Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble Gets Hitched

LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS^™

“Your friend Chaz sounds like a pig” is Monique’s observation when she and Tiffany overhear me relating the details about my evening to Gran (Mom, as usual, wasn’t available) while the three of us are having a quick, between-fittings lunch in the shop the next day.

“She’s right about that,” Gran, on my cell phone, agrees. “Whoever she is.”

“He’s not really,” I say, pausing with my Così tandoori chicken sandwich halfway to my lips. “I mean, under ordinary circumstances. That’s what’s so weird about this.”

“Well, that’s it, then,” Monique says firmly. She’s a beauty every bit as statuesque—and sure of herself—as Tiffany.

Unlike Tiffany, however, Monique has a British accent that makes her sound like a college professor every time she speaks.

A college professor who talks a lot about men being “wankers,” I mean.

“What’s it?” I ask.

Tiffany and Monique exchange glances. Tiffany nods.

“He’s in love with you, of course,” Monique says.

“You’ve never even met him,” I cry.

“I have,” Tiffany says, stuffing a wad of Jamaican jerk sandwich into her mouth. “And he totally is.”

“She’s right,” Gran says. “I’ve always thought that boy wanted to put a load of coal into your steam engine.”

I nearly spit out the bite of tandoori chicken I’d just taken.

“How can you say that?” I cry. “He’s Luke’s best friend! He’s my best friend’s ex-boyfriend!”

Tiffany looks at me blankly. “So?”

Monique is giving me the same blank stare. They must teach it at modeling school. “Yeah,” she says. “So?”

Gran sounds impatient. “Dr. Quinn comes on in ten minutes. How long is this going to take?”

“So… so…,” I say, for once in my life actually sputtering to find the right words. “So… Look. I’m sure men fall head over heels for you two all the time. I mean… look at you. But in real life—for real girls, like me, that is—that just doesn’t happen. Men don’t go around falling in love with me. And certainly not without encouragement.”

“Oh, and your letting him touch your titties in that taxi wasn’t encouragement?” Monique asks.

“You let him spend the night too,” Tiffany points out.

I put my finger over the mouthpiece of my cell. “Excuse me,” I say. “My grandmother is listening in on this.”

“Too late,” Gran says. “I already heard. This is even better than Dr. Quinn.”

“We were both drunk,” I insist in my own defense for what has to be the millionth time. I’m regretting ever having opened my mouth about any of this, a not unfamiliar sensation. I’m especially regretting not having hung up when Gran answered. “Look, forget I said anything. It was nothing.”

Why had I even said anything, especially to these girls? I wouldn’t have if I’d been able to discuss any of this with Shari. If I could just call Shari and go, Shari. This is what my fiancé’s best friend said to me. What do you think? none of this would be happening.

But I can’t do that. Because my fiancé’s best friend is her ex-boyfriend.

And I can’t talk about what happened with Chaz with Shari. Because it would all be too weird.

But Monique and Tiffany, it turns out, are not proving to be adequate Shari substitutes. Not at all.

“That last bit he said,” Monique says, “about the game just starting? That didn’t sound like nothing to me. Does it to you, Tiff?”

“No way, José,” Tiffany says. “I think he’s warm for our Miss Lizzie’s form.”

“Told you,” Gran sings.

“Oh my God, you guys.” I shake my head. “He is so not. And even if he is… it’s not going to go anywhere. He’s completely damaged from what happened with Shari. He says he—”

It’s at this moment—fortunately—that the door to the shop bursts open, and Ava Geck comes tumbling through it, her bodyguard and Chihuahua in tow. Ava has a wild look on her face, as if she’s being hunted. She’s wearing short-shorts over fishnet stockings, even though it’s approximately twelve degrees outside, and her lower jaw is moving rapidly… except that she’s not speaking.

Tiffany scowls down at the book in front of her. “What are you doing here, Ava?” she demands. “Your next appointment’s not for four weeks.”

