"Beautiful. Just look natural. Just continue to look natural." We heard from behind something, which made us turn, probably looking anything but natural. It was Ian the photographer, dressed from head to toe in tight, black clothing. The derby hat and horned-rimmed glasses were an obvious must for a guy like him. "I'm going to be here for at least an hour, but you won't even notice me. This place is breathtaking," he went on, "I should have come here long ago. I'll show myself out when I'm done and be in touch soon with your prints."
"You can stay," I told him. "Once you're done, you should stick around and enjoy the party."
Ian considered that for a minute. "Maybe I will," he said, cracking a smile. Then, his camera was once again at his eye, and he was snapping pictures like crazy.
Guests began to arrive in a steady stream, and before I knew it two hours of the party had passed in a big blur. When a party is in honor of you, it's funny how your nerves and adrenaline takeover and you can almost see everything from outside your body. I was having conversations with one person after another, and I thought I was managing, but it was taxing to say the least.
Rachel had been blown away when her best friend from high school surprised her, and that wasn't the only notable thing to happen at the party. Gretchen was being escorted by some soap opera hunk, which made my mother much more pleasant to be around, while at the same time making Joel Perrin less pleasant to be around. Joel had come to the party with some other girl so I didn't think it was jealousy necessarily, but he definitely had something against that soap opera guy.
Rachel went with Brit and Gretchen to the ladies room, leaving me to fend for myself. I found Josh and Ethan with a big group of swimmers. A few of them said how cool they thought the venue was but most of them just remarked about how hot Rachel was. I was already prone to want to take her at the drop of a hat, but my friend's blatant approval of her made me want to take her right now. Like I needed to prove she belonged to me.
Chapter 25
Rachel
"Collin's mom is quite the Caleb fan, isn't she?" Gretchen didn't even bother waiting until we were out of earshot of the woman before she said it. Gretchen, Brit, and I were steady walking towards the restroom and I waited a minute before I replied.
"She's a piece of work," I said. "I'm not really worried about her, though. This might sound crazy, but I actually don't mind having the challenge of winning her over. Plus, the way she's all protective over Collin only makes me want him that much more. She's actually doing me a favor, and she has no idea."
"Yeah, that is crazy," Gretchen said, shooting me a loving smile, "but I'm glad you found the silver lining."
"Me too," Brit added. "Besides, she must have done something right for Collin to turn out the way he did."
"That's what I'm talking about," I said. I was happy to have the girls on board because I honestly wasn't worried about it.
Gretchen had already gotten to know Brit over the course of the evening, so she didn't think twice about Brit's presence even though she was about to bring up something personal. "Can you believe Joel? Why is he so pissed at me?" she asked both of us.
"For the love of God, Gretch, why do you think?" I asked. I couldn't believe it when she looked at me with a confused face like she had no idea what I was talking about. "Duh, Gretchen, he likes you. You think I'm going to believe you honestly don't see that? It's totally obvious. He almost had Caleb meet him in the parking lot a few minutes ago."
"She's right," Brit said, agreeing with me. "He is pretty obvious."
"Well, just in case you didn't notice, he's here with his plus one… and she's no dog, she's some big shot doctor. If Joel wanted to be here with me, he would have asked me." Gretchen wasn't upset; she was just stating facts. "Plus, I like Caleb. He's a nice guy, and he's obviously hot."
"He is hot," Brit agreed. "I've seen him on TV before, when I was flipping channels, and he's even better in person."
"You're gonna have to do better than flip past his show pretty soon," Gretchen said.
"I know, I heard," Brit said, assuming Gretchen was talking about her new role. "Of course I'll watch once you're on there… did you get a pretty big role?"
"Yeah, it seems like the producers have a lot of plans for my character. Her name's Abby."
"That's so exciting! I've never met a TV star before."
"I haven’t either," Gretchen said, laughing. "It's all still pretty surreal."
Just then, Maggie Cooper walked into the ladies room. I made the introductions.
"Brit, this is Maggie, she's the awesome stylist who lets me hire her when I need help buying anything but Birks." That made Maggie laugh, and give us a disclaimer that she owned a pair or two of Birks herself.
"I hate to break up the party," Maggie said, making her way to the point of why she'd entered the ladies room in the first place, "But Collin's looking for you. He's right outside the door. I think he knows you're in here because he asked me to tell you to wrap it up and come back out." That earned a questioning glance from both Brit and Gretchen. Maggie and I both shrugged like we had no idea what was so important it couldn't wait.
