of the toilet, a wad of pink tissues in her lap.

“Philippa, maybe I can help. Did you get into a fight with Parker? It’s all right if you did. All couples fight and—”

She shook her head. “We didn’t get into a fight.”

“Astrid say something evil?”

Again, a head shake. “Astrid’s been really nice to me lately. She even stopped by my cubicle a little while ago to tell me that my family is the ultimate in Classic and that my father-daughter shots were spectacular. She said if she were giving grades for family, I’d get an A plus.”

Once again,
I
wouldn’t get a grade.

She burst into sobs again, burying her face in the tissues.

And you’re in here crying because…

“Then what’s wrong, Philippa?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” She stood up and blew her nose again, then burst into tears and sank back down.

Perhaps she wanted privacy. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

She grabbed my hand. “Will you sneak out with me for coffee? I don’t want to talk about it here.”

Five minutes later, we were in Starbucks with peppermint mochas and a cinnamon-chip scone to split. We sat in upholstered chairs at a little round table, letting the warmth and sweetness of our coffee relax us for a moment. The attractive man at the next table was sneaking appreciative peeks at Philippa, but she didn’t notice.

Even with red-rimmed eyes, Philippa elicited stares.
Because I saw her every day, I stopped noticing how striking she was. When I interviewed at
Wow Weddings
and Philippa stepped into the reception area to fetch me to Astrid’s office because Astrid’s assistant was out that day, I’d been momentarily dumbstruck. And intimidated. Not by her, personally, but by the way she looked and dressed. I didn’t look or dress anything like the Gwyneth Paltrow perfection that was Philippa Wills.

Five foot ten, thin as a rail, with poker-straight white-blond hair, the headband, the shirtwaist dress and penny loafers, maybe a dusting of blush and a little lip gloss, Philippa Wills, editorial assistant, was bursting with enthusiasm (she’d bubbled nonstop from the moment she collected me until she deposited me in Astrid’s toile-covered guest chair about what a wonderful working environment
Wow Weddings
was, even if you weren’t engaged, which she wasn’t, by the way, and etcetera, etcetera).

At Posh Publishing, where I’d worked for eight years, bubbling with enthusiasm was about as welcome as a buzzing fly.

Philippa hadn’t lost that bubble in the little over two years she’d been working at
Wow.
And if Acid hadn’t popped it out of her yet…

Which made a sad, crying Philippa very difficult to bear.

“Philippa, you can trust me, okay?” I assured her. “Whatever it is.”

She sniffled into her tissue. “I trust you. But I can’t tell you.”

“Well, how about if we just sit here and enjoy our coffee, then,” I said. “Maybe this scone will make you feel better.”

She broke off a piece but didn’t eat it. “I want to tell you. I really do. But I’m so embarrassed.”

“Hey, who’s the queen of embarrassing herself at
Wow?
”

“You are,” she said earnestly.

“So therefore,” I reasoned at my own expense, “you can tell me. No matter what it is, I’m sure I’ve topped it.”

“You won’t tell a soul?” she asked. “Not a soul?”

“Cross my heart,” I assured her.

“Not even Noah?”

“Not even Noah,” I promised.

She let out a deep breath and gnawed her lower lip. “My family hates me.”

“Your family hates you?” I repeated. “Philippa, your father thinks you’re the greatest thing that ever walked the earth. Your mother adores you, and your brother is your best friend.”

“Not really,” she whispered.

“Philippa, I was at your photo shoot,” I reminded her. “Your father couldn’t stop talking about how great you are. You and your brother couldn’t decide which one of you was the ‘best.’ And your mother—”

“They were paid to do all that,” she finally said.

Huh? “You paid your family to say nice—”

Oh.

She stared down at her feet. “They’re not my family. They’re stand-ins. Fakes. Models I hired from Perfect People.”

No wonder the fake Weston Wills looked familiar! I’d probably seen his head shot when I was looking for my own fake brother.

“They’re costing me two hundred fifty an hour,” she said between sniffles. “My stand-in brother goes for three hundred, because he’s particularly hot right now.”

My fake brother would have cost only one hundred and seventy-five.

“You hired models because you’re not getting along with your family?” I asked.

Silence.

“Philippa, trust me—I’m the last person who’ll judge you about family.”

She glanced up at me and gnawed her lip, then took a sip of her coffee. “Not getting along is an understatement. They totally hate me.”

Philippa was a lot of things, but hateable wasn’t among them. “Why do you think they hate you?”

“My parents and brother are boycotting my wedding,” she said in such a low voice I had to lean forward, which meant I was almost in her lap. “And anything to do with the magazine feature.”

I waited for her to continue.

Because…

“They totally hate me,” she said on a sob.

Because…

“Because I…sort of shortened my last name when I graduated from college.”

From…what? Willspimple? Willsfart? Willssnot?

“Wilschitz,” she said.

Ah. Wilschitz. I would have gotten there eventually.

“A lot of people shorten their names,” I told her. “Have you tried ex—”

“I changed my first name too,” she added.

I waited.

“It used to be—”

I was on the edge of my seat.

“Phyllis,” she finally said.

