Queen of Babble in the Big City (18 page)

Know your…

Wedding-veil lengths!

Shoulder—This veil just brushes—what else?—your shoulders. Remember, the taller the bride, the longer the veil should be. This length not recommended for petite brides.

Elbow—This veil extends to just past your elbows. The more detailed your dress, the simpler you want to keep your veil.

Fingertip—The ends of this veil hit you just at mid-thigh, or fingertip length. The longer the veil, the more attention is taken away from the bride’s midsection. So this length is recommended for fuller-figured brides.

Ballet—The ballet length veil extends to the ankles (presumably this veil got its name for being a longer veil that brides still needn’t worry about tripping over).

Chapel—This veil sweeps the floor, and sometimes drags upon it. If you choose this length, please practice walking in it before the ceremony, to avoid any veil-snagging disasters.

L
IZZIE
N
ICHOLS
D
ESIGNS
™

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

—Winston Churchill (1874–1965), British statesman

I
can’t sleep.

And it’s not just the metal bar cutting into the middle of my back through the inadequately thin sofa bed mattress beneath me, either.

Or the fact that I can hear my boyfriend’s father snoring, even though he’s separated from me by several dozen feet and a wall.

It’s not even the slight traffic noises I can hear through the double-paned windows overlooking Fifth Avenue.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the incredibly rich meal I just had at Jean Georges, one of New York’s premier destination restaurants for gourmands, which cost as much as twenty yards of dupioni silk…per
person.

Or even with the fact that my boyfriend’s mother came back from her day of Black Friday “shopping” loaded down with plenty of gift bags but looking oddly vital and glowing…especially for a woman who’d allegedly just slogged through the pre-Christmas hordes at Bergdorf Goodman. It wasn’t just my imagination, either. Her husband kept looking at her and going, “What is different? You have done something different! Is it your hair?”

In response to which Bibi de Villiers merely called him an old goat (in French) and waved him away.

And it isn’t even that my boyfriend and I are going to be on two different continents during our first New Year’s Eve as a couple, missing that vital Happy New Year stroke-of-midnight kiss.

No. It’s not any of those things. I know that. I know what’s keeping me up—I know it perfectly well.

It’s the fact that earlier today (or yesterday, I guess, considering it’s well after midnight by now), my best friend announced that she’s in love with her boss.

Her female boss.

And get this: her boss loves her back. Even asked her to move in.

And Shari was happy to oblige.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, I love Rosie O’Donnell. That documentary about her gay cruise ship line totally made me cry.

And I think Ellen DeGeneres is a goddess, too.

But my best friend, who has always, by the way, liked GUYS? Not just LIKED guys, but has always SLEPT WITH guys—way more guys than me, I might add—and who has never expressed sexual interest in a woman the whole time I’ve known her?

Well, except for that girl Brianna in the dorm.

But Shari was really drunk that night and said she just woke up with Brianna in her bed and no idea how she got there.

Wait. Was that a sign? Because Brianna (and her boyfriend, actually) was always hitting on me. But I just told her I wasn’t interested. Why didn’t Shari just say she wasn’t interested, like I always did?

Although Lord knows I’ve never drunk as much as Shari (she can afford the empty calories. I can’t).

Still.

But wait. Shari always did like those foreign films at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. You know, the French ones about young
girls coming of age sexually, usually with another, older girl as their mentor, or whatever.

God. That was a sign, too.

And now that I think of it, there was that time Kathy Pennebaker—God. It always goes back to Kathy Pennebaker, doesn’t it?—invited us over to a slumber party, then wanted to take a group bubble bath. I was like, “Um, aren’t we a little old for a group bubble bath—at
sixteen
?”

But Shari, if I recall correctly, actually
joined
Kathy in her parents’ bathroom, while I stayed downstairs to watch my then-crush, Tim Daly, on a
Wings
marathon.

God. I’d
wondered
what all that splashing had been about. I even yelled up the stairs for them to keep it down, because I couldn’t hear what Tim was saying to Crystal Bernard.

Jeez. How embarrassing.

So, okay. I shouldn’t have been so surprised.

And I guess, considering how much Shari has been talking about Pat, it isn’t
that
surprising. I mean, we all knew she liked her. We just didn’t know she LIKE liked her.

And what’s not to like? Because, after Shari dropped her little bomb, and I stood there on the curb with my mouth hanging open like an idiot, Shari grabbed my hand and said, “Come meet her.”

