Save the Date(77)

“I get to keep the suit?” Ralph asked, looking down at it again. I nodded, hoping that Rodney would care more about getting married than he would about getting married in the right clothing. I smiled hopefully at Ralph, and saw Bill doing the same.

“You’d really be helping us out,” I said. “And if you don’t want to stay, you wouldn’t have to—you could just drop in, marry them, and head out again.”

“Please?” Bill asked.

Ralph sighed. “Fine,” he said, reaching into the pocket of Rodney’s suit—apparently, now Ralph’s suit—and pulling out a business card. “E-mail me the details, the location, and when you’ll need me for the ceremony.”

I let out a long, shaky breath. “Thank you so much,” I said, as next to me, Bill nodded fervently. “We really, really appreciate it, and—”

“All right,” Ralph said, starting to look uncomfortable. “Just send me the information, and I’ll see you tonight.”

“Thank you,” Bill called, a little too loudly. Ralph gave us a smile that was more grimace than anything else, and hurried into the ballroom, probably trying to get there before we could ask him for anything else.

I looked over at Bill, who just shook his head. We headed back the way we came, waiting until we were out of the ballroom before either one of us spoke. “Oh my god,” I said, once we were in the clear. I shook my head, feeling like I was on the verge of bursting into giddy laughter.

“So, I think we can count that as a victory,” Bill said as we headed toward the car. He turned to me and held up his hand. “Go team.”

I smiled as I gave him a high-five. “Well, it’s kind of a victory,” I said, nodding toward the garment bag Bill had been holding for so long that it now just seemed like a part of him. “We’re down a suit.”

“But up an officiant, which is the more important thing.”

“That’s what I thought too. I hope Rodney doesn’t kill me.”

“I think he’ll be happy about it,” Bill said, then paused. “Well, maybe not happy. But probably grateful that he’s actually going to be able to get married.”

“Good point.” I unlocked the car, and we both got in.

“So we’ve gotten a judge and picked up the suit,” Bill said, then looked behind him at the garment bag he’d placed in the backseat. “I mean, kind of. We did pick up a suit, just not the one we expected. So now we need to get bagels.”

“Right,” I said, starting the car, then backing out of the space and driving forward, out through the country club entrance gates. “And Mike.”

“Mike?”

“Yeah, we have to get him. He’s . . . at a friend’s.”

“Cool,” Bill said, smiling across the car at me. “Onward?”

I nodded as I hit the turn signal that would take me toward the commercial district in town. It wasn’t that everything was fixed—Rodney still didn’t have anything to get married in—but we had found a judge. And somehow, it felt like I wasn’t on my own with this—it felt like Bill and I were in this together. I gave him a smile across the car. “Onward.”

*

“Uhhhgggggghhhhhh.” I glanced into the backseat, where Mike was curled up, moaning softly, the way he’d been ever since we’d picked him up.

“How you doing, Mike?” I asked, even though I had a feeling I knew how he was doing.

“Shh,” Mike said, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the window. “Why are you talking so loud? Why are you driving so fast?”

I looked down at the speedometer—I was going thirty miles an hour, and it felt like we were crawling.

He had been this way ever since I’d pulled into Jesse’s driveway and found Mike sitting on the front steps, his head hung between his legs. Luckily, J.J. had texted me that he’d called Mike until he’d woken him up, and told him to be ready to meet me. This way, I didn’t have to face ringing Jesse’s doorbell and having a fight with my brother—in front of Jesse—about coming to the house early. And while I wanted to see Jesse, there was so much going on at the moment that I really wasn’t sure I had the bandwidth for it right now. And at any rate, I knew I’d see him tonight—at the reception, with my hair and makeup professionally done, with these problems long solved and the wedding going smoothly. That’s how I wanted to see Jesse—when everything was going to be perfect.

I glanced back at Mike once more. It wasn’t like I’d never seen people with hangovers—I’d covered for J.J. when we’d all gone on a family trip to Hyde Park the day after his senior prom, when he could barely stand up. And I’d had a particularly rough morning myself last year, when I’d been staying at Siobhan’s when her dads were out of town and we’d experimented with mixing together most of their liquor cabinet. But I’d never seen Mike like this—his skin had a distinctly greenish tinge to it. And even though he’d showered at Jesse’s—his hair was damp—he somehow still smelled like whiskey, like it was coming out through his pores or something. I was hoping that maybe the wedding photographer would be able to use some kind of filter, because I had a feeling it wouldn’t look great, in pictures Rodney and Linnie were going to keep forever, to have one of the groomsmen look like he was on the verge of collapse.