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“Your friend with the frog plane.”
“Jimmy?” He glanced down into Lexie’s dark face. “Why are you here?”
“I’m your mother. Who else should help you plan your wedding?”
“Wedding?”
“I heard it on Wendy Williams!”
He looked out into the parking lot and the glassy rain puddles. “You shouldn’t get your news from Wendy.”
“I have experience planning weddings, you know.”
Yeah, she’d planned three of her own.
He looked at Lexie for help.
“Lexie’s a pretty girl, but you can’t expect someone special with a dusty attic to do it on her own,” his mother said.
Lexie slid into her car, and the dome light turned on just long enough for him to see the smile on her face and the laughter in her eyes. She probably wouldn’t be smiling so big if she knew his mother thought she was “special.”
“That trip just about killed my small bladder.”
He imagined she’d complained the entire trip. It served Jimmy right. “Hand the phone to the guy at the front desk.” One of the last things he needed was for Geraldine to chat it up with people in his building. Lexie gave him a little three-finger wave as she drove from the parking lot, and the taillights of her small SUV disappeared into the dark Seattle night. He instructed the front desk to let his mother into his apartment, then shoved the phone inside the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. A water droplet hit his forehead and ran down the bridge of his nose. Just as he looked up into the heavy night sky, inky clouds opened up and pelted him with cold rain.
He raised the hood over his head and ducked his face against the stinging downpour. By the time he’d jogged three blocks, his sweatshirt and shoes were soaked. At the corner of Broad Street and Second Avenue, a minivan raced through a yellow light and sent a spray of water up his legs to the crotch of his pants.
Fabulous. He was soaking wet, freezing to the marrow of his bones, and his mother waited for him at his apartment. He didn’t think his life could suck any harder.
“Would you like more tea, Geraldine?” Georgeanne Kowalsky lifted a china pot with tiny pink flowers painted on it and wrapped her hand around one side. “The water is still warm.”
“Yes, please.” Sean’s mother set her little matching teacup on the matching saucer and handed it over. She hadn’t mentioned the dog at the table, yet. Sean hoped she’d keep her rant about disease-spreading, filthy animals to herself.
“We serve a pink tea at several local retirement communities each year. The residents look forward to it, and we love it,” Georgeanne explained as she poured. “It’s a family tradition.”
Georgeanne’s Southern accent clung to her words like golden honey. If Sean listened close enough, he thought he just might hear “Dixie” playing in the background.
“Not my family,” John said as he reached for his tea and took a chug. His big hand dwarfed the delicate cup and looked as ridiculously out of place as Sean imagined his own did.
“John?” Georgeanne motioned toward her husband.
“No. Thank you, love.”
“Sean?”
“I’m good. Thank you.”
A bowl of pink roses and lilies sat in the center of a round table covered in pink linen. Next to the bowl, fussy a two-tier stand was filled with girl food.
“Cucumber sandwich?” Lexie asked him as she picked up a pair of silver tongs. She stood beside him, looking beautiful in a pink dress that hugged her in all the right places. A pink headband held her blond hair from her face. If they’d been alone, he might have messed it up for her. She leaned a little toward the tray, and the back of her dress inched up her thighs. If they’d been alone, he might have inched his hands up her thighs, too. “I’ve got petits fours and cream puffs?”
“Sure.” Why not? He was in hell. He sat at a pink-covered table with John and Georgeanne, thinking about sliding his hands up their daughter’s thighs. His mother sat on his right, her pinkie out like she was the queen of England. Why not eat the tiny food? Maybe he’d choke to death and put himself out of his misery.
“You may notice that we are missing a few cream puffs.” Lexie pointed to an empty space on the tray. “I’m not sure where they went”—she paused to look across at the ugly dog sitting in John’s lap—“but someone had cream on her nose.” She set a small plate in front of Sean with two crustless little sandwiches; three pink squares, each with a red rose; and two cream puffs. The dog was dressed in a tutu again, and her beady eyes stared across at Sean as her black tongue snaked out and licked the tip of her nose. He reached for a pink square and pushed the cream puffs to one side.
“Did you do that?” John “The Wall,” Chinooks coach and hockey legend, asked the hairless mutt. The d
og yipped and was rewarded with a piece of pink cake.
