Chapter Twenty-Nine
LUCY
Lucy couldn’t imagine what it cost to reserve a ballroom in Las Vegas the size of a Space X hangar.
‘A lot’ was the only number her brain could come up with as she looked around at the reception space.
The ceilings were probably thirty feet high, and the width of the room had Lucy questioning her choice of wedding footwear as she could fully envision herself cramping up between the bar and her table.
The wedding planner, a preternaturally chipper person by the name of Tiffy, walked their little group through the early stages of setup. The room was still just miles of ornate carpet and fancy chandeliers with pallets of folding tables and shrink-wrapped linens lined up against one wall.
Tiffy used the word ‘fantastic’ more than should be legal, and made copious notes anytime Chloe spoke.
She had the enviable body and presence of a showgirl, basically all legs and ramrod-straight spine with a hint of cleavage for excitement.
She was so striking that Lucy didn’t hear anything she said apart from the word ‘fantastic’ for the entire first hour of their meeting.
Tiffy warbled, ‘Each of the dining tables will have a pad beneath the tablecloth to keep the background noise to a minimum. We’ve actually had all of your RSVPs respond, which is fantastic!
Table service should be a breeze even with the special requests for gluten-free, kosher, keto, macro, and vegan! ’
‘Has the issue with the dessert tables been worked out?’ Chloe asked.
Tiffy jotted something in her notebook, then answered, ‘Absolutely! Your selection is going to be fantastic! I’m excited to see it all in place!’
Chloe clapped her hands together, and looked to her friends Hannah and Francesca, then to Lucy and Kim. ‘Can anyone think of anything I forgot?’
Tiffy responded to the silence with a hearty, ‘Fantastic! I’ll be in touch via text with any last-minute issues. On the day, Mom will be my point person so Chloe doesn’t have a thing to worry about.’
Lucy nodded her understanding.
‘Now, I believe it’s time to head next door to the Cristallo Salon and rehearse this ceremony!’ Tiffy exclaimed, pumping her perfectly manicured fist in the air.
Kim and Lucy brought up the rear of their little group. As soon as the others were out of earshot, Kim leaned over and said, ‘I don’t know what Tiffy’s on, but if it comes in a bottle, I want some.’
‘Probably just casino air and Flintstones vitamins,’ Lucy replied.
‘How old do you think she is?’ asked Kim.
Lucy answered, ‘I don’t know, twelve? Twenty-seven? Ninety? It’s so hard to tell now that they start with the Botox at puberty.’
Kim sighed. ‘She’ll probably never have a single wrinkle. Anywhere .’
Kim and Lucy entered the Cristallo Salon where the setup was almost complete.
All it was missing were the fresh flowers and finishing details.
Otherwise, it looked like a place to get married.
The three hundred or so folding chairs were positioned in perfectly aligned rows, the chairs staggered from each other so that no one had to lean around a poufy hairdo for a view.
The ceremony would take place at the front, up just two stairs.
Easily manageable even in high heels and a train.
It was a lovely space, regal and refined even with the roughly four thousand tons of crystal chandeliers hanging overhead.
Lucy watched from across the room as Tiffy shone her bright doe eyes at Chloe and Chandler, gesticulating wildly and making the couple laugh and bat their eyelashes at each other in adoration.
Lucy loved Chandler. He was bright, funny, and down-to-earth.
Of course, Lucy couldn’t help but notice that he was also crazy handsome with his sun-bleached hair and golden-hazel eyes.
He had a sharp Henry Cavill jaw and a former lacrosse player’s trim height and strength.
(Listen, she was forty-something, not dead.) All of those things were great, especially for Chloe, but Lucy truly loved Chandler Heylen because he was completely besotted with her daughter.
Whatever sappy vows he was going to recite at the ceremony would be one-hundred-percent sincere.
Now, who knew what might happen down the line.
Things changed. People changed – sometimes not together.
But right that minute, as Lucy saw Chandler kiss Chloe goodbye so that she could take her place across the room , Lucy was sure of Chloe’s happiness.
Chandler accepted Chloe for who she was, expected her only to be herself and nothing more.
