“Well,” Jason said, in his most charming camp-counselor, isn’t-this-going-to-be- great voice. “Now that we’re all here, let’s get started!”
We filed into the limo and I found myself at the far end, near the driver. Jason, of course, had situated himself as close as possible to David Barker, but I was fine with it—let him be the kiss-ass all day. Kiki and Eric sat on my immediate right, with Matt on their other side. I determinedly didn’t look in his direction.
As we headed to the first venue, Kiki kept up a constant stream of chatter. She was so excited about the wedding, about the trip to New York, about the fact that we were all together today. Had I gotten that e-mail that she sent regarding the custom made cotton candy cocktail that she wanted for the engagement party?
“Oh, Matty,” she said suddenly, the segue between her previous stream of consciousness and this one lost on me. “Did you know that Jen lived in Chicago during college? Didn’t you live in Chicago once? You guys totally have so much in common!”
Inwardly I cringed. How obvious could she be? Not to mention the fact that I really did not need this kind of distraction today.
But I was determined to be friendly, to make Kiki happy, so I smiled winningly at Matt and said, “Oh, really? Whereabouts in Chicago did you live?”
“Nowhere you’re familiar with, I’m sure,” Matt muttered, looking away. I was shocked by the disdain clear in his eyes when he looked at me. It was as if he had decided already that nothing I could say would be of any interest to him.
I felt my cheeks flush slightly at his dismissal, but I was determined not to let the sting of it show. You’re lucky, I told myself. It doesn’t matter how gorgeous he is; if he’s an asshole you can move right along and not give him a second thought.
“Oh Matty, stop being such a grump,” Kiki said easily, but there was an edge to her voice I had never heard before and Eric was clearly glaring at his older brother.
Not relishing the thought of causing any discord, I quickly changed the subject, asking Kiki if she’d had the chance to start compiling the guest list for the engagement party yet. We spent the rest of the ride discussing details while Matt sat in silence.
The first venue on Jason’s list was a country club in Birmingham. The grounds were beautiful and sprawling, and the clubhouse was the kind of place that was so ritzy I felt uncomfortable.
As the concierge showed us around, and Jason babbled about his vision, I couldn’t help but notice that Matt also looked completely out of his element. This clearly was not the kind of place he was used to spending time in.
As Jason and Mr. Barker questioned the concierge about the wine list, Kiki put her arm through mine.
“Jen, what do you think?”
“About what?” I asked, alarmed. Was she seriously asking me about Matt when he was standing two feet away, obviously watching us from the corner of his eye?
“The venue,” she said, looking at me strangely.
“Oh, the venue, of course,” I stammered, pulling myself together. “To be honest, Kiki, I’m not feeling it. It’s beautiful and all, but it’s kind of…”
“Generic?” she asked.
I looked at her in surprise. That was exactly what I had been thinking, and it was the first time that Kiki had expressed anything other than her absolute delight at any aspect of the wedding.
“It’s just not…special. You need a place that’s more you, more unique.”
She beamed at me. “You and I are totally on the same wavelength.”
Over Kiki’s head, I saw Matt roll his eyes.
***
By the time we had seen three more sites, I was feeling pretty bored. I could tell Matt and Eric were feeling the same way. Even Kiki was lacking much of her usual enthusiasm.
The sites Jason had picked—a yacht club, a restaurant, and a hotel ballroom—were beautiful, very swanky, very elegant. There was nothing wrong with any of them—on the contrary, most girls would kill for the chance to get married at these places. But none of them really screamed Kiki to me. As I had told her about the country club, they just weren’t special.
After the yacht club, when we had all climbed back into the limo, Kiki surprised me yet again.
“Jason, what’s the last site you have booked for us today?” she asked sweetly.
“We’re going to see a beautiful reception hall,” he told her, a hint of smugness in his voice. “A lot of celebrities in Detroit have gotten married there.”
“That sounds just great,” she said, and I again noticed a different edge to her voice, as if she knew he was being condescending to her and she didn’t like it very much. “But I was wondering if we could change things up, just a little bit.”
Jason stared at her, clearly caught off guard.
“Well, of course, Kiki, whatever would make you happy,” he replied. “What did you have in mind?”
“I actually wanted to ask Jen what she had in mind,” Kiki said, more sweetly still. “She and I have just been, like, sharing a brain lately. It’s almost kind of freaky! So I just would love to hear what Jen thinks.”
Shit. I couldn’t believe Kiki was doing this. Everyone in the limo was looking at me, Jason with an obvious grimace of anger.
I looked at Kiki, who nodded at me almost imperceptibly. I didn’t really have any choice, though I was sure Jason was going to give me shit for this later. Oh, what the hell, it was Kiki’s day, and Jason had done, in my opinion, a rather poor job choosing venue sites.
“I see you guys getting married at a place like Meadowbrook,” I said confidently.
“Like, the concert venue?” she asked, confused.
“No, the mansion.” Meadowbrook was located on the grounds of a university just north of where the Barkers lived. As Kiki had said, there was an outdoor concert venue there, but also, tucked away in the woods, was a gorgeous, stately old mansion. It had been built by the widow of one of the local auto barons back in the twenties. The grounds and interior were absolutely perfect for Kiki’s fantasy, fairytale wedding.
