FG 3 - The Wedding Blitz Read online

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Lizzie quickly turned around for the front of the bus.

  “That wasn’t a yes!” I called after her nearly on the edge of panic because I felt like crap most likely because I could barely keep anything down lately. Surely we could sightsee on a different day. When I heard the engine rev to life, I took off as fast as my body would allow to stop her from leaving the parking lot but Riley intercepted me halfway down the aisle.

  “Joie, be careful you might fall.” Just as the words left Riley’s lips I suddenly felt the tires roll over what felt like a large speed bump though I didn’t remember seeing any along the dirt and gravel roads of the Gorge Amphitheater. Thank god, Riley was there to act as a buffer between the kitchen table and me when the motion threw me to the side.

  “It’s okay,” Lizzie announced. “That was nothing important.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this for another two and half hours,” I suddenly groaned from the nauseous feeling building in the pit of my stomach. I knew Riley wanted to comfort me as he helped me over to the kitchen booth but we both knew that he had a weak stomach and I watched as the color quickly drained from his face. Unfortunately for him, all the bumping and jerking of the bus caused by Lizzie’s driving was wreaking havoc on my stomach.

  “Riley run,” I groaned, as I pushed Riley out of the seat to get up and zigzag my way down the aisle in the direction of Hawkins’ bathroom.

  “Joie be careful.” Riley seemed more concerned about the chances of me falling than listening to what I had to say.

  “Riley run!” I quickly covered my mouth as I began to sprint down the aisle but I only made it halfway before I spilled my guts. When I finally came up for air, I realized I wasn’t the only one making a powerful heaving, wretching sound like a frat guy on his twenty-first birthday.

  “Gross guys,” Lizzie called over her shoulder since she was the only one capable of speaking at the moment. Though I didn’t think she had any room to judge after all it was her driving skills or lack thereof that had caused us to vomit in the first place. Once I felt like the worst was behind me, I checked on Riley who had been smart enough to grab the garbage can from the cabinet below.

  “You okay?” I asked realizing that he still looked a little bit peaked.

  “You really meant run,” he smiled weakly.

  “No, I meant stroll away at your own pace,” I cracked a grin. “Actually, anything would have been more effective than tagging behind me.” I ruffled his hair.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he moaned looking like he could go for another round if provoked.

  After I was done cleaning up the mess I had made on the floor, Riley offered to do my hair though I noticed his usual tan complexion hadn’t fully returned yet. Riley might be gay but he wasn’t flamboyant so I couldn’t remember another time when he had offered to do my hair. I knew that I looked pathetic but god so did he.

  “You’ve got to feel just as weak as I do,” I pointed out.

  “Joie, your hair’s not going to do itself unless you’re telling me that you actually plan on running a brush through it?”

  “Does a hand count?” I was hopeful.

  “No, that only seems to work for Hawkins.”

  “I know, it’s sickening right? He rolls out of bed looking gorgeous.”

  “Like he’s had sex for hours,” Riley added with a knowing grin causing my face to blush a crimson red. Well that shut me up. Though shutting me up wasn’t really hard to do when I found myself dozing off with every strand of hair he straightened with Lizzie’s flat iron as we sat in the kitchen area.

  “Is that what you plan on wearing?” Lizzie turned to hiss at me once we were finally ready to join her up front.

  I glanced down at my white tank top and pink rolled up sweat pants and remembered how Hawkins had made a point to tell me how beautiful I looked in these clothes. “If it’s good enough for Hawkins, it’s sure as hell good enough for me,” I smiled as I took a seat next to Riley on the stairs leading down to the driver’s platform on the bus.

  “But you threw up in those clothes,” Riley pointed out.

  “I guess I could change—

  “I like that emerald color dress you own,” Riley was quick to suggest and for a second I turned to look at him like whose side are you on anyway but he just shrugged.

  “Honestly, I’m too exhausted to get up,” I admitted.

