“THANKS FOR LETTING me hang out here all day.” I’m back at Ashley’s, working from her kitchen table. I waited until Mr. Daniels was gone and Mrs. Daniels was in the shower to sneak out so I wouldn’t have to see them. I can’t face them. Not yet.
“Will you please tell me what happened to your eye?” Ashley asks for the third time, glaring at me over her laptop. “It’s a sex injury, isn’t it?”
“I told you, I fell at the gym.” I shake my hair forward to cover the purple swollen eyelid, and tug on my long sleeves to cover up any traces of the redness left by the metal handcuffs.
“You’re lying,” Ashley says, but fortunately for me is so preoccupied with her new novel and a houseful of girls that she doesn’t harass me for any further details. “Start getting ready for cheer. And no glitter,” she yells into the house.
“Have you been to Hawaii?” I ask. My laptop is open and I’ve spent the last hour toggling through resorts on Maui and Kauai. Between the incident last night and finding out that our apartment won’t be ready until September, right now focusing on Hawaii is the only thing keeping me sane.
“No. Why, are you researching for the honeymoon?”
“Yeah. I was going to try and surprise Matthew and book Rome, but he mentioned Hawaii and being he only has five days and a Hawaiian honeymoon has always been my dream, we are doing Hawaii. I’m just not sure if we should do Maui or one of the other islands.”
“Oh good, then you’re okay with the before the wedding thing. Kent told Patrick that Matthew was really worried you’d be upset.” Ashley types as she talks. “Should I say nude-colored bra or flesh colored? Or should I just go with black?”
“What before the wedding thing?” I close my laptop and give her my full attention. Nina walks in, covered from head to toe in glitter.
“That his time off from work is before the wedding and not after, and that you have to take your honeymoon before you actually get married. I gotta say, you are a much better sport than I am. I would be pissed as hell.” She looks up and grumbles at the sparkling child, “I said no glitter. Go wipe that off.”
We’re going on our honeymoon before the wedding? Is that what she just said? No. Impossible. Either I didn’t hear her correctly, or she’s confused. I take out my phone and type furiously under the table, going a little crazy with the question marks.
Holly: Ashley just said we are taking our honeymoon BEFORE the wedding????????
I stare and wait. No reply. Not surprising, Matthew isn’t usually quick to respond while he’s at work.
Stacy walks into the kitchen wearing more glitter than a roomful of strippers.
“Oh no. No way. Where is this glitter even coming from? I thought I threw it all out.” Ashley closes her laptop and jumps up from her chair. “The coaches said no more glitter. Is it coming from Grace? Does she have glitter over there?” she asks me, motioning to the house across the street.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen any glitter.” I shrug, wincing as I watch Lola enter the room next in all her sparkling splendor.
“Where are you getting all this glitter?” Ashley questions her oldest daughter.
“Grandma gave it to us,” Lola says with a snotty tone that I know is going to start a lovely little mother/daughter argument. And on that note, I start to gather my belongings. I peek at my phone; still no reply from Matthew. I’m sure Ashley misunderstood. This is just a case of the telephone game, where information got passed along from family member to family member, and the end result was a big miscommunication.
“Holly, when you go home, please tell Grace no more glitter. I’ve said it at least a hundred times, but for some reason she keeps ignoring me. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”
I don’t even want to see Mrs. Daniels, let alone get involved in the glitter war. There is no way in hell I am scolding my future mother-in-law over some harmless little sparkles.
“I’m actually not going home yet. I’m meeting Jayne for dinner so we can discuss wedding plans and stuff.” It’s not a lie. I am meeting Jayne. I planned out my entire day to avoid awkward run-ins at home.
“What wedding stuff? You’ve been here all day and didn’t mention anything. I can help you with wedding stuff. I love wedding stuff.”
“I think we’re just mostly going to discuss the bachelorette party. Not actual wedding stuff.” Ashley shoots me an annoyed look; she likes being involved in everything. “You’re coming to it, right?” I ask, hoping that’s enough to re-involve her and get that scowl off her face.
“Of course I am. We all are.” Nina reappears with less glitter. “No. I want it all off. Keep scrubbing. Me, Robin, and Grace, we’ll all be there.” She returns to the conversation without missing a beat.
