by S. K Munt
‘Then naturally… you need something blue.’ The woman produced a set of keys and smiled at Leigh like Leigh had rolled in from the boonies snapping gum and snagged herself a lucky drunk, but she smiled back and draped herself over Ryan’s shoulders, deciding to play back.
‘I do...’ she purred, trying not to freak out over the fact that there were no price tags to be seen on anything, while deciding to make Ryan rue the day he rubbed his inheritance in her face- by playing her part. ‘But baby…’ she felt the woman’s eyes follow Leigh’s finger down Ryan’s incredible jaw. ‘You said I was your princess, remember? So don’t you think I should get a tiara too?’
She expected Ryan to stiffen, but instead he turned to her with a wide smile. ‘Why do you think I brought you here in the first place, funny-Honey of mine?’ He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her deeply and wetly, before releasing her and turning back to the cashier, pointing to the shelf below the thong to a stunning little headpiece on a comb. ‘Wrap that up too please. Actually no- we should put it on in here, don’t you think?’
Leigh’s mouth fell open, and she shook her head rapidly, holding up her hands. ‘Oh my god I was only-’
‘What my Honey wants, my Honey gets…’ Ryan spanked her playfully. ‘Can’t have a fairytale ending, without a crown, princess.’ The cashier turned away, snickering, and Ryan leaned over and whispered in her ear. ‘I’m going to spank you for every time you shake that pretty little head, got it?’
Leigh nodded. Oh boy, had she ‘gotten’ it!
Ryan continued to humiliate and spoil her through three more stores. At Agent Provocateur, he made her try on every single garter they had in stock, and made such a vulgar display of enjoying sliding each one on and off her stockinged legs that the salesgirl ended up hovering, clearly afraid her enthusiastic customer was going to vanish into the change room for two minutes alone with one. Leigh’s face was bright red, not only because he was making a scene, but because every time he slid one into place, he made a point of stretching his pinkie finger up under the hem of her skirt and pressing one of the little crystals into her swollen, now slick flesh and biting his lip. He was too smooth to be seen of course, but his confidence to pull off such a seduction with a woman standing right there knocked the wind out of Leigh, and the lip-biting thing was killing her. By the time he settled on a pale blue garter with crystal and pearl detailing she was breathless, horny and ready to do something incredibly humiliating, and she got the distinct impression that if she popped into the change rooms for two seconds, the blonde serving them would pounce Ryan and have her wicked way with him. And of course Ryan would still be laughing too hard at his own evil-doings to fend her off.
But they left, both unmolested, and by the time Ryan had picked up a soft leather whip from the Playboy store, a gorgeous set of matching platinum wedding bands from Cartier, and had convinced the people at Baccarat to allow them to borrow a single glass rose for the evening, (provided he left them with the five hundred dollars it was worth) Leigh had given up shaking her head and was in stitches. He was just such a goof-ball and though she’d always prided herself on having a high threshold for embarrassment, his antics spoke volumes of an epic level of self-confidence, and she fell more in more in love with him, with every passing minute.
‘Why the glass rose?’ she asked as they waited for a cab. ‘I get the tiara and the garter and lord, even the thong- but why borrow a glass rose, of all things?’
Ryan hailed the next cab and opened the door for her, and she slid in. ‘Well, you’re sort of like Belle from Beauty and The Beast, you know?’ He slid in after her and closed the door. ‘Bellagio Fountain please,’ he said to the driver, and then settled back beside her. ‘With the books and everything. Besides… I don’t see any risk in borrowing that. And I want you to see that just because something may appear to be too beautiful and fragile to last… doesn’t mean that it won’t.’ He leaned over and kissed her jaw. ‘That’s my heart. And I’m trusting you not to break it. Just like you have to trust me, with yours.’
Leigh stared at him wordlessly, and he tweaked the end of her nose. ‘Don’t cry on me, woman. We don’t have any replacement mascara here, and besides… it’s five hundred bucks, not a million. After the way you went down those stairs the other night, I’m not willing to risk anything more expensive!’
Leigh bopped him on the head with it, but she was smiling. ‘Just testing how durable it is.’
