Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble Gets Hitched

“You… heard?” I manage to wheeze.

“About the shop closing? Yeah,” he says. “I called there first. Tiffany told me. Lizzie, I’m so sorry.”

And my heart begins to beat again. And all the sounds of the city come floating slowly back.

“Oh,” I say.

God. I am so stupid. Also, I am the worst Bad Girl ever to grace the Bad Girl Scale in the history of Bad Girls.

“Right. Yes. It’s awful. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“I do,” Luke says. “You’re going to move to Paris with me.”

I am trying not to be run over by all the people who are hurrying along the sidewalk. For the most part, they are stepping around me. But every once in a while, a harried Upper East Side mom on her way to some important lunch appointment uptown doesn’t see me and almost barrels her Bugaboo baby carriage into me, and I have to move. This happens now, and in the confusion, I think I’ve misheard Luke.

“I beg your pardon?” I say to him.

“I know what you’re going to say, Lizzie.” He is thousands of miles away, but he sounds as if he were standing right beside me. Except for the car horns and occasional police siren down Madison Avenue, which makes him slightly difficult to hear. I put my finger in my nonphone ear, just to be sure.

“But just listen for a minute,” he goes on. “I tried the medical school thing. I did. You can’t say I didn’t give it a fair shot. But… I just don’t think I’m cut out for it. I can’t hack another five or six—or more—years of school. I can’t do it. I think it will kill me. I really do.”

I watch as another young mother, this one pushing a newborn, walks by, a seven-or eight-year-old skipping by her side, an ice cream cone dripping all over his hand, down his arm, and onto the front of his shirt. Neither he nor his mom seems to care.

“Oh,” I say.

“But since coming to work for Uncle Gerald—Lizzie. It’s been great. I love it. I really do. I know when you first met me I was doing the same thing, and I said I didn’t like it, and I seemed burned out… but this is different. Gerald’s offered me my own department. I’ll have people working under me.” I’ve never heard Luke sound so enthusiastic. About anything. He sounds like his father sounds when he talks about wine. He sounds young. He sounds… happy. “There’s just one catch.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“It’s here,” Luke says. “In Paris. I’d have to move to Paris. Permanently.”

“Oh,” I say.

“But that’s why when I heard what happened today at the shop,” he goes on excitedly, “I thought, it’s a perfect opportunity. You’re out of a job, and I just got offered a great one. Lizzie, you can come here, to Paris. You can start over, like I’m doing. You can open a new shop here. A bridal shop. I walked by one the other day, and your dresses are a thousand times nicer. And much more affordable. Everything here is so expensive. There’s a real demand for affordable fashion. That’s where your niche is, I think, Lizzie. That’s what you need to do. Open your own shop here in Paris. A shop that offers beautiful couture for the ordinary girl, at prices she can afford. For brides.”

“I already have a bridal shop,” I say, sniffling. “In New York.”

“I know,” Luke says. “But that shop belongs to someone else. And they’re selling it. I’m talking about a shop of your own.”

“But… ” I say, looking at the display window in front of me. “In France?”

“Look,” Luke says. “You speak French. My family can loan you the start-up income. Lizzie… don’t you see? This is a perfect opportunity for it.”

“But.” I look around at the people hurrying by in all their different shapes and colors, at the buildings all around me, at the taxis and buses and delivery vans and trucks whizzing by, the sun slanting through the leaves of a nearby tree, growing, against all odds, through the pavement, in the shadow of the skyscrapers all around us.

Because that’s what New York City is all about. Trees growing up out of the pavement, in the shade, where no tree should ever grow.

And I say, “I love New York.”

“You’ll love Paris too,” Luke says. “You’ve been there, remember? It’s just like New York. Only better. Cleaner. Nicer.”

“It’s so far away,” I say as a kid walking by with a dog fails to clean up after it, and a woman with a Chanel purse yells at him for it.

“From what, Lizzie?” Luke asks. “Your grandmother? She’s dead. Remember?” But Gran isn’t who I’m thinking about.

“I can’t decide right now,” I say. “I… I’ll have to think about it.”

“You do that,” Luke says. “You think about it. You take all the time you need. But I think you should probably know… I’ve accepted the job my uncle offered me.”

“What?” I think I must have misheard him again.

“We’ll figure something out,” Luke says hurriedly. “If you decide to stay in New York, we’ll just do the long-distance thing for a while. People do, Lizzie. We’ll make it work. Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry? My fiancé—on whom, it is true, I am cheating—informs me that he is going to move permanently to another country, but that I shouldn’t worry?

“And if you need a place to stay, you know you can always move back into my mother’s place on Fifth. She already said it was all right. She’ll just need to use the place one weekend a month, for her—you know… ”

He means her monthly Botox injections. But I don’t say that out loud, since Luke doesn’t need me to remind him about that.

I am standing there, openmouthed in astonishment, when a voice behind me says, “Hey.”

I spin around, startled, and see a flash of khaki and the brim of a baseball cap.

“Luke,” I say into the phone. “I have to go. I… I’ll call you later, all right?”

“Okay,” he says. “Honestly, Lizzie… I don’t want you to worry. About any of this. I’m going to take care of it. Of you. I love you.”

“I… y-you too,” I stammer. And hang up. Then I demand, “What are you doing here?”

“Standing in front of Vera Wang’s flagship store?” Chaz quips. “Oh, I come here most days, actually. I like to try on a few of the mother-of-the-bride gowns. They feel so smooth and slinky against my skin.” He blinks down at me. “Shari called me. What do you think? And then I called the shop when you wouldn’t pick up any of my calls on your cell. Tiffany told me I might find you here. She says you like to come here to clear your head.” He looks at the display window. “I can see why. It’s so… shiny.”

I stare at the shop window too. But what I’m actually looking at is our reflection, him so tall and lanky, with his University of Michigan baseball cap perched on top of his head, and his strong, muscular legs, so tanned, unlike the tourists who occasionally walk past. And me, slightly wilted in my sundress from having run all over town in the heat of high summer, my hair hanging in a bedraggled mess from my barrette, wanting, basically, to die. We make the strangest-looking couple.

If that’s what we are. Which I’m not even sure of.

And of course behind our reflection is the beautiful, perfect Vera Wang wedding gown of the week. In a size two.

“They’re closing the shop,” I say to his reflection. “The Henris. They’re closing it. And moving to Provence.”

“I know. Tiffany told me that too.” He shrugs, looking infuriatingly unconcerned. “So. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I yell at him. “What do you think I’m standing here trying to figure out?”

God! How can I be in love with him? How can he be so different from Luke, whom I thought I loved for so long? I don’t want you to worry. About any of this. I’m going to take care of it. Of you. That’s what Luke had to say.