I blink. “I knew it,” I say. “Shari was right! He really was too perfect. There was something creepy about it.” Then I add, “Wait. You’d better not be making this up to make me feel better about what we’ve been doing… ”
“Better?” Chaz echoes. “Hell, all this time, I’ve been afraid to tell you. I thought you’d have a nervous breakdown if you found out.”
“If this is a joke,” I threaten, still not sure whether or not I believe him, “to make me feel less like a two on the Bad Girl Scale, it really isn’t very funny… ”
“I’m not joking,” Chaz says gravely. “And I don’t know what a Bad Girl Scale is. It was that girl Sophie, from his class, all right? The one who knew the guy who got us a table at the Spotted Pig that night. He was doing her behind your back all last semester. You should have seen her. You’d have flipped out. She wore that Juicy Couture stuff you hate. And those giant sunglasses with Dolce & Gabbana written on the side?”
I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “Nice try. But you’d never have kept something like that a secret this long. You’d have told me.”
“Actually,” Chaz says, sounding dead serious for a change, “I couldn’t tell you, Liz. How could I have told you about Luke sleeping with another woman behind your back when you were still so in love with him—or at least when I thought you were still so in love with him? How would that have looked? Consider my position, being in love with you, and wanting you for myself. Had I come to you before I’d actually, ahem, managed to win you over, as I apparently have now, and suggested to you that your fiancé was sleeping around behind your back, what, exactly, would I have accomplished? Yeah, you might have broken up with Luke, and yeah, you might have slept with me. But how would I know that I wouldn’t have been just some revenge screw—some way for you to get back at Luke for what he’d done to you?”
I blink at him.
The thing is, I believe him. Mostly because of the details—he couldn’t make up that Dolce & Gabbana thing. Chaz doesn’t know anything about designers—look at his shorts. But also because of the incredibly coarse way he was putting it.
What he was actually saying is incredible.
But, given his bluntness, it might just be true.
“That’s not what I wanted,” Chaz goes on. There isn’t a hint of sarcasm or laughter in his tone now. His blue eyes look almost pained. “That’s the last thing I wanted. For the longest time—since way before New Year’s, since the day I helped you move into this place—I wanted you any way I could get you. And that’s the truth. But I wanted you for keeps, Lizzie. And you weren’t going to stick around if that’s all I was to you, a revenge screw, a way to hurt Luke. So… yeah, I didn’t tell you. Until now. So sue me.”
Then, his shoulders still hunched, he whips out his cell phone. “Besides. I can prove it to you.”
The next thing I know, he’s pressed a button on his keypad. A second later, he’s saying, “Luke?”
“Chaz,” I cry. “No—”
But it’s too late.
“Oh, hey, man,” Chaz says conversationally, into the phone. “Oh, sorry, did I wake you? Oh no? You’re in town? What are you doing in town?”
I cannot believe this is happening. I flop back against the couch, slapping my hands over my eyes. I can’t watch.
“Oh, you did? Really? Oh yeah? Oh, she did? Oh, really. Oh, that’s too bad.” Chaz leans over and pokes me, but I don’t take my hands from my eyes. Finally, after a few more “really”s, I hear Chaz say, “Yeah, so, if you and Lizzie are splitting up, I guess that means things are really going to heat up with Sophie.”
Chaz must have put the phone close to my ear, because I hear Luke’s voice saying, “Well, you know, I’m going to be moving to France, so I guess I won’t be seeing as much of Sophie. But you know there’s this fantastic woman I’ve been seeing in my new office, that one I was telling you about, Marie… ”
I take my hands away from my eyes and just look at him. Chaz’s expression is a beguiling mixture of anxiety—that my feelings are hurt—and laughter. It is kind of hard not to see the humor in the situation. It’s not as if I care who Luke’s been doing behind my back.
I just hope he, like me, has been using a condom.
When he sees that I’m smiling too, Chaz puts the phone back to his ear and says, “Uh, Luke? So, listen, since you and Lizzie aren’t seeing each other anymore, I was wondering… how would you feel if I asked her out? Because, you know, I think she’s a great girl, and I’ve always sort of—”
Even from where I’m sitting, three feet away, I can hear Luke’s voice curtly cutting Chaz off.
Chaz’s grin grows more broad.
“Oh,” he says, his blue eyes twinkling at me. “You don’t think that would be a very good idea? Why? You think you’re such a sex god you should just have all the great girls for yourself, even after you’re done with them, is that it?”
Laughing, I gasp, “Chaz, don’t!” and reach out to wrestle the phone away from him.
“No?” Chaz is saying into the phone, even as he wraps an arm around my waist and wrestles me noisily to the floor. “Oh, because she’s in a very fragile state right now? I don’t think she’s in quite as fragile a state as you might think. What was that noise? Oh, I think that was just… my upstairs neighbor. Yeah, he just brought home another trannie from that bar down the street. Hey, Johnny”—Chaz takes the phone away from his face and yells at the walls as he tickles me mercilessly, while I try not to blow our cover by laughing—“it’s called abstinence! You should give it try! Oops, Luke, I gotta go, he’s puking in the hallway. Yeah, he’s sliding around in his puke. I’ll call you later.”
Chaz hangs up, throws his cell phone over his shoulder, then dives on top of me, burying his face in my neck. I can barely breathe I’m laughing so hard.
And I realize something: I’ve never had such a good time in my entire life.
Which is a lot to say, considering the day I’ve had.
Anyone familiar with her historical romances knows that any young bride worth her salt went to Scotland to elope in nineteenth-century Europe (even back then girls under eighteen weren’t allowed to wed without their parents’ permission). Even Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice despairs when she learns her flighty sister Lydia has not gone to Gretna Green with her lover, Wickham, for it meant he had no intention of marrying her.
Scotland is still a popular wedding destination for Americans, and many travel packages for that purpose can be purchased. Although care should be taken to fill out the necessary paperwork stateside before going, or the unwary bride could find herself in the same situation as poor, unhappy Lydia.
Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster
Eloping doesn’t necessarily mean a couple has to miss out on the fun of wedding gifts! The couple’s parents or other relatives or friends can still choose to host a reception for them upon their return. They can even still register for gifts and be within the confines of good taste and etiquette. With weddings growing to be so costly these days, some parents are finding it less expensive to pay their daughters to elope.
We should all be so lucky.
LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™
• Chapter 24 •
There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep House as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
Homer (eighth century B.C.), Greek poet
I find Monsieur Henri in his back garden the next morning, precisely where his wife said he’d be: practicing on his homemade pétanque lane.
He seems surprised to see me.
Well, I don’t suppose it’s often he receives visitors from Manhattan to his suburban Cranbury, New Jersey, home.