‘The head? Or the rose?’ he joked, rubbing his head, but like her, he was grinning.
*
At The Bellagio, Ryan led her to the edge of a massive fountain where they waited with hundreds of people under a now-rumbling sky, and when the opening strains to ‘My Heart Will Go On’ began to play, Leigh felt her heart flip over within her chest.
Another tragic love song? Really? Can’t we get some Salt ‘N Peppa going around here? Eminem maybe?
But then the water began to arc and dip, synchronized to the harmony, and it wasn’t long before Leigh was able to shake off the negative imagery from the awful end of Titanic, to gawk mindlessly instead. The show was beautiful, and she was moved to tears by the sheer resplendence of the display. Ryan held her tightly and sang along in a husky whisper, and Leigh wondered if any woman had ever come as close to Nirvana before, as she did in this man’s arms.
‘I haven’t been here before,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘I was afraid that things would come back to me, but nothing has. This place belongs to us, Honey- this memory will never be overshadowed by any other. I can’t say that about anywhere else in the world, just yet, but I’ll take you everywhere and do so much with you, that we would have lived five lifetimes, by the time I get the memories of one back.’ He kissed her. ‘Hopefully it won’t be long, until you’re as convinced as I am, that this is the only life that could possibly count for me.’
In his arms, Honey shivered with hope.
When the show was over and she was an emotional wreck, Ryan hailed another cab and directed it to The Venetian. Five minutes later, they were being rowed along an artificial canal beneath an artificial, sunny sky and Leigh’s head couldn’t move around fast enough to take everything in. Now that she understood that Ryan was trying to create as many memories for them as possible in the shortest amount of time, she was eager to help him- eager to make them count more than any other star-crossed romance ever had. She lay back in his lap, listening to him sing along with the man rowing and singing in perfect Italian, and then treated him to a hot dog from a little street vendor as they walked the next block to the bridge overpass near Paris Paris. The sky was so heavy by then that the stars were impossible to see, but Vegas shimmered beneath them and the frigid desert wind did sexy things to Ryan’s hair. She dropped sauce on herself of course, but it missed her white dress and landed on her shoe, and Ryan knelt to dab it away. She knew she’d eaten off her lipstick and was going to be incredibly wind-blown by the time they got to exchange their vows, but she just didn’t care.
‘Okay so I have something new- several something’s’ new,’ Leigh said, licking mustard off her thumb and then accepting a sip from the novelty cup he’d picked up from another street vendor, filled with a frozen margarita. ‘The thong is blue, the rose is borrowed…’ she touched her earrings. ‘And these pearls are about two years old. They count as my something old, don’t they?’
‘They could…’ Ryan leaned against the railing of the bridge and wiped his fingers on a napkin before stuffing it into a shopping bag. ‘But if you don’t mind… I have something else I’d like you to keep on you tonight... from someone important.’ He reached his fingers into the pocket of his leather pants, and produced a frayed, white piece of cloth which he then handed to her. ‘It was Imogen’s favorite…’ he said softly. ‘I found it last night and I think she’d like you to have it.’
Leigh took the scrap of cloth from him and examined it, smiling to see that it was a book mark. ‘Black Beauty…’ she whispered, tracing the hors
e with her fingertip. ‘Wow. It’s pretty special- I’d be honored to keep it on me.’
‘Yeah?’
Leigh looked up into his nervous smile. ‘Of course- if you’re certain that she’d be okay with you and I.’
‘I know it’s what she wanted.’ He took it from her and wrapped it around her wrist. It was just long enough to knot twice. ‘Do you like that book?’
‘I’ve never read it,’ Leigh said honestly.
‘Really?’
‘Really. I haven’t read a whole lot of those children's stories, you know? I was onto Danielle Steel by the fourth grade, and sort of bypassed the age of reading innocence. I only got around to Anne Of Green Gables, because it was sitting in a doctor’s surgery when I was little and I was a bored kid so…’ she touched her fingers to the band. ‘But I’ll read it next, okay? For her.’
Ryan took her hand. ‘Now I know that she’d love you.’