Phyllis Wilschitz.

Philippa Wills’s real name was Phyllis Wilschitz.

“My family says I’m pretending to be something I’m
not, but that’s not true!” she said. “I am Philippa Wills! Philippa Wills is who I was meant to be.”

“Who was Phyllis Wilschitz?” I asked.

She let out a deep breath. “When I walked down the hall in middle school, boys would shout out, ‘Run, everybody—Phyllis Will Shit!’ And girls would add, ‘Phyllis
Is
Shit!’”

“Oh, God, Philippa. How awful.”

I was surprised though. Usually girls who looked like Philippa were immune to middle-school torture. Philippa Wills (or Phyllis Wilschitz) had never had a pimple, let alone a bad hair day. It just wasn’t possible.

“I wasn’t exactly as pulled together then as I am now. I was a walking stereotype—the Coke-bottle glasses, bad posture from hunching over because I towered over all the boys, bad hair, the works.”

Ah. I peered at her. It was impossible even to imagine.

She took a sip of her coffee. “But my parents were sticking me in a private school for high school and I realized I had a shot at changing my image.”

“By changing your name to something glamorous?” I asked. “Glam by association?”

“Actually, back then I didn’t realize I could change my name,” she said. “I changed how I
looked.
I turned Phyllis Wilschitz into a hot babe.”

“How?”

“I read through every back issue of
Teen
and
Seventeen,
then bought Miss Clairol Light Blond, a pair of contact lenses and inexpensive versions of stylish clothing that I saw in
Seventeen
and on the popular girls at school. I practiced applying my new stockpile of cosmetics, stood up straight like my then idol Cindy Crawford and
voilà.
”

“Your parents helped you do all this?” I asked. “They
let you change your whole look in high school but have problems with your name?”

“Oh, they didn’t help me,” she said. “I had some money saved from birthdays and holidays and every baby-sitting job I ever had. My mother was furious when she saw my dyed hair. She insisted I change it back. I begged her to understand.”

“Did she?” I asked.

“She took a pair of scissors and cut off my hair.”

I literally gasped. “She did not!”

“Yup, she did. She said that no daughter of hers was going to walk around like a harlot with bleached-blond hair when she and my father scrimped and saved to get me into private school.”

Scrimped and saved? I thought her parents were wealthy.

“So she cut off my long hair to my chin and told me it would grow out faster if it was short,” Philippa continued, “but then she didn’t want people to think I’d colored my hair, so she kept dyeing it for me. I got to be blond with a chic bob all through high school.”

“Wow,” I said.

“I was still Phyllis Wilschitz, but I looked like a Philippa Wills. And I was treated accordingly. I was never made fun of again, but I hated the name.
Hated
it. I tried to explain that to my parents when I changed my name after college, that the name Phyllis Wilschitz didn’t match the new me. That I needed a name that conjured up an image of money, class, beauty, elegance.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “They were more than a little insulted.”

She nodded.

“Even so, I’m sure they don’t
hate
you. And there’s no
way they’d miss their girl getting married. I’m sure they won’t boycott the wedding.”

Philippa started to cry again. “I don’t know. They’re
really
mad at me. They say that Wills is a slap in the face to them. That my father’s name, my grandfather’s name, my great-grandfather’s name, my great-great-grandfather’s name ain’t Wills. It’s Wilschitz. Every time I get the lecture, they really emphasize the
schitz.
Wil-
schitz!
Wil-
schitz!
Don’t they know that only strengthens my resolve to be Wills?”

“Did your brother get teased?” I asked.

If you even have a brother.

She nodded. “He was tortured. Mercilessly. And it affected him his entire life. When you’re teased that way, picked on, made fun of every single day so carelessly, you either turn into a raging lunatic or you retreat. My brother retreated.”

“So he’s not Mr. Wall Street?”

She smiled. “He’s a librarian.”

“Does he understand about your changing your name?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t change his. But then again, his first name is Mike. That’s livable.”

“You really think they’ll boycott the wedding?” I asked.

“They figured I’d stop ‘this name nonsense,’ my last name, anyway, when I married Parker. They assumed I’d become Philippa Gersh and they’d never have to see or hear the Wills again. But I’m not taking Parker’s name and—”

I was surprised. Very. “You’re not taking Parker’s name?”

“Why should I?” she asked.

“No reason. I guess I just assumed.”

“I worked really hard to become Philippa Wills. I’m not going to give up who I am just because I’m getting mar
ried. And who I am is Philippa Wills. I’m not Phyllis Wilschitz or Philippa Gersh. I’m Philippa Wills.”

I was impressed. Very. “Good for you, Philippa,” I said. “So what does Parker think of all this?”

She gnawed her lower lip.

“Philippa, Parker does know your real name, doesn’t he?”

She didn’t answer.

Whoo-boy.

She sipped her coffee. “What was the point of telling him? We’d been dating only four months when Parker proposed, so it was too early for a ‘meet the folks,’ and since he proposed there hasn’t been an opportunity to get all of us together. I haven’t
had
to tell him. I’ll tell him before I introduce him to the Wilschitzes. Whenever that will be…”