Trouble Me

by Beck Anderson

  They both climb up on the bed, give me hugs on my good side. I can’t shower them with enough kisses. “No one can go anywhere,” I tell them. “I have all of you here, safe, in one spot. We’re good.”

  “Did you name her yet?” Beau strokes the baby’s hair with one pinky. He seems to love her already.

  “We were getting around to it,” Andrew says. “Your mom was working on five names.”

  “She doesn’t need five different names. That’s too confusing.” Beau shakes his head.

  Hunter intervenes. “No, names that have something with the number five.”

  “She was born on the twenty-fifth, she was five pounds five ounces, you know.”

  “Well, then it should be Quincy.” Beau makes little curls with the hair on the top of her head.

  “What?”

  “Quincy. It means the fifth son, but it’s close enough. And it’s not Cinco, which is not a good name.” Beau tells us this as a matter of fact.

  “I like it. I don’t know where that came from, Beau, but I like it.” Andrew gives him a hug.

  Beau hugs me one more time. “Excellent. It’s done. I’ll go tell everybody, and we can go to the cafeteria.”

  The boys coo over Quincy for a few more moments, then leave to go get something to eat.

  Andrew sits on the edge of the bed, holding Quincy as she drifts back to sleep, full and sated. “I have something to give you, Mrs. Almost-Pettigrew.”

  “What?” I sit up a little straighter.

  He turns and sets Quincy down in her bassinet, gently tucking her blanket in around her feet. Then he comes back to my and kneels by my bed. “Marry me, Kelly.”

  “My ring? Where’d you get that?” I hadn’t noticed it was gone.

  “It was on the floor near you. It must have come off in the struggle.”

  I look at my fingers. They’re covered in scratches. I shiver a bit.

  “Um, hello?” Andrew’s still on one knee by the bed.

  “Oh! Yes, I’ll marry you. Just like I said the…I’ve lost track. How many times?”

  Andrew smiles, and my skin warms with pleasure. Nothing can replace that bright grin. “I think this is lucky number seven.”

  “Yes, again.”

  He stands up and slides the ring on my finger.

  I pull him down to the bed, and we kiss.

  “Well, enough of that, then. Maybe now we can get to making plans for the wedding. I still have the number for that elephant.” He smiles again.

  Everything feels settled, after so many months of fear and uncertainty.

  “Sleep,” he tells me. “I’ll run down to the cafeteria and see what looks good.”

  I watch him walk away and feel at peace.

  42: Hey, Man, Nice Shot

  TUCKER WON THE BET ABOUT QUINCY’S GENDER, so here we are at Pebble Beach, playing golf. Tucker, Jeremy, Todd, and me. All because of a five-month-old baby girl who has me wrapped around her little finger already.

  “Are you gonna tee off or what?” Jeremy calls from behind me.

  “Shut it. I’m trying to concentrate.”

  Todd joins in. “It looks like you’re trying to pass a kidney stone. Just hit it, Tiger.”

  I connect with the ball, and it soars down the fairway, straight and true.

  Tucker’s on my side. “That’s how you do it, gentlemen.”

  “Lucky shot.” Jeremy checks his phone.

  We get back into two golf carts and cruise to our next shots. The fairway is warm in the sun. The cut grass smells fresh and clean. Life is good.

  “So, how’s life on tour?” Tucker asks Todd as they disembark.

  “Lots of moldy hotel rooms, but someone threw panties instead of a beer bottle on the last stop, so that’s an improvement.”

  “Oxford Comma, eh?” Jeremy looks at him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Clever band name.”

  “We thought so.”

  I don’t know why, but Jeremy and Todd don’t love each other. Maybe it’s best friend competition. That’s such a girl thing to do.

  “Let’s not squabble, girls.” Tucker does his level best to tease both of them at any opportunity.

  We make our next shots and land on or near the green. “Last hole, gents. Next up is drinks in the clubhouse.” Jeremy twirls his putter and fidgets. The man is never at rest.

  “Thanks for your support, J.” He knows I hate bars.

  “Fine. We’ll go back into Carmel for an early, wholesome dinner. Some bachelor party.”

  Tucker chips his ball up onto the green, edging it impressively close to the pin. “Go hang with other agents if you’re looking for the scumbag experience.”