I described it to them in detail and I could tell, immediately, that I had won Kiki over.
“Ooh,” she breathed. “That sounds awesome. Oh, let’s go look at it, please!”
“We don’t have an appointment there,” Jason said, smiling broadly, though I detected a definite tone in his voice. “But if you’d like, I can make some calls tomorrow and set something up.”
“Um,” I began uncomfortably. “I actually know someone. If you want, I could give them a call…”
“That sounds great, Jen,” Mr. Barker said. “Why don’t you give it a try?”
Two hours later the limo was pulling back into the Barkers’ driveway. Mr. Barker had booked the venue immediately. I had been right: Kiki loved the mansion. It was different than any of the other places we had seen and the castle-like atmosphere matched so perfectly with her fairytale theme.
I was feeling pretty good about this turn of events, to be honest with you. Though it hadn’t been my intention, I had clearly scored major points with Mr. and Mrs. Barker. Even Eric seemed excited about the site—though at first he told me he thought it might be too froufrou.
“I don’t really think so, Eric,” I had murmured quietly. “After all, this is where Eminem had his second wedding…”
That won him over.
We said goodnight to everyone—Kiki hugging me no less than three times—and the Barkers disappeared into their house, while Jason and I made our way over to our cars in the gathering darkness. As soon as he could be sure we were alone, Jason rounded on me.
“What the fuck was that, Campbell?” he hissed.
“I’m sorry, Jason,” I sighed. “But she asked. What did you want me to do?”
“You should have told her you wanted to see the next site, the one I had picked out.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I replied, starting to get annoyed, “the sites you had picked out weren’t going over so well with the bride and groom.”
“Well, her father loved them.”
“Her father is not the one getting married. He wants the wedding to be what Kiki wants.”
“Oh, give me a break,” he snorted. “Since you clearly don’t understand the way things work, let me explain something to you. Her father is the guy with all the power, okay? He’s the one you should want to impress. Not some flighty, ridiculous sorority girl.”
I took a step back. God, I had known Jason was a smarmy bastard, but this was too much, even for him.
“I don’t know what your objective is here, Jason, but my only priority is to plan the perfect wedding for Kiki and Eric.”
Jason grabbed my arm, his hand like a vice on me. “If you keep pulling crap like what you did today, you won’t be planning any more weddings at all,” he snarled. “What you did today was unprofessional and incredibly stupid.”
“That’s funny,” said a low voice from the darkness behind us. “It seemed to me that what she did today was her job.”
I squinted into the gloom trying to make out the shape there. He stepped out of the shadows and I felt my breath catch—it was Matt.
Jason immediately dropped my arm. “Hey, man, I don’t know what you think you heard, but Jen and I were just having a little chat—”
“I know exactly what I heard, man. You were berating her because your ideas sucked.”
For a moment, I was sure I saw Jason’s face redden, but then he seemed to recover some of his swagger. “I’m not very concerned with what you think,” he said lightly. “You’re hardly an expert in these matters…what is it you do again? Aren’t you a construction worker?”
Matt looked at him unflinchingly for a moment before he laughed. “Yeah, it’s a far cry from wasting other people’s money on a shallow, superficial party no one else really cares about.” Matt took a step closer to Jason. “But regardless of my lacking in profession, I think my brother would be pretty interested in what you had to say about his fiancée.”
Jason was silent for a moment. I had a feeling he would desperately have liked to punch Matt in the face, but he thought better of it and instead turned and walked to his car without a word.
I stood there for a moment, watching him, before turning to Matt.
“Hey, thanks. I appreciate that.”
Matt shrugged. “No big deal. I can’t stand that smarmy bastard.”
I smiled. “How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Know the office nickname for Jason?”
Matt chuckled softly. “Lucky guess.”
He was standing very close to me—in the darkness, I could barely see him, but I could sense his presence, large and warm. I felt my heartbeat pick up a notch.
“Is that really what you think about weddings?” I asked, curious.
“What? That they’re superficial and a waste of money?”
“Yeah, that.”
Matt nodded. “Yup, pretty much. I mean, no offense or anything.”
I shrugged. “None taken. But you’re wrong, you know.”
“Am I?” Matt shifted slightly, and I could see his face more clearly in the moonlight. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“I bet I could prove it to you,” I murmured. Crap. My voice had dropped a fraction and I’m sure my body language was just screaming for him to take me right there. When had I started flirting with this guy?
Matt looked at me appraisingly. I felt my heartbeat quicken even more. But then that look of dismissal crossed his face, the same one he had given me earlier in the limo.
“Not very likely. Goodnight.”
Before I could say a word, he had turned and walked toward his truck, his shape almost immediately disappearing in the darkness.
Chapter Eleven
“This is boring,” Annie said for the tenth time that afternoon as she, Ginny, Josh, Danny, and I tramped around yet another field, another potential site for the wedding. It was sunny today, hot and humid, and this was the fifth seemingly identical field we had looked at.
“No, Annie, listening to you whine like a five-year-old is what’s boring,” I snapped.
