by Matayo, Amy
I laugh and squeeze the sides of her knee, enjoying the way she squirms to get out of my grasp. Good luck with that, G.I. Jane.
“You’re a pain in the butt, you know that?”
Jane giggles. “I know. I’ll be even worse when Dillon tells me how to take you down. Did she pull your hair until you screamed like a girl?”
“Stop it.”
“Pants you in front of the whole family?”
“Cut it out.”
“Sit on you and tickle your ribs until you cried?”
I should have responded. I realize it a second too late.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she exclaims. “You’re ticklish!”
Sounding way too happy about this new bit of information, Jane waggles her fingers in my direction like a threat. I slap at her hand and dart toward my door without thinking. Darn reflexes.
“Oh my gosh, you’re so scared of me.” She laughs now, still wiggling those fingers.
“Keep your hands off me.”
She howls. “That’s something I never thought I’d hear you say.”
I manage to grasp her hand and pull her toward me. “You’ll never hear me say it and mean it.” God, I love this woman, brat that she is. I snake an arm around her neck and slide her toward me.
At a stoplight, I kiss her long and hard, then drive us out of Seattle with a smile on my face.
Chapter Four
(Nashville)
Dillon
All I know is that Liam swears he found a solution to the cake. He won’t tell me anything else, but I’m fine with it. If the cake is the only hiccup in these last few days, how he acquired one makes no difference to me.
The only thing that matters now is trying to enjoy this massage.
Should be easy, right?
Wrong. It’s nearly impossible to relax when the woman next to you won’t stop talking long enough to take a cleansing breath.
“And then he asked me for my number, but of course I didn’t give it to him because who gives out their phone number to a guy who just spilled hot chocolate all over your new white sweater? I mean, I bought it as a symbol for your wedding, Dillon. A white sweater, like ‘bride?’ It looked so good with my red hair, I’ll have you know, but not with a brown stain down the front. And the whipped cream. Did I tell you his drink was topped with whipped cream? Whipped cream does not look white when it’s dumped on a white sweater. It’s cream, which is slightly yellow in hue if you really look at it, so I suppose that should have been my first clue…” She stops talking for a second. The longest second so far. I get a little too excited about it.
“Dillon? Are you even awake? Did you hear my story?”
And…excitement gone.
Yes, I heard Sabrina’s story, and the ten other stories she’s told since we climbed onto these tables twenty minutes ago. We’re getting a couple’s massage. Weird maybe, since we’re not a couple. But I haven’t seen my cousin Sabrina since the cruise and she wanted to have a “girl day.” Since this was her idea and her treat, I could hardly say no. You don’t shoot a gift horse in the mouth, so they say.
Then again, I highly doubt the gift horse talks this much.
I consider faking a nap. There’s soft instrumental music playing in the background and lavender aromatherapy mist in the air, both of which speak to calmness. The whole atmosphere points directly to relaxation, but I’m fairly sure I’ve developed new frown lines while lying here. I attempt to mentally smooth them out and force myself to answer.
“Yes, I heard you—I mean, your story. It’s good you didn’t give him your number.”
“I know, right? I mean, what if he had called me? What if he had wanted to be my date to your wedding?”
“Wait—did you tell him I’m getting married?”
“No, but what if I had? What if he was my date and spilled hot chocolate or worse—red wine—on my bridesmaid dress? That thing was expensive. I plan on wearing it at least five more times to get my money out of it, but wine stains would totally ruin that plan.”
I try not to let it bother me that she pointed out the price of the dress twice in one sentence, but it does. It isn’t my fault that bridesmaid dresses cost so much money. They’re all made of silk except for the loud ones made of taffeta, and Sabrina is the one who specifically said “no taffeta.” Those were her first words after, “I get to walk down the aisle with the hottest groomsman.” When I pointed out she would be walking with Chad, she scoffed right after she laughed. I tried and failed to set them up last year; now Chad’s happy with Riley and Sabrina is better off finding someone else.