I was too stunned to resist. Not that I’d wanted to. I was completely curious to meet this person for whom Shari had dumped Chaz, the previous love of her life.

And, okay, Pat is no Portia de Rossi.

But she’s a slender, vibrant woman in her early thirties, with a cascade of bright red ringlets going down her back, and skin the color of milk, with a quick laugh and bright, twinkling blue eyes.

She shook my hand and said she’d heard a lot about me and that she supposed hearing about her and Shari was a shock, but that she loved Shari very much, and, more important, her dogs, Scooter and Jethro, seemed to love Shari very much.

To which I didn’t know what to say, except that I’d like to meet Scooter and Jethro someday.

So Shari and her new girlfriend invited me over to watch the Jets game next weekend.

I seriously don’t know which is more shocking to me: that my best friend is in love with a girl, or that she’s started watching professional football.

In any case, I said I’d be there. And then Shari walked me to the elevator.

“Are you sure you’re okay about this?” Shari wanted to know, as we waited for the rickety two-person lift to arrive. “Because you look kinda…well, the way you looked that day Andy showed up at Luke’s cousin’s wedding.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Because I don’t feel that way at all. I’m totally happy for you. That’s all. I just…how long have you known?”

“How long have I known what?”

“You know. That you like girls.”

“I don’t,” Shari said with a smile. “I like
some
girls. Just like I like
some
guys. Just like
you
like
some
guys.” Her smile faded, and she added seriously, “It’s about the person’s soul, Lizzie, not the parts they have on the outside. You know that.”

I’d nodded. Because that’s true. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be.

“I don’t love Pat because she’s a woman,” Shari went on, “any more than I loved Chaz because he’s a man. I love them both for who they are on the inside. It’s just that I realized the one I’m most romantically interested in is Pat. Possibly because she doesn’t leave the toilet seat up.”

I stared at her until Shari nudged me. “That was a joke,” she said. “It’s okay for you to laugh.”

“Oh,” I said. And laughed. But then my laughter faded as I thought about something else.

“Shari,” I said. “What about your mom and dad? Have you told them yet?”

“No,” Shari said. “That’s a conversation best saved for the next time I see them in person. Christmas vacation, I think.”

“Are you going to take Pat to meet them?”

“She wants to go,” Shari says. “But I’m trying to spare her. Maybe after they’ve gotten used to the idea.”

“Right,” I said. I tried to push down the spurt of jealousy I felt that Shari’s girlfriend actually
wants
to meet her parents, whereas my boyfriend has expressed not the slightest iota of interest in meeting mine. There were much more important things to take under consideration, after all. Like, I couldn’t even imagine how Dr. and Mrs. Dennis were going to react to the news that their daughter is in a romantic relationship with a woman. Dr. Dennis will probably head straight to his liquor cabinet. Mrs. Dennis will head straight to the phone.

“Oh God!” I’d stared at Shari, wide-eyed. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Your mom is going to call my mom. And then my mom is going to find out I’m not actually living with you anymore. And then she’ll know I’m living with Luke.”

“She’ll probably just be grateful,” Shari said, “that you and I aren’t a couple.”

“Yeah.” My shoulders sagged with relief. “You’re probably right about that. Hey—” I glanced at her in some alarm. “We’re not, are we? I mean…you never felt about
me
the way you feel about Pat, did you?”

Please say no
, I was praying.
Please say no, please say no. Because I value Shari’s friendship more than anything, and if it turned out she was in love with me, well, how could we be friends anymore? You can’t be friends with someone who’s in love with you if you don’t love that person back the same way…

Shari regarded me with an expression I might almost have called sarcastic.

“Yes, Lizzie,” she said. “I have been in love with you since the first grade when you showed me your Batgirl Underoos. The only reason I’m with Pat is because I know I can’t have you because you stub
bornly refuse to love me and not Luke. Now come over here and kiss me, you little minx.”

I blinked at her. And she burst out laughing.

“No, you idiot,” she said. “Although I love you dearly as a friend, I have never been romantically interested in you. You’re actually not my type.”

I don’t want to sound pejorative, but her tone seemed to imply that she couldn’t understand why
anyone
would be interested in me romantically.

