“Because it has your name sewn into it,” I said, my voice starting to rise. I saw a few people look over at me and made myself take a deep breath. The last thing we needed was to get thrown out of here before we could get Rodney’s suit back.
“Nevertheless,” Ralph said, straightening his cuffs, “I think this is an issue that should be handled by Swift Tailors. And . . .”
“Are you really not going to give us our suit back?” Bill asked, sounding baffled. “Seriously?”
“You can’t make me,” Ralph said, raising his eyebrows at Bill. He glanced between the two of us, like he was just now noticing my sneakers and Bill’s duck boots. “Are you two even supposed to be in here?”
My phone buzzed, and I saw that it was someone calling me from the house line. I held up my phone, and Bill nodded, and I could somehow tell, even though we hadn’t exchanged a word, that he was telling me he’d keep working on Ralph while I took my call. “Hello?” I said, walking a few feet away, toward the entrance.
“Charlie?” It was my mother, and she sounded stressed out—which wasn’t that surprising, considering there were fifteen people in our house, most of whom were probably waiting on the breakfast I hadn’t brought back with me yet.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, and seeing one of the waiters frown at me, I took another step toward the doorway. “What’s up?”
“I’m going to need you to get your brother on the way home,” my mother said. “Mike,” she added after a moment. “He needs to be here to take pictures with the other groomsmen. He can’t just expect to show up at the ceremony.”
“Um,” I said, blinking. I wondered if this was one of the things my parents had been fighting with Mike about the night before. “Okay.”
“And where are you with the bagels?”
“Well,” I said, looking around the room, where Ralph Donnelly was shaking his head at Bill—clearly, we hadn’t made any progress yet. “Um, it might be a minute. Do we have anything else to feed them instead?”
“You would think,” my mother said. “But your uncle Stu’s been eating up half of the contents of the fridge—” There was the click that indicated someone had just picked up the extension.
“CHARLOTTE LOUISE GRANT.” It was my dad, and he sounded furious—which my dad almost never did.
“Oh, by the way, your father’s mad,” my mom said, just a tad too late. I immediately felt a cold sweat break out on my upper lip. What had I done? Was he mad that I’d spent the night sleeping across from the wedding coordinator’s nephew? It was truly a bad sign when my dad full-named me.
“Hi, Dad. Um, what—”
“That dog has dug up my flower beds.” My dad’s voice was rising with every word, and I held the phone a little bit away from my ear, which had started to ring.
“Oh no. You mean—”
“Yes,” he snapped. “The flowers that were going to win me the title have been ruined. Utterly and totally wrecked.”
I suddenly remembered Waffles’s paws when he came back in after I’d let him out into the yard. Clearly, this explained it—he’d gotten them dirty destroying my dad’s dreams.
“This was my last shot, Charlie. And now it’s gone.”
“I’m really sorry, Dad,” I said. “Um—”
“Where did this dog even come from?” my dad asked, lowering his voice. “Are we sure Don’s not behind this?”
“He’s not,” my mother said firmly. “Charlie, just come back soon with your brother. And the bagels.”
“Right, the bagels,” my dad said, sounding a bit more like himself. “What’s taking so long?”
“There’s just, um, a really long line,” I said. “Be back soon!” I hung up before my parents could ask me any more questions.
“If you could just see where we’re coming from here,” Bill was saying as I joined him. His voice was wheedling and friendly, but there was a definite edge to it, like his infinite cheerfulness was finally being tested. “There’s a wedding in a few hours. And we really need our suit back.”
“And if you could see where I’m coming from,” Ralph said, smoothing down the lapels. “Which is not wanting to arrive in one suit and change partway through an event! I’ll be a hashtag laughingstock.”
“Um,” I said, looking at the people standing around, none of whom seemed to care all that much about what people were wearing.
“Look,” Bill said, dropping the friendly manner altogether. “I didn’t want to have to get the authorities involved. But . . .”
“Oho!” Ralph said, looking not at all scared by this threat, but weirdly delighted. “And say what, exactly?”
