Chapter 2
Two
Becca
My mother calls me at work with bad news.
“Supposedly, the champagne roses won’t be here in time. The woman on the phone said the best they could do was blue hydrangeas.”
“Blue hydrangeas are nice,” I say, pretending I know things about flowers.
But if I had to choose between roses and hydrangeas, hydrangeas win. Nothing against roses, but champagne? Isn’t that just beige?
I have the phone propped precariously on top of the stacks of folders I’m carrying into the working lunch at Gamble, Gamble & Gamble, the ridiculously named, family-owned law firm where I work as a legal assistant in Black Mountain.
I don’t love the commute, but it pays well for someone with only a high school diploma and a quick executive assistant certification.
My mother’s calls about the wedding have become so frequent that I’ve had to use my earbuds to talk quietly so it doesn’t appear that I’m on personal calls all day at work.
I should ignore her, but she’ll just call again, even after I’ve told her I can’t answer phone calls at work. And also, if I don’t answer, she’ll make decisions without me. Not that I have the brain space for more decisions, but her tastes are…just not my thing.
To be fair to my mother, though, it is pretty close to the time I usually take a lunch break, and she has no way of knowing that the senior partners have called a last-minute “working lunch” meeting.
My mother scoffs. “Well, I told her not to even think about it. Not for this wedding. Hydrangeas!”
So why are you calling about this, if you don’t need my input on this little snag? I want to ask.
I trudge into the conference room and start passing around folders to everyone already seated around the table.
The meeting hasn’t officially begun yet, but it’s time to wrap it up this call.
“Sorry, Mama. Can we talk about this tonight? I’m about to go into a meeting.”
“While I have you,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard me say that I’m busy, “You need to decide on what to borrow.”
“Borrow?”
“You know. Something old, something new…”
I answered back, “Right. Something borrowed, something blue. Glad you asked, because I have that already.” I smile and feel a little bit relieved that we have this one connection when it comes to the wedding.
“Do you?” She sounds skeptical.
“Yep,” I say quickly, arranging legal pads and pens around the table.
“Quincy already offered to let me borrow a tiara from the dance company,” I said of my best friend, who has access to a shared warehouse of gorgeous costumes.
She showed me a stunning, hammered brass Greek-goddess-style tiara, and when I tried it on last week, it felt just right.
I got chills—way more chills than I got at the first wedding gown fitting with Iris.
No shade to Iris. The dress she’s designed for me is special, but it’s not… me.
What nobody knows is that I have a plan B for my gown. And it’s perfect with the goddess tiara.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Mama says. “Tiara! Please. You’ll wear my veil. And it’s borrowed!”
“Isn’t the whole wedding technically borrowed since everything’s on Daddy’s credit card?” I ask.
Mama hears that and snorts, then goes right back to talking about the veil.
I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t want to wear a veil.
It’s not something I like. Mama is of the opinion that a gown with a long train requires a matching, trailing lace veil.
However, I don’t actually want a gown with a long train, either.
“Mama, that’s not what we talked about—”
She cuts me off, going off on another tangent.
Meanwhile, the senior partners are staring at me.
“We’ll have to talk later, Mama,” I say. I hang up before she can respond.
Yes, we will have to talk later. About the fact that I don’t want to wear a veil. About the fact that I went and bought a gorgeous dress the day after Nico proposed, and Iris is also doing alterations on that one at the same time she’s finishing the Mama-approved dress.
The dress I picked is a simple, white floor-length gown that skims my hips perfectly.
No frills, lace, crystals, or pearls. But the way it drapes and folds is a dream.
It’s a dress for a grown-up, with an asymmetrical, off-the-shoulder neckline.
The style complements the updated updo my hairstylist has practiced on me.
The whole look is super chic, both hearkening back to ancient Greece and also modern at the same time.
And now that I think about it, a bouquet of blue hydrangeas would complement the look perfectly. Surprising and unusual, but visually interesting against the unadorned dress.
Champagne roses, on the other hand, only do with the ivory, lacy, embellished getup my mama wants me to wear.
My head is spinning so much over all this, on top of increased pressure at work now that my boss is trying to make partner.
Ten minutes into the meeting, someone’s phone gets a text notification. For a second, my stomach clenches, but then I breathe. Pretty sure I silenced my phone after I hung up with my mother.
While speaking, one of the senior partners looks around the room as if trying to determine who is the idiot who did not silence their phone, but otherwise lets it go and keeps talking.
A minute later, another one comes through.
The senior partners are staring in my direction.
Oh, shit.
I scramble for my phone, which sits face down on the conference table.
“Ms. Wright.”
“Sorry,” I say.
Out of the corner of my eye, my boss, still a junior partner, has one perfectly manicured hand covering her face.
I silence my phone and slide it toward me on the shiny mahogany conference table. How could I forget?
Oh, maybe because I’m so damn tired. The partners keep calling lunch meetings, giving my boss, Leela, more work to do, and by extension, the paralegals and me, her assistant.
On top of that, the wedding stress is way worse than I thought it would be.
And I had my reasons to think the planning part would be less stressful compared to most brides I know.
All that to say, I’m losing sleep, and it’s making me forgetful.
So when my boss and the senior partners are staring at me, I sheepishly slide my phone to my chest and hit the button to silence it. Where I make a fatal mistake is in turning it over just before dropping it in my handbag. And there, to my horror, is a notification from Nico.
The photo is tiny. Nothing more than a thumbnail. But what’s in the photo is anything but tiny.
My soon-to-be husband’s giant, erect penis stares back at me.
Not that anyone near me saw it before I dropped it into my handbag, at least I don’t think so.
That man of mine is going to get it when I get home.