She needs someone who never talks, someone happy to sit and listen to her incessant chatter. Chad is not that person.
“What about—” Sabrina starts again, but a female voice says in a very hushed tone:
“For this part, we need everyone to lie still and quiet to get the best effect.”
Sabrina shuts up, and I breathe a barely audible sigh of relief. This part is nothing more than the woman rubbing a lavender-scented lotion over my—and I assume Sabrina’s—shoulders and laying a hot towel on top. I suspect she simply wanted Sabrina to stop talking as much as I did. This is confirmed when I feel a soft pat on my shoulder just before the woman says, “I will come back to check on you in ten minutes.”
The door closes, and I smile to myself, grateful for the solitude and the pampering and the ability to just be for a few minutes. The skin under the towel becomes a mixture of hot and icy-cold, a pleasant sort of burn that I begin to relax into.
This feeling lasts approximately ten seconds.
“Do you think she really wants us to stop talking?” Sabrina’s at it again, but this time she’s whispering. I want to point out that whispering is still technically talking even though I’m slightly positive she’s barely moving her lips, but I don’t. There’s no use.
She’s three minutes into a whispered story about a recent rash on her left arm when I blissfully drift to sleep.
* * *
Liam
The clouds look weirdly familiar in a have we met before? sort of way, like seeing a teacher outside of school or your neighbor when you bump into each other at an out-of-state hotel. They’re out of place right now, especially in warmer-than-usual Tennessee. They’re gray and full as though holding on to a secret. If the secret is nothing more than a little rain, we’re okay.
The sharp drop in temperature has me more than a little worried.
I blink up at the sky, a mostly insignificant nudge of concern refusing to leave my mind. I say insignificant because I watched the weather report this morning and have religiously checked the weather app on my phone, and no one mentioned anything more than an afternoon shower, maybe a flurry or two coming our way. But at only two o’clock in the afternoon, the sky is oddly dark. If I didn’t know better, I’d think snow clouds were hovering directly overhead, thick and foggy, readying for a surprise attack.
I’m worried we’re in for a surprise attack.
I search the parking lot for my car. So far today, I’ve picked up my suit from the tailor, finalized honeymoon plans—we’re heading to London, avoiding the beach like the plague it still is to both of us—and paid off my credit card so it’s ready to use again. Now I’m off to meet Teddy at Jane’s new apartment downtown. After two long days on the road, they’re driving in from Seattle with a truckload of her belongings, and I promised to help unload everything. With only three days to go until the wedding, I need the distraction.
I pull out of the parking lot and onto the highway just as a snowflake lands on my windshield. Another prickle of concern nudges my consciousness, but I remind myself it’s only one flake. One is nothing. No big deal. Not even worth a thought. My phone rings on the seat next to me, and I pick it up.
“Hey, we just pulled into the apartment. Did you know it’s snowing?”
It’s Teddy, asking what I’m thinking without saying it directly. Did you know it’s snowing three days before your wedding?
Did you know all signs point to this being a very bad thing?
It’s been years since Nashville has seen more than a hint of snow. Every year they predict it, and every year their prediction is wrong. The boy has cried wolf for so long, and so many times now, no one in Music City believes him anymore. What are the odds that this year measurable snow will come down?
It’s just snow, I tell myself again. Nothing will go wrong. It can’t. Dillon’s mother would have an emotional meltdown with all the time she’s invested in this wedding. I briefly close my eyes and take a deep breath before focusing on the road again.
“I’ve only seen a couple flakes,” I say.
Teddy gives one humorless laugh. “Oh dude, wait until you get downtown. We’re gonna need to unload this truck fast before we freeze to death.”
I sigh long and slow and send a few prayers upward. It’s a twenty-minute drive to get downtown. With every mile I travel, the snow falls harder and faster.
