Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble

I know it’s ridiculous. But my eyes have actually filled with tears. I do my best to blink them away. I don’t want him to know that I’m crying with joy over the fact that he’s given me a six-pack of diet Coke. Because I’m not. It’s the gesture, not the beverage.

“Th-thank you,” I say. I know I need to keep the conversation short, or he’ll hear the tremor in my voice. “D-do you want one?”

“You’re welcome,” Luke says. “And no, thank you. I prefer to get my caffeine the old-fashioned way, with a Colombian drip. So. What have you decided?”

I’ve taken one of the cans from the plastic holder and am about to crack it open. “Decided?”

“About what you’re going to do,” Luke says. “When you get back to the States. Are you going to stay in Ann Arbor? Or move to New York?”

“Oh.” I crack open the can. The sharp hiss of carbonation is every bit as musical to my ears as the burble of the river to my left. “I don’t know. I want to move to New York. You know, with Shari. But what would I do there?”

“In New York?”

“Right. I mean, let’s face it. It turns out there’s not a whole lot you can do with an individualized major in history of fashion. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Oh,” Luke says with a mysterious smile, “I’m pretty sure you’ll figure something out.”

“Right,” I say-very sarcastically. I mean, for me, anyway. “And then there’s the small fact that I haven’t exactly graduated yet. How can I find a job if I don’t even have my B.A. yet?”

“Well,” Luke says, “I think that depends on the job.”

“I don’t know,” I say. And take a sip of my diet Coke. The bubbles from the carbonation tickle my tongue. God, I’ve missed this. “It might just be simpler to stay in Ann Arbor for one last semester.”

“Right,” Luke says. “And see if you can patch things up with what’s-his-name.”

I am so shocked by this I nearly spit out the diet Coke I’ve just swallowed. Yes! Nearly one of sixteenth of one my six precious cans!

“WHAT?” I cry after I swallow. “Patch things up with-what are you TALKING about?”

“Just checking,” Luke says. “I mean, you say you want to stay in Ann Arbor…and he’ll be in Ann Arbor. Right?”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “But that’s not why. I mean, at least in Ann Arbor I still have my job at the shop. I could live at home and save up my money, then join Shari in January.” If she hasn’t already found another roommate.

“That,” Luke says as he turns the car up the driveway to Mirac, “doesn’t sound much like the girl I met on the train the other day, the one who took off for France without even knowing if she’d have a place to stay when she got there.”

“I knew I’d have a place to stay,” I say. “I mean, I knew Shari was here somewhere. I knew I wouldn’t be alone.”

“Just like you wouldn’t be alone in New York,” Luke says.

I laugh. “Oh, you’re one to talk,” I say. “Why aren’t you moving to New York? You told me you got into NYU.”

“Yeah,” Luke says as we bounce along the steep driveway. “But I don’t know if that’s really what I want to do. I mean, give up my six-figure salary for five more years of school?”

“Oh, you’d rather help rich people figure out how to make more money than save lives?”

“Ouch,” Luke says with a grin.

I shrug. Or as best I can when I’m being jounced around so much and am also trying to protect the precious elixir in the can I’m holding. “I’m just saying. I mean, managing stock portfolios is important. But if it turns out what you’re actually good at is healing sick people, isn’t it kind of a waste not to do that instead?”

“But that’s just it,” Luke says. “I don’t know if I am. Good at healing sick people, I mean.”

“Just like I don’t know if there’s anything I’m good at that someone in New York will actually pay me to do.”

“But,” he says, “as a certain person keeps telling me, you’ll never know if you don’t even give it a try.”

Then we’re bursting out of the trees again and onto the circular drive that leads to the house. It’s even more impressive, it turns out, in daylight than it is at nighttime.

Not that Luke seems to notice. I guess because he’s seen it so many times already.

“That’s different,” I say. “I mean, you already know there’s something you can do. Someone’s paying you a six-figure salary to do it. You know how much I get paid? I get eight bucks an hour at Vintage to Vavoom. You know how far eight bucks an hour goes in New York City? Well, I don’t, either. But I’m guessing not very far.”

Luke, I notice when I glance nervously his way to see what he thinks of my admission, is grinning more broadly than ever.

“Is this how you are with everybody?” he wants to know. “Or am I just lucky because, in a moment of weakness, you revealed all your deepest secrets to me?”

“You promised not to tell anyone about those,” I remind him. “Especially Shari, about the thesis-”

“Hey,” Luke says, pulling up in front of the chateau. His gaze is steady on mine. He’s not smiling anymore. “I said I wouldn’t tell. Remember? And I’m not going to. You can trust me.”

And for a second-while we sit there looking at each other across the bag of croissants-I can swear that something…happens…between us.

I don’t know what. But it’s different from all the times I thought he was going to kiss me. There’s nothing sexual about what happens there in the car. It’s more like some sort of…mutual understanding. Some sort of acknowledgment that we are spiritual kin. Some sort of magnetic pull-

Or maybe it’s just the smell of the croissants. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had any kind of pastry.