  Jeremy takes in a deep breath and turns full circle, arms out. “No, seriously, a gorgeous day like this with, dare I say it, my best friends? This is where I want to be, even if it means we don’t drink.”

  Todd nods in agreement. “What’re you going to do now that you’re a full-on family man, Andrew? We’ll never get to see you. Especially when you hightail it back to Boise whenever you can.”

  Tucker speaks up. “You have to admit, Andrew, it’s not on the way to anywhere.”

  “Exactly the way I like it.” I bend over the green and line up my putt. I tap the ball gently. It sails across the green, makes the hole, but lips the cup. “Damn it.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Woods. You’re denied a birdie.” Todd marks the score card.

  Jeremy speaks up. “No, really. We need to plan something. Otherwise I’ll never see you unless we’re working.”

  I smile and watch Todd make his putt. “I have a plan, actually.” I walk over to the cart, reach in my bag, and pull out three white envelopes.

  “What’s this?” Jeremy tears into his.

  “Fly-fishing trip. Swan Valley, Idaho, next summer. Best fly-fishing in the world. You three, me, and maybe Hunter and Beau if they can stand so many old guys.”

  Tucker nods. “Perfect. I want to try out my new reel.”

  Todd shrugs. “Never fished, but you know I’m down. The band’s taking next July off. Damon has to have carpal tunnel surgery.”

  “It’s settled, then.” I hop in the driver’s seat of the cart.

  “What, I don’t get a vote? What if I don’t want to go?” Jeremy looks pouty.

  “I’m about to make you a ten-percent commission on a three-hundred-million-plus franchise movie. You want to go.”

  “Fine. I want to go. I hate you, though.” He gets in the cart next to me.

  “I hate you too.” I smack him on the leg with a golf glove.

  Tucker and Todd load into the cart behind us. The wind comes up off the ocean. The sun begins to sink, lighting the clouds orange and pink and blue from behind.

  Jeremy looks at me, looks at the deep emerald green turf, the ocean laid out in front of us. He breathes in deep. “This, son, this is why you and I put up with all the bullshit. Thank you.”

  “We’re almost having a moment, aren’t we?”

  “Don’t ever quote me, but yeah. This is a good time.” He looks down at his golf glove, interested in the stitching all of a sudden.

  I turn the cart toward the clubhouse. “A good time. Definitely.”

  Things are all falling into place. And it’s a good place, finally.

  I like it.

  The next week, the way everything is decked out, the Bishop’s House is breathtaking.

  I know, I’m a guy. I don’t get this stuff. But I can appreciate when something is really beautiful. It’s a beautiful June day, and I’m getting married.

  Initially, I was doubtful about this spot. Kelly dragged me around to all sorts of places in Boise. We knew it had to be Boise; that was a no-brainer. It’s our place. It’s our home. LA is just where I work.

  So, she brings me out here back in February, and everything’s dead, it’s freezing, I’m freezing my ass off, and, hello, it’s next to the old prison? That’s a weird symbolism I’d prefer not to associate with my wedding day.
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  But then we hiked up the path in the back, curling up to Tablerock, and the lights of the city sparkled out in front of us, and the river twisted in a ribbon through the dry hills and down into town, and I thought, Okay, I guess I can see it.

  She showed me the little side garden, told me about the roses in bloom in June, and I nodded my head yes.

  If it made her happy, I was on board anyway.

  I guess it was smaller than I expected. I come from Hollywood. Land of the oversized everything. There is no such thing as restraint. Texas is probably the only other place so ridiculous. No shame in a very big game—that’s how LA plays it.

  Weddings I’ve been to in the past have been over the top. I went with Jeremy to one of his other client’s weddings. It featured a horrible amount of pink tulle: Pepto-Bismol and cotton candy’s love child. The swans in the pond at the entrance of the estate had pink tulle bows around their necks. PETA would’ve freaked.

  LA weddings that pretend not to be pretentious are the worst, though. One invite told me to wear a white or cream dress shirt with jeans that were “distressed,” and they “preferred” I not wear shoes. Women were supposed to wear “carefree country garden looks.” I hucked that one in the garbage at the two-second mark.

