Chapter 22 Chris
CHRIS
I finally made it to the party.
The yard was decked out in tiki torches and the pool had beach balls floating in it. A band was playing.
I was about an hour behind everyone after getting off work, then running home to shower and change into my Hawaiian shirt.
I scanned the yard through the kitchen window and found Larissa.
She was wearing a floor-length strapless dress with flowers on it, and she had a big white flower in her hair.
I stood there a moment just to look. She was beautiful.
I didn’t usually see her dressed up—not that she wasn’t beautiful when she wasn’t.
I lingered another few seconds, then headed for the yard. I found the group of my friends clustered around a high-top table. I edged in between Jesse and Larissa. When Larissa turned and saw me, she lit up. “Hey, you made it.” She was grinning. And then I saw why.
Woofarine’s face was on her dress, mixed in between the flowers. The plot twist of the year because Woofarine’s face was also on my shirt. I’d ordered it online and we must have gotten them at the same place and picked the same design. We both burst into laughter.
Mike paused, looking between us. “Damn, I didn’t know there was a dress code,” he said.
Everyone watched us cracking up.
“Uh, can we also be in on the joke?” Becca asked.
I pointed to the dog faces.
“Oh my God,” Becca said. “You guys are nerds.”
“I didn’t even notice it,” Mike said, looking back and forth between our clothes.
“Did you plan this?” Jesse asked.
“No,” we said in unison, which made Larissa laugh harder.
“You should have told me. I would have got one too,” Mike said.
“You wouldn’t have worn this,” Larissa said, still giggling. “It’s too hokey for you.”
“Eh, you’re probably right.” He wrapped his free arm around her and squeezed. She leaned into it and beamed, and I took the moment to study a citronella candle on the table.
Jesse looked over at the bar. “Hey, I’m gonna get one of those pineapple things. Anyone want anything?”
Mike shook his head. “I’m not drinking tonight.”
Jesse looked at him like he had two heads. “What? Come on! They got like, three signature drinks over there.”
“I’m training, dick,” Mike said.
I shook my head. “I’m not drinking either.”
“I’ll take one,” Becca said.
“I’ll have a pina colada,” Larissa said.
“Remind them about the allergy,” I said.
Jesse gave me a finger gun. “Got it.”
Jesse left for the bar and I went to serve myself some dinner.
“Isn’t it pretty?” Larissa said, coming up behind me as I surveyed the graze table. Deli meats and cheeses, crackers and berries, chocolate-covered almonds, wasabi peas and dried fruits. It was garnished with hibiscus flowers and palm leaves and birds-of-paradise.
“Too bad it’s got nuts on it,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“How are the snackle boxes going?” I asked, turning to her.
She shrugged. “Slowing down a little bit.”
I nodded at the table. “What about doing something like this?”
She twisted her lips. “Hmm. Do you think people would buy it?” she asked. “Like if I did small boxes or party platters?”
“Oh yeah. I’d buy it.”
She studied the table. “This actually looks like fun. I’ll add it to the rotation. I made a goal of earning an extra hundred dollars a day for the next three months.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? How’s it going?”
“Not great,” she admitted. “I need more hours in the day.”
I studied her studying the table.
I wished Mike helped her with this stuff. I didn’t think she’d take money from him—she was too independent for that—but he could encourage her. Help her figure out what she wanted to do, help her do it.
She’d been staying at his house three to four times a week for the last month. Mike was in heaven, it was all he could talk about.
We migrated back to the group. Jesse got her a pina colada and I’d just finished my food and tossed the plate when I heard the sound of an electric wheelchair.
I knew exactly what this meant. My first instinct was to dive in front of Larissa, but Mike whipped her out of the way first with mere seconds to spare.
Grandpa slammed to a halt in the middle of our group, his oxygen tank on the back of his wheelchair.
“Grandpa,” Mike said. “I wondered when you were gonna slow down enough for me to say hi.”
“Shut up and give me a cigarette,” he snapped.
I snorted.
Grandpa scowled at me. “You better be laughing because you have my Marlboros.”
“I do not have your Marlboros, but it’s nice to see you,” I said.
Mike crouched down in front of him. Then he pulled a pack from his shirt pocket. “I got you right here, old man.”
“Mike, he’s on oxygen,” Larissa whispered.
“Everyone does it,” Jesse said. “It’s safer when he’s smoking because no one gets run over.”
Mike stood. “I gotta get a lighter. I’ll be right back, then sneak you off to the gazebo.” He winked at him.
He left and Grandpa turned his attention squarely on Larissa. “Who the hell are you?”
She smiled at him. “Larissa. Nice to meet you.”
“You Chris’s girlfriend?”
“No. I’m with Mike,” she said.
“Then why are you and the drug dealer wearing the same uniform?”
She choked.
“I’m a drug dealer now?” I asked, amused.
He narrowed his watery eyes at me. Then he gunned it. Becca barely got out of the way. We watched him part the crowd until he disappeared around the pool house.
