by Kim Barnouin
Beat it, devil. As if any of those situations would ever happen. Cheese? Please. Anyway, Zach was already my partner in life. He knew me. Understood me. Wanted me to succeed on my terms.
“Need any help?” he asked, picking up the wooden spoon from the empty mixing bowl and swiping his finger through the icing.
“Nope,” I said, barely able to keep myself from turning around and telling him I’d found the ring, by accident. “I need to get started on the fondant and then I have a million seashells to make, but I’ve got it.”
“Any chance Jolie will come to her senses and call off the wedding?” he said, swiping one more lick of the bowl.
“Seriously doubt that.”
“God, I want to object. You’ll have to slap your hand over my mouth when the minister brings it up.” Sometimes he seemed fine about his baby half sister getting hitched so young, but sometimes, the look that came over his face was like one big, long sigh.
Poor Zach. He wouldn’t even get the chance to object.
“Jolie will be fine. Married or not at eighteen, she’ll blaze her way through life. You know that.”
“You’re right. I forget how much like you she is.” He kissed me again, told me he loved me, thanked me for walking Charlie, then headed upstairs to change for his run on the beach.
In just hours, we’d be a mile up that beach, attending the wedding, where I’d meet his entire family. Where he’d likely ask me to marry him.
Hell yeah! the little angel perched on my shoulder shouted in my ear.
Clementine’s No Crap Café will go to shit, the mini-devil on the other said, jabbing the pitchfork into my neck.
4
I delivered the cake in one piece (with the help of the trusty McMann twins), and it looked f-ing spectacular. Now, at four o’clock, glass of good champagne in hand, I stood barefoot in the sand (my shoes, like all the other wedding guests’, were in the boutique hotel’s shoe check-in) next to Zach on a private stretch of beach, surrounded by women in brightly colored sheath dresses and men in linen suits, countless of whom were Zach’s relatives.
I could relax too. Sous chef Alanna had assured me she was not only fine, but on fire to be in charge for the night, and I’d heard in her voice that she was the same old reliable Alanna McNeal.
The weather gods had been kind for the outdoor wedding—brilliant sunshine, bright blue skies, and low seventies. The ceremony for Jolie and Rufus, also barefoot, under a white silk canopy held aloft by bamboo poles, had been beautiful, even when the Ice Puppets, the groom’s alternative-folk-rock band, sang a nonsensical song-poem they expressly wrote for the ceremony. The bride and groom had gazed at each other with such lovey-dovey, googly eyes that all the preceremony buzz about their age and “rushing into marriage” had changed to “They’re so perfect for each other” and proclamations about young love.
Even I, someone who usually reworked recipes in her head during readings of hour-long vows and poetry, was held completely rapt by the Zen Buddhist minister’s every word about union and love and forever. The moment Jolie and Rufus leaned toward each other for their first kiss as husband and wife, I started tearing up like everyone else—including Zach. I’d always thought weddings were about frilly, white gowns and an open bar and a zillion-dollar industry that made brides care about crazy stuff. But this wedding was only about one thing: love. As I watched Jolie and Rufus’s first dance, to “You’re My Best Friend” by Queen, I tightened my hand in Zach’s and he squeezed back and smiled at me.
“Uh-oh, tipsy aunt Jocelyn coming toward us,” he whispered in my ear. Jocelyn, who Zach had told me was his favorite great-aunt, had been at our table for dinner. She was hilarious and told me funny stories during every course about Zach and his siblings as children.
The tiny, elderly woman, so elegant despite her bare feet, with white hair coiled atop her head like a crown, ambled over in the sand, trying not to slosh her glass of champagne.
“You two had better be next!” she said to us, her pale blue eyes twinkling. “I’m eighty-six years old and want to see my eldest nephew walk down the aisle before I kick it.”
Since we’d arrived an hour ago, Aunt Jocelyn was the third person to use the words next and us in a sentence. Each time, Zach smiled uncomfortably and changed the subject. If I hadn’t seen that ring with my own eyes, I might have thought marriage was the farthest thing from his mind.