Annie and Ginny both looked at me, surprised at my outburst.
“Sorry,” I sighed.
I was so tired today, had been tired for weeks now. I was getting more and more overwhelmed with the work involved in planning Kiki’s event. It wasn’t just the wedding that I had to worry about; we were also hired to plan the shower, the rehearsal dinner, the welcome dinner for out of town guests, and the engagement party, which was fast approaching.
Jason had been a complete ass to me at the office ever since the venue fiasco, hoisting more and more of the grunt work off on me. I was determined not to let him break me, determined to impress everyone with my dedication and ability. I was working late, working weekends, spending time outside of work with Kiki whenever she wanted to chat. It was exhausting.
Add to that the work I was doing for Ginny and Josh, and I was starting to feel pretty ragged. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to be helping them, and Ginny’s happiness was my top priority, but it was all starting to get overwhelming.
“She has a point,” Ginny sighed. “This is pretty boring.”
“And hot,” Josh muttered, shifting Danny in his arms.
“And hot,” Ginny agreed. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
I felt a flash of irritation at her, and tried to tamp it down. This is what I had been telling her for weeks. A bohemian, natural, outdoor wedding was fine and good in theory, but in practice it involved dusty fields, unpredictable weather, no facilities…the list went on.
“Plus, I have to pee,” Annie said. “Where exactly were you planning on having your guests do that, Gin?”
“You’d have to rent porta-johns,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. “You’d also have to rent a tent, in case it rains—which, you know, isn’t like completely outside the realm of possibilities for late October.”
I knew I sounded irritated and short, but I couldn’t help myself.
“You’d also have to rent tables, chairs, linen, flatware, glasses, lights…” I trailed off, noting that Ginny was looking uncomfortably at the ground.
“You’re right, Jen, sorry,” she said softly. “I should have listened to you in the first place when you told me this was a bad idea.”
I felt slightly guilty. None of this was Ginny’s fault. If she had a vision of getting married in a dusty old field, I should have just been supportive of that. I mean, obviously I should have tried to talk her out of it, but I didn’t need to make her feel embarrassed either.
“No, I’m sorry, Ginny,” I said. “I’m being a jerk. I’m just hot and tired.”
“You know what I think would be great?” Annie asked. “If we could have this conversation back in the car. You know, where there is air conditioning.”
Once we were settled back in my Jeep, I decided we needed to re-group.
“Okay, we need to switch tactics,” I announced. “I know you guys wanted to get married outdoors and not have to pay for a site, but I think, logistically, that’s just too much work. By the time you bring everything in that you need, you’ll have spent more money than if you would have just booked a place that actually, you know, does weddings.”
“So what are you thinking?” Josh asked.
“We can find a place that still incorporates the outdoors, but that also has facilities. I know a couple parks that have clubhouses with kitchens and ballrooms—so you can get married outside but have an indoor space for the party. There are also some restaurants that have outdoor spaces.”
“Sounds good to me,” Josh said. “Take us wherever. The show is now in your hands.”
I sighed with relief, taking out my iPhone and performing a quick Google search. Within minutes I had set up appointments at a park-like venue close to Ginny’s bookstore, and two restaurants downtown.
When I got off the phone, I noticed Annie was looking at me with raise
d eyebrows.
“What now, Ann?”
“You’re kind of scary when you’re determined,” she said, shaking her head.
***
By the end of the day we had visited all three sites, and I was sure Ginny and Josh would choose one of them. They had liked the venue at the park, but they would have had to bring in food. I had a feeling they would end up choosing the second restaurant in downtown Detroit. It had a funky vibe to it, with local art hanging on all the walls and a very cute walled garden, just about big enough to have the ceremony. Best of all, they did food onsite, so we wouldn’t have to worry about hiring caterers.
Plus, it was available the last weekend in October, the anniversary of when Ginny and Josh had reunited. That put the wedding awfully close to the Barker wedding, which was on the twenty-fourth, but I figured I’d have a full week free to do all the big stuff—rehearsal dinner, decorating the venue, checking the last-minute details. I could make it work.
Despite the fact that I was exhausted, I was feeling pretty excited about the wedding. Having the venue and the dress made it seem much more real to me. I could picture them getting married now, picture it down to the last tiny detail—the flowers, the centerpieces, the cake.
So even though it had been a long week, and even though I had to wake up early to have brunch with Kiki the next day, I brought my laptop out to the living room the second we got home so I could do some research. Before long, I was lost in a world of flowers, ribbon, lace, and veils.
“Hey, Jen,” Ginny said, joining me on the couch. “Thanks for today. I really appreciate it.”
“I had fun,” I smiled.
Just then, my computer pinged, distracting me. I had an email from Kiki.
“Josh just found a really good deal on a honeymoon package.” Dimly, I could hear Ginny still talking as I scanned the message, something about the photographer for the engagement party.
“Jamaica, can you believe it? The only problem is, the price jumps like crazy if we wait till the last week in October—something about Halloween, I guess. So we’re changing the date to a week earlier. I know the restaurant had said they had an opening then as well.”
Three Girls And A Wedding Page 6
