Chapter 38
Note to self:
Send a fan letter to my new
favorite author.
Sleep, it turned out, was the furthest thing from my mind. After quietly changing, I climbed into bed and went to work searching for authors named Alicia who wrote pirate books.
It was no accident he’d chosen my name. It couldn’t be. I thought back to the clue he’d given me at the pool. A warmth started in my stomach and moved through my body. I was the person he thought so highly of. Me.
What did it mean?
It didn’t take long to find the name: Alicia Night, whose website proclaimed she wrote “Love Stories Set on the High Seas.” She had quite an online following: reader art, reviews, devoted fans, and constant speculation about her identity.
I immediately downloaded every book to my reading app. Each cover featured scantily clad men and women. On pirate ships. In torrid embraces. With lustful eyes. Written by Theo. Mild-mannered Theo. My Theo.
My brain could not connect my quiet, thoughtful Theo with these stories. This must be like what happens when someone finds out there’s a serial killer in the family and they say things like, “I can’t believe it. He was such a nice guy.”
Except no murder, of course.
It was after one in the morning, but that didn’t stop me from opening one of the books and reading the first two chapters before I was interrupted by a soft knock on the door.
I scrambled to the window and peeked through the curtains. It was Theo.
Quietly as possible, I opened the door. “Is everything okay?”
He shook his head. “It’s Mack.”
Despite calling forty-three times and sending just as many text messages, Mack didn’t respond to any of them.
“Straight to voicemail again.” I rubbed grit from my eyes since it was now after two in the morning. Any pie cocktail buzz I’d had disappeared the second I realized we had a problem.
When Theo had returned to the room, he’d found a note from Mack saying he and Mimi were going out on the town. I gently woke Abe, who said he’d seen Mack before he went to bed around ten, which meant he’d left sometime between ten and one in the morning. Nothing good ever happened then.
I paced the length of Mack and Theo’s room. “What do I do?”
Definitely not calling my mother, that was for sure. Why couldn’t he answer his phone and let me know he was okay?
“He is a grown man,” Theo said but when he got a look at my face, his voice trailed off.
“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
“I know.”
“In a city he doesn’t know.”
“Yes.”
“With a strange woman he doesn’t know.”
He shrugged. “She seemed pretty nice.”
“Theo!”
“Right.”
“Mimi might not even be her real name. She could be planning to harvest his organs.” I stopped in front of Theo and grabbed his shirt with two fists. “We have to find him.”
He covered my hands. “Ali. I’m not going to say a word about how you sound like your mother right now.”
“That’s what you got out of all this?”
“We’ll find him.” He gently pried my hands from his shirt.
“How?” I threw myself on the nearest bed. “He could be anywhere.”
My phone pinged. It was a text from Mack. I gasped, my jaw going slack.
“What?”
I handed Theo the phone to show him the photo my grandfather had sent. It was of Mimi and him, both wearing huge smiles. Mack had on a t-shirt that said, “What Happens in Vegas is Awesome”, and Mimi had a “Vegas, Baby!” hat on. But that wasn’t the part that made me gasp. Oh, no. It was that they were standing in front of a sign which read 24-HOUR WEDDING CHAPEL.
“He wouldn’t, would he?” I asked for probably the fiftieth time as we left what might have been the fiftieth twenty-four-hour wedding chapel in this city. Turned out that twenty-four-hour sign was not unique. They were everywhere. Like the Vegas version of lawn flamingos.
“I’m sure it was a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.”
Theo threw an arm around my shoulders as we walked down the block. “You’ll laugh about this later.”
“No, I don’t think I will.”
The next chapel boasted that a couple could be married by Elvis, Britney Spears, or Michael Jackson. The lobby was clean and white with a long counter. Behind it, a large sign hung on the wall, which outlined their wedding packages starting at the “Sign and Go” for a mere seventy bucks, and going up to $2,300 for the “Grand Ultimate” package, which included all the bells and whistles, a hotel room, and a borrowed wedding dress. But wait, you could make your own package, too—à la carte style. It was like a fast-food menu but for matrimony.
“This is… classy.”
A middle-aged woman in a pale-pink dress stabbed out a cigarette and shot us a practiced smile. “Hello, lovelies. Can I help you with anything?” She pulled a thick binder from under the counter. “You can flip through this to see our selection of flowers, wedding dresses and tuxes.”
“We’re not here to get married.” With a yawn, I held out my phone with the photo of Mack and Mimi. “Have you seen these two tonight?”
She grinned. “Oh, yeah. They were the cutest. Sometimes you get some real idiots up here but these two were sweet.”
My heart seemed to freeze mid-beat. “They were here.”
Theo put his hands on my shoulders. “Do you have any idea where they went?”
“I think they said they were going to Casa Nostra, that Italian restaurant down the block, to celebrate.”
“To celebrate,” I repeated. Mack had done it. He’d gotten married to a woman he’d met all of eight hours ago.
“Thank you,” Theo said after getting directions to the restaurant. He turned me and gently frog-marched me out of the chapel.
Somehow, we made it Casa Nostra without me realizing we’d even been walking. The restaurant was busy despite it being closer to four in the morning. We scoured the entire restaurant and when we found nothing, I pulled a chair out from the nearest table and sat.
The couple sitting at the table looked at me curiously. The woman held up a basket. “Breadstick?”
“Thanks.” I pulled one out and took a bite. “Sorry for intruding.”
She shrugged. “Eat up, honey. You look like you could use the carbs.”
“You have no idea.” I waved the breadstick at her. “This city is nuts.”
Theo passed the table, then stopped and turned around, walking back. “No luck.”
“Nope.”
The woman offered Theo a breadstick too. “Who ya looking for?”