“Mrs. Daniels is going?” There’s no hiding the panic in my voice. “She can’t.”
Ashley laughs at my reaction. “Oh my God, why are you freaking out? Of course Grace is going. I mean, you’re only having like five people, I would think you’d be glad she’s going for head count purposes alone. And why are you still calling her Mrs. Daniels? Call her Grace. She’s not your fourth grade teacher. The woman is going to be your mother-in-law.”
A vision forms in my head of what Jayne has planned. Penises as far as the eye can see. Inappropriateness by the truckload with said penises. Mrs. Daniels with the same horrified expression on her face as when she peered into the room last night.
“No. She can’t. I don’t even… th-think I want a… a... a…,” I’m so stupefied, I can’t even think of the words for a few seconds, “…bachelorette party.”
“Oooo.” Ashley’s lips make a big round O. “Grace knows about whatever this little incident was.” She swirls a finger in the direction of my battered face. “And sex was involved, wasn’t it.” She follows this with more oo-ing. “The walls over there are paper thin. I probably should have warned you.”
“Paper thin?” I choke out.
“You might as well tell me now. If one of us knows, we’re all gonna find out eventually.”
My gut tightens. She’s right. They are all gonna know. I’m marrying into a family where I am forfeiting all privacy. My family may be a bunch of kooks, but at least we keep our secrets to ourselves. All bottled up and hidden under sarcastic comments and bitterness like a normal family should. My mother and sister are happily not attending my bachelorette party, and that’s the way it should be. Some things family does not need to be a part of.
“I have to go. Jayne is probably waiting for me.” Ashley may find out what happened, but she will not hear it from me. I sling my bag over my shoulder and grasp the laptop under my arm. “Thanks, Ashley.” I turn and bump into Ella, and just from that small interaction I am dusted in a sheen of gold glitter.
“See you again tomorrow?” Ashley asks, reaching for her daughter and scrubbing her down with a wet dish towel. I see Stacy in the corner of the kitchen with her phone directed at us. “Is that recording? What did I tell you about doing that, Stacy Marie?”
Oh God. Now I’m being captured on film. My life is turning into a bad episode of Keeping up with the Danielses.
“Not tomorrow. I have yoga and then”—it’s back to Dunkin’ Donuts—“I have errands to run.”
“Oh, too bad. I like having you around.” Ashley frowns. “Maybe Thursday?”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I need some space. This was nice, but perhaps it’s a bit too much.
“Holly, don’t worry about Grace. Believe me, she’s seen it all. And you are so having a bachelorette party, don’t even try backing out of it. Grace will be fine with whatever craziness Jayne has planned, and Robin and I can’t wait for a wild night out.”
“What’s a bashler ret party?” Ella asks.
“A grown-up party for the bride.”
“I wanna go.”
“No.”
“What? We aren’t going?” Lola and her tween attitude are back for round two. “I thought we were part of the wedding. Why can’t we go?”
“Is there going to be sex there?” Karlie asks.
“What?” Ashley’s eyes bug out. “How do you know that word?”
I sneak away unnoticed and break into a run to get out of the house. There are so many Daniels’ family members. Big ones, little ones, glittery ones, meddling ones. Yes, my own family is crazy, but I’ve never spent an exorbitant amount of time with them like I do with Matthew’s family. And although I love this family I’m about to be part of, lately I feel like I eat, sleep, and breathe them. There’s no escape.
If this is what it’s like now, what is it going to be like after we get married?
I TURN THE radio up in my car to help keep me awake. I stayed three hours past my shift helping out with the overwhelming number of patients the ER was hit with. What is it about a full moon that makes people go crazy? One woman actually howled at me when I tried to take her blood pressure. She claimed she had been bitten by a werewolf, but I’m pretty sure those were her own bite marks on her arm.
The house is dark as I pull up and park. My body aches to be in bed cuddled up with Holly and to sleep for the next ten hours, until it’s time for me to get up and do it all over again.
As I creep up the stairs, I see the light coming out from under the bedroom door. Yes. She waited up for me. Maybe she roped the beds together? Sweet. I’m tired, but not that tired.
I open the door, stopping dead in my tracks as I absorb the new arrangement. It takes a full minute to even process what I see. The beds are no longer together; they’ve been moved, separated into an L. One bed is along the wall, and the other has been repositioned against the connecting wall under my window. Holly lies on her side, propped up on her elbow watching a show on her laptop.