  “I’ll go fetch it for you,” Riley nominated himself.

  “Thanks,” I said halfheartedly.

  “Someone has an image to keep up,” Lizzie sang.

  “I told you, I don’t care about that anymore.”

  Wow, did they really still care how I was perceived by the public because I knew Hawkins didn’t. Riley came back with the dress in his hands but when I went to argue he literally pointed out a soiled mark on my tank top. Well there was nothing like a little reality check to keep me motivated.

  “How bad was it really, last night?” he asked as he helped tug the dress down around my shoulders. “All we know is that Hawkins couldn’t get the ring from his mother.”

  “And he didn’t seem very happy about it either,” Lizzie ticked.

  “It was the night from hell,” I groaned as I blew the hair out of my face and straightened out the dress. “It was little things like, she wondered why I wasn’t eating her food,” I sighed. “And what do I do besides write for Hawkins’ website.”

  “Ouch,” Riley grimaced.

  “Yeah—that’s not even the worst of it. I think she was just getting started if Hawkins hadn’t stopped her.”

  “You should have said I do your son,” Lizzie snorted.

  “Oh yes that would have gone over really well,” I laughed.

  “Well, it’s the truth. That’s what you do,” she smirked clearly pleased with her cleverness as she looked out at the road.

  The drive was long and a bit scary with Lizzie behind the wheel but thankfully for whatever reason there seemed to be only one three lane highway that led from the Gorge straight to Seattle. I was beginning to realize that Washington State had a lot to offer a tourist like the flatlands with its large white wind power generators, which Lizzie called windmills, packed tight along the distant horizon the closer we drove east toward the Gorge. And the further we drove west away from the Gorge toward Seattle, the more mountains sprung up around us covered in green mossy trees. I could also make out Mt. Saint Helen in the distance and smell the saltwater of the Pacific Ocean in the air once we were closer to the city.

  Once we finally reached the museum, Lizzie looked for a place to park the large tour bus giving me enough time to look around. I glanced up at the Space Needle, which loomed over top of the museum, and noticed a glass elevator making its way to the top. Lizzie circled around the block so many times I thought I was going to be sick again but she finally said f@#k it and parked the tour bus in what looked like a no parking zone. Well at least we didn’t have to worry about it getting towed.

  I stepped off the bus in the short emerald dress looking like the old me. The old insecure me who thought she needed to look like a rock star’s girlfriend. The old me who had the time to care about something as silly as a makeover in comparison to now I thought as I absentmindedly laid a hand over my small bump.

  “You ready to finally be doing some sightseeing,” Riley rubbed his hands together excitedly bringing me out of my thoughts as we headed inside toward the admission line.

  “Yeah, finally,” I smiled as we approached the counter to pay for our tickets.

  “How can I help you today?” a brunette with a slicked back ponytail and bright red lips greeted us at the counter.

  “We’d like to buy tickets for the museum,” Riley said as he reached for the wallet in his back pocket.

  “Three adults for the Chihuly Museum,” she began to peck away on her computer’s keyboard.

  “And the Space Needle too,” Riley added and for a second I thought I hallucinated.

  “Who are
you, and what have you done with my friend?” I balked in a half laugh. I couldn’t believe we were going to have two sightseeing adventures.

  “I’m sorry but all of our reservations for the Space Needle are booked,” the brunette informed us.

  “But I want to buy the premiere VIP package.” Riley presented her with another card from his wallet. I watched the woman glance over at Lizzie and me before quickly returning her attention back to the computer screen. “I saw on the internet that VIP guests get first priority,” Riley added.

  “Ah yes—well we do reserve a few tables for such occasions,” she continued to peck away. “Here are your tickets for both the Chihuly Museum and the Space Needle.”

  “What did you show her, your crew pass?” I joked on our way into the museum.

  “Why would I do that?” he asked and then pointed overhead, “Wow, look at that.”