"Guess I should go see what's going on," I said, taking one last glance in the mirror.
The four of us walked out to find that Collin was indeed waiting at the door. He was standing with his back toward us, talking to Zack and a few other teammates from L.A. Aquatics. He turned when he heard us approach, and I couldn't believe he still had the ability to make my heart stop.
His smile was the most inviting thing I'd ever seen. I wanted to be on the other end of that smile for the rest of my life. I didn't stop walking until I was at his side and he had an arm around me.
Gretchen and Brit made quick work of taking over the conversation Collin was having with his teammates, which gave Collin the opportunity to lean down and whisper in my ear without being noticed.
"I've got a something to take care of that can't wait until after the party." My eyes flew up to meet his, thinking I should be concerned, but I could tell from is expression that the something he needed to take care of was tucked inside his pants. I stretched up so I could reach to whisper in his ear.
"We're sort of the guests of honor here. We can't just disappear."
"Like hell we can't," he said, barely bothering to whisper. "It's our party and we'll sneak off if we want to."
How could I not want to sneak off with this guy? I constantly felt that slow burn when he was around, but seeing him like this, looking like he was about to ravish me in front of all these people, only served to intensify my feelings.
"Where are we supposed to—" I started to ask, but he must have sensed the resolve in my tone, because he cut me off.
"Come with me everybody," Collin said to the group at large. He grabbed me by the hand to lead me back into the main room.
It's hard to believe (when you considered how much I wanted this party)… that I hated being the center of attention. So, when Collin pulled me onto a platform and whistled to get everyone's attention, I was beyond mortified. Somehow I thought I could escape the evening without making toasts or an official statement of any kind.
"Collin, what are you doing?" I asked under my breath before I turned to face the gathering crowd. He ignored me, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze as he issued a final short whistle for the benefit of the people in the back.
"Is everybody enjoying The Mirror Garden?" he asked, with the confidence of a talk show host, and I wondered where that had come from. The crowd answered him with a round of whoops and applause. "Well, we all know why we are here tonight," Collin continued. He paused to look down at me, "To celebrate me being the luckiest bastard on the face of the earth." The crowd responded with laughs and catcalls. "I promise I won't get too mushy here… I won't say things like we are meant for each other, or that I felt a terrible void when I lost her three years ago." He was looking at me, which drew sounds of approval from our friends. Then he looked at the crowd and said, "I won't even brag
and say things like she's great in bed." That made me gasp and slap him on the shoulder, bringing on a round of laughter. "So why am I up here if I won't say any of these things, you ask. Well, I'm sure all of you know we were married in Vegas, and a few of you may know I proposed with a plastic ring my friends and I picked out at a tourist gift shop."
"Size seven adjustable," yelled Ethan, and everyone laughed again.
"I'm going to let you all get back to enjoying your evening at this lovely place, but I just wanted you all to see that I did better by her than a plastic ring." He took a ring box out of his pocket and held it up to the crowd with an exaggerated wink before opening it to let me inspect its contents.
It was a beautiful, simple, vintage inspired piece of custom jewelry. The size of the diamond was understated compared to the huge thing he'd given me in Vegas, but it was the most beautiful stone I'd ever seen. I knew it was a diamond, but it almost had a pink sheen to it. It was exactly the ring I would have chosen for myself… probably even better than that. I smiled up at him with obvious approval, and the crowd went nuts as he smiled back and drew me into his arms.
While the cheers rang out around us, he lowered his head to my ear and whispered, "You have no idea what I'm about to do to you. You better get ready." Then, like he had said no such thing, he faced the crowd again with a dazzling smile and a fist in the air like he had won something.
At that moment, I wanted him to do anything he wanted to me. I had a smile plastered on my face for quite a few reasons… I loved my party, I loved my ring, and most of all I couldn't wait to see what sort of business we were about to take care of.
He led me through the mingling crowd as quickly as he could without drawing attention to the fact that we were trying to sneak away. I could tell he was anxious to have me in private by the way he spoke to everyone in clipped sentences. After a few minutes of deliberate maneuvering, we made it to the edge of the room. He pulled me into a hallway and out through a side door.
"Where are we going?" I asked. I was breathless from the thrill of sneaking away together.
"My truck," he said, fishing his keys out of his pocket. "Wipe your lipstick off. I have something we need to deal with."
