An arm slides around my waist, and a second later, a man in a charcoal gray suit is kissing my neck.
“Hey,” Chaz says. “You did good.”
“Thanks.” I giggle. Yes, really. I giggle. That is what Chaz does to me. “Do you like the ribbon work around the neckline? I thought that was a nice touch. I’m going to do that to the new line of flower girl dresses we’re introducing for next year’s resort line.”
“It’ll sell like hotcakes,” he says.
He’s wearing the yellow tie I love, in honor of the occasion. My knees are melting. The sight of Chaz in a suit and particularly that yellow tie still has the power to turn me into butter on a hot stove. I wonder if that will ever change.
I have a feeling it won’t.
A bored clerk has just called Tiffany’s and Raoul’s names, and we’re getting ready to crowd into a tiny chapel with them when there’s a commotion in the hallway as a familiar voice shrieks, “Wait! Wait for me!”
“Oh God,” Shari groans. “Who invited her?”
I bite my lower lip. “Um… I might have mentioned that Tiffany was getting married downtown today… right about now.”
“Oh my God, Lizzie,” Tiffany snaps. “Aren’t you ever going to learn to keep your mouth shut?”
Before I have a chance to answer, however, Ava bursts in, wearing a demure business suit (complete with pillbox hat) and clutching the arm of her husband, Joshua Rubenstein, aka DJ Tippycat, followed, as always, by Little Joey.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Ava says, with all the regality her recently acquired position as president in charge of marketing of Geck Industries has given her. “We got stuck in traffic on the way from the helicopter landing pad.”
Tiffany glares at her, but Raoul says amiably, “So glad you could make it.”
Then the clerk calls their name again, and we all file forward for the mercifully brief—but meaningful—ceremony.
It isn’t until Latrell has uncorked the champagne, and congratulations have been exchanged all around, and we’ve been told to file out again to make room for the next couple, and Raoul’s instructed us to get back into the Town Cars he’s provided to take us back uptown to Tavern on the Green that Chaz snags me by the elbow and pulls me into a corner by a water fountain and a bulletin board listing clerk’s office personnel. There he shows me something he has hidden in an inside pocket of his suit.
“Do you know what this is?” he asks, a suspiciously bright twinkle in his sapphire eyes.
I look at the plain white envelope.
“It’s the deed to my building?” I ask eagerly. “You paid it off with your secret inheritance, and I don’t owe any money on it anymore?”
Chaz looks disappointed. “No. Is that what you want me to do? I thought you wanted to do it all by yourself, stand on your own two feet, and all of that stuff you said last summer?”
“Um, yeah,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment. “I do. Totally. So what is it?”
Chaz opens the envelope and pulls out the folded paper inside. It’s a pamphlet with Office of the City Clerk of the City of New York written on the top. Under it, it says, What You Need to Know to Apply for a Marriage License.
“Yeah,” Chaz says when I turn my stunned gaze toward him. “I took one. And before you throw up, you can say no. I won’t be mad or offended or anything. I don’t care if we ever get married. It’s not important to me at all. I love you and only you, and I always will. No piece of paper is going to change that. I just know it used to be important to you, and if it still is, well… we can do it. And this might be a way we can do it that won’t cause you to break out in hives, or me to york. We could just fill out the application now, come back tomorrow—there’s a twenty-four-hour waiting period—and do it. We don’t have to tell anyone. I just figured, you know, since we’re here anyway, we could go in there real fast—I wrote my name down on the list when I got here, the application office is downstairs. It’s okay, we’ve got time, we’re like number ninety on the list or something—while everyone else is getting into the Town Cars, and then join them up at Tavern on the Green. And no one will be the wiser. We’ll be exactly the same. Only we’ll be getting married. Tomorrow. Or whenever. They’re good for sixty days. The licenses, I mean.”
I am still staring at the pamphlet he’s holding.
“You’re asking me to marry you?” is all I can manage to choke out.
“If you want to,” Chaz says. “You don’t have to. And I’m not talking about one of those big monstrosity things your clients have, with a chocolate fondue fountain and the chicken dance. I don’t want that. I will never want that, do you understand? My sister had that, and it was—” He shudders. It is clear he is beginning to lose it. I lay a steadying hand on his arm as he goes on, “Your parents will probably want to have that for you, and I am telling you right now… I will run. I will run as far and as fast as I can away from that. I will come back to you at night, when it’s safe. But I’ll hide during the day, where they can’t find me. Even if I have to take to the swamps. I know there aren’t any swamps in Michigan, but… ”
I give him a gentle shake.
“Chaz,” I say. “It’s all right. I don’t want that either, okay? I like your idea. Doing it this way, just you and me here tomorrow. No one else. Because that’s what getting married is really about, right? Just us. No one else.”
“No one else,” Chaz says. “Because we’re the only ones who matter. I mean, I guess we can tell people… someday.”
“Someday,” I agree. “When we feel like it. We can just mention it. Like, by the way… we got married. Although they’ll probably be mad we didn’t invite them.”
“I don’t care,” Chaz says. “Do you care?”
“I don’t care,” I say. “We don’t even have to tell them if we don’t want to.”
“I should probably mention to Luke that we’re going out first,” Chaz says. “To sort of cushion the blow. I can tell him we’re married in a few years. Although he’s juggling approximately four steady girlfriends in Paris right now. I don’t know why he still thinks my seeing you is such a bad idea.”
“Aw,” I say. I still can’t seem to summon up any animosity toward Luke. I’m still holding on to his engagement ring to give to my own daughter, if I ever have one. Or to my niece Maggie, from whom I’m expecting great things. “That’s so cute.”
“Cute, my ass,” Chaz says. “Let me see your arm.”
Obediently I roll up the sleeve to the vintage Lilli Ann pink wool suit that I’m wearing. We both stare at the inside of my elbow.
“No hives,” Chaz says.
“That’s a good sign. Do you feel like throwing up?”
Chaz shakes his head. “No.”
I’m feeling optimistic about this, and about the number we are on the list. Ninety. That was Gran’s age when she died. They both seem like gifts from above. Like maybe… maybe someone is watching out for us… someone who wants to make sure we aren’t on the highway to hell after all.
Or that maybe we are, actually. Because maybe that’s a good place to be.
Chaz and I both look down at the pamphlet in his hand. It is divided into frequently asked questions, which include, Is a premarital physical exam or blood test prior to the ceremony required? (Answer: No) and Can two first cousins legally marry in the state of New York? (Answer: Yes) and Can I use the marriage license in another state? (Answer: No).
It all seems so… legal.
“You really want to do this?” Chaz asks.
“I think so,” I say. “But… you once said I’d make a terrible wife.”
“I’ve sort of amended my opinion on that,” Chaz says. “I think you’d make sort of a spiffy one now.”
“Spiffy?” I grin up at him. “Did you really just say that?”
He grins back. “I think I did.”
I grin even harder. “Do you promise to cherish and obey me?”
“I already do,” Chaz points out. “Especially the obey part. In bed, when you get saucy with the whips and chains.”
“Then,” I say gravely, “Charles Pendergast the Third, I will gladly marry you.”
“You guys,” Tiffany shrieks from the doorway through which everyone is filing. “Are you coming or what?”