2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) Page 14

  “What the hell, Tara?” Catherine wailed, thinking of how she’d never felt this hungry in her entire life. Her yogurt had gone in the trash—just didn’t have the guts to eat it—and the soup hadn’t held her an hour.

  “They’re for me. If you even reach for one I will break your fingers, okay?” she threatened around a mouthful of gooey cheese.

  “Anyway,” Georgia said, rolling her eyes and shifting Nell to the other boob. “We really need to get down—”

  “You know, I have to say that I’m impressed with that whole breastfeeding thing. I would have thought you too uptight to let it all hang out there like that.” Tara pointed toward her chest with a cheese-covered chip.

  Catherine could see the tight set of Georgia’s jaw and she stepped in before things went any further. “I was hoping that you could help me with the invitations, Georgia. What printer did you use? Yours were beautiful.” Not that I could ever afford them. They were probably engraved.

  “Oh, I have the card right here,” she said quickly, using her free hand to snap open the tab on her journal. She sifted through several pages of clear plastic sleeves filled with business cards. “They are so good, and quick too. A bit pricey, but I thought the extra money was worth it to avoid mistakes and lag time.”

  “Wonderful!” Catherine took the card, knowing she would never call.

  “Why don’t you just e-mail invites and be done with it? Completely free. Lightning fast,” Tara offered.

  “You can’t be serious,” Georgia clucked.

  “You can’t sound any more stuck up,” Tara bit back, crunching another chip.

  “I’ll look into both options,” Catherine said, stomach rumbling, trying to be Switzerland at the same time she fought the urge to grab the nachos and shove her face in the plateful, scarfing them down in one fell swoop she would regret later.

  “Well, I’m going to send the bachelorette invites that way. They have great templates online,” Tara said, plunking herself down next to Catherine like she was staking claim. “I used them for my cousin’s lingerie party when she got divorced.”

  Georgia’s eyes widened as she turned to Catherine accusingly.

  “A lingerie party for a divorce?” Catherine asked excitedly, turning out of Georgia’s death stare and focusing on less difficult things.

  “Yeah,” Tara said matter-of-factly. “She was married forever and when she finally wised up and dumped the ass we thought she needed to get her groove on. Garters, thongs, edible undies—the works.”

  Georgia cleared her throat and Catherine knew she was being summoned onto the carpet. She glanced toward her oldest friend in the world and then back at her most unorthodox friend ever, feeling like a total heel.

  “Well, I—you see, Tara… I asked Georgia to be my—”

  Tara didn’t even let her finish. “What do you mean Georgia is your maid of honor? She isn’t even a maid,” she pointed out smartly.

  “We made a pact way back in college. I was hers and she was going to be mine.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of statute of limitations on that? It’s been almost two decades!”

  “That is not helping your cause,” Catherine shuddered. Besides, there was the fact that Tara’s idea of a bachelorette party would probably land them in jail, and the shower would… well, probably land them in jail, and the toast… that would probably land guests in the hospital, what with the possibility of heart attacks in several of their older guests. She was too—unrestrained was the nicest way to put it.

  “I just mean that we’ve been friends long enough now that I shouldn’t always take a backseat to Georgia. Shouldn’t the friend who got you and Fynn together in the first place—”

  “We both had something to do with that,” Georgia retorted.

  “Oh, are we on the snacks again? Because I believe that we settled that back in the trenches in Minnesota. You just don’t have the stomach for larceny,” Tara tossed back.

  Georgia pfft’d. “Like I even want to have the stomach for it.”

  “I was the one with the plan. They fell in love. And now I should be honored,” Tara said simply, turning to Catherine for her blessing.

  Georgia turned her attention to Catherine as well. Both of them waiting for her grand statement proving them right. Then even Nell got in on the action, popping off the breast to fix an albeit hazy gaze on her godmother. Hardly fair.

  “Besides,” Tara added, “she’s all dumpy and post-baby, while I would rock the dress. Better wedding pictures with me,” she sang, even though they all knew that Georgia looked spectacular.

  “You are already going to be in the wedding pictures. As a bridesmaid,” Catherine assured her.

  “Way to throw a bone.”

  “I can always replace you with Lacey,” she pointed out.

  “Oh please, like that will ever happen.” Tara let out a bark at the ridiculousness of it.

  Catherine’s silence was her final warning, not that she wanted to follow through with the threat—this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.

  “Oh, alright. Bridesmaid it is. But I get to choose my own dress.”

  “Bridesmaid, and I will choose your dress,” Catherine trumped her, imagining the black and the garters and the lacing Tara would pick. “You’ll wear what the rest of the party wears.”

  “But I’m going to choose my own shoes,” Tara said forcefully.

  “Fine. Shoes only. The rest is mine.” Catherine made a mental note to go with full-length gowns, perhaps even small pooling trains, on her wedding party—just in case.

  “So when is this shindig going to be?” Tara asked.

  “I was thinking March.” Catherine mentally bit her lip in anticipation of the reaction.

  “It’s beautiful that time of year. Way underrated as a wedding month if you ask me,” Georgia said supportively, already up to the matron of honor task. “Absolutely lovely here in New York… is this where you’re doing it?”

