Getting Lucky (A Lucky Novella) (8 page)

“Wow,” Lisa whispered.

“That’s the one,” Tara said, tears welling up in her eyes.

Having purposely dressed myself with my back to the mirror, I had yet to see myself in the dress I had already fallen in love with. After seeing their reactions, my anxiety had shifted to curiosity as I took several careful steps toward the nearest mirror.

There I was. Not your traditional bride by any means, but then, nothing about Noah and I had ever been traditional. I slowly scanned the length of my reflection, starting at my daring shoes which made my legs look crazy long and tone, up to the feathered mini skirt of my dress which not only gave me a slight princess pouf, but would be a blast to dance in as the feathers took flight with every move. The fit of the top was seamless, but the most striking thing I saw when I looked in the mirror was my own smile.

I turned to face my friends again.

“I’m getting married tomorrow,” I said quietly. Tara and Lisa both huddled around me in a group hug. Having them here with me was already turning out to be the icing on the cake.

I didn’t even bother trying on the other two dresses. Beautiful as they were, they were simply no match for the white one. When we went to pay, I noticed there was a third bridesmaid dress lying on the counter.

“Who’s the extra dress for?” I asked.

“Danica. Can’t have her being the only one who doesn’t match. It wouldn’t look right,” Tara said. Then she told the woman to go ahead and ring everything up together.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” I interjected. “Do you have any idea how many new shoes that it?”

Tara giggled. “Oh honey, as much as I would love to take credit, I can’t. Your hubby to be has been picking up the tab all night.”

“What?”

“Well, of course. He didn’t tell you?”

“No.” He most certainly had not!

“Yeah, he called me a little while after you did. Asked if I could help with the wedding because knowing you, you’d just downplay the entire event and that he wasn’t going for that. Said he had a lot of making up to do, and he was going to start by giving you a one of a kind wedding to remember. Oh, and then he used the word priceless, which I’ve taken pretty literally.”

I watched in silences as Tara handed over Noah’s credit card. I was too speechless to do much else. Lisa came up beside me and squeezed my hand.

“He’s still the same guy. He’s just more comfortable with it now.”

She was right. The Noah I was seeing so much of suddenly had always been there and I had always known it. He just hadn’t ever stuck around for that long. In the past it seemed like every time I caught a glimpse of him, the other Noah, the asshole Noah, would rear his ugly head to try and convince me I had been wrong about what I’d seen. Sometimes I had believed the asshole and sometimes I hadn’t. Now I couldn’t help but be a little scared that the asshole would come back and try to take everything I wanted most, just as it was about to be mine forever.

Maybe Lisa was right. Maybe he was truly ready to show the world the best parts of himself, the parts I had seen long before everyone else had.

Chapter 10

What happens In Vegas

By th
e
time we finally reunited with the boys, everyone was hungry again. Thankfully, Tara had prepared for this and scheduled a late night pancake break at one of the twenty-four hour restaurants back at our hotel. After we were all efficiently refueled, we embarked on a night of gambling. D. won big at Black Jack while Tara scored a sizeable jackpot playing slots, but no one won bigger than Gabe, who was beaming from ear to ear when Danica showed up to see him.

The hours flew by and with no concept of time, we relied heavily on Tara to keep track of the schedule for us. It was after 5 am when she decided that not accounting for time to sleep had been an oversight on her part. She gave each of us a four hour window to use how we chose and ordered us to be back in the lobby for breakfast by 9:30 in the morning.

Noah and I didn’t even need to discuss our options. We headed straight for bed and passed out the second our heads hit the pillows.

Breakfast consisted of a massive buffet and none of us were surprised to see Danica standing in line with us. After that, the boys and girls split up again. Tara had arranged for the groom and groomsmen to take a ride out to the nearest golf club, a weird choice considering Noah didn’t play, but whatever. Meanwhile, the bridal party was to enjoy a day at the spa. While I was initially apprehensive about the idea of being poked and prodded and covered in mud by complete strangers, I got over it quickly. I still wasn’t fond of the mud, but everything else more than made up for the minor discomforts of having grainy wet sand in places you really shouldn’t ever have grainy anything. And even I had to admit, my skin felt ridiculously smooth when it was over.

When we were done polishing up our bodies, we were ushered over to the adjoining salon where we received mani-pedi’s to match our dresses, before having our hair and make-up perfected for the evening. Best part of all, was knowing Tara wouldn’t be scolding me for doing a shoddy job myself as I began my trek down the aisle.