I showed her the photo and she smiled. “Oh, yay. I’ve seen them. They were sitting over there.” She pointed at a table nearby, now occupied by a trio of women. “Not sure where they?—”
That’s when I heard it. Somewhere a man was belting out Taylor Swift at the top of his lungs. I grabbed Theo’s hand. “Do you hear that?”
The restaurant bar boasted twenty-four-hour karaoke and while the place wasn’t empty, it was a fairly small crowd of the very drunk, which included Mack and Mimi.
Mack was on the stage. Every lyric sort of tumbled out of his mouth in sloppy, drunken happiness. Despite that, he got an occasional catcall and random applause. Standing by the stage and swaying to Mack’s caterwauling was Mimi, wearing bright-pink hot pants, four-inch heels, and a shirt that showed a whole lot of the girls she was currently shaking.
“What is happening?” I whispered.
“I would say Mack is having a really good time.”
I plopped down at the bar, eyes on the stage. After Mack ended his song, Mimi joined him for a truly horrible rendition of “Islands in the Stream.”
“A really, really good time,” Theo said as we watched Mimi plant a kiss on Mack’s cheek.
“Can I get you something?” the bartender asked.
“I’m with the band.” I yawned. The adrenaline was fading fast, replaced by exhaustion.
Theo sat next to me, his baseball cap pulled low. I gazed longingly at his shoulder, wondering if he’d be okay with me putting my head on it. Or if he’d possibly let me curl up in his lap.
Theo turned to me and frowned. He brushed a piece of hair from my cheek and read my mind again. “You look tired.”
“So do you.” And I’d already noticed his limp was becoming more pronounced with each step. “And your ankle is hurting, isn’t it?”
He gave me a weary smile. “And we still have a marriage to break up.”
I groaned. “Do you think they have quickie divorces in Vegas?”
Mack and Mimi finished their song, and with linked hands, practically skipped off the stage.
We tracked the two back to a table full of people who looked to mostly be in their sixties and seventies. What had they done? Crashed a senior living group, got married, got drunk, and then decided to continue the celebration with karaoke, and not necessarily in that order.
“Mack,” I said, much too loudly. Everyone at the table jerked their heads in my direction.
“Ali-Cat!” Mack stood and held his arms open. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
I blinked. “We’ve spent the last two hours searching for you. Your phone goes straight to voicemail. I’ve been worried sick.”
“I didn’t mean to worry you. I left a note. I sent you that text too, but then my phone died. Did you get it?” With a grin, he waved his hand around the table. “Mimi, look who came to visit.”
“It’s four o’clock in the morning. This isn’t a visit.”
Mack continued jovially like he hadn’t heard a word I was saying. “Friends, this is my granddaughter, Ali, and her fiancé, Theo.”
“He’s not my…” A rowdy round of congratulations made it impossible for me to be heard. “Whatever.”
After everyone settled down, Mimi pointed to the one unoccupied chair. “Well, you two, pull up a seat. We’re celebratin’.”
“Did you two get married?” I blurted out.
Mack’s eyes widened and he plopped back down into his chair. “Now, Ali…”
“The picture you sent…it was in front of a wedding chapel, and I know you’re a grown adult. Of course, you are, and I love you, and I know you have this plan and you’re looking for a change, but meeting a woman and marrying her eight hours later is insanity. She could be a serial killer or a mouth breather or…I don’t know.” I paused and looked over at Mimi. “No offense, Mimi. You seem very nice.”
“Oh, no offense taken.” Her mouth twisted into an amused smirk. “But, sugar, I’ll ease your mind right now. I got seconds on the day God handed out common sense. There’s no way I’d let a man I just met put a ring on it. That would be nuttier than a squirrel turd.”
A wave of relief coursed through me. “Thank God.”
Mimi pointed to a man in a dress shirt and tie and a woman in a lavender dress who were sitting almost on top of each other, each wearing matching expressions of bliss. “Those two got hitched.”
The couple waved and the woman held up her left hand and pointed to the wedding ring there.
“Congrats,” I said weakly.
“They’re friends from Texas. That’s why I’m here,” Mimi continued. “This was all planned, but then I met Mr. Charming here,” she leaned over and gave Mack a kiss on the cheek, “and thought he looked like a man who liked to have fun. So, I invited him as my plus one. I didn’t realize this would cause so much concern.”
“Oh.” That’s all I could say. My face felt hot with embarrassment like I’d received a dressing-down from the principal (which had happened once…or twice…or, well, you get it).
Mimi’s eyes danced from me to the man standing behind me. “You’re here now. Why don’t you have a seat and stay awhile.”
“We should take Mack and get going,” I protested. “We have a lot of driving ahead of us tomorrow.”
Mimi raised a dark eyebrow and spoke in a firm voice. “Sit.”
“Got it.”
The table only had one empty seat and with Theo’s ankle, I offered it up to him. “You take the chair. I’ll find another one.”
Theo frowned. “No, you sit. You’re exhausted.”
“And your ankle hurts.”
“I’m fine.”
I crossed my arms. “So am I.”
“This is stupid,” Theo muttered. He sat in the chair. Then, before I could blink, he grabbed my waist and pulled me onto his lap. “There. That’s better.”
“I’m not too heavy?”
“Don’t even.” He adjusted his arms around me, one hand going to my hip.
But I wasn’t planning on arguing. I put my head on his shoulder, breathed in all the Theo sort of smells—soap and citrus and comfort. My eyelids began to droop, the world growing blurry and muddled. His hand, warm and gentle, slid under the hoodie and sleep tank I had on. It found a patch of skin on my lower back and his thumb began to make small, soothing circles. It was the last thing I remember before falling asleep.