  My eyes lifted up toward the clear glass ceiling that was filled on the opposite side with over a thousand pieces of differently shaped sizes and colors of blown stained glass. It didn’t take long for me to realize Dale Chihuly was a master at shaping glass into looking like living organisms of flowers, water lilies and gardens. It was as if the serene paintings by Claude Monet had married the boldly colored paintings by Van Gogh and gave birth to the three dimensional world around us. We literally gasped like kids in a candy store as we moved from room to room.

  “Look at this,” Riley pointed to a row boat filled with large brightly colored balls of glass that overflowed into what appeared to be a lake but was really a flat black glistening glass floor.

  “It’s beautiful,” Riley gushed as he took a picture of the scene on his smart phone.

  “If you think that’s good, you should see this,” Lizzie, who was already ahead of us, continued into the next room. “It looks like an ice sculpture,” she added when we had finally caught up to her.

  Over a thousand clear pieces mixed with white and silver blown glass twisted and winded around each other to the top of the ceiling; giving off the effect of carved ice. It reminded me of an extravagant centerpiece I thought I might see at some super expensive hotel in New York or Paris.

  “It really does look like an ice sculpture,” Riley agreed as he reached for his phone again. “Joie go stand beside it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Just do it!” he ordered causing me to hunch over my shoulders like a scolded child as I approached the breathtaking masterpiece.

  Riley took shot after shot with me by the ‘ice sculpture’ so many times that I soon thought that it was weird that he didn’t ask Lizzie to join me. I overheard him murmur under his breath that this gives me so many ideas before turning back around toward the row boat full of brightly colored glass balls with a renewed sense of purpose. By the end of the tour I caught him snapping shots of what looked like a stained grass version of a marsh with glass plants.

  “Riley, The Space Needle,” Lizzie finally interrupted nodding in the direction of the tall tower with the saucer like domed top that was literally only a few yards away from the Chihuly Museum.

  “Sorry, didn’t realize the time,” he mumbled as he put his smart phone back in his jean pocket.

  “Time for what?” I asked.

  “To get there before it closes,” Riley explained as we walked over to the entrance doors and entered the building. I glanced around the souvenir shop that was packed with merchandise like t-shirts, hoodies, posters, bags, and other novelty type gifts. Yet what I noticed most was how empty it seemed to be for a major tourist attraction especially one that was entirely booked. Riley squeezed my hand as he led the way over to a closed elevator shaft which was positioned in the center of the building with the store wrapped around it. When we came to a stop in front of the elevator doors, I realized that we had already lost Lizzie somehow, though the place looked completely deserted.

  “I’m so happy to be here with you during this moment in your life,” Riley took a minute to personally address me. Though I had no idea what he was talking about until the elevator doors slowly retracted. Standing there leaning casually against the back banister as if it was the first night we met all over again, was Hawkins.

  “Going up?” He asked coyly looking more handsome than ever dressed in what looked like a pale gray Armani suit minus the tie. The gray suit complimented his blue smoldering eyes and his swept back dark hair. It made me instantly want to hug Riley for all the trouble he went through just to get me to look halfway decent for something I was beginning to sense I was going to remember for the rest of my life.

  “Yeah, I am,” I confessed breathlessly as if I was finally sure we could do this or at least die trying and stepped into the elevator with him.

  I turned to mouth thank you at Riley before the elevator doors closed again. Hawkins in all of his beautiful glory made the moment seem even more surreal when he turned to face me and grabbed both of my hands as the glass elevator shot up revealing the city around us.

  “I may not have a ring to present to you yet but I don’t hold much faith in materialistic objects and I know you don’t either. What I do have is faith in is us.” He then got down on one knee. “Josephine Hall you’re the only one I prefer and will always prefer, would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”

  My eyes suddenly welled up, too overcome with emotion when I finally found the word, he was waiting to hear. “Yes.”

  When he stood back up again, I rushed into his outstretched arms.

