Chapter 4
Four
Becca
I’ve heard stories about some couples who aren’t in sync. Apparently, some women have to fake orgasms.
I am not that woman. I don’t know what that says about me, but I suspect that it says more about Nico.
But more importantly, he’s there for me. No matter how tired he is. He doesn’t cluck his tongue and remind me of the plan to have less sex leading up to our wedding night. He doesn’t sit me down and make me eat dinner first.
What he does do is care for me better than I care for myself.
He just knows.
He sees the look on my face and knows my head is spinning out of control.
Nico does it all so readily. With so much energy and enthusiasm and delight.
The way he can fuck me when my clothes are barely off. The way he has a work-around for anything.
On any given night, I’m having two orgasms before the man has even dropped his jeans.
But right now, this is the best part.
Both of us drained and wrung out like two abused dishcloths, I get to lie with my head on his chest, my leg slung over him.
I listen to his heartbeat slow down from jackrabbit level to resting-Nico level.
I may drift off for a bit, even as both of us need to eat, need to wipe down, but he doesn’t mind. It’s like he knows this helps me. All of it.
I just need this part for a little longer, and then I’ll do my routine.
I’ll wash my hair and pile it up, out of the way, and slick down my face with the expensive stuff that Quincy told me would help me stay looking rested leading up to the wedding.
I’ll pull on my cut-off sweats and my raggedy Tarheel tee-shirt that I stole from my big brother when I was in middle school and never gave back.
He smooths my hair down. I know it tickles his chin, and the touch grounds me.
We’re always awake much later than we should be, but I wouldn’t trade these little quiet moments with the gentle rush of air from the ceiling fan cooling our naked, overheated bodies.
Everything is quiet and calm as he gives me little kisses on my forehead.
“The wedding is in two weeks,” Nico murmurs sleepily. “Anything you need help with?”
I sigh. “No. I’m just…handling Mama until it’s all over and we can be alone. No phone calls. No last-minute changes to the guest list. No deciding between champagne roses and hydrangeas. I just want to be married to you.”
He strokes my back. “Same. I wish I could take some of that burden off of you.”
Normally, I’m an excellent multitasker. Lately though, he can tell that I’m extra tired, extra stressed…just extra.
“I know. I’ll just need you to back me up on Saturday when I tell her that I won’t be wearing the dress she commissioned. And I won’t be wearing her veil.”
I feel bratty just saying all that out loud.
When my parents were kind enough to accept Nico into the family after years and years of pushback because of…
well, the reasons were always unclear. On the surface, it was the obvious thing.
His parents were what my grandma used to call “ne’er-do-wells.
” He came from the wrong side of town. The side of town with addresses that appeared in the police blotter of the Songbird Ridge Gazette on the regular.
The side of town where Police Chief Pitts was filmed for a local television station’s report on a meth explosion and subsequent arrest of a drug ring that, as it turns out, involved Nico’s parents.
So, okay, my parents had a reason to be concerned.
Although Nico got good grades and never took drugs, he did have a carelessness about the law, which clicked well with my rebellious streak.
It all added up to the pair of us running wild through the streets of Songbird Ridge, much to my very upstanding and conservative parents’ chagrin.
But then everything changed after high school. They just…stopped pushing back. They were nice about Nico. So nice that now, six years later, they’re offering to pay for every last detail when it comes to the wedding.
As long as we have that wedding in their beautiful, historic church instead of “barefoot in the woods” at the state park mountain overlook.
As long as I wear the ornate, one-of-a-kind dress my mother ordered, along with the heirloom veil, instead of something “outlandish.”
As long as Pastor Patty gets to officiate, rather than the dubiously ordained local man Rowdy Fraser.
As long as I let her make the most tasteful choices about the flowers, the colors, the music.
As long as, for the cake, I let her hire a famous baker from Asheville who won that contest on Netflix, rather than something from that “hipster” Evelyn at the Four and Twenty Bakery.
As long as, for every “interesting” or “eccentric character” I add to the guest list, my parents get to include one of their fraternity or sorority friends, or a town council member, or a state senator.
And finally, as long as I get married on her schedule, beating out all her sorority sisters by being the first mother of the bride in the bunch.
Yes, it feels bratty and ungrateful of me.
But on the other hand, something’s got to give. I have to draw the line about what I put on my body. I don’t care if it clashes with the church’s vibe or decor, or how it looks next to Mama in her mother-of-the-bride ensemble. It’s important to me.
Nico gets it.
“I’ll be there,” he says. “Whatever you need. But you should do it sooner rather than later. She’s going to freak out if you wait until the day before the wedding.”
“I know. I’m going to tell her on Saturday, at the final dress fitting. Iris has my original dress, the one I want, ready for me to try on as well. I know once my mom sees me in it and how happy I feel in it, she’ll let go of the idea that I need to wear something so over-the-top.”
Nico is quiet for a moment, stroking my back.
“If you’re sure this is the battle you want to choose, I’m with you all the way.”
I sigh. “It is.”
If things go well with Mama on Saturday, maybe she’ll even reconsider the reception hall—an hour away at their country club in Asheville, instead of the close-by Songbird Ridge Community Center.
That would, at least, be less about my own wants and more about concern for all the people having to drive so far between the ceremony and the reception.
I wince, remembering how Daddy called the community center a glorified bingo hall.
“Then I’m with you,” Nico says. “Whatever happens.”
I tilt my head up to absorb the steady gaze.
I smile, feeling everything that remains tight loosen and relax.