Queen of Babble Bundle with Bonus Material

by Meg Cabot

“You’re going somewhere on the Fourth of July?” she asks sadly.

  It takes me a minute to register what she’s saying. Then I shake my head.

  “Just to a barbecue,” I say. “At my best friend’s house. In Brooklyn.” When Ava continues to look stricken, I add, “Ava…you can come, if you want to. But…won’t you have other plans? I mean, the Fourth of July isn’t for another week. You’ll probably have gotten a better invitation by then.” And, please God, you won’t still be staying at my place.

  “I don’t know,” Ava says. “Maybe. Chaz is going to be there?”

  “Yes,” I say slowly, wondering what she’s getting at.

  “I kind of have been wanting to see this guy,” Ava says. “You talk about him so much. Maybe I’ll just stop by. Oh, there he is!” She points a French-manicured finger at the screen.

  And I have the privilege of gazing, for the first time, at DJ Tippycat.

  He is surprisingly normal looking—a bit on the short side, slightly balding, and wearing a shirt with the word “Wonderbread” written on it. In fact, if Shari were here, she’d accuse him of being a nebbish.

  “Wow,” I say. “He’s…that’s…”

  “I know,” Ava says with a sigh. “Isn’t he hot?”

  And I realize that there really is no accounting for taste. At least when it comes to DJs. And, I’m pretty sure, princes.

  And philosophy Ph.D. candidates.

  A HISTORY of WEDDINGS

  When, during medieval times, marriages represented not only the joining of two people but of two families, or even two countries, it was necessary for the bride to dress to impress, meaning layering on the bling…not just jewels, but the costliest furs and materials that could be found, as she was representing her noble lineage.

  So were introduced the first wedding gowns…the richer and more powerful the bride’s family, the wider the sleeves and the longer the train.

  Obviously, those on the lower social rungs attempted to copy the richies until…well, everyone’s wedding gowns were long and flowing.

  It wasn’t until Queen Victoria chose to wear white to her wedding to Prince Albert that the color became the most popular choice for wedding gowns. Until then it wasn’t thought to represent brides or purity—blue was!

  But white has stood for brides ever since, and we have the Victorians to thank for it…along with the concept of evolution, free public education, and don’t forget Jack the Ripper!

  Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster

  While starlets such as Sarah Jessica Parker might be able to get away with a black wedding gown, a touch of white to acknowledge the special nature of the day is generally appreciated. Wearing all black on your wedding day is actually considered bad luck. While it hasn’t appeared to affect Sarah (as of this writing), really—why risk it?

  LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™

  • Chapter 13 •

  There are three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.

  I Corinthians 13:13

  I wake the next morning to the sound of a horrified gasp.

  I spring from the couch—ignoring the crick in my neck, brought about by having spent the night on a less than comfortable sleeper sofa that does not, in fact, fold out—and lunge for the window, where Ava is standing.

  “What?” I demand, expecting to find a dead body, at the very least. But all I see are a few dozen paparazzi lying in wait below.

  Ava points a trembling finger at them. They haven’t yet noticed that she’s spotted them; they are leaning against parked cars, smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee from Starbucks cups.

  “How,” Ava demands, in a sleep-roughened voice, “did they find me?”

  I blink down at the rough-and-tumble cameramen, with their beards and their cargo pants and their multiple lenses.

  “How should I know?” I ask. I try not to sound as cranky as I feel. I’m not really a morning person, and feel even less so after my night on the couch. “I didn’t tell anyone you were here.”

  “Well,” Ava says. She’s scooped up Snow White and is clutching her to one silk pajama–ed breast. “I certainly didn’t tell anyone I was here.”

  “Little Joey?” I ask.

  Ava shakes her head. “No way. Are you sure you didn’t tell anyone?” Ava has begun tearing about the apartment, gathering up her things and stuffing them back into her seven suitcases—as much as she can do so one-handed, since she’s still hanging on to her dog. “What about Luke? Could Luke have told anyone? Maybe he’s mad at you for breaking up with him.”

  “We’re not broken up,” I remind her. “I told you, we’re just on a break. Besides, he doesn’t even know who you are.”