  “I don’t really know that yet.”

  “That’s okay, you have time.”

  “You think?” she asked, relieved. She’d been pretty sure that she was cutting it close, but if Georgia thought she was doing okay then she must be on track.

  “Not to say that we shouldn’t start hammering out details and looking at reception spots. Although you’re on your own with that if you end up in Nekoyah. Me going there now would be difficult.”

  Tara humphed loudly, voicing her I-told-you-so about the slack maid of honor appointment before heading back to the kitchen.

  “Not Nekoyah. But maybe back home in Chesterton?” An uncertain question.

  Georgia looked through the pages of her journal while expertly burping little Nell in the opposite direction. “Let’s see… we should definitely get the location figured out within the next two months. At the very least the state,” she chuckled.

  “But I only have—” She couldn’t get the rest of the words out, turning deep shades of red.

  “She’s choking!” Tara hurled herself into action.

  Catherine shook her head, hacking and unable to speak, the motions making her look even more distressed rather than putting her friend off.

  “Stand back, I know what I’m doing,” Tara announced, as if a crowd surrounded them rather than just a bewildered Georgia cradling a semiconscious Nell.

  She tugged her to standing and clasped her arms around her midsection, yanking violently upward, wrenching free the words that had caught in her throat. “Two months,” Catherine spewed out into the air.

  “That’s what I said.” Georgia looked unperturbed.

  “I mean just two months,” Catherine stressed. “That’s when I want to get married. This March.”

  “Excuse me?” Georgia’s mouth dropped open in protest.

  “I saved your life and I don’t even get a thank you?” Tara prodded.

  “She wasn’t choking, Tara.”

  “She most certainly was.”

  “She was coughing.
You’re never supposed to do the Heimlich on someone who’s coughing,” Georgia pointed out bitterly.

  “So now you’re an expert on that, too? Weddings and chokings? How am I supposed to compete with such a hero?”

  “Quit it!” Catherine hollered.

  “I’m just sayin’,” Tara grumbled.

  Georgia flipped to the calendar page in her journal. “Did you really just say you want to get married two months from now?”

  She nodded her head shamefully.

  “How do you expect to pull that off?” Georgia challenged.

  “People do it all the time.”

  “What people?”

  “Just people… that I’ve heard about… around….” Catherine said evasively. She couldn’t think of a single example. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done, right?

  Catherine could see Georgia was trying her best to remain calm and not bitch her out for being nuts. If Tara hadn’t been right there with them, she probably would have gone ballistic, but Georgia didn’t like to show any weakness in their friendship that Tara could capitalize on.

  “I think March is perfect,” Tara purred, catching the schism vibe and wrenching it open further.

  “But this March? What’s the rush?” Georgia asked. “You’ve only known each other eight months.

  “What’s the wait?” Catherine countered.

  “Because you can’t plan anything worth planning in only two months.”

  “Well maybe I want to be married before I’m thirty-five—one week, one day, one minute before, for that matter; just so long as it’s before.”

  “But it’s so arbitrary to put an age on it,” Georgia pointed out.

  “Oh sure, Mrs. Thirty, thirty-five is arbitrary,” Catherine mocked. They had both wanted to marry before thirty, and Georgia had made that happen. So what that she’d had almost a year to plan it. She made her dream come true. Now she had the successful husband and a new baby girl (before she turned thirty-five—another goal reached) and here she was dashing Catherine’s goals and dreams as if they were capricious and ridiculous?

  “I’m not saying that,” Georgia retorted.

  “But that is what you just said,” Tara pointed out helpfully.

  Georgia cut a lethal look toward her runner-up for maid of honor, but she engaged Catherine instead. “I’m not knocking your desire to be married sooner rather than later. I just wanted to help you create perfection… and with two months, well, that’s going to be impossible.”

  “I don’t need perfection,” Catherine huffed. “I just need Fynn.”

  “Well, if this is the timeline, then we don’t have a moment to spare. Get me?” Georgia shifted into drill sergeant mode. “I want you to research the options in these magazines and by Saturday you need to have plans in mind. You seriously need to make a decision on location—”

  “Here,” she blurted.

  “Are you sure?” Georgia asked, noticeably less angst-ridden by the prospect.

  She nodded tightly, trying to be certain.

  “Okay then. Already a big decision made. I’ll start calling wedding coordinators and make some appointments.” Shock over; she was ready to go all in on the task.

  “You know, I have a cousin in Philly who does wedding planning,” Tara offered. “I can see—”

  “That won’t be necessary. We want someone who specializes in New York to do a New York wedding.” Georgia waved her off snottily, and Tara shot her the bird before going back to her nachos.

  “So we’ll start bright and early on Saturday,” she commanded the room, closing her journal. “And don’t think you can jet off to see Fynn every weekend. I’m grounding you,” Georgia added, staring Catherine down like only a mother could.

  “What?” she whined in full teenage tone.

  “You can’t have the pre-thirty-five wedding of your dreams and go off on mini Fynn-cations too. It’s unrealistic. You have to focus.”

