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“A belly button ring really isn’t that big a deal,” I reasoned.
“Right? It’s her body. But yeah. Since you are the flip one, I have to be the reasonable one. And the reasonable thing is to discuss the prenup now.”
“Okay,” I agreed, leading her over toward the couch. “Let’s talk about the prenup. I don’t want one.”
“Well, then you’re an idiot,” she declared, eyes rolling. “What if I was running an ultra-long con on you?”
“An ultra-long con, huh?” I mused. “Involving that time we both got food poisoning and both slept on the bathroom floor of the hotel, taking turns vomiting? If that was part of the con, darling, you have earned the money,” I told her, smiling. “That damn lobster—”
“We agreed you would never say that word ever again,” Wasp accused, skin going gray at the memory. And, to be fair, that had been a rough long weekend. But how did you know you truly loved someone if you hadn’t lived through mutual food poisoning together, and still wanted to be with them?
“I think a small part of you is still worried I don’t trust you because of our… unconventional courtship. I think this should wipe away any of those residual concerns. I trust you. You can marry me tomorrow and run away with half my fortune the day after that. That is how much I trust you.”
“That is very foolish,” she told me, scooting closer, throwing her legs over mine. “But thank you,” she added, resting her head on my chest. “What did you have in mind for the wedding?”
“Something ostentatious,” I declared, making her chuckle.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
“And I want it soon.”
“Of course you do.”
“And I want to invite everyone from the casino,” I added. We’d been regulars there anytime we were in Navesink Bank.
“And Eamon Awan as your best man?”
“And all the fixers as my groomsman,” I agreed.
“Our wedding is going to be ridiculous. Your upper-crust, billionaire acquaintances. My arms-dealing brothers, a team of professional fixers, ex-conwomen…”
“And we will have to find a way to make Leonard our ring bearer.”
“Of course we will. Maybe he can ride in on the farm pig,” Wasp teased.
But make no mistake, I was taking notes.
And in six month’s time, there was going to be an African Gray perched on a saddle attached to a six-hundred-pound farm pig.
I’d always been known for the ridiculous.
Now we both would.
Wasp – 5 years
“Fenway, what the hell are we going to do with a ten-foot-tall giraffe stuffed animal?” I asked as he grabbed it around its middle, groaning a bit when he lifted the massive thing off the floor.
“We are going to put it in the toy room, of course.”
“We’d have to anchor it to a wall. It could fall down and crush her.”
“She pointed at it,” he insisted, shrugging a shoulder.
That was all it took with him.
Our little girl pointing at something.
Then he was going out of his way to acquire it for her.
Once, when she was just ten months old, she had thrown her chubby hand out of the window and pointed a pudgy finger at a massive dog on the street. This big white fluffy thing that likely weighed more than I did. And the only reason she pointed at it was because it looked like the dog in the picture book I read to her before bed.
What did my husband do?
Pulled over the car, hopped out, ran across the street, and tried to offer the owners an untold sum of money—I’d asked, he’d refused to tell me—to sell him their dog. Thankfully, the owners were attached and declined. I had my hands full with a baby and Leonard and, let’s face it, my husband. I wasn’t ready for a dog that was bigger than all of us.
This giraffe, while not requiring feeding and washing and numerous trips outside, was equally as impractical as that dog had been.
“Darling, this is Hamleys!” Fenway declared, as though that brushed aside my concerns.
For Little Bee’s—Beatrice’s—third birthday, I had wanted to do something fun, but normal. Like a backyard barbecue with friends and family. Maybe ramp it up a notch with rented bounce houses and cotton candy and popcorn machines.
Of course, Fenway had other plans.
When it came to stubbornness, we were matched.
But when it came to making plans behind the other’s back, Fenway was the clear winner.
Before I had even looked at cotton candy machine varieties online, he had somehow managed to get his jet and a hotel lined up, as well as called Hamleys to work out a deal to rent the world’s largest and oldest toy store for the entire day.
Now, was the toy store possibly the most epic place in the world for a child? Even I would admit that. It had an actual, working merry-go-round, a tube slide that went down two floors, a two-level fire engine to play in, a candy shop, and every single toy known to mankind.
