Beach Wedding(13)

“Well, at least you’re as cute as Tom Cruise,” she finally said.

“What was that?” I said.

“You heard me. Give me something to write on.”

“Like a piece of paper?”

She flipped over a coaster and pulled the clipboard pen out of my shirt pocket and wrote down something.

“I’m here with someone, but I want you to call me tomorrow. I’m in the city for the summer. You do know where the city is? New York City?”

“It’s in Manhattan, isn’t it?” I said over the mad beat of my heart.

“Yes, it is in Manhattan,” she said.

My breath caught as she leaned in super close and slipped the coaster with her number on it and my pen back into my shirt pocket.

“All the way in,” she said in my ear before she pulled back.

“Wait—what’s your name?” I said after seeing it was just a number written on the coaster.

But she just turned on her white-sandaled heel and stepped away into the beach shadows beyond the tent and was gone.



17

Maybe an hour later, the entire bar tent was empty.

George Michael was halfway into “I’m Your Man,” and we were boxing up the empties when Nick elbowed me in the back so hard, I cried out.

I stood up and turned around.

And saw that the man of the hour had arrived.

“Hey, boys. Working hard or hardly working?” Noah Sutton said as he leaned over and grabbed a bottle of Heidsieck champagne out from beneath the bar.

He was taller than he seemed from the society pages. And just as perfectly and remarkably good-looking. He was wearing all white, I saw, but not a tuxedo. His linen shirt was half-open, and he had on a pair of white jeans.

That he was soaked to the skin didn’t seem to faze him. Quite the contrary. He looked like a very happy man.

“Hello, Mr. Sutton. Can I get you a glass?” Nick said politely.

I elbowed Mr. Badass back as he suddenly became Mr. Kiss Ass.

Then we all turned to the mouth of the tent and saw why Noah was so happy. Two women waved at Noah. One was blonde, the other had red hair, and they were both cat-eyed and wearing white high-cut one-piece bathing suits.

“There you are! You can’t get away that quick,” the redheaded beauty called out to Noah.

Noah waved them in with the champagne bottle.

“Sir?” Nick said as the girls suddenly rushed in, giggling and whispering.

“What’s that?” Noah said as the girls swung themselves under his arms.

“Would you like glasses with that?” Nick said.

“Won’t be necessary at this juncture,” Noah said as he was being dragged away. “But thank you.”

“No problem, sir,” Nick said.

“Boys!” Noah called over his shoulder without looking at us.

“Yes, sir,” we answered in unison.

“You didn’t see me.” He grinned.

“See who, sir?” Nick said, elbowing me again.

“Now, that,” Noah Sutton called as he was pulled off into the darkness, “is what I like to hear!”



18

I opened my eyes the next morning.

It was one of those times when you wake up and everything is different. Where it feels like several hundred million years have passed. Or maybe you’ve been transported to a new planet.

“A dream,” I immediately said to myself as I remembered everything.

Driving Nick’s Cadillac, the Armani-suited security guy, the blue glass spaceship Sutton house beside the ocean, the girls on the swings, George Michael. Noah freaking Sutton himself.

“George Michael,” I mumbled, laughing. “I mean, that’s impossible. It had to be a dream, had to be.”

Then I raised my head off my pillow and looked down.

At my red-stained shirt, my crusty black jeans, my disgusting sticky wet black booze-soaked Reeboks still glued to my feet.

It wasn’t, I realized with an explosive smile and a fist pump of triumph. It had actually happened. All of it.

Then I saw the money. On my bureau, there was a wad of cash, a massive one, more money than I’d ever come close to seeing in my entire life. I got up and started quickly counting my cut of the tips. There were fives, tens, twenties. Lots and lots of twenties. There was a fifty. And no! A hundred?

“Eight hundred fifty-five bucks!” I cried as I finished counting. In one single night!

I went over the blur that was the end of the night, packing up, breaking down the boxes, having a few more sips of pink champagne, the Charlie, as Nick and I started to call it. After a couple of hours, Nick gave me a hilarious ride back home in his Cadillac, singing George Michael the whole way.

What a night, I thought. The greatest night of my life. Heck, anyone’s. Man, Nick Murray was the coolest. And my brother as well, for not being around so I could take his place. What a score and a half!

Then it felt like the top of my head exploded as I remembered the very best part.

The English Aphrodite girl!

The real-life fairy princess who had given me her number.

My hand shot to my shirt pocket for the coaster.

My empty pocket.

“It’s not there!” I yelled.

I rifled through everything on top of my bureau. Then started panicking.