Whatever it is that’s going on between Luke and me-if anything-it’s over a second later when the door to the chateau is thrown open and Vicky, standing there in a pale blue kimono, says, “God, what took you so long? We’re all starving. You know I get hypoglycemic if I don’t eat first thing in the morning.”

And the moment between Luke and me-whatever it was-is gone.

“Got your cure for hypoglycemia right here,” Luke says cheerfully, grabbing the bag of croissants.

Then, when Vicky stomps back into the house, Luke turns to me and winks.

“Look at that,” he says. “I’m healing people already.”

The rest of the morning is a blur of deliveries. The first truck to arrive is the one carrying the dance-floor, stage, and sound equipment for the wedding’s band-in this case, not the string quartet Luke tells me plays most weddings at Mirac, but Blaine’s band, Satan’s Shadow. As workers from the company in charge of setting this up begin their work, another truck-this one filled with folding tables and chairs for the rehearsal dinner and wedding reception (both of which are to be held on the lawn)-rumbles up the driveway (knocking down everything Luke and Chaz couldn’t reach, and forcing the two of them to have to scramble back down the driveway to clear it of all the newly fallen branches) and needs help unloading.

Just as Shari, Chaz, Blaine-who, his band not having arrived yet, declares, “I’m bored,” and begins pitching in-and I get the last of the folding chairs off the truck, another one arrives, this one carrying all the food the chef and staff from a local restaurant will be preparing for the festivities. This food needs to be unloaded and carried to the kitchen, where Madame Laurent supervises its storage, and the restaurant chef begins preparing canapes for the cocktail hour, which begins in the late afternoon…

Which is when the out-of-town guests begin showing up, either in their own rented vehicles or ferried from the train station by Dominique, who has managed to avoid having to do any hard labor by volunteering to do this instead. The groom arrives first, with his dazed-looking parents. I am very curious to see this computer programmer Vicky is marrying instead of the rich Texas oil baron her mother wanted for her, and I have to say, when I finally see Craig, I can understand the attraction. Not that he’s good-looking-because he’s not.

But when Vicky comes flying at him from inside the house, blathering about everything that’s going wrong, from her friends still not having hotel rooms to Blaine having told her that she looks fat in her rehearsal-dinner dress, Craig’s reply is as phlegmatic as his parents’ reaction to Mirac.

“Vic. It’s all right,” he says.

And Vicky actually stops crying.

At least until half a dozen of Vicky’s friends-as pretty and blond as she is-pile out of minivans and stumble across the gravel driveway in their wobbly high heels to hug her. Then she starts bawling all over again, and Craig, not looking in the least bothered by this, gently leads his parents to the vineyard, where Monsieur de Villiers happily shows them around the cavernous cask room.

Soon it seems the entire chateau is under attack by what appears to be the upper crust of Houston society, stylishly clad matrons with their navy-blue-blazer-wearing husbands in tow, with whom Dominique mingles and laughs.

These Houstonians, in turn, raise their eyebrows at the arrival of the remaining members of Satan’s Shadow, who show up in an extremely disreputable-looking van and are greeted by Blaine with their signature Satanic cry, which involves tipping back the head and ululating (which causes Vicky to run inside, screaming, “Mo-o-o-om!” and Shari, as she helps me spread a tablecloth over the last of the twenty-five or so tables on the lawn, to shake her head and go, “God, am I glad I’m an only child”).

I’m happy when the staff from the restaurant takes over and begins setting the tables. This leaves us free to run inside to change before the cocktails are served-a necessity since we’re going to be manning the bar for the event, opening the bottles of wine and champagne Monsieur de Villiers will be supplying, and I personally don’t want to gross anyone out with my sweat stains. I don’t exactly have the most experience opening wine bottles, either, so I’m suspecting the evening should be pretty interesting, on the whole.

I’m just coming back down the stairs, feeling refreshed and semi-presentable in a black sleeveless Anne Fogarty linen dress, when I nearly collide with a group of people coming up the stairs, led by Luke, who is hauling a couple of really heavy-looking suitcases.

“I’m telling you, son,” a portly bald gentleman in khaki pants and a black polo shirt is saying to Luke. “It’s an opportunity you can’t afford to miss. You were the first person I thought of when I heard.”

Behind the balding man hovers Ginny Thibodaux, looking flustered.

“Gerald,” she says, “did you hear me? I said I think Blaine’s smoking again. I could swear I smelled cigarettes on him just now. That funny foreign kind he and all his friends like so much…”

Behind Mrs. Thibodaux, Vicky is saying, “Mom, you have got to talk to him. Now he’s saying his stupid band won’t play covers. Mom, he swore they’d play covers. Now he’s saying they’re only doing their songs. How am I supposed to have my father-daughter dance to some song called ‘Cheetah Whip’?”

“I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. Thibodaux says. “Your brother just hasn’t been the same since that Nancy left him. I wish he’d meet a nice girl. Wouldn’t any of your friends-”

“Jesus, Mom. Would you worry about something that actually matters for a change? What are we going to do about the fact that he won’t play any covers? Craig and I are not having our first dance as a married couple to a song called ‘I Wanna Bang Your Box’…”

“Well, hello,” Luke says with a grin as I make room for him and the Thibodauxes to pass me. “Don’t you look nice.”