The Bride (The Boss) (2 page)

“I, uh, I brought a little something to contribute to the festivities,” Neil said, reaching into the shopping bag to pull out one of the bottles of 1996 Dom Pérignon.

He’d brought the Dom Pérignon because I’d suggested he not go overboard. My mother was going to eat him alive.

She took the bottle and turned it in her hands with a little nod. “This was very thoughtful of you.”

“We’ve got beer, too, Neil, in the cooler outside the door. Just don’t let all the heat out,” my grandmother called, her head in the oven as she peeled the tinfoil off the ham.

“I’ll chill this,” Mom said, taking the other bottle from Neil.

Grandma deposited a heavy bowl into my hands, and I gasped, juggling it quickly so as not to slosh gravy onto my coat. “Take that out to the table.”

I cast an apologetic glance at Neil as I moved past him, into the crowded dining room and out to the porch. As I went, I heard my grandma shoo him out of the kitchen.

It wasn’t a long journey with the bowl, but by the time I got back to Neil, he’d been cornered by my great-uncle Doug, who had an open beer in his hand despite the fact it was eleven a.m. on Christmas morning.

“You heard a dem gingerbread Oreos?” he asked Neil, taking a swig from his bottle.

Neil blinked and stammered, “N-no. That sounds horrible.”

“No, they’re a real ting,” Doug insisted, gesturing with his beer. “They were on the Channel Six news.”

“I’m sorry, did you say noose?” Neil spotted me, and his relief was visible. I should have warned him about the thick Yooper accent that ran in my family.

“Hey, Sophie!” Uncle Doug put out his arm for a half-hug. He was my grandmother’s youngest brother, sixty-five, and he’d recently retired from his job as a DNR officer. “Did ya hear about dem gingerbread Oreos?”

“That sounds gross.” I stood beside Neil and reached up to put a hand on his shoulder. It was as hard as a blacksmith’s anvil with tension. I hoped he’d brought his headache pills with him.

“They got ‘em down in Marquette,” Doug went on. “They don’t got ‘em at the Pat’s here, but I told Debbie’s sister, ‘you better save me some of dem gingerbread Oreos.’”

My aunt Debbie yelled from the living room that there was something wrong with their cell phone, and Doug excused himself. As he walked away, Neil muttered to me, “I feel like I’m listening to an alien language.”

“Oh, you just wait until
I’ve
been up here a couple of days. No matter how hard I’ve tried to shake it, the accent always comes back.”

Neil’s eyes widened as he considered the implications of that statement. “I think I do need one of those beers, after all.”

My grandmother emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Everybody shut up, we’re gonna pray!”

Since my cousin Jimmy was going into the seminary, he did the honors. As everyone crossed themselves—including me, solely on reflex—Neil bowed his head respectfully. That’s one of the things I really love about Neil; he’s mindful of small stuff, and that lets him fit in anywhere, even when he doesn’t fit in at all.

We’d been sticking to a mostly vegan diet since Neil had picked it up during the big, fun year of cancer. But there was absolutely nothing that could be classified as vegan at my family’s cheese-smothered Christmas dinner, so we took the opportunity to gorge ourselves shamefully on fatty baked ham and thick, gooey casseroles. I had a feeling this meal would be the dietary point of no return for both of us.

There has never been a dinner table invented that could hold an entire extended family of Catholics. There were just too damn many Scaifes, so most of us ate standing up, or sitting on couches or folding chairs, since there were only six seats around the dining room table.

Neil and I stood in the little corner next to the back bedroom, our plates balanced on our hands, our bottles of Leinenkugel perched on the windowsill between ancient styrofoam snowmen.

“I need you to still love me,” I managed around a mouthful of scorching hot mashed potatoes, “when you are witness to the gastrointestinal nightmare that will be this food’s legacy.”

“We shall never speak of this night. What happens in Michigan stays in Michigan. Hopefully including your accent.” He lifted another bite of ham to his mouth. “And we must never tell Emma about the orgy of animal products we’re ingesting.”

“Who’s Emma?” my mom called from the dining room table. The woman had the hearing of a buck in November.

Neil chewed and swallowed, then reached for his beer. “My daughter. She’s a vegan.”

“Oh, you have a daughter?” My mom brightened, and my grandma and aunt Marie both perked up. I knew Mom had visions of adorable kindergarteners in her mind.

