Page 73 of One More Time
It was difficult, but she pushed those feelings aside. They didn’t matter. Anything beyond Sunday was nothing more than fantasy. Her wild week in Las Vegas notwithstanding, Lucy led a very conventional, manageable life. Rooted in reality. In her work and her students. She had a lawn that needed watering. A temporary hold on her mail that had to be picked up from the post office. Bills. Tenure.Reallife. Chloe’s destination wedding had turned into more of a vacation than Lucy had anticipated, but it was still that. Just like any other vacation Lucy had ever taken, there were still obligations waiting for her on the other side. Syllabi to finalize, meetings to schedule, advisees lining up to have their hands held. Vegas was a break from real life, not the start of a new one.
Luckily, one doesn’t reach the age of forty without developing the ability to snuff out and bury hopes and dreams that have problematic consequences. Lucy had that particular routine down like the guy with the shovel and the extra-large trunk in a Scorsese movie. Impossible dreams, and their cousin’s unbridled optimism, were privileges of youth.
Tiffy guided Kim to a seat in the bride’s section, then worked her way through the rest of the family, placingDevin, Sam, and James in the front row. Brandon slowly made his way toward Lucy at the back of the room.
He stood beside her and focused his attention on Chandler and the officiant, who were standing by for further instructions from Tiffy.
‘Are your parents coming?’ Brandon asked, stuffing his hands in his thousand-dollar pockets.
Lucy answered, ‘My parents are in Bucharest … or Bratislava or some other European city that starts with a B. I sort of tuned out when they gave me some extremely lame excuse about non-refundable tickets a full nine months before the wedding.’
‘Still not the sentimental types?’ Brandon asked.
‘Well, to be sentimental they’d have to be human, and I’m becoming less and less convinced that’s the case.’
Tell her Nicky called.
Brandon only nodded. Lucy knew that as a man who had lost his own loving, caring parents many years before, Brandon couldn’t understand her own. Truth was, Lucy couldn’t either. But the Rollins family weirdness was a very old story that Brandon had been party to for as long as they’d been in each other’s lives. The bar for the elder Rollinses’ involvement in family matters was extremely low, and still they’d never managed to clear it.
Chloe and her entourage of bridesmaids joined Brandon and Lucy. Chloe carrying a bouquet of truly atrocious plastic flowers. Lucy could just make out a purple penis-pop tucked in behind a cluster of extremely unrealistic neon orange orchids. Somehow, though, the psychedelic colorscheme was set off by Chloe’s white Alexander McQueen suit so that the whole effect was the sort of garish favored by haute couture.
‘You girls make this for her?’ Lucy posed with a smile.
Alexis answered, ‘We are dangerous with floral wire and a glue gun.’
Tiffy sauntered back up the aisle and directed Lucy and Brandon to a vestibule just outside the salon where the groomsmen awaited their bridesmaids. Tiffy lined them all up, giving firm but ‘fantastic!’ instructions.
Tiffy pushed a button on a Lusso-Resort-logo-emblazoned iPad and a string quartet’s instrumental version of Bruno Mars’s ‘Marry You’ filled the air. Lucy knew that on the day it would be performed by a live quartet that had a regular gig at The Venetian, but even the recorded version was lovely.
Lucy stood at the doors, awaiting her role at the head of the processional.
Tiffy whispered, ‘Ready?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy replied.
‘Fantastic!’ Tiffy whisper-yelled, then pushed a button on the wall and the double doors to the salon opened simultaneously.
Something about the swelling strings, and the tune that Lucy knew by heart, started a rumble of nerves tickling her belly.
She stepped into the Cristallo Salon with Bruno Mars lyrics tripping through her brain in time with the instrumental score.
Lucy tried to remember Tiffy’s instructions. ‘Look upnot down at your feet. Keep your focus on the officiant at the front of the room.’
But Lucy couldn’t, not when she’d spotted Nicky sitting in the front row between Jenna and Sam.
His smile was wide and open, and Lucy’s stomach responded with a full flip. Olympic-level gymnastics. The excitement and nerves from the moment before morphed into something else. Something like exhilaration.
Nicky winked at her, and Lucy felt her face heat.
He wore another black button-down, this one short-sleeved, that showed off his tats, glistening like sugar-dusted candy in the crystal-refracted light.
Lucy felt her heart trip, skip a full beat.
When she reached the end of the aisle, Nicky rose to guide her to her seat.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lucy whispered.
‘Chloe invited me,’ he replied.