I didn’t say so at the time, but I was kind of wondering the same thing. I mean, doesn’t Pat realize that Shari is an inveterate blanket hog (as I discovered to my disadvantage when we were forced to share a sleeping bag at camp that time those mean girls threw mine in the lake) and has, to my knowledge, never once returned a book she borrowed? It was a miracle that Chaz, a known bibliophile, even put up with her as long as he did. I purposely never loaned Shari my clothing, because I knew I’d never see it again.

Of course Shari never asked to borrow any of my clothing. My style is just a little too retro for her, I guess.

But, whatever.

“You have a type?” I asked her with a raised eyebrow. “Because you seem to cover a pretty wide range—”

“Primarily,” Shari interrupted, “I like people who can keep their mouths shut once in a while.”

“Well, then, it’s no wonder you and Chaz broke up,” I said, just as the elevator, groaning with the strain, finally arrived.

“Ha ha,” Shari said. Then, giving me a hug, she said, “Take care of him for me, will you? Don’t let him slide into one of his funks where he stays inside all day reading Heidegger and never ventures out except to buy booze. Promise?”

“Like you have to ask,” I said. “I love Chaz like the brother I never had. I’ll make sure to get Tiffany to invite him out with her and some of her model friends. That should cheer him up.”

“That ought to do it, all right,” Shari agreed.

And the elevator doors closed and she was gone.

And that was that.

Well, except for the part where now I can’t sleep a wink, because I keep replaying it all over and over in my head.

“Hey.” The word, spoken so softly beside me, causes me to jump. I turn my head. Luke is awake, and blinking at me sleepily.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “Did I wake you?” I hadn’t been making any noise. Had I managed to wake him with my noisy thoughts? I’ve read that couples can become so close that they can read each other’s minds.
Ask me to marry you, Luke. Luke, ask me to marry you. Luke. I am your father…
Oh no, wait—

“No,” he says. “It’s this damn metal bar—”

“Oh yeah. It’s killing me, too.”

“Sorry about this,” Luke says with a sigh. “We just have to put up with them for one more night and then they’ll be gone.”

“It’s all right,” I say. I can’t believe he’s worrying about me when he has something so much bigger to worry about—his mother’s secret affair, I mean.

Except of course he doesn’t know about that. Because I haven’t told him. How can I? He’s so happy his parents are back together.

And something like that could totally sour him against marriage forever. I mean, what if he concludes, from his mother’s catting about—not to mention Shari’s recent abandonment of Chaz, and his own ex-girlfriend’s leaving him for his own
cousin
—that women are incapable of fidelity?

And things between us have been going so well—familial visitations aside. Even having Tiffany and Raoul to Thanksgiving dinner didn’t prove the disaster I thought it would, as they provided a welcome distraction for Chaz, who seemed to take great pleasure in watching Tiffany gad about in her thigh-highs and catsuit—I really think Luke might have forgotten all about that whole “people our age don’t even know what love is” thing.

Maybe I’ll even be getting an extraspecial present for Christmas. The kind that comes in a very small box.

Hey. You never know.

“Well,” Luke says, his lips suddenly in my hair, “I think you’re a trouper. You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. And hey—did I mention that turkey you made was delicious?”

“Oh,” I say modestly. “Thanks.”

Well? He doesn’t need to know it came already cooked.

“I think you’re a keeper, Lizzie Nichols,” he says, his lips now moving lower than my hair, and toward some other parts of my body that can appreciate lips more than hair.

“Oh,” I say in a different voice. “Thanks!” A keeper! Why, that’s
practically
a marriage proposal. Calling someone a keeper is like saying you never want to throw them back into the dating pool for someone else to snatch instead. Right?

“And you’re sure,” he says, from down there, “that you and Shari never—”

I sit up and glare at him in the darkened room. “Luke! I told you! No!”

“Whatever!” he says with a laugh. “I’m just asking. You know Chaz is going to ask, too.”

“I told you.” I can’t believe this. “You can’t say anything to Chaz. Not until Shari’s told him. I wasn’t even supposed to say anything to you—”

Luke laughs—not very nicely, I might add. “
Shari
told you something and asked you to keep it a secret?”

“I
am
capable of keeping some things to myself, you know,” I say indignantly. Because, seriously…if he only knew what I’ve been keeping to myself since I moved in.

“I know,” he says with a laugh. “I’m just teasing you. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to him. But you know what Chaz is going to say.”

“What?” I ask, relenting—but only because he looks so handsome in the moonlight spilling in from the windows.