“Well—” I exchanged a glance with Bill. “That you stole a suit?”
“But that’s where you’re wrong,” Ralph said, shaking his head. “I was given a suit. I didn’t knowingly steal anything.”
“But now you know,” Bill pointed out, shaking the garment bag in his direction. “So don’t you have some obligation to, um, rectify the situation?”
I noticed with alarm that people were starting to put down their coffee cups and napkins and make their way into the area with the chairs. What if Ralph just left, still wearing Rodney’s suit? Bill and I were crashing this event, so it wasn’t like we could complain to anyone about it. “Look,” I started, just as two men who looked around Ralph’s age passed him as they made their way to the ballroom.
“Donnelly,” one of them said, with a nod.
“Your Honor,” the other one said.
“I have to be going,” Ralph said, starting to edge toward the ballroom. “But—”
“You’re a judge?” I blurted out, feeling my heart start to beat hard. “Like . . . a real one?”
“Yes,” he said, folding his arms on top of Rodney’s suit. “But if you think that my role changes my position about this—”
“No, it’s not that,” I said quickly. I looked over at Bill and saw he was pretty much thinking the same thing that I was—that maybe we had an opportunity here. “But, like, you’re a judge judge,” I said, feeling that after Max, it couldn’t hurt to make sure of these things. “You’re not just a judge on TV, right? You can do all the things judges can do?”
“I’m a probate judge,” Ralph said, looking increasingly confused. “But I don’t know what that has to—”
“What does that mean?” Bill asked. “Like—people on probation?”
“No,” Ralph said, his voice heavy with disdain. “I handle wills and estates.” We must have both looked blank, because he sighed and said bluntly, “Dead people.”
“Oh.” I nodded, thinking this might not have been a bad choice for Ralph, if this was the way he interacted with the living. “But you can do all the things judges can, right? Like . . . you can marry people?”
Ralph’s eyebrows flew up, and he looked from me to Bill. “You two seem a little young.”
“No,” Bill said quickly, and I could see that the tips of his ears were turning red. “Not me and Charlie. We’re not . . . I mean, we’re just . . .”
“It’s for my sister,” I said, jumping in, noticing that almost everyone else had made their way into the ballroom by now, and starting to talk faster. “She’s getting married tonight, and we’re down an officiant. They’re not religious, so we need to find a judge. . . .”
“Let me guess,” Ralph said. “Someone got ordained online, then found out you can’t do that here?” Bill and I nodded, and Ralph shook his head.
“So, would you be willing to do it? You can keep the suit,” I promised recklessly. “And even attend the wedding if you want. You can have dinner and everything! Um . . . do you like salmon?”
“I get to keep the suit?” Ralph asked, looking down at it again. I nodded, hoping that Rodney would care more about getting married than he would about getting married in the right clothing. I smiled hopefully at Ralph, and saw Bill doing the same.
“You’d really be helping us out,” I said. “And if you don’t want to stay, you wouldn’t
have to—you could just drop in, marry them, and head out again.”
“Please?” Bill asked.
Ralph sighed. “Fine,” he said, reaching into the pocket of Rodney’s suit—apparently, now Ralph’s suit—and pulling out a business card. “E-mail me the details, the location, and when you’ll need me for the ceremony.”
I let out a long, shaky breath. “Thank you so much,” I said, as next to me, Bill nodded fervently. “We really, really appreciate it, and—”
“All right,” Ralph said, starting to look uncomfortable. “Just send me the information, and I’ll see you tonight.”
“Thank you,” Bill called, a little too loudly. Ralph gave us a smile that was more grimace than anything else, and hurried into the ballroom, probably trying to get there before we could ask him for anything else.
I looked over at Bill, who just shook his head. We headed back the way we came, waiting until we were out of the ballroom before either one of us spoke. “Oh my god,” I said, once we were in the clear. I shook my head, feeling like I was on the verge of bursting into giddy laughter.
“So, I think we can count that as a victory,” Bill said as we headed toward the car. He turned to me and held up his hand. “Go team.”
