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She looks sexy enough for Manhattan and casual enough for a country club, which is where we’re heading.
Tea on the lawn at 3:30, the schedule reads, though we figure that has to be problematic considering all the rain.
Wrong.
The grass is soaked, but the tea party is still on.
A couple of steps and Bailey’s spiked heels sink into the ground like tent stakes the time my Scout troop went camping too close to a New Jersey swamp. It’s happening to all the other women; the lawn is dotted with females staggering from one spot to another.
Not my woman.
Bailey clings to my arm, leans down and yanks off the mules. Then she plants her bare feet in the soggy soil, rolls her cuffs to mid-calf, looks at me and laughs.
“So much for being fashionable,” she says.
What she is, is cute as hell. The staggerers seem to agree because it only takes a few minutes before they eyeball her, dump their fancy shoes and squish their way through the grass the same as she’s doing.
I tuck her shoes into the back pockets of my jeans. Then I take her hand and we head for today’s buffet line. This time we’re both hungry. The pizza was good, but we’ve been blowing through lots of calories.
“Time to refuel,” I say as I hand her a plate, and Bailey does that batting-her-lashes bit and says she definitely wants me to keep my energy levels up.
How could I not have known the woman who’s worked for me all these years?
Long tables offer up an assortment of goodies, though I suspect this isn’t the kind of tea somebody from England would recognize. There are plenty of little cakes and tiny crustless sandwiches, but there’s also real food and despite all the fancy French names, it’s pretty basically American. There’s a guy at a grill turning out burgers and hot dogs, another plucking lobster tails from an enormous kettle. I half expect Bailey to ask the pedigree of the burgers and dogs, but she doesn’t. Turns out the grill guy is also doing a stack of hockey pucks labeled Vegetarian, and that’s what she chooses.
“That way I don’t have to wonder about the meat,” she tells me, her expression earnest and caring and, what the hell, I make the same choice. But we also take lobster tails after the server with the kettle and the tongs sees the hockey puck on her plate. “Harvested off the Maine coast,” he confides, “from carefully managed, environmentally sound waters.”
She thanks him. I do too, because not eating lobster when I know a lobster would happily eat me if our situations were reversed is not high on my list of Doing the Right Thing…Except, I realize as we look for a table, I would have done it to keep my woman happy—and what is with this my woman stuff? I am not a guy who thinks that way. I don’t believe in absolutist language. A woman belongs to herself, same as a dude belongs to himself…
“Bailey? Come sit with us.”
Shit. The bride has spotted us. She and the groom are at a table for four, and she’s beaming the kind of smile you see in toothpaste ads. Big, bright, and phony.
I take Bailey’s hand and dip my head to hers. “Your choice, babe,” I murmur.
“We’d love to,” my girl says, and the only way I know she’s lying is because she squeezes my hand hard enough so her nails dig into my palm.
We join the happy couple.
Elevator Boy starts things off by saying he’s pissed that there was nothing the country club could do about the weather. It’s hard not to go all wide-eyed and say Well, duh, but I manage. Violet the Vixen—that’s the role she’s dressed for in a clingy knit top cut so low I’m amazed her toes aren’t showing and black tights that I suspect make it tough for her to breathe—Violet says they decided to hold the tea outside anyway. Elevator Boy says they didn’t have a choice because the dining room was already booked. Violet shoots him a look and says he really should have told the manager how he felt about that. Elevator Boy says he did. Violet says he should have made his position on the matter more determined.
After that, they fall silent.
I clear my throat. “So,” I say brightly, “where are you two going on your honeymoon?”
“Greece,” Elevator Boy says.
“Chester rented a yacht.”
Elevator Boy swallows. The sound is audible.
“I rented a nice boat,” he says.
“A yacht,” Violet clarifies.
He leans towards her. “It’s a boat. A very nice boat.”
Her eyes narrow. I told you they were narrow to begin with, remember? Well, now they’re just little slits.