Workaholic, cookaholic or not, all the mushy-gushy emotion in the air had gotten to me. It had started with the bride and groom’s engagement party a few months ago—with a toast Zach had given. Zach was close with his half sister, but when Jolie had first announced she was engaged, right around the time that Zach and I had started seeing each other, Zach and Jolie had argued every minute. His baby sister, marrying at age eighteen? Throwing away her future and a free ride to UCLA to instead become an actress? The double whammy had had Zach apoplectic. I’d gotten to know Jolie pretty well, and she might be young, but she was smart and she knew what she wanted. And what she wanted was to become an actress and marry Rufus. Trying to get Zach to see Jolie’s side of things had almost torn us apart before we’d even gotten really started. In the end, it had been Zach who’d convinced their father not to disown Jolie, as Cornelius Jeffries had threatened.
But Zach’s toast at their engagement party, held at his beach house, almost made me cry, and I wasn’t a crier. He’d clinked on his glass with a dessert spoon, then told the hundred plus guests how much he loved his half sister, fourteen years his junior, that she had a good head on her shoulders and a big heart. That it had been Jolie who’d gotten him through the toughest time of his life, when their dad had had a massive heart attack a few years back. Jolie, just thirteen then, had had utter faith that their dad would be okay, that he’d pull through because he was Cornelius Jeffries and nothing could ever strike him down. Everyone, including the big man himself—a toughened multimillionaire in the brown Stetson he wore everywhere—had started tearing up. But when Zach had said how lucky Jolie was to have found the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with—that was when I almost started crying. Especially when he’d added, “Because, when you find that person, you don’t let them go.”
I wasn’t letting Zach go for anything.
“Now, dear, listen to me,” Aunt Jocelyn whispered, wrapping her arm around mine. Her diamond bracelets jangled against my skin as she leaned close. “If you do want to be next, there’s only one way to get there. Be yourself. Be amazing. Kick tush,” she added with a smile.
I couldn’t wait for this awesome woman to be my aunt. “Oh, I plan to,” I assured her.
“Telling Clementine embarrassing stories about me as a kid?” Zach asked.
“Just giving your date some pointers about life and love,” Jocelyn said with another grin. “Your uncle Frederick and I have been married for sixty-four years this summer, testament enough.”
“Well, how about a dance to celebrate six decades of marriage, Aunt Jocelyn?” Zach said, handing their glasses of champagne to a passing waiter. He led his great-aunt to the dance floor erected on the sand and twirled her around to the band’s playing Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.”
As the bandleader announced that it was time for the cutting of the cake—and it had come out as perfectly as I’d hoped—Zach came back over, draping his arm around me.
Cornelius Jeffries’s fiancée, soon to be wife number four, clapped her hands three times and trilled, “Family pictures by the cake, please!”
Jolie’s mother, ex-wife number two, a hippieish artist in her midforties with white-blond hair to her waist, seemed only too happy to let the outspoken fiancée who’d stolen Cornelius from wife number three, who’d stolen Cornelius from her, take over. No wonder Jolie was so cool—her mother was awesome.
“I’ll hold your champagne,” I said, reaching for Zach’s glass.
Zach put both our glasses on a waiter’s tray. “She said family pictures. And where I go, you go.” He t
ook my hand and led me over to the cake, under its own canopy.
“Clementine!” the bride said, rushing over to give me a big hug. “I’ve barely gotten to talk to you all day! We have to catch up when I get back from Europe. Everyone!” Jolie called out. “Clementine, my brother Zach’s girlfriend, made this incredibly gorgeous cake. She owns Clementine’s No Crap Café on Montana. You have to check it out.”
Jolie rocked. The smiling bride and groom pushed down on the knife and cut the cake. Jolie put a little piece in Rufus’s mouth, and he put a little piece in hers, then they kissed, and Rufus dipped her, eliciting claps from the guests.
Those two loved each other and would be just fine.
As Zach and I were surrounded by people, some catching up with him, others asking me about my restaurant, waiters came around and handed out plates of cake, which got me many oohs and aahs and compliments.
