As he turns to James with a look of empty shock on his face, a blood-curdling scream from the women’s prep room shatters the moment.
“YOU
INVITED
JESSICA
COFFIN
TO
MY
WEDDING,
MOM?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jason, having no choice in the matter, recovers quickly from James’ wedding cost comment and rushes to the source of the sound. I look out the window and yes, indeed, there’s Jessica Coffin, a wall of long, straight blonde hair attached to the heart of a demon.
I abandon my mom and James and take off after Jason, if by take off you mean run like a sloth being transported by a snail.
This dress is so heavy I am sure that when I remove it at the end of the day I’ll just float up and be carried off into the clouds.
Marie and Shannon are face to face now, the bride screaming so loudly and inches from her mother’s face that it’s like watching wounded rage in pure form come out via fingertips and travel into Marie’s body. I swear a tri-colored arc of electricity leaps from Shannon’s eyes to her mother’s heart. The cycle is so complete, their screaming in synchronicity, that there’s a certain magic to it, a mellifluous quality that makes me stop and take in the sound.
Meanwhile, Shannon’s ex-boyfriend, Steve, is out there, looking at Jessica’s ass and pretending to talk to her, all while grabbing canapes from wandering wait staff.
Brave man that he is, Jason inserts himself between Shannon and Marie, who each try to bring him over to their respective dark sides. Declan comes rushing in to the doorway just as Shannon’s voice gives out and she picks up the bridal bouquet, arm pulled back like a baseball pitcher, aimed straight for her mother.
“You wouldn’t!” Marie screams.
“TRY ME!”
Declan is across the room and holding Shannon’s elbow with a mobile grace that makes it seem staged.
“You can’t see the bride before the wedding!” Marie scolds. Her hair is wild and flat on one side, and mascara flakes from the nine layers she uses to get eyelashes longer than Donald Trump’s actual hair freckle her face.
“Watch me,” he shouts.
“You can’t!” The pitch of her voice drops two octaves, as if the hounds of hell have been dispatched from her vocal cords. Muffin and Spritzy start barking back. It’s 101 Dalmatians all over again, and Marie is looking like Cruella herself, only instead of collecting puppies, she’s collecting tartan.
Jason shuttles her out of the room quickly, giving Declan a look that says, I think this is the first of many such situations. Soon they’ll have a protocol. But for now, we’re all first-timers here.
Shannon is bent in half, her corset loosened, her carefully coiffed curls spilling around her face like sentries in crooked formation as she sits in a chair now and cries like the world has ended.
Marie tries to enter the room, but I block her with the door, using it as a half-closed shield.
“What are you doing?”
“Protecting my bestie.” I close the door all the way and stand there, knowing I need to act as a bouncer at my best friend’s wedding to protect her from...
Her mother.
It’s finally come to that.
Forty-five minutes before the ceremony.
“What are you doing here?” Shannon asks, her voice a mixture of half-horror and half-relief as Declan drops to one knee and looks at her, eyes filled with the kind of love most people spend three lifetimes trying to find.
“I heard you screaming. What did Marie do now?”
“She invited Jessica Coffin to the wedding.”
An uncharacteristic set of emotions marches across Declan’s face. “Why doesn’t she just drop a ring in your coffee for you to swallow while she’s at it?”
“I know! She invited the woman who almost ruined our getting together, and who is my biggest online bully, to the most important day of my life!”
“Honey, this isn’t the most important day of your life. It’s the first day of the long series of days that will, if I have anything to say about it, be one day after the other of the most important day of your life. Right up until the day we die together, well into our nineties, after I give you the best orgasm ever.” The way he looks at her as he speaks is like watching love come to life.
She sniffs and laughs, all giggles and twitches. “That’s one hell of a bucket list you have, Declan.”
“I never back down from a challenge.” He pulls her up and kisses her temple. She lets out a shaky breath, then cries softly.
“I don’t want this,” Shannon whispers.
“Don’t want to marry me?”
“God, yes I want to marry you! But this? The pompous pageantry of it? No! Mom’s completely taken over and no matter how hard I try to stand up against it, I can’t win.”
He holds her while she cries, then says in a deep, determined voice, “Sometimes the only way to win is not to play.”
“What?”
“Bow out. Fold.”
“Our wedding isn’t a game of poker!”
“It sort of is, Shannon,” he insists. “Is this—” He gestures around the room and outside “—how you imagined our wedding would be?”
“Hell, no.”
“Do you want this?”
“Do you?”
“No. But I’ll go along with it because I love you.”
“I don’t want any of this! I would have been happy getting married on one of the Harbor Islands with just family and close friends! Or eloping in Vegas!”