Queen of Babble Bundle with Bonus Material

by Meg Cabot

  I laugh. Infuriating as he is sometimes, Chaz really can be funny.

  “Speaking of Shari,” I say, joining him on one of the matching couches. “What’s going on with you? I hear y-you’re—” Here it goes. I take a long, fortifying gulp of my wine, hoping it will keep me from stammering more. “Seeing someone.”

  “News travels fast,” Chaz says. “Yeah, I am. A woman from my department, Valencia Delgado. She’s meeting us at the restaurant tonight. I think you’ll like her.”

  Uh, no, I won’t.

  Where is this feeling coming from? The same place the loop-de-loop came from? What’s happening to me? How could I have been so good for so long—six months—only to start falling apart now, so close to the finish line…or what would be the finish line, if Luke and I had ever actually gotten around to making any wedding plans? Why am I freaking out over this Valencia Delgado person? Just because she’s bound to be incredibly beautiful and well read. Not at all like me. The last book I read was—God! An Agatha Christie novel someone left in the shop! What would someone getting his Ph.D. in philosophy ever see in a girl like me?

  But wait…what does that matter? I’m not dating Chaz. He isn’t even my type! My type being the kind who actually believe in marriage.

  “Wow,” I say, trying to sound unconcerned, although the truth is I’m consumed with gut-wrenching anxiety over meeting this woman. Which doesn’t even make sense. “That’s so great. I’m glad you’re not still upset over what happened with Shari…”

  “Actually,” Chaz says, “Shari and I are good now. We had lunch the other day—”

  “Wait.” I am so astonished I completely interrupt him. “You and Shari had lunch the other day?”

  “Yeah. And her friend, Pat,” he says. He’s reached up and is undoing his tie. His lovely yellow silk tie, the one that practically caused my heart to stop. “Sorry,” he says when he notices the direction of my gaze. “But this thing is driving me insane. I have to go change into real clothes. Do you mind?”

  I shake my head. “Go ahead,” I say. Then, as he disappears down the hall, I call after him, because I can’t stand not knowing more, “You had lunch with your ex-girlfriend and her new girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.” Chaz’s muffled voice floats toward me from his bedroom. “Only Pat’s not really Shari’s new girlfriend, is she? They’ve been together, what, like half a year now. Or more, actually.”

  I am having trouble absorbing all of this. I dump some ice into my wine and stare at a pile of student papers sitting on the coffee table in front of me.

  “So you guys are like…friends now?” I ask.

  “We were always friends,” Chaz calls back to me. “We just had a period where we didn’t talk as much as we used to. And, of course, we no longer make the beast with two backs.

  “So anyway,” Chaz says, coming back into the living room. He’s changed into jeans and a University of Michigan Wolverines T-shirt. One of his many baseball caps is back in its usual place. I know I should feel relieved that he’s out of his heart-fluttering finery, but strangely, all I feel is confused.

  This is mainly because he looks as good to me in the baseball cap as he had earlier in the suit.

  “She seems good,” Chaz goes on. “Shari, I mean. And Pat’s nice. For someone who clearly considers me one of the hetero male oppressors.”

  “So,” I say, unable to stop myself. I try. I really do try. But before I can clamp my mouth shut, words are pouring out of it—words I’d give anything to stuff back inside it. “I know it’s none of my business, but I was just wondering if you had told Valencia your opinion on the whole marriage thing—”

  “Lizzie.”

  It’s no good, though. As usual, the words are just streaming out of me, like water from a fountain. And nothing can plug it, not even me.

  “Because it really isn’t a good idea to lead her on,” I prattle away. “I’m just warning you for your own good, you know. I imagine a female tenure-track philosophy professor scorned is not a pretty—”

  “Lizzie.”

  For the first time in my life, something in another human’s voice actually causes my own to dry up. I close my mouth and stare. His eyes, for some reason, seem bluer than normal. His gaze blazes into mine from where he stands, looking at me from behind the pass-through.