“At least a hundred people have asked me how serious you two are,” Gareth, Zach’s brother, said as he came over and stood beside me. “If one more person asks me anything about you guys, I might have to smush the rest of my cake in their face. Or toss them in the Pacific.”
“Clem made the cake, and trust me, you don’t want to waste it,” Zach told his brother, once again sidestepping the question of how serious we were. How next we were. And we were very next. I could get engaged. I could run Clementine’s. I am woman, hear me roarrr my ass off.
“Ooh, the woman I’ve been dying to talk to all afternoon is finally standing alone,” Gareth said, staring at a redhead on the other side of the dance floor. He handed one waiter his half-finished cake, took two glasses of champagne from another, and headed over. Gareth Jeffries was five years younger than Zach, every bit as rich, and every bit the playboy that I’d once thought Zach was. But like Zach, he would do anything for his family, and the more I got to know him, the more I adored him.
“All the singles ladies, please line up!” Jolie’s stepmother-to-be called out.
Oh, fuck no. I tried to move behind Zach. I wasn’t alone, either. Not one woman stepped forward.
“See, Lydia,” the bride called to her stepmother with a shake of her head. “I told you. It’s not 1982!”
But Lydia rolled her eyes and dragged a few singles front and center. They looked absolutely miserable. “It’s tradition, dear,” she said, snagging another ringless woman.
“I think the single men should line up and catch the bouquet,” Jolie called out, and I couldn’t help clapping.
Big mistake. “You too, Clementine,” Lydia said, taking my hand. “And Avery, get over here, young lady,” she shot at Zach’s fraternal twin sister. “I see you hiding behind Uncle Desmond.”
Avery Jeffries slapped her palm to her forehead. “Someone save me.”
Within seconds, the stepmother had a lineup of around twenty sheepish-looking women.
Sara, who’d become friendly with Jolie through me, was hiding behind her mammoth boyfriend—six feet four and at least 250 pounds. Her unadorned left hand was behind her back to avoid Lydia’s eagle eyes for lack of ring.
Jolie stood by the water’s edge, facing the water. “Sorry,” she called out with a shake of her head. “Here goes.”
“And somebody had better catch it,” Lydia shouted. “It’s seriously bad luck for a bouquet to land on the ground.”
Jolie flung. The bouquet was headed straight for me. No one moved, including me.
If I didn’t put my hands out, the red-and-white monstrosity would land in my face and blind me. I had no choice.
“Yeah! Clementine’s caught the bouquet! She’s next!” Lydia shouted.
I caught a glimpse of Sara practically doubled over in laughter next to Joe, who was stuffing his face with my cake.
Holy hells bells, this was embarrassing. I glanced over at Zach, but he was deep in conversation with a cousin, thankfully missing the entire thing. As I walked over, I overhead at least ten people joke to Zach that they expected to be invited to his wedding. Again, strained smile.
Ya’ll are ruining his surprise, I wanted to shout at them. Leave the guy alone. Getting married is about two people who love each other, not all this crap.
Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than for Zach and me to take a long walk down the beach, hand in hand. For him to tell me he loved me, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I’d run Clementine’s just fine with Zach as my partner in crime.
Just as I joined Zach, his father disengaged from a group and came over to us. “Is this some kind of vegetarian cake?” Cornelius Jeffries asked as he approached us, forking a piece of cake in his mouth. He wore a suit and his trademark Stetson. Cornelius looked like a sixtysomething version of his sons—tall and muscular, his thick, dark hair shot through with gray. “It’s not half-bad.”
A vegetarian cake, ha. Yes, Cornelius, there’s no ground beef in this cake. “Actually, I’m a vegan,” I told him. “But the cake isn’t. Full of eggs and butter.” In the name of friendship, sometimes you had to get your hands dirty.
“Now it makes sense,” he said, taking another bite before getting pulled away into conversation with a group of men.