“It’s a funny story,” I said, even though I knew it wouldn’t strike them as remotely funny. “She’s twenty-five. She’s my exact age.”

“She’s a month younger,” he clarified. As though that made things better.

“Oh, a whole month.” Anger tightened my mom’s fake smile. I thought it might crack and fall off.

“Well, that would be a good story, wouldn’t it, Becky?” Aunt Marie laughed to defuse the tension. “‘My daughter and my grandbaby are the same age.’ You could go on
Maury
.”

“Um, no, Emma is not…” I shook my head. “Emma is not my baby.”

“Well, you better have some soon,” Marie said, as though it weren’t the most mortifying thing in the world for her to order Neil and me to procreate. “Your mom’s been hungry for a grandbaby.”

How soon my mom’s expectations had swung from “don’t get pregnant,” to “get immediately pregnant,” the moment a man was in the picture for me. I bet she felt differently now that she’d met Neil.

I’d gotten pregnant the year before, but we hadn’t kept the baby. I didn’t regret that choice, but I was glad my mom didn’t know. She’d told me time and again how disappointed she was that I wouldn’t have children. I wasn’t about to change my mind, but I wished for her sake that she didn’t feel that way.

I’d already warned Neil about my mother’s obsession with being a grandmother, and he’d agreed to take the fall for me. He cleared his throat and said, quite seriously, “Well, after I had chemotherapy and the transplant this year, it’s not likely that children are in our future.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.” I had no doubt that my mom meant that. She would probably feel irrationally guilty over Marie’s remarks later.

“The good news is, he’s still alive,” I reminded them with a wise-ass smirk.

Neil grinned over the top of his beer bottle. “Somehow, you’ll just have to cope with your disappointment, Mrs. Scaife.”

My mom laughed, and I saw a glimmer of hope that she might slightly warm to Neil after all.

A little after lunch, Neil excused himself to call Emma and wish her a happy Christmas. “I’ll go outside,” he said, gesturing toward the door with his phone. “It’s a bit loud in here. And I don’t want to be rude, of course.”

“Don’t put your tongue on anything out there, or it
will
get stuck,” I teased.

The moment he was gone, my mother and my aunt Marie herded me into the back bedroom. I backed into the end of the narrow bed and had no choice but to sit on all the coats as the two women loomed over me.

“Explain yourself, Sophie Anne!” Mom hissed in a low voice.

“Explain what?” I held out my open and utterly innocent palms. “I told you I was bringing my boyfriend to Christmas, I brought my boyfriend to Christmas.”

“You didn’t go to law school! You are not going to lawyer your way out of this!” Mom pressed her garish holiday manicure to her forehead. “How old is he?”

“Forty-nine.” I lifted my chin defiantly. Or was that childishly? Why could I never act like an adult when my mother was involved?

“Forty—I’m not even forty-nine, Sophie! What the hell are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking he’s super-hot and great in bed?”

Mom crossed herself. “Jesus Christ.”

“Okay, so, what does he do?” Aunt Marie asked, her voice insistently calm, like we were in an emergency that needed immediate handling. Then, in split second of panic, she added, “For a living! I meant for a living, what does he do?”

“He owns two media companies. He’s the tenth richest man in Great Britain.”

My mom sat down heavily beside me. “Oh, sweetie, you’re not doing this for the money, are you?”

“Mother, no! God, I didn’t even know he was rich when I met him.” I shook my head. “Why can’t I just meet a guy and fall in love with him and not have any ulterior motive? You are being extremely weird about this.”

“Your mom is just concerned for you, Sophie,” Marie said gently.

“And pissed off that you didn’t tell me any of this before,” Mom added.

I took a sharp breath, my exasperation audible. “It’s not like I lied to you—”

“You didn’t lie to me, but you didn’t tell the truth!”

“What does it even matter?” I demanded. “It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong.”

“So he’s a little older, so what?” Marie said, putting her hands on her hips. “Sophie, do you love him?”

“Absolutely.”

“And does he treat you good and love you back?”

I nodded decisively at my aunt. She turned to my mom. “Then why are you having a shit fit over this, Becky? You should just be happy that she found a guy who isn’t covered in tattoos with a bunch of junk in his face.”

