The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date, #3)(44)

“I stopped to buy you coffee since I figured you wouldn’t have made it yet and because I knew I wouldn’t be able to let you stop to make some.”

Great. Maddie had coffee. Alexa had coffee. All he had was a coffee maker full of meticulously measured coffee and water on the other side of the room. A coffee maker he hadn’t even had time to turn on before Alexa barged in.

“Thanks for the coffee, but you’d better spill this news immediately,” Maddie said. There was a short pause. “Wait. Something happened that made you show up at my house on a Saturday morning. You’re already engaged. Are you pregnant?”

Alexa laughed.

“No, God, no. At this point that would definitely be more terrifying than amazing. No, it’s . . . Okay, so you know how I really wanted to get married at the Berkeley Rose Garden, but they were booked for weddings every weekend day straight for the next year? And every time they open a new Saturday I try to call to get the date but someone always gets it ahead of me?”

He heard Maddie sip her coffee. He looked at the coffee maker on the other side of the kitchen with longing.

“Yeah, of course I know. We had a plan that Olivia and I would call for you for the next date, remember?”

“Yes, right, I forgot, it’s been a wild morning. Well, okay, I know someone who works for the Parks Department—I did them a big favor a few years ago around that Harvest Festival thing—and she kept saying I was at the top of the waiting list, but I didn’t really believe anything would come of that. Well, this morning I checked my work voice mail, and she called late last night to tell me an October date just opened up and I should call her today on her cell if I want it, because otherwise someone else would grab it.”

October? This October?

“October of this year?” Maddie repeated his thoughts.

“I know, I know, it’s really soon. But . . . Mads, was somebody over here? Your place is so neat! I mean, for you.”

Huh, this was neat? He’d been thinking that Maddie’s place was kind of cluttered.

“I just cleared out some stuff, that’s all. For, um, a charity drive.” Had she cleaned up for him? “Can we get back to your news? October?”

Theo looked down at Maddie’s spice rack. Why the hell was turmeric next to herbes de Provence?

“Right, sorry. Okay, so I listened to the message in the car when Drew and I were driving back from Napa—we had to come back early this morning because he’s on call today—and we had been trying to talk ourselves into having the wedding at the perfectly nice but totally generic site we saw yesterday. And when we heard October, we both just looked at each other and grinned. So I called her back right away and said yes.”

“You just grinned and said yes? To getting married in less than four months? Just like that?”

“Just like that!” Alexa said. “Drew was so excited and said all this sweet stuff about how he couldn’t wait to marry me and he was so glad it was going to be in just a few months, and it got me excited, too, but what the hell was I thinking? Does he have any idea how much we have to do in the next four months? I don’t have a dress! Maddie, what the hell am I going to do? See why I said this was terrifying?”

Less than four months.

Maddie had said, back in May when she set down that list of rules, that this thing would only last until the wedding.

He’d agreed to that then, partly because she was naked and so was he and he would have agreed to anything she said, but also because the wedding felt so far into the future. At least a year away. Maybe more.

Now it was October. That felt way too soon.

Granted, he’d always sort of assumed they wouldn’t actually last until the wedding. Their relationship felt too tenuous for that. He’d never quite believed Maddie could keep the secret from Alexa anyway, and he’d figured that she’d end it as soon as that happened.

But it was one thing to assume it would all blow up at some point, and a very different thing to know for sure they were going to be done by October.

“Don’t panic,” Maddie said. “Please, this is you and me we’re talking about. Four months is nothing. We can put together a wedding in that time, easy. No one needs huge amounts of time to plan a wedding; that’s just what the wedding industrial complex wants you to think. Here: go home right now and make a list of all the things you have to get done for this wedding, and then send it out to me, Olivia, Drew, Carlos, and Theo. Theo will be very useful here.”

That was probably the nicest thing Maddie had ever said about him.

“I will figure out your dress. I was born to do this,” Maddie said. “We can get this done.”

Theo tried to think of what task Alexa and Maddie would come up with for him to sort out. Probably the DJ. Or the bartender.

Probably the DJ and the bartender.

And definitely something that involved spreadsheets.

“Oh God, my MOM,” Alexa said. “She’s going to flip OUT. I haven’t told her about this yet. I have to work up to it.”

“Did you talk to Olivia?”

He heard Alexa stand up.

“Yeah, and of course right before I called her I had a moment of panic that she had a trial or something scheduled for that week and so I’d have to cancel after all, but no, the date is clear.”

“Okay.” The door opened. Could it be? Was she actually leaving? “We can do this! I’m going to go home and make a list of everything we have to do and try to chill out for a second. Thanks, Mads. You always know what to say. I’m sure I’ll email you a spreadsheet in a few hours.”