  I notice Ava’s lower lip jut out a fraction of an inch, but she chooses to ignore this ill-timed reminder that not everyone is addicted to Google Entertainment News.

  “Well, what about your friend Shari?” she asks. “You told her not to tell anyone I was here, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did,” I said. “She’d never say a word. What about your limo driver? Would he have told anyone?”

  “Absolutely not. They all sign a confidentiality agreement with the company they work for. He’d never breathe a word, not if he didn’t want to lose his job.” Ava pauses as she’s jabbing numbers into her cell phone. “What about your grandmother?”

  I immediately begin chewing my lower lip. Gran. I’d forgotten to tell Gran not to tell anyone that Ava Geck was staying in my apartment. But surely she wouldn’t—

  “Yeah,” Ava says, looking away from me. “That’s what I figured.” Someone picks up on the other end of the line she’s dialing. “Joey?” she barks into the phone. “Code one. We’re compromised. Come now.”

  “But she wouldn’t have told anyone,” I insist, trailing after Ava as she heads into the bathroom. “I mean, Gran didn’t even know for sure it was you. And she wouldn’t have known who to call. She doesn’t exactly have TMZ or whoever on speed dial!”

  “Yeah,” Ava says, looking tight-faced. “Well, she sure seems to have caught on fast, hasn’t she?”

  It’s all I can do not to burst out with, You’re the one who picked up the phone! You’re the one who taught her how to program the season pass on her TiVo!

  It’s not Ava’s fault, though, I know. It’s mine. Me and my big mouth. As usual.

  “Ava,” I say. “I’m so sorry. I’m really just so, so sorry.”

  “Whatever,” Ava says, with a shrug of her slim shoulders. I notice she can’t seem to make eye contact with me. “I’m going to take a shower. When Joey gets here, will you buzz him up? He’ll buzz three times quick in a row, then twice, real slow, so you’ll know it’s him. Okay?”

  I nod. I feel terrible. “Ava—”

  “Just let him in,” Ava says. “Okay?”

  I nod again, then back out of the bathroom so she can close the door. A second later, I hear the water turn on.

  I can’t believe this. What a disaster! The integrity of Chez Henri has been totally compromised. Not to mention my own personal integrity. Not that I had much of it to begin with.

  Still, I can’t believe Gran of all people had been the one who’d called the paps on Ava. She wouldn’t even have known how to do it. It’s not as if it matters—the damage is done, obviously—but I have to know. I have to know if it’s really my fault. I pick up the phone and call my parents’ house. Gran picks up on the first ring.

  “What?” she demands.

  “Gran,” I say. I keep my voice low, in case Ava hasn’t gotten into the shower yet and is eavesdropping, as she is all too wont to do.

  “Who is this?” Gran demands. “Lizzie? No one’s here. Your dad’s at work, and your mom’s at the Y. Your sisters are all God knows where—”

  “That’s okay, it’s you I want to talk to, anyway,” I say. “Did you say anything to anyone about Ava Geck staying at my place?”

  “Well, good morning to you too,” Gran says. “Did you shtup him yet
?”

  “Gran,” I whisper. “I’m serious. Did you tell anyone about Ava?”

  “Of course not,” Gran says, sounding annoyed. “Who would I tell? No one talks to me except you. I’m just crazy old Gran, too drunk for anyone to take seriously—”

  I feel myself begin to relax. It hadn’t been my fault after all. For once in my life, it hadn’t been me—

  “Although,” Gran says, in a different tone, “your sister Rose was skulking around last night while I was talking to you.”

  I feel my blood run cold. If it had been Sarah, I wouldn’t be worried. But Rose is a different story.

  “Do you think she heard you?” I ask.

  “I know she heard me,” Gran says. “She asked a lot of questions after I hung up, like why I was asking about Ava Geck, and what Ava Geck was doing at your place. I just told her what I knew—”

  I let out the worst curse word I know. Gran, being Gran, is unimpressed.