“Sorry,” Ava says, still chewing. She collapses onto the chaise longue I insisted Madame Henri place in the far corner for nervous, waiting mothers, and peers out the plate-glass window in the front of the store, her body hidden from view by a display dummy dressed in a princess gown from the 1950s, complete with a voluminous, diamanté-dotted tulle skirt that takes up almost the entire display window. “We were in the neighborhood looking at condos and suddenly… paparazzi! Can we hide for a few minutes until they go away? I don’t have any eyeliner on.”

“Hold on, Gran,” I say into my cell. I walk over to Ava and hold out my hand expectantly. “You may,” I say.

Still crouching behind the tulle skirt, she looks down at my hand with a blank expression on her face. Then comprehension dawns. She spits her gum out into my hand. I walk over to the trash can beneath the desk at which Tiffany is sitting and dump it, then reach for a tissue.

“Little Joey,” I say to the bodyguard, to whom we’d been formally introduced during Ava’s last visit. “There are blinds if you want to pull them down.”

Little Joey—whose hulking three-hundred-pound, nearly seven-foot frame makes it clear that his name is ironic—begins pulling down the black metal blinds I’d bought at the Manhattan Target when I’d been rehabbing Jill Higgins’s gown, and she, too, had had problems with stalkerazzi.

“Why are you looking for a condo in Manhattan, Ava?” I ask her.

“It’s, like, so much better here than in Los Angeles,” Ava says, pulling her shivering Chihuahua onto her lap. “Except for the weather. For one thing, you don’t have to drive as far to get to cool places. Which is great if you’re wasted. And for another, no one asks you for autographs, or crap like that—usually. I mean, people stare. But they don’t bug you. Except, like, teenagers at H&M.”

It takes us a moment to digest this. Tiffany is the first to recover.

“So are you looking for a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom, or what?” Tiffany asks conversationally.

“She’s looking for four bedrooms, three baths, and an eat-in kitchen with at least two thousand square feet of outdoor terrace, and full southern exposure,” Little Joey says when Ava just blinks bewilderedly at the question.

When we all turn our heads to stare at Ava, dumbfounded by this information—since to my knowledge, no such piece of real estate exists on the island of Manhattan (for less than five million dollars, anyway)—she just shrugs and says, in her little girl voice, “I’ve got seasonal affective disorder. Hey, do you have anything else to eat? All I’ve had today is a PowerBar, and I’m, like, starving.”

I hand her the other half of my tandoori chicken sandwich, but she makes a face.

“What’s that white slimy stuff?” she asks suspiciously.

This causes Tiffany and Monique to dissolve into a fit of hysterical laughter from which it’s clear they won’t soon recover.

“Tzatziki sauce,” I say. “Ava, how can you be marrying a Greek prince and not know what tzatziki sauce is?”

“I like him,” Ava says, snatching the sandwich out of reach of her dog—whose name, she’d informed us the day before, is Snow White (“After the Disney princess”)—“not his country’s food.”

“Well,” I say. “You should try it, at least, before you decide you don’t like it.”

Ava shrugs and takes a bite. Her mouth occupied, I turn back to Tiffany and Monique, who are wiping their eyes from their shared—if disgustingly raunchy—joke.

“Seriously, you guys,” I say to them, addressing my remark into the phone. “Do you think I should try talking to him? Luke thinks he’s depressed. What if he’s right? Maybe if I talked to him about it, it would help. To bring about closure, you know? Sometimes when things are out in the open, they don’t bother people as much.”

“Says the girl who can’t keep a secret to save her life,” says Tiffany with a laugh. Although frankly I don’t see what’s so funny about that remark. Also, it’s not true. I’ve kept lots of secrets.

I can’t happen to think of any right now. But I’m sure there are some.

“What are we talking about?” Ava wants to know. She’s already gnawed off a quarter of an inch of the sandwich half I’ve given her. Snow White is busy with another quarter of an inch. It’s not hard to see how the two of them stay so trim.