In front of the Eiffel Tower and fresh from a romantic canal ride in Italy, Leigh kissed him, knowing she’d be home wherever he was, forever more.
Ryan
It was strange that their wedding- their entire reason for them having come to Vegas in the first place and the thing he’d been obsessing about the most for twenty-four hours straight- ended up being the lowest key moment that he and Leigh had shared together yet.
There was no stress and no nervousness. No cried of identity fraud, no dramatic outbursts from disgruntled exes or cranky parents- Ryan took his place at the altar (which was right by a jukebox in the retro-themed diner) and watched Leigh approach him while the Elvis impersonator beside him crooned: ‘Can’t Helping Falling In Love’. The song brought tears to his eyes, as did the shy smile on Leigh’s face, but once again, it was that look of wonder that drew his focus more than anything else. She tried her hardest to keep her eyes on Ryan, but he knew that the diner was so ‘her’ that it wasn’t even funny, so watching her trying to keep a straight face and not dart across the room to order a milkshake or fondle the shiny chrome counter tops was highly amusing. He kind of wish he’d smuggled in a squirrel, just so he could set it off during the ceremony and watch her writhe with the need to chase it and damn the solemn vows.
But eventually, her frenzied gaze landed on him, and he saw her soften and relax, and her beautiful, adoring and still slightly-awestruck smile moved him more than any ballad ever could. She looked like an angel, the tiny tiara glittering on top of that cap of freshly-smoothed, satiny blonde hair, the playful, incredibly tempting dress hugging every delectable curve, those pretty silver shoes gleaming like glass slippers on the end of her long, slender legs… she was a princess, and though her knuckles were white around the stem of the delicate glass rose, conveying her lingering doubts, he knew that he already was Prince Charming to her… she just wasn’t ready to believe that it would last forever.
They were married by the king in a matter of minutes, and witnessed by two people employed by the little chapel. Leigh choked up when she repeated her ‘I do’ which was impressive to Ryan because he was so beside himself that he had to practically creak the words out.
‘I now pronounce-’
Ryan had her in his arms and was kissing her passionately in a heartbeat, and he hadn’t realised, until the words ‘Husband and wife’ followed over the top of their heads, that he’d been terrified that something was going to happen to prevent their marriage from happening, and knowing that it was said and done filled him with such elation that he swept her up into his arms, unable to kiss her deeply enough, falling more in love with her when she didn’t squeal with embarrassment or try and kick him away.
She flung her arms around his neck, stabbing him a little in the back of the head with the glass rose and whispered: ‘I was scared too,’ against his mouth and he groaned, knowing that the term ‘soul-mates’ was a very real thing, and that he had found his.
Eventually ‘The King’ started laughing so hard that Ryan couldn’t block him out anymore, and he put Leigh back on her feet and turned to ask where they were supposed to sign, his hand gripping her free one so hard that their new wedding bands clinked together. Mindless to the rules and knowing that no one within the chapel actually gave a shit about who was marrying who, Ryan signed his name as ‘Ryan Weaver’ and grinned when Leigh signed as ‘Honey-Leigh Dallas-Hone’ almost running out of space on the certificate as she did so. They shared a secret smile and then got up and posed for their portrait, then had a slow dance to ‘Love me Tender.’ It all went so fast, and though Ryan sort of resented the shotgun aspect of it all, he knew that they’d do it right, eventually.
‘Okay so…’ he said, stuffing their new belongings into the large shopping bag he’d been lugging around all afternoon. ‘Stratosphere tower then back to the room?’
‘Good luck getting into there right now,’ the photographer said, handing them their thumb drive of precious memories. ‘I’d suggest you wait until the morning.’
‘I really wanted to see everything all lit up… is it always packed at night?’
‘Yes, but more so tonight than ever. Hunter Marks is having a charity concert at the Stratosphere tonight- a pit-stop on his tour, and the place is apparently jammed with people trying to get last minute tickets.’