It was 4
p.m. when we headed back to our rooms to get dressed. Noah had already vacated the premises when I walked in with the dress. I had stashed it in Tara’s room the night before. All the guys had received strict instructions from Tara to be absent when we returned from our spa and to meet us at the chapel for the ceremony. While we’d be using the Limo, Tara had named Jason the driver of my car, putting him in charge of the groomsmen and their punctuality. It was yet to be seen whether or not that would turn out to be a good move.

I was just finishing up when I heard a rap on the door.

“Yoo-hoo. Are you done? It’s time to take you to your wedding,” Tara chirped from behind the door.

I opened the door and waited for her last minute critiquing. There wasn’t any.

“You’re total perfection,” she sighed, then she remembered the large paper back in her hand and added, “Oh, I almost forgot. You’ll need these.” Tara reached into the bag with her free hand and retrieved a lovely bouquet of white roses. The simplicity of it brought the perfect balance to my otherwise blingy ensemble.

“Wow. I’m like a real bride now,” I said looking down at the flowers in my hands.

“Yup. With like a real groom, like totally waiting for you,” Tara said, mocking me.

“I know! And he’s like totally hot, too,” I added. “We better hurry before some like totally skanky girl comes a long and tries to like totally snag him from me.”

“Like, totally.”

I counted a total of 27 more likes and 23
totallies by the time the conversation came to an end as we climbed into the limo where Lisa and Danica were already waiting for us. I almost told Tara, but then I decided against it. She didn’t need to know that my nerves were suddenly so shot that I had to recite our stupid conversation in my head repeatedly, searching for our bad vocabulary choices just to keep from jumping out of the moving vehicle.

Then, the moment I saw Noah, all of my crazy fears subsided. Sure, the idea of commitment still scared the crap out of me, but was loving Noah for the rest of my life really a commitment? Hadn’t I already loved him for seven years without ever even choosing to do so? The next seven or fifty years would be no different.

The ceremony itself went off without a hitch. When it came time to exchange rings, I had a momentary panic attack realizing that in all of Tara’s careful preparations we had missed a very vital step. Only we hadn’t. Before I could express any of my concerns, I watched as Gabe handed a small box to Noah. He opened it up carefully and then slid a diamond encrusted band with a princess cut center onto my finger.

“You didn’t really think I spent the day golfing did you?” he whispered.

All I could manage in response was to press my lips together to keep from crying and force the corners upward into what was probably the freakiest looking smile ever. I complimented this gesture with nodding repeatedly before realizing that I was sending the wrong message and switching the nod to a shake of the head.

Somehow we both still managed to recite our vows perfectly, and neither of us broke into too much of a giggle every time our Elvis spoke in his extremely exaggerated ‘king’ tongue. It wasn’t until the very end, after he had pronounced us husband and wife and declared that we could kiss that he ‘thanked us very much’ and we completely lost it. Between the overflow of emotions racing through us, the lack of sleep and the extra shots of caffeine we had consumed throughout the day to get us to this point, Elvis’s grandeur was simply too much. We laughed hysterically until everyone else was caught up in the same insane whirlwind. Our endless giggling continued to send waves of involuntary movements through our bodies as we left the chapel. When we finally calmed down enough to catch our breath out in the parking lot, Noah was holding me up to his chest and caressing my face with a million feather light kisses, none of which left so much as a trace on my skin, but each of which etched permanent prints of themselves onto my heart.

Just when I thought the moment couldn’t be any more perfect than it already was, I heard the locks click as Noah opened the car door and reached inside to put the key in the ignition. Seconds later, the radio set the whole parking lot a buzz with music. Noah took my hand and sent my body twirling over the pavement as we danced our official wedding dance, his lips mouthing the words I love you every time he spun me around and our eyes met. The deed had been officially complete…well, almost. There was still the matter of cake.

Tara had arranged for us to celebrate back at our hotel where Noah had booked us a suite for the final night. When we got there, the room had been decked out with everything you needed to achieve just the right ambiance of romance and celebration. The catering crew had already set up food and beverages for eight and at the center of the table stood a cake that made me want to skip everything else and dive head first into its frosting.

After a long night of celebrating, our friends said their good byes and headed back to the airport as Noah and I continued our new adventure by hitting the highway and taking my most memorable road trip to date.

Looking back, the things I remember most about those twenty four hours in Las Vegas aren’t how delicious the cake tasted, or how beautiful my dress was or even how the size of my diamond took my breath away. It’s the way those who mattered most to me, showed me I mattered most as well when they dropped everything just to share in that moment with me. How the joy I felt that day, spilled over into everything else, resounding in laughter that still echoes in the back of my mind whenever I think it about it. And, most of all, I remember the look in Noah’s eyes when he said ‘I
do.’ There was no fear, no hurt and no doubt left to speak of. It was only love. The kind of love Grandma Pearl had always promised I’d find. In that instant, I had known that she was there with us.