"What?" I asked, meeting his eye as he opened the door to his truck. He looked around briefly before taking my hand and placing it on the rock hard piece of equipment he had in his pants. Even through two layers of fabric, I could feel the thing… feel the hardness of it. He cupped his hand around mine and held against his erection so I could see exactly what we "needed to deal with". It made me weak with desire. I let out an unintentional moan, which prompted him to pick me up and toss me into the truck as if I weighed nothing.
"Put up the console," he commanded in a rough voice, as he climbed in behind me and closed the door. His windows were so darkly tinted, I wasn't worried about being caught. Actually I couldn't care less about being caught at this point… I had a beast of a man climbing into the truck so that he could have his way with me. My own desire was overwhelming. I felt like I could climax at the drop of a hat. We were still struggling to position ourselves comfortably, but he was on top of me now, kissing me with an urgency that reminded me of that night at the charity ball. He continued at that pace until we were both left steeping in satisfaction.
****
It had been roughly fifteen minutes since we'd left the party, and we were now in the parking lot trying to make ourselves presentable to go back inside. I was checking my reflection in the driver's side vanity mirror while he was standing in between his truck and the car parked next to it. He tried to straighten out the new creases his pant legs by motioning as if he were dusting them off. Sometime during our encounter, he had taken off his jacket, so he located and retrieved it from the backseat of the truck.
I was so thankful he had the foresight to make me take my lipstick off. I reapplied a fresh coat to my lips and powdered my nose before he helped me down from the truck so we could go back to the party. Both of us were relaxed and in great moods after the little session we had in the truck.
I stopped him by pulling on his arm before we made it to the entrance. "I love you," I said. "I love everything about you. I love that you're so crazy about me you drag me into parking lots, I love that you buy rings, and give speeches. I love that you're such a good—"
"I know you do Ray. I know just how you feel because I feel that same love for you too." He kissed me on the cheek so he wouldn't mess up my newly applied lip-gloss and we walked inside, hand in hand, to finish the evening with our family and friends.
Against my better judgment, we went in through the front door. Collin obviously didn't care if people knew what we were doing. Maybe he even wanted them to, I thought, smiling to myself as we rounded the corner into the main room.
"There you are." Collin's mom's expression was concerned. "I was beginning to think you left." She'd been looking at Collin the entire time, but her gaze began to shift to me. Boy, was that awkward. She was so reluctant with the eye contact that it made me (a person who's normally fine with human interaction) feel shifty. I had no idea what was going to come out of the woman's mouth.
"We don't want any trouble," Collin said, as if she were a gang member with a switchblade.
For some reason, his honest fear of her behavior caught his mom as funny, and she began to laugh. "I have been pretty bad, huh?" she said, through the giggles. "I didn't know I was that bad Collin." She was regaining her composure, her face changing to (what I thought was) an attempt at sincerity. She was looking at me when she said, "That's what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. I know how I've been, and I'm sorry. (a pause) Families don't always get along. Things can't be hunky dory all the time, and that's just something we all have to accept." She leaned forward and gave me a stiff hug. She did the same for Collin before turning to disappear into the crowd.
"Was that an apology I heard in there somewhere?" I asked.
He put an arm around my shoulder and gave me a smile and a squeeze. "Are you kidding? That was groveling," he said. "She loves you, I can tell."
Then he gave me another smile and a kiss, and as I studied his perfect face, I realized how much I was I looking forward to a lifetime of those same smiles and kisses.
Collin and I entered the room, and Gretchen came over to us with a big smile on her face.
"I'm going to make a speech," she said.
I wasn't expecting her to, so I said, "Are you sure? You don't have to."
"I know I don't have to, silly. I want to. Besides, it gives me something to think about other than the little tryst I had outside with Joel just now.
"What?" I gawked. It wasn't a total surprise, but Joel and Gretchen were both here with other people tonight.
"Come on," she whispered, ushering Collin and I into the center of the room. "Time for a speech. I'll tell you about that later."
Acknowledgements
A big, fat thank you to (in alphabetical order because I'm equally thankful to you all) Claudia, Glenda, Janney, and Wendy for help with edits and feedback.
You guys are the best!
Thanks also to my husband and kids for being so patient while I'm staring at the laptop.
Thanks to Zack for having a body that already looks photoshopped, you made my job easy.
Thanks dpgroup forum.
Three Years Later Page 17