‘Whoa- Hunter Marks is here TONIGHT? Oh my GOD!’ Leigh turned to Ryan with wide eyes, and then her expression fell. ‘It’s okay babe, we can go see the tower in the morning…’ she smiled and slipped his arm through his. ‘I’m sure there will be way less people then anyway…’
Ryan rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not allergic to the guy, remember? I told you- it’s just that one song that gets on my nerves.’ He glanced at the photographer again, suddenly excited to have the chance to prove to Leigh that he wasn’t hiding a train-wreck in his emotional tunnels. ‘Can you still get tickets, do you know?’
The woman shrugged, sticking a pencil into her wiry black hair. ‘My niece just texted me to let me know that she got two from a scalper- for one-fifty each, but she’s been there a while…’ she glanced at the window and frowned. ‘I wouldn’t waste your money, if I were you. He’s thrown this thing together spontaneously today- you know these rock stars- always drunk and acting on a whim… so it’s probably bedlam. Besides, I’ll bet all my chips that it’s going to be rained out within the hour anyway because it’s out by the pool, not even in a real stadium or anything.’
The details of the concert were inconsequential to Ryan, but the urge to make Leigh’s pretty eyes widen yet again, almost overwhelming. ‘Thanks for the advice,’ he said, smiling at the woman and leading Leigh from the room, sort of excited at the idea of hearing a live concert, even if it was of the thrown-together variety. He hoped that he looked up at that stage and heard the screaming fans and felt something- some sort of desire or even better, abhorrence to the idea of pursuing a similar goal of his own. He couldn’t deny that music was in his heart and therefore, pumped through his bloodstream on a daily basis, but without the recollection of lifelong dreams and ambitions, he didn’t know if he’d be perfectly happy trading his guitar in for a medical degree or something, or if that sort of thing would cripple him when his memories came back. He thought of Justin and Ryan in the book, paddling in the lake near Kylie’s father’s summer house, listening to the seasoned musicians jam together and praying that one day, that would be them- and he had to admit that his heart lifted at the idea. He could see Leigh pregnant with one of his babies, while their son and his childhood best friend swum in the lake, safely in view, and a glow spread right through him. What could be more wonderful for them both, for gifting Leigh the life within her favorite novel, only as the aging rock star and his loving wife- not the doomed lovers, waiting for the other shoe to drop?
‘So...are we going back to the room to make love as husband and wife?’ Leigh asked sweetly as Ryan hailed yet another cab.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I have another fantasy in mind.’
She lifted her eyebrows. ‘Such as…?’
‘Doing you backstage at a rock concert.’ He smacked her bum, sending her flying toward the cab that had immediately pulled up. ‘It doesn’t matter if I’m actually the one onstage, does it?’
Leigh threw back her head and laughed. ‘Actually, no- it doesn’t. But Ryan, we seriously don’t have to do this! I’d be perfectly happy to-’
‘You’re gonna stop fighting me at some point, aren’t you?’ he asked her, exasperated as he climbed into the cab after her, happy to get out of the freezing wind.
Leigh turned to him and flipped her hair over her shoulder. ‘Nope. I’m afraid I’m going to have to be spanked into submission, every single time.’
Ryan growled and pulled his wife onto his lap. ‘Thank god.’
FIFTEEN
Leigh
The street around The Stratosphere hotel was so packed that the cab had to stop half a block away. Leigh had already had misgivings about the whole idea, but as she hobbled after Ryan on aching feet, she began to kick herself for having shown so much enthusiasm at the prospect of seeing Hunter Marks live in the first place, because Ryan was like a dog with a bone when it came to pleasing her.
But he was a cute dog with a juicy bone and so she stood, hugging herself and shivering while Ryan approached scalpers and tried to see if anyone had any tickets left. It wasn’t just cool to see someone so famous, but someone from Australia who’d not only made it, but ‘owned’ it. There was no bigger star than Hunter Marks, and the fact that he’d grown up just only an hour away from where she had was thrilling. She wished she’d gone to his very first concert back in the early naughties, but she’d been thirteen and hadn’t appreciated rock then the way she did now.
As Honey waited, her excitement climaxed, but after ten minutes and being offered only to be snuck in the kitchen entrance for the tidy sum of two thousand dollars, Ryan admitted defeat and pulled Leigh back onto the street and began to walk with her along the sidewalk.