  “What?” I ask, my throat suddenly going dry. I realize, from the intensity of his gaze, that we’ve somehow passed from ordinary—or, in my case, anyway, mindless—conversation to something much more serious.

  And, incredibly, I feel myself blushing to my hairline, my cheeks flaming hot as the asphalt outside had been before when Chaz had come walking up.

  Anything, it seems, might be brought up at such a moment. The fact that for the past six months we’ve barely talked…except politely, and always in the presence of someone else (Luke).

  Or the fact that six months ago, we had our tongues down each other’s throats.

  Is he going to bring up one of those things? And if so, which one? I’m not sure which I dread him bringing up more—the fact that I’ve been trying so assiduously not to be alone with him so we can’t have a repeat performance of what had happened on New Year’s Eve…or discussing what actually happened on New Year’s Eve…

  What if he comes out from behind the pass-through and tries to reenact what happened on New Year’s Eve? Will I try to stop him?

  Wait. Of course I will. Won’t I?

  Yes! Yes, of course I will! I’m engaged! To his best friend!

  Except…his eyes are so blue right now…I feel as if I could go swimming in them…

  “I swore I wasn’t going to ask this,” Chaz says.

  I gulp. Oh God. Here it is. I try not to remember that loop-de-loop my heart gave when I saw him coming toward me down the street. I swear I don’t even know what that had been about. I am not in love with Chaz. I am not in love with Chaz.

  “Are you—”

  Then I jump as the buzzer to the front door to Chaz’s building goes off.

  My shoulders, which I’d clenched with nervousness, sag. Whatever it was he was going to ask me, he evidently decides to drop the subject, since he says, “Huh, speak of the devil.”

  And he goes out into the hallway to buzz Luke in without another word.

  I find that I’ve been clutching the sofa cushions. Slowly I release my fingers…as well as the breath I’ve been holding. I’m sweaty, as if I’d just been running a mile.

  Not that I’ve ever actually run a mile. But as if I have.

  What’s going on? Why am I such a bundle of nerves? This is dinner with my boyfriend and his best friend. And his best friend’s new girlfriend, the woman I’m going to murder. Nothing to worry about. What is happening to me?

  And when is this evening going to end, so I can go home and kill myself?

  A HISTORY of WEDDINGS

  Weddings farther west in postcolonial America were short on ceremony and heavy on the partying. It was around this time that the shivaree, or charivari, became popular, a tradition based on an old French custom that included the wedding guests gathering beneath the bride and groom’s bedroom window on the first night of their honeymoon and banging on pots and singing drunkenly, allegedly to drive away evil spirits…but mainly with the intention of forcing the groom to throw money down to them in order to make them go away. Occasionally the festivities would reach such a fevered pitch the groom would be pulled out the window, and the bride would be forced to pay a ransom if she actually wanted to enjoy her honeymoon in the company of her new husband.

  They didn’t call it the Wild, Wild West for nothing.

  Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster

  Do you need a wedding planner? While they can often save you a bundle by getting you discounts, not every bride needs one. If you’re planning a large wedding, have a demanding job, or don’t have a mom or sister to whom to delegate the many tasks involved in planning your dream nuptials, then hiring a wedding planner might make sense. Look for
one who does wedding planning as a full-time job, who has insurance and good references, and be sure to ask how much she charges (hourly, fixed fee, or a percentage of your wedding budget).

  Your wedding planner isn’t supposed to be your best friend…but she could just save your sanity—not to mention your life!

  LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™

  • Chapter 10 •

  A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

  Germaine Greer (b.1939–), Australian-born feminist writer

  I’m having a hard time picturing The Office’s Jim Halpert dining at the Spotted Pig, which he allegedly did once on a date with Karen. I know it’s just a TV show and fictional and all, but this place is super-trendy, and part of what makes that show so endearing is that everyone on it is so tragically unhip.

  But there are people here with the kind of glasses they wear only in Scandinavian countries and tattoos all up and down their arms and I heard a guy at the bar telling another guy that he just got late admission to Harvard Law School, and saw a girl lifting up her skirt to show her friends her new thong. Plus everybody standing outside smoking in their camouflage cargo pants with their carefully messed up—but really loaded down with product—hair is also checking their e-mail on their BlackBerries.