“You moved the beds?” I’m dumbfounded by the new look of our room.
“Mm-hmm. And I’m watching the new episode of Jeopardy! without you, too,” she says, her eyes never leaving the screen. “Spoiler alert, the final question is, What is taxidermy?”
This is not good. I know I’m in trouble, big trouble. I just don’t know for what.
“What’s going on?” Is this about last night? It’s hard looking at her swollen eye without feeling awful all over again.
“Did you get my text before?”
“My phone died, and it was a crazy night. Did something happen?” The answer to that question is an obvious yes.
“I just wanted to let you know that I started making the arrangements for the honeymoon. I wanted to run a few things by you first,” she says through tight lips.
Fuck. She knows. But instead of just telling me she knows and getting this conversation started, we’re gonna play a game first. I lift up my glasses and rub my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Holly. I was going to tell you, I just didn’t know how.”
“So, it’s true? We have to take our honeymoon before the wedding?”
“I can’t get the time off the week after. I’m lucky to have even gotten off what I did. You have to put in months in advance, and everything happened so quickly, it was too late when I put in the request.” I walk over and sit on the edge of her bed. “But we can still have an amazing time. We can leave the second my shift ends that Sunday and be back the night before the wedding. We can even fly in the morning of the wedding if we want.”
“I can take a twelve-hour flight and arrive home just in time for my wedding. Is that what you’re suggesting?” Her tone lets me know I’ve just qualified as the world’s dumbest man.
“No,” I respond quickly, gawking awkwardly down at my feet.
“It’s fine, Matthew,” she says, sliding her laptop under the bed and then burrowing underneath the covers. “It just sucks, that’s all.” She rolls over in her own private bed and faces the wall. I place a hand on her shoulder, and she jerks it away from my touch with a childish grunt.
Exhausted, stressed, and defeated, I’m left to strip out of my scrubs and climb into my assigned bed alone. Our heads are lined up in the corner where the two beds meet. The room is so quiet. After ten minutes of the silent treatment, I can take no more.
“I love you,” I take a chance and say to my bunk mate, keeping my fingers crossed that she’s not too angry to say it back.
“I love you, too,” she replies in a soft voice.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Not just for this, but for all of it. The wedding, the honeymoon, living with my parents. I’m sorry that I’m not able to give you all the things you dreamed of.”
Holly rolls over and gets up from her bed. She tiptoes over and squishes tightly into my twin. One arm and one leg extend over me in a half cuddle/half attempt to stay in without falling.
“No, I’m sorry,” she whispers. “You’re my dream. That’s all that matters.” She shifts to adjust her grip. “I’m sorry I was upset and that I watched Jeopardy! without you. It was just the crazy mishap last night, then spending the day at Ashley’s and trying to make excuses for my bruised face, then meeting Jayne so that I didn’t have to face your mom… I’m just spent. If we need to take our honeymoon before the wedding, it’s okay. As long as I’m with you, that’s all that matters.” She tilts her head and kisses the base of my neck. It’s all she can really reach, due to our cramped position.
“I love you, Holly, and we’re still gonna have a great honeymoon. I promise.” I inch my arm under her back as far as it will go, and reach for her breast, giving it a firm squeeze.
“Um, what are you doing?” She arches away from my wandering hand.
“Come here and I’ll show you.” I try urging her body on top of mine.
“Oh, no. Nuh-uh. I was serious when I said no more sex while we’re here.”
“No sex, but we can—”
“Nope. Nothing. This shop is remaining closed while we are in port Daniels. In fact, I better get back over to my bed right now.” She gets up and scurries back over to her own bed.
“Holly, our apartment isn’t going to be ready until September. I can’t wait that long. I will die.” I. Will. Die.
“Well, then I guess we better start planning our honeymoon. That’s only a few weeks away.” Holly giggles into the darkness.
A few weeks. I run a hand through my hair and fidget to find a comfortable position in my old bed. I’ll never survive. Which is crazy, because before Holly I had barely even had sex, and I survived. What do I do? I ask myself and wait for a voice to reply. Silence.
Holy shit, what am I doing? No, no, no. Old habits.
Me and him. We don’t talk anymore.