  “Well,” she says. “You can’t exactly blame her. It’s not like she doesn’t need the money, the way she’s maxed out her credit cards on clothes over at the discount places…especially that T.J. Maxx. Plus that no-good bohunk of a husband of hers got laid off again, and he’s not exactly impartial to the jewelry counter over at JCPenney. You should see how many gold neck chains I saw him wearing at the pool the other day.”

  I close my eyes, trying to summon the strength I need not to burst into tears on the spot. I’m sure Rose is swimming in debt.

  That doesn’t mean I don’t want to hop on a plane to Ann Arbor and strangle her.

  “If you see Rose today, Gran,” I say, “can you give her a swift kick in the pants for me?”

  “Don’t worry,” Gran assures me, relishing, as usual, being in the middle of a cat fight between me and one of my sisters. “I’ll remind her of how fat her arms looked in that slutty dress she wore for her senior prom. That always makes her cry. Like goddamned Niagara Falls.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and hang up feeling only slightly better. Really, could things get any worse?

  And yet they do when, a half hour later, Ava emerges from my bathroom looking perfectly coiffed in a purple animal-print catsuit with bright orange stilettos, and finds Little Joey and me waiting for her on the couch.

  “Ready?” she asks him, not even glancing at me.

  “Ava,” I say, leaping up. “I’m sorry. It was me. I mean, I told my grandma. But it wasn’t her fault. My sister—”

  “It’s okay,” Ava cuts me off. But I can tell from her pinched expression it’s not. It’s not okay. It’s far from okay. “We’re going now. Right, Joey?”

  Joey heaves his three-hundred-pound girth up from the sofa. “You got it, Miss Geck. I already took down the suitcases.”

  “Ava,” I say, trying again.

  “It’s okay, Lizzie,” Ava insists.

  But I know it isn’t. Nothing is okay.

  Nothing is ever going to be okay—at least between me and Ava—again.

  I watch them leave through the living room windows. The paparazzi throw down their cigarettes and coffee cups—I’m going to have to sweep them all up before the shop opens—and surges forward to virtually attack Ava the minute she walks through the front door of my building. Little Joey shields her the best that he can, using his elbows and sizable belly to forge a path for her to the waiting limo. Ava climbs inside, Little Joey follows, and they speed off, the photographers in hot pursuit.

  And then my street is quiet again. If it weren’t for all the litter on the sidewalk—and the wad of blond hair in my drain—it would almost seem as if they hadn’t been there at all.

  But I know I’ve just messed up an important client relationship. Worse, I’ve messed up a budding friendship.

  And honestly, I have no one to blame for it but myself. Just like all the other messes in my life at the moment. Great.

  Just great.

  I had never been up to Shari and Pat’s roof before, but it turns out they’ve built a little garden oasis there. On a redwood deck, surrounded by overflowing flower boxes bursting with geraniums and delphiniums, you can stand and look out at the skyline of Manhattan, rising in all its glory out of the East River. It’s an amazing view. And it’s all theirs.

  Well, along with all the other tenants in their building. And all the other neighboring rooftops along their street. All of whom are having Fourth of July parties at the same time as theirs.

  But they aren’t about to let all the dueling stereo speakers bring them down. Shari, at least, has a lot of other issues to worry about.

  “I can’t believe he brought her,” Shari keeps saying, casting dark looks in Chaz’s direction.

  “I told you he would.” I’m downing ice cream like there’s nothing else being served, which isn’t true, because there are also burgers, hot dogs, chips, about ten different kinds of pasta salad, and, of course, the two pies Chaz brought.

  But somehow, the only thing that is making me feel better is ice cream. It’s been a long week. A loooooooong week.

  And the sight of Chaz sitting over there with Valencia—who is looking cool and serene, in spite of the ninety-degree heat, in white linen gauchos and a black tank top that shows off her perfectly toned arms—isn’t doing much to make me feel better.

  “So, is that the girl?” I ask between gulps of rocky road.

  “What are you talking about?” Shari wants to know.

  “The girl you’re trying to fix Chaz up with. Is that her?” I point to a pretty girl who has joined Chaz and Valencia over by the beer cooler they’re both sitting beside.