  “Why are we here again?” Chaz keeps asking. We got a table only because someone Luke knows from one of his classes—a girl, Sophie—knows the guy who is seating people tonight.

  “It’s supposed to be good,” Luke says cheerfully. “Oh, look. Sweetbreads.”

  “That’s guts,” Chaz says. “I had to stand for an hour outside to sit at a bench at a tiny table at a place that’s going to serve me guts. We could have gone to the Polish place in my neighborhood and gotten guts for five dollars and no waiting. And I could be sitting in a chair and not on a bench.”

  “But then you wouldn’t have seen that girl’s thong,” Valencia points out cheerfully.

  “True,” Chaz agrees.

  I shoot Valencia a dirty look. It’s not her fault, of course, that she’s so perfect—tall and tan and thin with perfect straight dark hair that she’s caught up in a classy single silver barrette—a lovely complement to her ruby red sleeveless sheath dress. She can’t help that she’s witty and charming and intelligent too. Even her pedicure is perfect.

  I want to reach across the velvet banquette we’re sitting on and grab her by that perfect hair and pull until her face hits the tabletop and then keep pulling until I’ve dragged her across the restaurant and then maybe when we’ve reached the bachelorette party at the table next to ours (when did the city become so full of bachelorette parties that you couldn’t seem to go out without encountering one?) I’ll turn her loose and say to the bachelorettes, “Have at her, girls—oh, and by the way, she’s a tenure-track professor at a major private university.” Then maybe, when they’re done with her, I’ll give her back to Chaz—if he still wants her.

  Oh, wait—did I think that?

  No, I didn’t. Because I’m way too busy exchanging text messages with Ava Geck to think things like that.

  Ava: LIZZIE, WHERE R U?

  Me: I’m at the Spotted Pig in the West Village. Why?

  Ava: I’M COMING.

  Me: What? Ava—Why aren’t you in Greece?

  No response. Calls to her cell phone go immediately to voice mail. I’m not sure her “I’M COMING” actually meant that she was coming to the restaurant. Knowing Ava, it could just as easily have meant she was coming…literally, in the throes of passion, and also happened to be texting me.

  It’s not something I’d put past her.

  “So I’ve been meaning to ask you guys something,” Chaz says as the waitress brings the dozen oysters Luke has ordered. I’m not eating oysters tonight. Not because I don’t like them, but because it’s June and I can’t risk a bout of food sickness. I’ve got twenty gowns to get to twenty nervous brides, or my name will be mud in this town.

  I mean, Chez Henri’s name.

  “Hit me,” Luke says. He’s in a good mood because his classes are over. He’s not sure he exactly aced his exams—he thinks he might have tanked his bio final, actually—but that doesn’t seem to be bothering him too much. He’s just relieved they’re over, and that he’s going to be getting on a plane for Paris in a couple of days.

  If I weren’t feeling so guilty over the fact that I’ve barely had two minutes to spend with him all month anyway—and won’t for the next two days he’s in town, either—I’d be a little miffed over just how excited he is to be leaving me for the summer.

  “So, are you guys ever actually going to set a date, or is this just going to be the longest engagement in the history of mankind?” Chaz wants to know.

  I choke on the sip of white wine I’ve just taken. I can’t believe he asked that. I mean, it’s refreshing, on the one hand, that someone is actually asking Luke and me—instead of just me—about the engagement for a change. Luke’s the one who always seems to escape this kind of questioning—and who also seems so perfectly content with how things are going, him living in his mother’s doorman building on Fifth Avenue and me living in my hovel on East Seventy-eighth, where I have to answer the door with a lighter and a can of hair spray just in case it’s a rapist and not the UPS man after all.

  And okay, true, I still can’t even think about my own wedding without telltale hives showing up—oh God! There’s one on the inside of my elbow now!

