Save the Date

The bakery department was equally deserted—just a woman wearing a white smock and a white Food Mart baseball cap, standing behind the counter and scrolling through her phone.

“Hi,” I said as we approached the counter, and I saw her eyebrows rise as she took in me and Bill in our formal wear.

“Hi,” she said, setting down her phone. “Can I help you?”

“I called earlier,” I said, wishing I’d remembered to write down the name of the person I’d been speaking to. “I’m Charlie Grant. I mentioned that we needed something that could work as a wedding cake? And—”

The woman nodded with recognition. “The three sheet cakes, right?”

I nodded, hugely relieved that in the last half hour, there hadn’t been a run on their cakes. “Yes! That’s right.”

“Just give me a second,” she said as she headed toward the door behind the counter, the one marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. “I’ll be right back.”

I turned to Bill, who looked as relieved as I felt. “Thank god.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I was worried at the last moment that something would have gone wrong. . . .”

Bill shook his head. “I feel like we’ve had enough of that for one wedding.” Then he paled and reached out to quickly knock on the wooden paneling on the bakery case. “Hope I didn’t just jinx us.”

“I’m not even sure what that would look like,” I replied honestly. At this point, what else could go wrong? The tent collapsing on everyone? Linnie realizing she’d actually made a huge mistake and running off with Olly? As these possibilities—and more—started to fill my head, I realized Bill might have a point, and I quickly reached out and knocked, in almost the exact same spot as him, and he smiled at me.

“Maybe we ordered too fast,” he said, nodding at the pictures displayed on top of the case, which showed all the custom cakes the bakery could make. “Would Linnie and Rodney prefer a themed cake for their wedding? Superheroes or robots or princesses?”

I laughed. “I think the guests might be confused if their piece of wedding cake had a robot on it.”

Bill smiled too. “Well, maybe,” he said. “But—” He stopped suddenly and tilted his head to the side, like he was listening for something.

“What?”

Bill gave me a smile and pointed up. “Hear that?”

After a moment, I realized the Rush song had ended and the piped-in music was the same song that Olly Gillespie had played when he’d tried to convince Linnie to jilt Rodney at the altar. I shook my head. “Well, that—” But whatever I was about to say got stopped halfway to my lips when I realized Bill was holding out his hand to me, a half smile on his face.

“Want to dance?” he asked. And even though there were lots of reasons to say no—we were in a supermarket, we didn’t really have time for this, Jesse was waiting for me back at the wedding—but I found that none of these reasons really seemed to matter that much as I looked at Bill, his hand extended toward me.

I didn’t reply, just took his hand, his fingers warm against my cool ones. He held my hand lightly in his, and we stood there for just a moment, looking at each other. And then he twirled me around and then away from him. I felt my shoes turn easily on the waxed supermarket floors, and I spun, the produce section and the bread aisle whirling around me for a moment before Bill spun me back. Bill clearly knew how to dance, which, amazingly, seemed to mean that I knew how to dance too. He spun me in and out and then around again as the yacht rock poured through the speakers, singing about turning the radio up for that sweet sound. I didn’t care that I was wearing a silk dress in the supermarket, or that we were dancing in a place where, usually, people didn’t dance. As we turned in a circle together, there under the fluorescent lights, I had a sense of rightness—of calm—that I hadn’t felt all weekend. Maybe even before that.

“Grant!” I looked over and saw that the woman behind the bakery counter was back and that there were three large cakes in boxes on the counter in front of her. “Order’s ready.”

“Coming,” I called. Bill spun me once more, and I just let the world whirl around me for a moment before I came to a stop and smiled at him. He kept his hands where they were for a moment, touching my waist lightly. Then he stepped away and we were back in a supermarket again.

“Okay,” the woman behind the counter said, punching some numbers into the register. “That’s three sheet cakes. . . . Did you need utensils?” I shook my head, and when she told me the total, I handed her my “in case of emergency” credit card. I had a feeling my parents would more than understand the necessity for it when I told them. “Do you need help out?” she asked as I scrawled my signature on the receipt and looked over at the cakes. They were big, in cardboard boxes with clear plastic lids, presumably so you could see what you were getting—so that if you needed a replacement wedding cake, you didn’t end up with one covered in robots. I thought I could handle one, but before I could reply, Bill appeared at my side, stacking two of the boxes on top of each other and giving her a smile.

“We’ve got it covered.”

We headed out of the supermarket, neither of us going fast. We were slowed down a little by the fact that we were both carrying very large cakes. But I had a feeling Bill might be walking slowly for the same reason I was—the fact that if these cakes didn’t make it home in one piece, we were pretty much out of options. The automatic glass doors slid open, and both of us winced simultaneously as we stepped outside. We couldn’t have been in Food Mart very long, but it was as though we’d been gone hours. It was now fully dark out, and the wind was blowing strongly enough that I gripped my cake hard, trying to keep my balance in my heels.

Bill headed over to the truck, and I followed, not even caring that my skirt was blowing every which way—I was just focusing on getting this cake inside. We were halfway across the parking lot when I heard it—a low rumble of thunder, followed immediately by a flash of lightning illuminating the sky for just one moment before disappearing. “Uh-oh,” Bill said, and I saw him pick up his pace. He beeped the truck open—the headlights coming to life—just as thunder sounded again and I felt the first drop of rain on my shoulder.

“Oh no,” I muttered, moving as fast as I felt I could without dropping my cake. The rain was coming down steadily harder, splashing on my head and arms and leaving faint watermarks on my dress. It was falling in droplets that were bouncing off the plastic top of the cake box, then running down the sides, and I just hoped, as I hurried across the parking lot, that the box was watertight and we weren’t going to show up with soggy supermarket cakes to my sister’s wedding.

Bill made it to the truck first, and he balanced the cakes under one arm as he opened the back door of the cab. He leaned down to place them inside just as I caught up with him. It was pretty much pouring now, the sky dark except for the occasional lightning bolts that would fork across it, the wind howling. It felt more like October than April, and I could feel myself shivering as I held on even tighter to the cake box.

“Got it,” Bill said, reaching for my cake. He placed it on the floor next to the other two, then slammed the door. He ran for the driver’s side, and I ran around the hood to the passenger seat, and we both threw ourselves into the car and closed the doors at almost the exact same moment.

It was much warmer, and quieter, inside the cab of the truck, and I looked across at Bill as the rain beat down on the windshield and the roof, all around us.

“Wow,” Bill said, looking out through the windshield as he ran a hand through his hair.

“I know,” I said, watching the rain run over the glass, then turned to look at Bill. There were still droplets of rain clinging to his tuxedo jacket and on the side of his neck, and I felt the impulse to reach out and brush them off before I caught myself. “Shall we?”

“Let’s.”

We were almost home when Bill glanced over at me and took a breath. “So,” he started, then cleared his throat. “Charlie. I—”

But I never heard what he was about to say, because at that moment a police car, sirens on and lights flashing, zoomed around us to pull into the driveway of my house.