  “Yeah,” Shari says, looking annoyed. “See how cute they look together? They’d be a perfect couple—if he hadn’t brought that ice bitch with him. And what’s Tiffany doing over there with them? She’s totally monopolizing the conversation, it looks like.”

  I take an enormous bite of my ice cream. “I don’t know,” I say, my mouth too full to say more. Fortunately.

  I don’t mention that Tiffany, in the car service her fiancé, Raoul, insisted we share on the way over, had sworn to me that she was going to keep Chaz from making a love connection with “that ho from Shari’s office, because he’s totally right for you. And, furthermore, I am going to split him and that orange-name lady up too.”

  I didn’t bother reminding her for the millionth time that it doesn’t matter to me who Chaz dates because I’m actually engaged to someone else, because she’d just have brought up, as she usually does, that I’m “on a break,” and people who are happily engaged don’t tend to ask for one of those.

  “Hey, so what’s up with Ave Geck?” Shari asks, distracting me from my gloomy thoughts. “Is she still mad at you for outing her to the press?”

  I wince. The fallout from the Ava situation turned out to be worse than even I could have imagined. The Henris had not been too happy to see the front of their shop in photos plastered all over the press the morning after it was announced Ava Geck’s high-profile royal wedding had been canceled. I’d tried to convince them there was no such thing as bad press, but they hadn’t really gone for it. They couldn’t understand what Ava was doing spending the night in my apartment in the first place. Like Luke, they didn’t think an employee inviting a client to stay with her was particularly professional.

  In retrospect, maybe they were right. But then, Ava had pretty much invited herself.

  “Yeah,” I say. “She’s not speaking to me. Which I can understand.”

  “Well, she’s the only person I know who doesn’t want to be a member of Lizzie Nichols’s entourage these days.” Shari points at the small cluster of people gathered around Chaz’s pies—he’d brought both a strawberry rhubarb and a blueberry—running their fingers around the empty tins and then licking them, and then running them around the rims again. Tiffany’s fiancé, Raoul, and Monique and her fiancé, Latrell, have already handed out the bottles of champagne and boxes of sparklers they brought along with them, to contribute to the festive party mood
. And to make up for the fact that they hadn’t exactly been invited.

  “Okay,” I say sheepishly. “I realize four people is a lot. But they all really wanted to come.” I don’t mention that Shari’s fantastic view of the fireworks—and the fact that the Fourth of July happened to fall on a Wednesday this year, making it hard to go out of town—had something to do with it.

  “I’m not complaining,” Shari says. “It’s just that if you get any more popular, I may have to move to someplace bigger in order to accommodate all your fans every time I have you over.”

  “I’m not popular,” I say, abashed. “I’m just…”

  “Admit it,” Shari says with a smile. “They’re the misfit toys, and you’re the island. How are things going with Luke, anyway?”

  I shrug. “Fine,” I say, speaking around the red plastic spoon hanging from my mouth. “I mean, as well as can be expected, seeing as how he’s in Paris and I’m here and we’re on a break.”

  Shari points at the ring finger of my left hand. “You’re still wearing it.”

  “Well,” I say, neurotically shoveling more ice cream into my face, “we’re still engaged. He’s acting like everything is fine.”

  “Ooooh!” shrieks Tiffany suddenly, jumping to her four-inch stilettos and pointing into the twilit sky. “They’re starting!”

  We hear a muffled boom, and the next thing I know, a huge carnation of light is exploding in the sky.

  “Zee One Hundred,” Shari screams. “Switch it to Zee One Hundred! We’re missing the musical accompaniment!” She dives for the radio while two dozen people look at her as if she’s lost her mind.

  A second later, Tiffany sidles up to me and says, “Okay, so here’s the L.D.”

  I screw up my face at her in confusion. “The what?”

  “The L.D.,” she says. “The lowdown?” When I nod, she goes on, “Don’t look at me. Look at the fireworks. Pretend we’re talking about the fireworks. Her name is Mae Lin, and she’s got some kinda like master’s degree in like social work or something. She lives in Alphabet City and she loves the Buckeyes—that’s a basketball team—and collects vintage Fiesta Dinnerware. You are so fucking dead.”