  Getting ready for our wedding, I was surprised at the small garden, the tiny rooms inside the house, and, yes, the abandoned penitentiary next door. But I was happy that Kelly didn’t want anything bigger. I wasn’t very surprised about that, though. One of the things I love about Kelly is how down to earth she is. She’s not trying to be anything she’s not. I can’t tell you how desperately refreshing that continues to be, especially after any extended length of time in LA.

  And here we are. I haven’t seen Kelly for hours. She’s somewhere in the Bishop’s House. I’ve been with the boys—Tucker, Todd, and Jeremy—out in the ridiculous tour-bus-sized RV Jeremy rented for us to get ready and “pre-function” in. It has a huge TV inside, which Hunter and Beau love. They’ve spent most of the day watching Adventure Time and eating what I think were supposed to be party favor mints. Hopefully Tessa doesn’t notice they’re missing off the tables.

  Another difference from a Hollywood wedding, Tessa is as close as we get to a “wedding planner.” She and Kelly planned it all themselves, and the furthest they went toward a staff was to enlist various female friends and relatives to help out with different little things: favors, centerpieces, decorations, big fabric bows that I do not understand. We had a huge budget, only because Sandy told me what an average wedding costs in LA, and the girls have used a tiny fraction of it.

  My only request was music. I got to pick the band for the reception. They are an LA band, and they are going to kill it, if I do say so myself. Todd was going to play with Oxford Comma, but two of the guys are on a trip to Mexico. Kelly asked a friend to play the cello as she walks down the aisle, so that will be pretty. What matters to me is that the reception gets us a noise ordinance ticket. (It would if we’d had it at the old LA house. I know that; it’s happened before.)

  I’m outside, wandering around the garden. The boys are driving me nuts. Jeremy might be the worst of them. The windows of the house all have a filmy acetate over them. It’s very pretty, and it’s also smart-man Jeremy’s way of discouraging any wayward guests from taking shots to sell to tabloids.

  The paparazzi aren’t here yet. We’ve done all the arrangements under pseudonyms, and most of the people are friends of Kelly’s or Tessa’s, so they haven’t said anything, but we sent out a final “party” invitation yesterday, so someone will get wind.

  We had a “save the date” invite go out, and we told them it was for Quincy’s christening. I’m sly like that. We christened her weeks ago. An old friend of Kelly and Peter’s did the honors. Kelly knows everyone in Boise, I swear. But it helps, because no one except the three of us, our folks, Hunter, Beau, and Quincy knew about it.

  My mom and Kelly’s mom are holed up with Quincy somewhere, and I hope the two of them aren’t fighting. I’m also hoping they aren’t hitting it off too well. Gwen and Maria do not need to form any kind of mom alliance. I’m proud of my mom, though. It took a lot of prescription medication and more than a few counseling sessions, but she gutted it out and got on a plane with Dad to come for the wedding.

  The cellist tunes up in the garden. The guests will be driven over from the church downtown in about fifteen (Tucker thought of that—he’s good, that one). The trees and the arbors and the stone walls of the garden are all lit with tiny white lights. It reminds me of the time Kelly and I had dinner when she visited me on set during The Last Drive. The memory makes me smile.

  But what really takes my breath away is my bride. She stands at the end of the aisle.

  “You’re not supposed to be out here,” she informs me.

  I wonder if I should close my eyes. “I wanted to see you before everyone got here. And I’m a rule breaker.”

  She’s amazing. A delicate veil falls down her back from the comb in her thick, dark hair. Her dress is a pale pink. She looks a little nervous, her cheeks flushed. We had a delicate conversation a while back about the way a wedding might feel to her, what it might feel like to put on a wedding dress again.

  I wasn’t sure how a widow might want things to go. She decided to wear Peter’s ring on her right hand. It’s her way to bring his memory to the ceremony. It breaks my heart when she touches it. I swear I can see all the hurt and loss in the depths of her eyes. The whole story of losing him unspools in the seconds between her touching the band and her consciously changing course to think of something else.

  This only makes me more determined to keep her happy for the rest of her life. She deserves it for so many reasons.

  After a lot of consideration, and wondering if it felt right, she decided she wanted to have a ceremony with family and friends, the people we’ve leaned on.