  “I love you, Joie,” he murmured into my hair before the elevator doors suddenly flung open and I realized we weren’t alone any longer. A group of our closest friends and family turned to look at us with anticipation.

  “She said yes!” Hawkins announced to the room that instantly broke out into cheering applause, and a few cat calling whistles when he leaned in to lock lips with mine for a kiss.

  “Whoo hoo!” someone shouted and I felt my cheeks slightly flush when we finally pulled away again. Hawkins then proudly took my hand in his and led me off of the elevator.

  I was pleasantly surprised to see my mom standing there among the crowd even if she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. I knew she probably thought I was too young to get married. She at least tried to sound hopeful when Hawkins led me straight over to her.

  “I didn’t know that you were in town,” I gushed as we leant in for a hug.

  “J.T. had me flown in for the occasion the other night,” she gave him a genuine smile. “We had a lot to talk about on the plane ride over.”

  “So that’s where you were,” I realized; trying to hide the surprised tone in my voice because honestly I was touched by the gesture.

  “I wanted her blessing,” he explained.

  “And…?” I wanted to ask, how did that go?

  “I gave it to him, of course,” my mom quickly replied clearly not wanting to offend my future husband who I knew she thought very highly of especially when she was under the false assumption that he paid off the mortgage on her house.

  “Thank you mom, that means a lot to me,” I felt myself get emotional all over again.

  “I just want you to be happy, Josephine,” my mom confessed in a moment of honesty.

  “I am happy, mom.”

  “I know you are,” her eyes twinkled. “Well I don’t want to steal you away from your other guests. Go mingle and have fun,” she waved us off but not before I leant in for one more hug.

  “Your blessing means everything to me,” I murmured into her chestnut colored hair and she squeezed me tighter in response.

  “Now go, enjoy your night,” she went to wipe away a fresh set of tears and Hawkins saved her from any more embarrassment by taking my hand to lead me away to our other guests.

  “Having my mom here means the world to me,” I whispered to him. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t have to thank me. I wanted her blessing, Joie,” he confessed earnestly, making the gesture feel even more meaningful to me.

 
When I realized that he was leading me over to his parents next, who were seated on the opposite side, I felt the smile on my face suddenly fade. Hawkins’ mom sure didn’t look like a terror from across the room, more like a southern belle. I could even make out the dimples in her cheeks whenever she smiled widely up at another guest she must have known but when she noticed us coming her way I caught her muttering something under her breath to her husband, Jack.

  “Be nice,” Hawkins’ dad mouthed before we finally approached them.

  “Joshua, it’s so nice for you to finally greet us,” she said sweetly but I don’t think either one of us missed the dig at my mom being introduced to us as a couple first.

  “I think what she means to say, is congratulations,” Hawkins’ dad smiled warmly up at the two of us.

  “Oh stop,” she playfully slapped him in the gut. “I mean precisely what I say. I haven’t lost my mind yet. My patience maybe,’ she sighed, ‘But not my mind.”

  “It’s good to see you too, mom,” Hawkins cracked a smile since he must be used to her antics by now.

  “Oh it’s good to see you too,” her cold front melted for a second as she got up to give him a hug and murmured, “I hate it when we fight.”

  “Well you know that’s entirely up to you,” I overheard him whisper to her in their embrace.

  “And Joie, it’s so nice to see you again,” she pulled away from Hawkins a bit abruptly to squeeze my hand though I couldn’t help but notice her frown when she glanced down at my bare ring finger.

  “So explain this to me, Joie,” she sighed as she sat back down. “I’m fascinated to hear why the two of you have a thing for elevators?”

  “Umm…well?” I smacked my dry lips because I never thought I’d have to explain this one to Hawkins’ mom. Maybe it was because she didn’t think I was good enough for her son but for whatever reason it seemed the more time I spent around Hawkins’ mom the more nervous and tongue tied I became. “We had this big misunderstanding on one of them once…a fight actually,” I blurted out like an idiot. “But then we realized neither one of us was who we made the other person out to be.”