To this day, any time anyone even mentions Las Vegas, Noah jumps on it, making sure that everyone knows about the time he went there himself. And he doesn’t stop there. He loves to recycle tacky Vegas phrases while he’s doing it, talking about ‘what happens in Vegas’ and ‘winning the jackpot.’ In the end he always laughs and says, “That’s the day I got Lucky.” And I smile to myself and think
,
so did I
.

Epilogue

I've alway
s
loved this house, with its rustic charms and warm personality. Even though it has been repainted many times over the years, the worn edges of the outer walls still seem to show through as the paint continues to chip in those very same spots. Aside from the living room which seems to get an annual makeover and the main bedrooms, most of the interior walls weren’t much different. In fact, the kitchen and bathrooms were still covered in the same wall paper they had been plastered with sometime in the sixties. According to my mother, they’d had been around so long that they had come back into style…twice, but I didn’t exactly share that opinion. While she proudly proclaimed it was vintage, I tended to lean more toward old and used up. Not that I was pushing for any renovations. I’m just saying, let’s call it what it is – well worn. And that happened to be my favorite part. That’s what made this house my home. The wear and tear of the years were more than just scuff marks and chipped paints. They were traces of my past filled with the memories of four generations.

This house was my
Great Grandma Pearl's and when I was a little girl my mother must have told me a hundred different stories about her. In a way, she’s always been with me, even though I’ve never actually met her.

It
was hard to believe that come tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t be walking down those steps and strolling through this living room on my way to the kitchen. Instead I’d be nearly one thousand miles away at a new school, meeting brand new people and starting a new chapter of my life.

For weeks I’
d been trying to decide how I’d introduce myself. My real name was Gabriella, but in eighteen years, I’d never been called that. It had always been ‘Vegas’. I was seven before I realized that it wasn’t my name. And nine before I realized it was weird. After that I always told people that I was called that because I learned to play Black Jack at the tender age of five (compliments of Uncle D.) but the real reason, and naturally therefore
embarrassing
reason, was that Las Vegas was the place I had been conceived. Which apparently, was public knowledge around these parts because I’d seen the ‘congrats on your baby’ cards and every one of them had referred to me as
Vegas
, or
Vegas Baby
.

            
 
In the end I’d probably just stick with it. So, I prepared myself to tell the black jack story over and over again…unless I came up with something cooler, but it was hard to beat a gambling toddler.

             
Of course the whole name thing wasn’t nearly as big of an issue as I was making it out to be. Mostly, I was just using it to distract me from the things that were really freaking me out; like leaving my parents and younger sister Hanna. After all the times I’d complained about Hanna stealing my clothes and getting into my make-up, I knew there would be so many more times that I’d miss walking into my room and catching her knee deep in shoes and purses, digging through my closet. And my parents, well, they had been my foundation my entire life and I dreaded giving up the things I had grown to depend on, like midnight pancakes on a Friday night with my mom or hanging out with my Dad at the bar on a Monday afternoon before the doors opened for business. And Saturday brunches. God, I’d miss those! The tradition had been in place since long before I was born. Saturday brunch had meant a time for friends and family to gather. They had brought everyone together even in the times when life was taking us apart.  I had enjoyed my first play dates with Jenna over Saturday brunch. I suppose it was only natural that we’d grow up to be best friends, given that our parents were as well. To this day, Mom and Tara still taught at the same school they had all met at.

             
Of course, there was also Nathan. He was two years younger than Jenna and I, and he’d basically been annoying me since the first time Gabe and Danica brought him over (and yes, it was at a Saturday brunch as well). I vividly remembered the first time we met because he had reached up with his little fist and grabbed a handful of my hair. I knew right then and there that he would be a problem. And he had been ever since. Somehow it only seemed to get worse as he got older, and cockier…and disgustingly charming. As of late, he had taken up hitting on me for entertainment. Like there was any way I’d ever go out with him! Never mind that he was younger, he was also an arrogant jackass who was well on his way to growing into full-fledged player-hood, and I wasn’t about to get in line with all the dumb floozies already waiting for him to look their way.

Maybe there was
one
thing, I wasn’t going to miss…although, if I was completely honest, part of me worried that maybe I’d miss Nathan most of all. But there was no way I’d ever tell him that… .