  And so here she stands, in her soft, satin gown, the clean lines hugging her waist and falling to the ground, trailing out behind her. It’s simple and purely sexy. I can’t stand it. Let’s skip to the leaving for the honeymoon part right now, can we?

  “Just a quick kiss, and then I better go back in,” she says. “The moms will skin me alive if they know I’m out here.”

  I pull her to me, feel the silky gown under my hands, smooth my fingers down the back with the little buttons at the small of her waist. I could get very lost in the sensation.

  “Hello, Mr. Pettigrew, are you with me?” She steps out of the embrace and touches me playfully on the nose.

  “I’m here. You’re amazing.” I lean forward to kiss her.

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Before all of this is a blur, and it will be—”

  “What?”

  “I never thought I’d be happy again. Not like this. I didn’t know I could.”

  Her eyes well up with tears. She looks up to the sky, breathes in.

  “I didn’t know how to be happy before you.” I take both her hands.

  “Well, thank you. For fixing me. For loving me.”

  “And the same to you, Mrs. Almost-Pettigrew.” I kiss her, her hands in mine, and the world stops.

  “This is some sort of a wedding-day violation.” Jeremy claps me on the back. “You two are going to jinx the whole thing. If the vans pull up with you out here, we’ll have a tweetastrophe on our hands. The whole point is I get to confiscate cells when they get off. Don’t take that away from me. That’s my moment…that and the toast.”

  “That’s still up for negotiation. I may have Hunter and Beau handle yours. And Tucker gets to go first.”

  “Fine. Now go hide. We need to get this show on the road.”

  My bride lets go of my hand and disappears.

  Why have I not killed Jeremy? For the millionth time the question occurs to me. I give him yet another opportunity to live.

  43: Beautiful Day

  QUINCY’S FUSSY. Mom and Maria are passing her back and forth, c
ooing and humming and trying every trick in the book.

  She’s probably hungry, and lately, the bottle just doesn’t compare to me.

  I am in my wedding dress, and if I have to nurse my baby on the way down the aisle, well, that will just be par for the course. I am Kelly Reynolds Almost-Pettigrew, and this is how we roll, my family and me.

  “Do you want me to nurse her?” I ask. “We have a few minutes.”

  Both the moms look at me in horror. “Lord, no, Kelly. This is your day. We can handle a hungry baby.” Maria scurries off to find the diaper bag.

  I got ready way too early. I wandered around. I sneaked out to see Andrew. Mostly I have just been turning in nervous circles. Jeremy poked his head in about five minutes ago and said there was one more vanload of guests coming from the church, and then it was all systems go.

  I am about to say it’s on, right now, and one last batch of friends is just going to have to pick up in the middle. It’s not like they won’t figure out that it’s our wedding and not Quincy’s christening. I’d say me in a wedding gown and Andrew standing up at the end of an aisle would be a giveaway, but you know, that’s just me. Maybe I’m assuming too much on our guests’ parts.

  Maria returns with a warmed bottle. Quincy relaxes into her arms.

  Jeremy’s head appears in the doorway again. “It’s time.”

  There’s a collective female noise at this news. Maybe it’s a happy purr? I wouldn’t say squeal. Most of us have been out of the squealing phase of our lives for a long time now.

  Tessa comes up and circles me. She tugs on the dress, fluffs the back of it, digs the teeth of my hair comb into my scalp. “You’re ready to roll. And I want to apologize for the girls. Joe’s got ’em teed up right at the head of the aisle, but he may not get the lollipops out of their hands for the walk. You ask five-year-old triplets to be flower girls, you get what you get.”

  “They’re adorable no matter what. They could pickpocket the guests and still be adorable.”

  “Don’t say that in front of them. They’ll do it. They’re a mob. They’re like a little diminutive French Revolution. They’ll throw your rose petals and then go storm the Bastille.” Tessa hugs me, hands me my bouquet. “Dan’s waiting for you, and he’s such a cute father of the bride. This is it, my friend. It’s your day, kiddo. I’m so thrilled for you. You got your second chance.” She kisses me on the cheek and then has to wipe her lipstick off. Typical Tessa.