I smiled as I gave him a high-five. “Well, it’s kind of a victory,” I said, nodding toward the garment bag Bill had been holding for so long that it now just seemed like a part of him. “We’re down a suit.”
“But up an officiant, which is the more important thing.”
“That’s what I thought too. I hope Rodney doesn’t kill me.”
“I think he’ll be happy about it,” Bill said, then paused. “Well, maybe not happy. But probably grateful that he’s actually going to be able to get married.”
“Good point.” I unlocked the car, and we both got in.
“So we’ve gotten a judge and picked up the suit,” Bill said, then looked behind him at the garment bag he’d placed in the backseat. “I mean, kind of. We did pick up a suit, just not the one we expected. So now we need to get bagels.”
“Right,” I said, starting the car, then backing out of the space and driving forward, out through the country club entrance gates. “And Mike.”
“Mike?”
“Yeah, we have to get him. He’s . . . at a friend’s.”
“Cool,” Bill said, smiling across the car at me. “Onward?”
I nodded as I hit the turn signal that would take me toward the commercial district in town. It wasn’t that everything was fixed—Rodney still didn’t have anything to get married in—but we had found a judge. And somehow, it felt like I wasn’t on my own with this—it felt like Bill and I were in this together. I gave him a smile across the car. “Onward.”
* * *
“Uhhhgggggghhhhhh.” I glanced into the backseat, where Mike was curled up, moaning softly, the way he’d been ever since we’d picked him up.
“How you doing, Mike?” I asked, even though I had a feeling I knew how he was doing.
“Shh,” Mike said, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the window. “Why are you talking so loud? Why are you driving so fast?”
I looked down at the speedometer—I was going thirty miles an hour, and it felt like we were crawling.
He had been this way ever since I’d pulled into Jesse’s driveway and found Mike sitting on the front steps, his head hung between his legs. Luckily, J.J. had texted me that he’d called Mike until he’d woken him up, and told him to be ready to meet me. This way, I didn’t have to face ringing Jesse’s doorbell and having a fight with my brother—in front of Jesse—about coming to the house early. And while I wanted to see Jesse, there was so much going on at the moment that I really wasn’t sure I had the bandwidth for it right now. And at any rate, I knew I’d see him tonight—at the reception, with my hair and makeup professionally done, with these problems long solved and the wedding going smoothly. That’s how I wanted to see Jesse—when everything was going to be perfect.
I glanced back at Mike once more. It wasn’t like I’d never seen people with hangovers—I’d covered for J.J. when we’d all gone on a family trip to Hyde Park the day after his senior prom, when he could barely stand up. And I’d had a particularly rough morning myself last year, when I’d been staying at Siobhan’s when her dads were out of town and we’d experimented with mixing together most of their liquor cabinet. But I’d never seen Mike like this—his skin had a distinctly greenish tinge to it. And even though he’d showered at Jesse’s—his hair was damp—he somehow still smelled like whiskey, like it was coming out through his pores or something. I was hoping that maybe the wedding photographer would be able to use some kind of filter, because I had a feeling it wouldn’t look great, in pictures Rodney and Linnie were going to keep forever, to have one of the groomsmen look like he was on the verge of collapse.
“Are you drinking the water?” Bill asked, pointing to the bottle in the backseat cup holder, which we’d picked up at the bagel shop for him.
Mike turned his head to look at it, grimacing. He reached out, gave a feeble attempt to open it, then slumped back against the window again. “Too hard,” he moaned.
“I’ll get it,” Bill said, reaching into the back and opening the cap again. “There you go.”
“Thank you,” I whispered to him.
“It’s fine,” he said, glancing into the backseat again. “Think he’ll be okay for the wedding?”
“He just needs sleep,” I said, hoping this was true. “And water.” I looked at the two huge Upper Crust bags that were sitting at Bill’s feet, containing enough bagels and cream cheese to feed an army. “You want a bagel, Mike?” Bill lifted one of the bags and held it out to him.
“Oh my god.” Mike groaned, turning his head away.