Zach was about to say something to me, but his cousin Griff, whom Zach had introduced to me earlier, pulled him aside with a maniacal look on his face. Seriously, the guy—early thirties, like Zach—looked to be freaking out, but in an excited way. I took a sip of my champagne and watched as Zach and Griff headed over by the huge planters in front of the hotel, as if hiding from view. But through the stalks and leaves of a giant bird of paradise, I saw Zach reach into his pocket and hand Griff the black velvet ring box.
Cute, I thought. He must have confided in Griff about proposing to me, and Griff wanted to see the ring—for some un-guy-like reason.
They shifted a bit farther behind the huge plant. Griff opened the little velvet box, took a deep breath, smiled that maniacal smile again, and then closed it. Next came a cousinly embrace. As they headed out from behind the giant plant, Zach caught up to some relatives heading into the hotel, and I watched Griff go over to a blonde in a short, pink dress. He led her farther down the beach, then got down on one knee—the black velvet box proffered in his hand.
Wait a minute. That was my ring. Wasn’t it?
A second later, she jumped up and he swung her around.
My ring on her finger.
My hard-won yes coming from her mouth.
5
I wasn’t proud of my next move, but after Cornelius Jeffries’s third story of roping a buck at a dude ranch out West, and the bajillionth toast to Griffin and his new fiancée, I faked an emergency at the restaurant and got the hell out of the hotel lounge (where the family had migrated once the reception had wound down) with its wall-to-wall Jeffrieses.
Rejoice! the little devil on my shoulder screeched with a jab of his pitchfork. You just dodged the bridal bullet!
You didn’t want it, then you wanted it, now you’re not getting it, the angel said with a strum of her harp. That’s what you get for snooping.
Zach glanced at his watch. “It’s just after eleven, and the place is closed. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”
Nope, I thought, my stomach churning. It can’t. “I’m really sorry, but I’d better go handle it. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
He looked at me quizzically, but handed me the keys to his car and I bolted.
Actually, there was an emergency (my feeling like a big, fat fool), so I didn’t feel that bad about taking off on the after party. And I did go straight to the restaurant, the only place that could set me straight, make me forget what had just happened.
Remind me of what I was supposed to be thinking about, what I was supposed to be focusing on. It wasn’t getting married. Jeez.
I parked in the tiny alley behind Clementine’s No Crap Café and headed in the back door, the place dead quiet and sparkling clean. Just a few hours ago, the noise in the kitchen would have been deafening on a bu
sy Saturday night, but now, at eleven thirty, it was my peaceful sanctuary, where I could shake off feeling like a dumbhead and work on my rustic potpie.
I put a Clementine’s No Crap Café apron over my midnight-blue halter dress, took off the four-inch heels, cranked up the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on the iPod dock, and got to work at my stainless steel station, slicing carrots into chunks and chopping onions. Sweet potato for the whole-wheat-biscuit crust or pumpkin? It would take forever to bake a sweet potato right now, so I’d use pumpkin tonight and see how it came out.
I added mushrooms, peppers, peas, corn, some fresh thyme, pepper, and sea salt to the carrots and onions, then brushed the veggies with extra-virgin olive oil and slid them into the oven to roast. Mmms, the smell of caramelizing onions never got old. As I started pressing dry the tofu, I kept thinking about that ring, so of course I started pressing too hard. Slam. Wham. Bam. Shitzam.
Focus, Clementine, I ordered myself. That’s what you’re here for. I put aside the tofu to start the crust when I heard my phone ping with a text.
I’m out back.—Z
I should have known he’d come after me. I went to the back door and let him in.
“The emergency was cooking? I smell something good.”
The emergency is that I didn’t want to marry you ten hours ago. Now I do. What am I supposed to do with that? Think fast, Clem. “One of the McMann twins thought he left a burner on, and then when I got here, I realized I might as well work on my rustic potpie for the Times reporter. I only have six weeks, and—”
“Can you bring over the ingredients to my place? There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” His expression was dead serious. He looked kind of . . . nervous.
He was dumping me. He was moving to New York. Hong Kong, maybe. He wanted to see other people. “What about?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level.
He took a deep breath. The kind of deep breath you take when you’re about to tell someone something he or she won’t want to hear. “Let’s go. We’ll take Charlie for a walk on the beach.”