  But still. Why is it that when it comes to the wedding planning, people always ask the bride how it’s going and never the groom? My family’s been hounding me for months. I haven’t heard a peep out of the de Villierses about it. Are any of them throwing me showers or engagement parties? Um, no. At least my family’s offered. Even though I’ve turned them all down, since I’m too busy with work even to think about that kind of thing.

  And I seem to break into hives at the mere mention of the word “engagement.”

  “Charles,” Valencia says.

  That’s the other thing about Valencia. She calls Chaz Charles. No one calls Chaz Charles. Except his parents.

  Chaz can’t stand his parents.

  “No, no, it’s okay,” Luke says, after slurping down one of the Caraquets. “Of course we’re going to set a date. We were thinking September, right, Lizzie?”

  I stare at him in total astonishment. This is—literally—the first I’ve heard of this. “We were?”

  “Well, that’s when there’s an opening in the rental schedule at Mirac,” Luke says. “And it won’t be too hot then. And that’s when most of my parents’ friends will be back from their summer places. We want to make sure they can come, because they’re the ones who are going to pony up with the best gifts.” He winks at me.

  I continue to stare at him. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I mean, I do, but I can’t believe he’s saying it. Out loud.

  “And that should give you plenty of time to start planning things,” he goes on. “Three months is enough time, right?”

  I look down. It’s amazing. But there’s another hive popping up inside my other elbow.

  “I…” I can’t stop staring at the angry red welts in the romantic restaurant lighting. The walls are red. Just like Valencia’s dress. Just like my hives. “I don’t know. I guess. But…don’t you have to be back for school?”

  “I can miss the first couple weeks of classes,” Luke says with a shrug. “It’s no big deal.”

  Something in his tone causes me to look up from my hives—there are two new ones—and into his face.

  “Wait,” I say. “You are going back to school in the fall. Aren’t you, Luke?”

  “Of course.” Luke grins at me, that handsome, easy smile that so enchanted me from that first moment I met him on the train to Sarlat. “Lizzie…you look like something just went down the wrong way. Is everything all right?”

  “She’s been working too hard,” Chaz says, speaking for the first time since popping his
most unwelcome question. “Look at her. She’s got those dark circles under her eyes.”

  I fling my hands to my face, horrified. “I do not!”

  “Charles,” Valencia says again, grinning. Her teeth are perfectly white and even. I wonder how she has time for tenure-tracking between flossing.

  “Does she even sleep anymore?” Chaz wants to know.

  “She’s like a machine,” Luke says. “I’ve never seen anybody work so hard.”

  “Of course I’m working hard,” I say, flinging open my handbag and digging through it for my compact mirror. “It’s June! What do you think happens in June? That’s when people get married. Normal people, I mean, who actually talk about when they’re going to get married, instead of avoiding the subject like it’s a ticking bomb that has to be defused the way we do, Luke. I’ve been working on twenty gowns, all at the same time. I’m trying to start a name for myself, you know. Single-handedly, I might add, since my boss has been out sick for the past half a year. And having you guys tell me I have circles under my eyes and that I work too hard totally doesn’t help!”

  “Lizzie,” Chaz says. I can see him staring at me from behind the compact, which I hold up to check on the circles. “I’m totally teasing you. You look beautiful. As always.”

  “Really, Lizzie,” Luke says. He picks up another oyster and swallows it without chewing. “What happened to your sense of humor?”

  “She’s terribly solipsistic, isn’t she?” I hear Valencia murmur, though I know she hadn’t meant me to. I’ll have to look up the word “solipsistic” later.

  I feel tears prick the corners of my eyes. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I do know I want to kill everyone at the table. I really do.

  Starting with Valencia.

  “And the only reason I don’t talk about the wedding,” Luke goes on, “is that you always seem to stress out about it so much whenever I bring it up. I know your family wants to have it at their house. I also know you’d rather die…but you can’t seem to figure out how to tell them that. So I thought it would be better for me to leave it alone until you figure it all out for yourself. That’s it. It’s not that I don’t want to marry you anymore, or anything like that, you knucklehead.”