Marie was talking about my first boyfriend, a nineteen-year-old I’d started dating when I was seventeen. He’d had the most awful amateur tattoos and he’d played bass in a garage band. He’d seemed so dangerous and like such a bad boy.

I’d since learned that the truly bad boys looked perfectly normal and respectable until you got them into a Parisian sex club.

Mom huffed. She knew she’d lost the argument. “Are you guys still staying out at the trailer?”

“I don’t know, are we still invited?” I snapped.

Mom’s expression softened. “Of course you are. Just…stop dropping these bombs on me, Sophie. I never know what’s going on with you anymore. You don’t have to be so secretive.”

“Well, apparently she does, if you’re going to freak out like this whenever she tells you something,” Marie observed.

“Can I go now and enjoy my lovely Christmas with my family, who I have not seen in a year?” I asked with a roll of my eyes.

Mom huffed and I pushed through the door and out into the dining room. Neil was still outside, thank god. I went to the kitchen and leaned over the sink to peer out the window. He paced between cars in the driveway, phone to his ear, his other arm wrapped around his chest. Occasionally, he stopped and bounced for warmth. He had a huge grin on his face as he talked to his daughter.

I knew it was difficult for him to be away from her at Christmas. The only other time it had happened, Emma had told me, had been when he’d gone to visit his ex-wife, Elizabeth, and her family the year before they’d gotten married.
 

Emma took this trip to be a very good sign for her father and me.

Still, I felt a little bad that Neil wasn’t spending the holiday with his daughter. I knew he missed her terribly. It assuaged my guilt slightly that she was celebrating with her fiancé and his family this year.

The rest of the visit was surprisingly stress-free. Neil was asked at least seven times what part of Ireland he was from, but he was very gracious about correcting people. As the day went on, he relaxed considerably, and I marveled again at how adaptable he was to such an unfamiliar situation. Neil had grown up with wealth and proper manners, but he didn’t look down on my loud, sometimes earthy family the way other people with his upbringing might have.

It was around four o’clock when Neil and I left, our arms weighted down with plates of leftovers, cookies, and my grandmother’s fudge. I must have hugged all of my relatives a thousand times apiece.

“Are you heading back to the trailer right now?” my mom called from the table as we walked past.

“No, I wanted to take Neil to see the lake while it was still light out.” I gestured to the door. “We’ll meet you back there. Is the key still in the same place?”

“Just don’t ‘get lost,’ or ‘run out of gas,’” Marie snarked, complete with finger quotes. The woman would not shut up about that first bad boyfriend.

My mother shot her a look. “Yes, the key is in the same place. I’ll be heading that way shortly.”

“Okay. Bring more leftovers, we’ll have dinner.” I was going to be as relentlessly cheerful as possible about this whole thing.

When we stepped outside, Neil gave me a reassuring smile. “I think that went quite well.”

Awww. The poor guy.
“I think you’re being way too optimistic. You have no idea what’s going to happen to you tonight.”

The wind off the frozen surface of Lake Superior was cutting cold, but since we’d both grown up in extreme low temperatures, Neil and I were brave enough to face it. Someone had plowed the gravel parking lot by the shore and shoveled off the wooden steps to the beach.

“I thought the Great Lakes had magnificent, sandy beaches,” Neil mused aloud as we navigated the slick staircase.

“There’s sand. It’s just under all this snow.”

He put a hand out to steady me. “Careful.”

“Yeah, I might fall and bruise my ass. Oh, wait, it’s already bruised,” I snorted. Knowing the limits of our stamina and accommodations over the holiday season, we’d gone a little crazy with the Dominance/submission fun times in the week before we’d left New York.

It had been entirely warranted. I’d been so keyed up and stressed over my audition with
Wake Up! America
that, when it had gone perfectly, I’d needed to blow off some steam in a big way. Sometimes, it felt like our lives were never going to slow down and let us catch our breath.

Which was why it was so nice to stand on the shore and smell the clean lake breeze. “I’ve always felt like this lake had a primal energy, you know?”

Neil raised one eyebrow sardonically.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I laughed. “I’m not about to get a tattoo of a dream catcher and start reading tarot cards in the park. But look at it. As a force of nature, you have to be impressed. All the sand here? Washed off the bottom of the lake by the water. If you went in right now—”