My phone rang, and the car Bluetooth picked it up—and I could see it was Siobhan calling. I closed my eyes for a second as I remembered that with everything happening today, I’d never called her back. “Hi,” I said, answering it, already speaking fast. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday—things have been so crazy here you wouldn’t believe it. What’s happening? Tell me what’s going on with the roommate situation.”
“Well, before that,” Siobhan said. “I have some bad news.”
“What’s going on?”
“They canceled our flight last night, and the next one we could get on doesn’t get in until Sunday.”
“But the wedding’s tonight.”
“I know,” Siobhan said. “I’m so sorry to miss it—do you think Linnie will be mad?”
“I’m mad!” I snapped.
“Charlie,” Mike mumbled from the backseat. “Could you just . . . maybe not with the yelling?”
“The flight was canceled,” Siobhan said, her voice getting tenser. “It’s not my fault.”
“Well, did you ever think maybe you shouldn’t have gone to Michigan the weekend of my sister’s wedding? I can’t believe you’re telling me this now!”
“Um, well, maybe if you had called me back I would have told you yesterday!” Siobhan said, sounding increasingly angry.
I glanced over at Bill, who was looking fixedly down at his phone, like he was trying to pretend he’d gone temporarily deaf. “I’ve been really busy. There’s been a lot to deal with here—”
“I don’t know why I’m even surprised. You did what you always do—the second your family shows up, it’s like I don’t exist.”
“Are we really doing this now? Again?”
“Um, yeah, because you do this every time. I’m always here for you, to listen to you talk about Jesse nonstop . . . ,” Siobhan said. I glanced quickly into the rearview mirror, but Mike’s eyes were closed. “But the second I need you, if your family’s around, you’re MIA. It’s like I don’t even matter.”
I took a breath to try and argue with this, even though I knew, deep down, she was right.
“And don’t make me feel bad for going to visit my college just because you’re not exc
ited about going.”
“Oh, now this is my fault?”
I heard Siobhan let out a breath, like she was trying to keep herself from yelling again. “I didn’t say that. But it’s like you don’t even want to talk about what’s going to happen next year. It’s like you think you’re going to keep on going to high school, staying in that same house forever.”
“No, I don’t,” I said automatically, without even stopping to wonder if she was right.
“Oh yeah?” Siobhan’s tone was suddenly biting. “So then I guess you finally told Stanwich you’re going there. And you told your other schools not to hold your spot. You’ve picked out your classes and finished your roommate survey?” This hung in the air for just a moment, and I bit my lip, since we both knew what the answers to these questions were. “All you’ve been talking about for months is this weekend, and getting to be with your family again. What happens when this weekend is over?”
I drew in a sharp breath. It felt like Siobhan had just gut-punched me—that unexpected, that painful.
“I’d say call me back later,” Siobhan said, “but I have a feeling you won’t. Tell Linnie I’m sorry.” And then she hung up.
I gripped the steering wheel hard, feeling my hands shake slightly. It was the first real fight we had ever had. A fight that wasn’t just about what movie to watch or how many minutes constituted being late for something or if you were obligated to share mozzarella sticks. This was a fight that had actually meant something.
But she didn’t know what she was talking about. There was nothing wrong with wanting to see your family. There was nothing wrong with wanting to have a great weekend for your sister’s wedding, and I wasn’t about to let her make me think that there was.
We drove the rest of the way home in silence, Bill looking down at his phone and Mike groaning softly from the back whenever I took a curve too sharply. As I got nearer to our house, I realized that there was now nowhere to park in the driveway. Crowding around the drive, and in front of the garage, were twice the vehicles that had been there when I left. There were Tent City and Where There’s A Will trucks, a truck with MCARDLE’S FLOWERS printed on the side, and two white catering vans in front that had people clustered around, pulling out platters and rolling trays. I wasn’t sure what the dented minivan that was half on the driveway, half spilling into the road was for. It had AWYWI! printed on the side in letters that were peeling slightly, but that didn’t mean anything to me.
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