* * *
Dillon
My skin feels soft like butter and my pores are open and clean. My senses have been calmed with infusions of lavender and eucalyptus. All my muscles have been oiled and rubbed down and kneaded into submission, and I’m relaxed and invigorated. Nothing is better than a bridal spa day, nothing ever in history. Three hours of bliss, and all I want now is a nap.
I’m just turning to thank Sabrina for so thoughtfully setting this up when I glance out the window and gasp.
Sabrina sees it too, because all the air goes out of the room while the two of us stand in the middle of the lobby, slathered in lotion, holding our wallets, and staring in horror.
“Yeah, it’s been coming down hard for over an hour now,” the receptionist says, as though what is supposed to be the best week of my life isn’t beginning to unravel right in front of me. Snow is coming down in thick sheets like someone opened an old feather mattress and began shaking it all over the world. We’re trapped inside a snow globe with no way out. We couldn’t even see the way out if someone handed us a map, because we also couldn’t see the map.
Where are we?
Why is there so much snow?
How long is it supposed to last?
That thought snaps me to attention, and I pull up the weather app on my phone. Just this morning, it showed the forecast as being partly cloudy and cold—absolutely no mention of snow or bad weather. I’ve been watching weather updates religiously on the hour, every hour, for days now. Some might call that excessive, I call it cautious. Fine, excessively cautious. Whatever. I’m a bride. What are we, if not crazy neurotic? It’s practically a rite of passage, just ask my mother, the queen of neuroses.
Animated snow is falling on my phone screen from the weather app—so much snow. And it’s falling in front of a row of brightly colored suns on display for the next five hours, which means someone at the weather app place needs to be fired. I growl and look out the window once again for clarification, but all I see is white.
“My weather app says sun all day. No mention of snow anywhere,” Sabrina says, dropping her arm. “Could someone please explain how this is happening?” By this, she means the snow continuing to fall and accumulate all over the ground. Almost all the dead grass is covered, my best guess is we’ve received an inch of snow so far. Maybe it will stop soon. The wedding is in three days, so there’s plenty of time for this to fall, stop, and quickly become a melted, forgotten memory by Saturday.
The receptionist turns on a television hanging on the wall behind her, oblivious to the way Sabrina and I lean against the counter to gawk over her shoulder. She adjusts the volume, but I quickly wish she hadn’t when the weather forecaster utters words like:
Surprise appearance.
Crept up on us.
Storm of the season.
Maybe the decade.
Anywhere from six to thirty-two inches expected.
Over the next three days.
“Excuse me, what did he just say?” Four heads turn to look at me. “Thirty-two inches? Isn’t that like three feet?” I stare unblinking at the screen, willing him to proclaim an early April Fool’s joke in the middle of January.
He doesn’t.
“No, three feet would be thirty-six inches,” the receptionist very unhelpfully explains before turning to watch the screen again. “But wouldn’t that be something else? I prayed so hard for a white Christmas, but I suppose a white January would work out just fine.”
No, it wouldn’t! I scream inside my mind. I have family coming in! And flowers that need to be delivered! And the cake…probably! Though Liam never told me what he ordered and Dear God, please don’t let it be a supermarket off-the-shelf-cake. Then again, who cares? No one will be able to eat it in three feet of snow because no one will be able to show up!
But I don’t say anything.
I just turn to look at Sabrina while she looks at me. She doesn’t need to say anything; I see it in her eyes. This is bad.
Nothing about me is relaxed now. Even my pores are clogged up and sad.
Chapter Five
(Springfield)
Riley Mae
“Okay, we’re closing early tonight, so you all have one hour to order and eat. Starting now.” This might be a rude way to speak to one’s customers, but mine are used to my directness. They were used to it in the old place before the tornado demolished everything, and they’re used to it here. I fill an empty cup with coffee and pat Mr. Joyner on the shoulder. “Did you hear that, Mr. Joyner? I’m closing up in an hour because I’m leaving for a wedding, so drink up and order another cupcake if you want one.”
