Chapter 12 #4
“He doesn’t go for half measures, does he?” Jamie commented to Violet and Felicity. “That’s a total look!”
“Hopefully, she’s not from an escort service. He does that too,” Violet said sternly.
“He has a lot of energy,” Felicity said. “He brought a girl to Tommy’s wedding who looked like a hooker and she kept calling him by the wrong name.”
Jamie laughed. “He’s every older man’s dream come true, and so is his date. My father would die for a night with a girl like that.”
“He was mortifying when we were younger,” Violet said.
“The only time he ever picked me up at school, he hit on one of my teachers. I think he went on a date with her. She always told me how charming he was. Now he’s kind of a joke and very predictable.
” But Andrew was undeniably a very good-looking, distinguished older man.
Jamie could imagine him making a dazzling couple with Dominique in her youth, but their personalities and styles were completely different.
She was a lady to the core, and he was a rogue, and enjoyed every minute of it.
He had a martini in his hand minutes after he arrived, and Kimberly was guzzling champagne as fast as she could drink it. Andrew didn’t seem to mind.
Taylor found them in the crowd a little while later, and his eyes widened when he saw his soon-to-be future wife. “Wow! You look hot!”
“Thank you.” She was pleased by the compliment, and then they circulated in the crowd, greeting people, but with almost three hundred people there, they couldn’t get to everyone, and Elizabeth started the dinner right on time.
The Whitfields didn’t like eating late, and they were on a schedule, and didn’t want to run over it, or there would be a late charge they wanted to avoid.
All of the young Walkers were seated together, Felicity and Taylor, Jamie and Violet, Tommy and Marlene, a couple the girls didn’t know.
Andrew, their father, and his date were seated with Dominique, which she didn’t appreciate, but they were all civilized and got along.
Taylor’s parents were at the same table, and Phillip looked enraptured, watching Kimberly and envying Felicity and Violet’s father.
Elizabeth and Dominique exchanged a knowing look and laughed, which no one else noticed.
The speeches were tedious, which they usually were at wedding dinners.
Old school friends of Taylor’s roasted him, an uncle told embarrassing stories from Taylor’s teens, his mother gave an emotional speech about what a perfect son he was and how lucky Felicity was to marry him.
The food was as banal as expected, and as predicted the dinner ended by nine-thirty and did not run over the allotted time.
Toward the end of the speeches, Felicity noticed Taylor and a number of young men in a long line at the bar, drinking shots, and she saw that her father was with them.
Taylor and his father-in-law-to-be were becoming fast friends. Kimberly had disappeared somewhere.
Violet and Jamie joined a big group of young people who, along with Tommy and Marlene, were going out to hit the bars on a Friday night.
Marlene was wearing the black dress Violet had loaned her.
Taylor left with them, and Felicity left with her mother.
She didn’t want a late drunken night before her wedding.
She dropped her mother off and went home to SoHo on her own.
“It wasn’t as bad as I expected,” Dominique said.
“It was very nice,” Felicity said generously.
“Your father wins the prize at every wedding for most shocking date. Nothing embarrasses him,” she said, and Felicity laughed.
They were all used to it. They hadn’t been able to find Taylor’s parents to thank them and say goodbye, but they would do it at the wedding.
For them, it had been a grand affair, and Dominique was sure they were pleased.
Felicity dropped Dominique at her house and went back to her apartment. It was quiet and peaceful, which was just what she wanted. She would have to deal with over three hundred people the next day, and she didn’t want two nights of it.
She soaked in a warm bath, turned on an old movie she liked, and was in bed before midnight.
She had a big day ahead, and she had noticed recently that she was exceptionally tired at night, which she assumed was due to the pregnancy.
She fell into a deep sleep, and never heard the apartment door open at two in the morning, until it slammed and she woke with a start.
For a minute she was afraid it was an intruder.
She sat up to try and see in the dark, and there was a crash as someone stumbled over a piece of furniture, and she heard someone say, “Fuck!” It was Taylor and he sounded drunk.
There was no surprise there the night before his wedding.
Except he had come to the wrong home. He was supposed to be spending the night at his parents’.
And instead he had come home to her and now she had to deal with him.
She didn’t want to, but she had no choice.