Chloe adored him, really deep-down loved him in that big, wonderful way that Lucy herself had always hoped for but had never managed to find.
Of course, Lucy’s traitorous, sleep-deprived mind chose that moment to drift to Nicky.
Her feelings for him were becoming … complicated. She still felt the old anguish of ‘The Breathing Room,’ but since Nicky’s revelation it was more like a tender, freshly healed scar. The damage was mostly repaired; only the ghost of it remained.
She could envision, with perfect clarity, the old notepad her parents always kept by the phone when she was in high school. Could picture it, discarded, yellowing with age, in the junk drawer in the kitchen. Tell her Nicky called.
The traces of bitterness and loss that had always hung like a filter over her memories was tempered by something even more dangerous, though – expansive, oppressive, fond feelings.
Stubborn, inconvenient, dangerous things that made Lucy crave conversation with Nicky the way she’d craved chocolate when she was pregnant with Chloe.
Missing his touch when he wasn’t around with a desire that bordered on desperation.
They were emotions that made her mind wander down impossible paths that involved more than either she or Nicky had to give.
It was difficult, but she pushed those feelings aside.
They didn’t matter. Anything beyond Sunday was nothing more than fantasy.
Her wild week in Las Vegas notwithstanding, Lucy led a very conventional, manageable life.
Rooted in reality. In her work and her students.
She had a lawn that needed watering. A temporary hold on her mail that had to be picked up from the post office.
Bills. Tenure. Real life. Chloe’s destination wedding had turned into more of a vacation than Lucy had anticipated, but it was still that.
Just like any other vacation Lucy had ever taken, there were still obligations waiting for her on the other side.
Syllabi to finalize, meetings to schedule, advisees lining up to have their hands held.
Vegas was a break from real life, not the start of a new one.
Luckily, one doesn’t reach the age of forty without developing the ability to snuff out and bury hopes and dreams that have problematic consequences.
Lucy had that particular routine down like the guy with the shovel and the extra-large trunk in a Scorsese movie.
Impossible dreams, and their cousin’s unbridled optimism, were privileges of youth.
Tiffy guided Kim to a seat in the bride’s section, then worked her way through the rest of the family, placing Devin, Sam, and James in the front row. Brandon slowly made his way toward Lucy at the back of the room.
He stood beside her and focused his attention on Chandler and the officiant, who were standing by for further instructions from Tiffy.
‘Are your parents coming?’ Brandon asked, stuffing his hands in his thousand-dollar pockets.
Lucy answered, ‘My parents are in Bucharest … or Bratislava or some other European city that starts with a B. I sort of tuned out when they gave me some extremely lame excuse about non-refundable tickets a full nine months before the wedding.’
‘Still not the sentimental types?’ Brandon asked.
‘Well, to be sentimental they’d have to be human, and I’m becoming less and less convinced that’s the case.’
Tell her Nicky called.
Brandon only nodded. Lucy knew that as a man who had lost his own loving, caring parents many years before, Brandon couldn’t understand her own.
Truth was, Lucy couldn’t either. But the Rollins family weirdness was a very old story that Brandon had been party to for as long as they’d been in each other’s lives.
The bar for the elder Rollinses’ involvement in family matters was extremely low, and still they’d never managed to clear it.
Chloe and her entourage of bridesmaids joined Brandon and Lucy.
Chloe carrying a bouquet of truly atrocious plastic flowers.
Lucy could just make out a purple penis-pop tucked in behind a cluster of extremely unrealistic neon orange orchids.
Somehow, though, the psychedelic color scheme was set off by Chloe’s white Alexander McQueen suit so that the whole effect was the sort of garish favored by haute couture.
‘You girls make this for her?’ Lucy posed with a smile.
Alexis answered, ‘We are dangerous with floral wire and a glue gun.’
Tiffy sauntered back up the aisle and directed Lucy and Brandon to a vestibule just outside the salon where the groomsmen awaited their bridesmaids. Tiffy lined them all up, giving firm but ‘fantastic!’ instructions.