“Someone needs to get him a horn,” Becca mumbled.
“Like he’d use it?” Jesse said.
Larissa stared after him. “Is he always like that?”
“As long as I’ve known him,” I said.
“He taught all of us to drive,” Jesse said. “He’d use us to take him to the gas station to buy cigarettes so Aunt Joy wouldn’t catch him.”
I laughed. “Hey, we got our behind-the-wheel hours in.”
Mike came back ten minutes later with a mai tai. “Grandpa’s all set up in the gazebo,” he said, taking a swallow from the side of his glass. “We’ll all be safe for about ten minutes.”
I eyed the drink. “What happened to training?”
“What? This? I wanted to try it, just one,” he said.
Larissa turned around from her conversation with Becca and saw the cocktail in his hand. “Oh. I thought you were driving. It’s why I got the pina colada.”
He laughed. “Babe, I’m six three and two hundred and ten pounds. This won’t even give me a buzz.”
She didn’t look sure.
“Last one,” he said. “I promise.”
“Okay.” She tucked her hair behind her ear.
The karaoke started. Larissa lit up. “You want to sing a duet with me?” she said, turning to Mike.
“Nah.”
“Pleeease?” she begged. “It’ll be so fun!”
“I don’t sing, babe.”
She gave him the same puppy dog eyes that got me to keep Woofarine. “I don’t want to go up alone.”
“Take Chris.” He nodded at me.
I froze. “I… What?”
“Oh, Chris, please?” She peered at me.
“Go,” Mike said. “Help me out so I don’t have to do it.” He nudged his girlfriend and winked at her. She rolled her eyes and then looked at me hopefully.
“Uh… okay,” I said.
“Really?”
“Sure.”
She bounced. “What do you want to sing?”
“You pick. It’s gonna be bad though. I don’t have a good voice.”
“I’m so recording this,” Mike said, pulling out his phone.
Someone shrieked on the other side of the yard and we looked up to see Grandpa doing a three-point turn to blaze down the dance floor with a cigarette in his mouth. Joy was chasing him.
“Shit,” Mike said, pounding the rest of his drink. “I’m gonna go get him before he gets us both pinched. You two have fun. I’ll be recording from the gazebo.” He gave Larissa another quick kiss, set his empty glass down, and left.
She turned back to me. “Ready?”
“I was hoping you forgot.”
“Oh, stop. Let’s pick a song.”
She pulled out her phone and brought up Google and searched male/female karaoke duets.
“Oh, ‘Islands in the Stream,’” she said.
Immediately no.
It couldn’t be a love song. That wouldn’t be appropriate. I also didn’t want to have to tell her it wasn’t appropriate because then I’d make it weird.
“How about ‘Under Pressure’?” I asked.
David Bowie and Queen. Nothing wrong with that.
She scrunched up her nose. “Nah.”
“Okay…” I scanned down the list. Love songs. Love ballads. Every single one.
“How about ‘Something There’? Beauty and the Beast?” she asked. She tapped it and lyrics came up.
Hellll no. A whole song about falling in love with someone you didn’t notice before.
“I don’t know that one well enough to sing it,” I lied.
“We could do ‘You’re the One That I Want.’ From Grease?” she said, looking up at me.
Even worse.
I cleared my throat. “How about ‘Stan’? Eminem.”
She lowered her phone to give me a horrified look. “The one about the deranged fan who commits the murder-suicide of his pregnant girlfriend?”
“Yeah, why not? It’s got a good beat and you can sing the chorus by Dido.”
“I’m not singing that here,” she said, looking at me like I’d lost it. “There are children.”
I puffed out my cheeks.
Again, if this were Becca, the song wouldn’t matter. Again, I couldn’t explain why it did.
“Why are you being so difficult?” she teased.
“Hey, I’m doing you a favor.”
“Are you?” she deadpanned.
I looked around. “I don’t see anyone else lining up to be your emotional support backup singer.”
She gasped playfully.
“How about we sing together,” I said. “Instead of alternating. Maybe… ‘Sweet Caroline’?”
She lit up. “Perfect!”
Jane and her sister-in-law Briana were singing “I Got You Babe” while we put in our names. Then we waited over by the graze table for our turn.
“So what did you rate the bread?” I asked.
“The Hawaiian roll? I didn’t get to try it.”
I drew my brows down. “What do you mean?”
“There are nuts all over the menu.”
“Mike forgot to tell Joy about your allergy? She would have had something for you if she knew you were coming.”
She shrugged. “It’s fine. I can’t expect the world to accommodate me.”
No. But Mike should have.
“Mike didn’t eat either,” she said. “He’s taking me to get something in a bit. We’re leaving early.”
“Oh,” I said. “That sucks. I just got here.”
She put out her bottom lip. “Awwww, you gonna miss Mike?” she teased.
Not exactly.
Jane and Briana finished their song and everyone clapped. The DJ was waving us over. “Are you ready?” I asked.
“I am.”
When we were on the stage singing, I saw Mike at the bar getting his second drink.