  Thursday, January 6th

  -22-

  “Dad?” she said, bewildered. Her mother was the receptionist and communications director of the Hemmings household, and yet again her father had reached the phone first. It was like the whole world was turned on its side.

  “Catherine?” Sounding as surprised on his end that she would be calling twice in as many days. “What can I do you for, my daughter?” he asked playfully.

  “You sound terrific,” she noted. He wasn’t talking extra loud or sounding otherwise much older than his actual years.

  “I can’t complain. Did you call to compliment me? Or did you want to talk to your mother?”

  Catherine hesitated. It would be easier to just say it now, but she couldn’t help herself; she wanted to hear all that motherly excitement as she, the daughter, announced her wedding date. It was one thing to announce her engagement; of course her mother was reserved. Plenty of women had fallen victim to open-ended engagements that never reached the aisle. But she wasn’t going to be one of those. She had a date set… or almost set. She felt herself swelling with pride and excitement. “Put Mom on the phone.”

  “It’s going to take her a minute. She’s in the middle of a new puzzle I got her for a late Christmas gift.”

  “Isn’t that sweet.”

  “It was the least I could do seeing as how she picked up a real honest-to-goodness phone in her after-holiday shopping spree.”

  “So that’s why you sound so content.”

  “This thing goes back to the basics. Corded to the wall. I don’t know how anyone uses that other crap. Or who wants that kind of mobility. If I’m not in my chair here at home, I don’t need people to reach me,” he said simply, case closed.

  Catherine felt a smile spread across her face. “Let me guess, Mom made you promise you would answer it if she let you have the phone.”

  He chuckled on the other end. “Something like that.”

  KA-THUNK

  “What was that?” she asked, startled.

  KA-THUNK, KA-THUNK

  “That would be your mother.”

  “What is she doing?”

  “Working on that damn puzzle,” he said breezily.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, you know your mother had her heart set on building that log cabin in Wyoming with her bare hands… said it was going to be the puzzle of her life—”

  “She did not!” Catherine guffawed.

  “I figured letting her install hardwood in the living room would take the sting out of not moving.” He gave a full belly laugh, getting a genuine kick out of himself.

  “Catherine?” Her mother’s voice was in her ear, slightly out of breath. “Perfect timing; you caught me at the end of a row.”

  “Dad is helping you, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, don’t mind him. He just likes to pull your leg. I told him to take a break, watch a little golf. We need to stop for dinner anyway.”

  “So, hardwood floors? Whatever will we do now that we don’t have to preserve the vacuum lines in the carpet for company,” she said flippantly.

  “The living room is still for company, Catherine. The floor doesn’t change that,” her mother cautioned.

  Of course.

  Actually, Mom, I called to tell you the latest news….” She was going to wait for a drumroll or a pregnant pause worthy of big news, but the words just tumbled out. “We’re going to have a March wedding. March 4th,” she added, throwing out her first choice for a date. But as soon as the words were out of her mouth she could hear her mother suck wind on the other side.

  “What’s wrong with March?” she immediately countered.

  An almost imperceptible pause. “I didn’t say anything was wrong with March,” her mother said plainly.

  “You didn’t have to say it,” Catherine grumbled, frustrated that her mother always said so much even when she wasn’t actually saying anything at all.

  “It’s a lovely month.”

  “For other things,” Catherine added for her. She could hea
r pots and pans knocking around on the other end and could tell her mother was starting dinner, making her stomach perk up at the thought of a real meal rather than that frozen dinner she’d eaten and burned off just picking up the phone.

  “Don’t get smart with me,” Elizabeth reprimanded.

  “I just wanted to let you know to save the date,” Catherine said, trying to sound nonchalant and uncaring, though her whole point with this call was to extend the olive branch to her mother and include her in the wedding process. She’d assumed that Elizabeth Hemmings would be honored, but instead she had taken the branch and broken it in half over her knee.

  “I don’t even have a calendar that goes that far into the future, but of course my daughter’s wedding will outweigh any other plans,” she said briskly.

  “It’s in March, Mom, not the next millennium.”

  “This March?” Elizabeth’s voice was edged in disbelief.

  “Yes, this March.”

  “But two months is hardly enough time to plan a wedding, Catherine,” she chastised. “Connor and Lacey planned for a year.” As if that brought home the point and won the argument.

  “Connor and Lacey can kiss my ass,” she groused, certain this would be just the first of many comparisons to Lacey and Connor’s perfect nuptials.

  “Catherine Marie,” her mother warned.

  “Lacey had real blossoming cherry trees as a backdrop, Mother. She had to wait a year for the bloom. Besides, I’m already past-date. We all know it would be easier to just be married now.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant,” her mother groaned.

  “No. Jeez, is that the only way you think someone would actually choose to marry me?”

  Her mother wouldn’t dignify that with a response—probably because that is exactly what she thinks.

  “Two months is plenty of time. People get married in two days’ time,” Catherine said, continuing her argument by copping a go-with-the-flow attitude she didn’t feel. People were raining on her choice of date left and right and it was getting tiresome defending herself… especially since she really had no idea about the probability of pulling this off, having never planned a wedding before in her life. But she wasn’t going to just lie down and let thirty-five come for her. She was going to be ready for it.