One of the senior partners shakes his head, setting aside my annoying interruption. “Leela, I want you to take the lead on the Murphy case.”
I try to keep my jaw from hitting the table. I turn to glance at Leela. “I’m on it,” she says, showing no emotion but a calm smile.
She says this as if she’s been expecting it. What I happen to know is that she has been wanting this. The Murphy case is a big one. Maybe the biggest litigation in the history of this firm. Maybe the whole state. The trouble is, it’s no slam dunk.
There are interviews to schedule, legal documents to proofread, and case files to keep organized. On top of that, support Leela in whatever she needs, ensuring she’s set up for success. That means a shit ton more work for both the paralegals and for me.
Surely they’ll hire more temporary help. Surely I don’t need to worry.
“Perfect,” says her dad, founding partner Hector Gamble. “I want a full brief by morning on our plan of attack. I hope you’re ready.”
She’s been ready. Leela has been wanting to lead a defense so badly to impress her dad that she can taste it.
After the meeting, I offer her my congratulations.
“Thanks,” she says. “Order whatever you want for dinner tonight. It’s gonna be a late one.”
“Oh no.” Wait, what? Did that come out of my mouth?
“Excuse me?”
I put a hand to my mouth. “I wasn’t saying it to you, I was saying it to…the universe in general. As in, oh no, just my luck.”
She gives me a small, knowing grin. “You have plans tonight?”
No way am I telling her I have plans to torture my fiancé with the longest, slowest blow job he’s ever had. That would be insane. So I tell her the non-sexual half of my after-work plans.
“I’m supposed to meet my mother to go over the seating at the reception. But I can cancel that.”
Leela nods. “That’s right, you’re getting married in a couple of months.”
My stomach drops until I remember she already approved my vacation time. “At the end of the month,” I correct.
“Really?”
I nod. “June 26.”
“That’s very soon,” she says, looking dismayed.
The wheels are turning in her head.
She wouldn’t. Leela would not dare to ask me to take off less time for my wedding and honeymoon.
My boss nibbles on her bottom lip for a moment. Back in her office, she leans against my desk while I get to work transcribing notes for her from the meeting we just came from.
“I don’t suppose you could come back early from your honeymoon?”
“I wish I could, but I’ll be on a cruise.”
“Could you hop on a plane at a port of call?”
This is a wild thing to ask, and once I look up from my computer, I realize by the look in her eye she’s half-kidding.
“Relax, I wouldn’t ask that of you, Becca. But will the ship have Wi-Fi? Cell signal?”
I think about this for a second. She has no idea where I’m going, so I might as well lie my ass off.
“Sorry. Nico’s keeping it a surprise, but he did say we’re going somewhere very far away and very remote.”
This is a bald-faced lie. According to the ship’s website, the vessel had unbeatable internet service. But my boss doesn’t need to know that.
“Hmm. Well, I’d appreciate it if you could check in once in a while just to keep abreast of the case. Surely there’s nowhere that your groom could be whisking you off to that’s very far from a town with an internet cafe, at least.”
“I’ll see if he’ll give me any clues, and let you know,” I say nervously, knowing just how well Leela Gamble can sleuth things out and find out I’m lying through my teeth.
She smirks at me. “Okay. You’d better go reply to his text. It seemed…uh…urgent.”
“Oh my god.”
“I didn’t see anything, I promise.”
“Leela!”
“Not on purpose! The sooner you get out of here, the sooner we’ll be done with this day.”
With five minutes left of my lunch break—most of which was spent scarfing down half of a deli sandwich and chips disguised as something healthy with a name that includes the word “Sun” or “Harvest,” I make a mad dash to the parking level underneath GG&G.
There, I hop into my car and lock the doors.
I glance around, making sure no one has seen me, and then, only then, do I unlock my phone.
Now I can see the whole enchilada.
I don’t know how Nico managed to take that photo on his lunch break. I have a passing thought that this photo might have been taken inside a restroom stall somewhere, and while that’s a little disturbing, that feeling is quickly replaced with warm tingles.
That’s my guy.
The warm feeling is not so much about the seven hard inches, but more about the text message that accompanies those inches.
Nico
All yours.
All mine. This man works so hard for us.
At family gatherings, he always finds himself cornered by my nieces and nephews, but never seems to mind.
He loves my art so much that he thinks I should apply for the base income program for artists in Songbird Ridge, though he doesn’t really understand how difficult it is to qualify. I haven’t even been to art school.
And then, what’s here in this photo is all mine, too, and it’s delicious. From the root to the rigid shaft to the dark pink tip, complete with a tiny ribbon of precum weeping out.
Want it. Want to lick it right now. And then I want Nico’s mouth on me. I want him to do me so hard with his tongue that I forget everything I’m currently frustrated or worried or stressed about.
I want him to make me forget all about this wedding planning.
Much to my chagrin, my phone rings right as I’m staring at my soon-to-be husband’s penis.
Mama is calling again.
At the same time, I receive a text from one of the paralegals, Angie.
Angie
Where are you? Leela needs you to make client calls.
Who do I make time for first?
My mother will only keep calling, but she’s not the one who pays me.
I send her to voicemail and text her to say that, unfortunately, I’ll have to work late tonight.
She’ll probably be relieved about that. My input only seems to be nominal. And what do I care about who sits by whom at the reception?
Really, I have nothing to complain about. An overbearing mother? My decent paying job? A tiny but nice apartment? A man who adores me?
At most, I could use maybe an hour more of sleep at night. Or seven.
And maybe a checkup at the doctor to find out why I’ve been so fatigued and achy lately.
But other than that? No complaints. My life is good.
It’s too perfect, when you really think about it.