“Lizzie’s fiancé’s best friend is in love with her,” Monique says lightly. She’s split her vegi muffuletta with Little Joey. “And she doesn’t know what to do about it.”

I roll my eyes. “He’s not in love with me,” I say. “He—”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Ava interrupts, licking the fingertips Snow White’s just licked. “Why don’t you just fuck him?”

“Who’s that?” Gran asks over the phone. “I like her.”

I have no choice but to set down my Diet Coke and say, “Ava, first of all: Monique is wrong. Chaz isn’t in love with me. We’re just friends. Second of all, you shouldn’t be driving anywhere, short or long distance, if you’re wasted. I want you to know that I Googled you after I got home last night, and I know all about your DUI. You need to be more careful. With all your money, why don’t you just hire a driver? And last, while I appreciate that, as feminists, we have every right to embrace whatever kind of language we choose, even words considered by previous generations to be ‘unladylike’ or ‘coarse,’ it really isn’t tasteful or imaginative to use vulgarities in everyday conversation. Sure, if you’re really upset about something. But the f-word, Ava, when you’re speaking about making love? I think you’re better than that. In fact, I know you are. Besides, what would Prince Aleksandros say?”

Ava looks at me with the same blank expression she’d worn when I’d held out my hand for her gum. “He says ‘fuck’ even more than I do,” she says.

I sigh. “Let’s just drop it,” I say to the room—and into the phone—in general. “Pretend I didn’t say anything. Especially to Mom. Okay, Gran?”

“Tell you what you should do,” Little Joey remarks, after taking a delicate sip of the Diet Peach Snapple he’s produced from one of his enormous pockets. “Get this guy alone, in a darkened room. Open up a bottle of Hennessey. Play a little Vandross. That’s how you have yourselves some closure.”

“Now,” Gran says approvingly, “someone is finally talking sense.”

I gape at my cell. “That’s… that’s preposterous,” I stammer. “I happen to be deeply—deeply—in love with my fiancé. I mean… come on, Tiffany.” I turn to her for help. “You’ve seen Luke and me together. You had Thanksgiving with us, remember?”

“Right,” Tiffany says, thoughtfully tapping on her perfectly aligned—also capped—front teeth. “But I think Little Joey might be onto something, Lizzie. I think you want us to say you should go talk to Chaz. I mean, why else would you have mentioned it?”

Monique nods too. “Right. You do seem to want us to tell you that you should go talk to Chaz about it.”

“I think you liked having his hand down your bra and are hoping he’ll do it again,” Tiffany adds.

I widen my eyes at her. “Boundaries,” I say, jerking my head urgently at Little Joey, who is now smirking into his Snapple bottle. “Ladies! Boundaries!”

“That’s what I said.” Ava, ignoring me, has turned her huge baby blues onto Tiffany. “She should just fuck him and get him out of her system. That’s what I did when I found myself with feelings for DJ Tippycat on Celebrity Pit Fight.”

I blink. Then I say firmly, “I am not going to make love to my fiancé’s best friend, Ava. That is a totally ridiculous suggestion. For one thing, I would never betray Luke’s trust like that. And I can tell you that if that’s how you deal with your fiancé’s friends—or… or DJ Tippycat—well, he isn’t going to stay your fiancé for long. And for another thing, I happen to be in love with my boyfriend. Besides which, Chaz happens to be my best friend’s ex-boyfriend—”

“Yeah, but it’s not like she wants him anymore,” Tiffany says in a bored voice. “Seeing as how she’s gay and sleeping with a woman now.”

Ava sucks in her breath. Little Joey looks as delighted as if he’s just won the lottery. Snow White yawns and curls herself into a little ball and goes to sleep. Gran says, “I think I’ll just TiVo today’s episode of Dr. Quinn… how the hell do you work this thing?”