The elderly man has been one of my most loyal customers since my doors first opened, but his hearing isn’t what it used to be. Sometimes he misses things all together, so I deliver special announcements to him myself. If anyone might want a few cupcakes for the road, he will.
“A wedding, Riley Mae? You getting married?”
My face heats at his question, and thank the heavens above Chad hasn’t arrived yet. He wouldn’t care, we’ve talked about marriage more than once. But pressuring him isn’t something I desire to do. Besides, things are good between us now, and there’s no need to shake it up. “No, not me, Mr. Joyner. Chad’s brother is getting married on Saturday.”
“That boy’s a fool if he doesn’t ask you to marry him. If I were forty years younger, I’d ask you myself.”
I smile at his compliment. It’s one I’ve heard before. “I’d probably say yes, even though you’d only want me for my cupcakes.”
He laughs. “And your coffee, don’t forget that. Where are you driving to?”
“Nashville,” I say, glancing out the picture window. My heart starts to sink a little at the thought of driving that far in this weather, but I pull it back up kicking and screaming.
Mr. Joyner frowns at me, then at the view outside. “How do you think you’re gonna make it all the way to Nashville in this? They say it’s snowing from here to Memphis.”
He’s right, it’s snowing everywhere. Buckets of it. Six inches, to be exact, all of which have been falling steadily over Middle America the past twenty-four hours with barely a break. I considered closing the restaurant today for inclement weather, but I didn’t close after the tornado, so it seemed a little silly to close it now. So many rely on this place for food and companionship, and to deny them isn’t in my makeup. Still, this is the most snow Springfield has seen in more than forty years, and of course, it would happen right before Liam’s wedding. It’s just my luck it would happen when we need to carefully transport an intricately decorated cake I spent the last seventeen hours working on nonstop.
“All the way to Memphis, huh?” I bite my bottom lip and walk toward the window, seeing nothing but a blanket of white for miles. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize the storm stretched so far.
“What’s all the way to Memphis?” Chad says, sneaking up on me from behind. He must have come in the back door, and I wonder how much he heard. I continue to stare out the
window, feeling another wave of unease scratching the back of my mind.
“This snow.” I turn and let him envelop me in a hug. “Apparently, it’s everywhere. You think we’ll make it there okay?”
He kisses the top of my head. “I think we’ll make it there just fine,” he says, but I hear the concern he’s trying to hide. His tone is too bright, a forced enthusiasm injected into his delivery.
“How long have you been here?” I ask, pulling away to look at him. He smiles and unwinds his arms from my waist.
“Long enough to hear this guy trying to steal my girl,” he says to Mr. Joyner, eliciting a laugh from the older man. “Though I don’t blame you. She does make good coffee.”
“And cupcakes. Everyone knows that’s the real reason you love me,” I say, bumping his hip with mine as I pass by on my way to the counter. Chad follows me, clearing a table of empty plates as he goes, bringing them around to drop into the sink. He dries his hands on a towel and uses it to pull me to him.
“I love you for a lot of reasons, and none of them have anything to do with your baking skills. And don’t be saying yes to anyone’s proposal but mine. It’s coming soon, you know.”
“You heard that?” I smile, my heart drumming double-time in my chest.
“I did. Mr. Joyner knows a good thing when he sees one.” Chad kisses me, softly and quickly because customers are watching. “And he’s right, this drive might be a bit of a challenge. I know we were going to wait until five o’clock, but we probably should leave in the next half-hour to give ourselves more time. Is your suitcase packed and ready?”
“It’s in the back seat of my car. I just need to get the cake packaged up, and we can go.”
“I’ll load your bag in my trunk,” Chad says, fisting his keys and walking into the back room toward the door where his car is parked.
“Riley, it’s looking pretty bad out there,” my grandmother says, passing Chad in the doorway. “Why don’t you take off now, and I’ll close the place up?”