Tiffy pushed a button on a Lusso-Resort-logo-emblazoned iPad and a string quartet’s instrumental version of Bruno Mars’s ‘Marry You’ filled the air. Lucy knew that on the day it would be performed by a live quartet that had a regular gig at The Venetian, but even the recorded version was lovely.
Lucy stood at the doors, awaiting her role at the head of the processional.
Tiffy whispered, ‘Ready?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy replied.
‘Fantastic!’ Tiffy whisper-yelled, then pushed a button on the wall and the double doors to the salon opened simultaneously.
Something about the swelling strings, and the tune that Lucy knew by heart, started a rumble of nerves tickling her belly.
She stepped into the Cristallo Salon with Bruno Mars lyrics tripping through her brain in time with the instrumental score.
Lucy tried to remember Tiffy’s instructions. ‘Look up not down at your feet. Keep your focus on the officiant at the front of the room.’
But Lucy couldn’t, not when she’d spotted Nicky sitting in the front row between Jenna and Sam.
His smile was wide and open, and Lucy’s stomach responded with a full flip. Olympic-level gymnastics. The excitement and nerves from the moment before morphed into something else. Something like exhilaration.
Nicky winked at her, and Lucy felt her face heat.
He wore another black button-down, this one short-sleeved, that showed off his tats, glistening like sugar-dusted candy in the crystal-refracted light.
Lucy felt her heart trip, skip a full beat.
When she reached the end of the aisle, Nicky rose to guide her to her seat.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lucy whispered.
‘Chloe invited me,’ he replied.
‘When?’ Lucy asked, confused.
‘When she texted me the schedule.’
‘You text with my daughter?’ Lucy asked.
‘Yup,’ he replied into Lucy’s ear, sending goose bumps down her neck. ‘The tall one with the iPad sat me down here. I think she recognized me.’
‘Famous-guy superpowers,’ Lucy whispered back.
Their attention slid back to the aisle where the bridesmaids and groomsmen were finishing their paired walks to the front of the room.
Then, the music changed, and all assembled stood and faced the entry doors.
For her part, Lucy braced herself for the wave of emotions that always accompanied ‘I Choose You’ by Sara Bareilles.
The string version, along with her daughter gliding down the aisle on Brandon’s arm was just that much more devastating.
Jesus, when Chloe had the wedding dress on, Lucy would be a mess.
Lucy felt Nicky’s hand settle on her hip, holding her steady. With his other hand, he produced a silk handkerchief.
Good Lord, who is this man?
She looked up at him, tears making him a fuzzy kaleidoscopic version of himself. Lucy was sure that awe and wonder were smeared all over her face like cheap lipstick, but she couldn’t help it. Couldn’t have stopped it even if she’d wanted to.
When they were seated again, and Tiffy was back to pep-talking and commanding the wedding party like the world’s prettiest brigadier general, Nicky leaned toward Lucy. He rested his left hand on her right knee, and Lucy felt it in her belly.
He touched his lips to her ear and said, ‘Remind me again, what’s the groom’s name? Ross? Joey?’
Lucy chuckled quietly behind the handkerchief. ‘Chandler,’ she said.
‘I was close,’ he teased.
‘You got the category right.’
‘Does he have a brother named Ross? Sister named Joey?’ Nicky teased.
‘Monica,’ Lucy replied.
‘For real?’
‘No.’ Lucy smiled. ‘His only brother’s the best man. Mason.’
‘Chandler and Mason,’ Nicky said as though rolling the sounds around in his mouth. ‘Sounds like a law firm.’
‘Conner and Wade?’ Lucy said with a wink, recalling his own son’s names.
‘Touché, Rollins.’
‘Are either of your boys married?’ Lucy asked.
‘Nope. They’re both a little more Tinder, a little less Match.com.’
She laughed. ‘Gotcha.’
Lucy’s brain proffered: I can’t wait to meet them. Then she mentally punched her damn brain in the mouth. Stop it. She had to stop it.
Lucy focused her attention on Tiffy, and managed to make it through the rest of the rehearsal without any more daydreams about impossible things.