Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble Gets Hitched

I cannot believe this is happening. I flop back against the couch, slapping my hands over my eyes. I can’t watch.

“Oh, you did? Really? Oh yeah? Oh, she did? Oh, really. Oh, that’s too bad.” Chaz leans over and pokes me, but I don’t take my hands from my eyes. Finally, after a few more “really”s, I hear Chaz say, “Yeah, so, if you and Lizzie are splitting up, I guess that means things are really going to heat up with Sophie.”

Chaz must have put the phone close to my ear, because I hear Luke’s voice saying, “Well, you know, I’m going to be moving to France, so I guess I won’t be seeing as much of Sophie. But you know there’s this fantastic woman I’ve been seeing in my new office, that one I was telling you about, Marie… ”

I take my hands away from my eyes and just look at him. Chaz’s expression is a beguiling mixture of anxiety—that my feelings are hurt—and laughter. It is kind of hard not to see the humor in the situation. It’s not as if I care who Luke’s been doing behind my back.

I just hope he, like me, has been using a condom.

When he sees that I’m smiling too, Chaz puts the phone back to his ear and says, “Uh, Luke? So, listen, since you and Lizzie aren’t seeing each other anymore, I was wondering… how would you feel if I asked her out? Because, you know, I think she’s a great girl, and I’ve always sort of—”

Even from where I’m sitting, three feet away, I can hear Luke’s voice curtly cutting Chaz off.

Chaz’s grin grows more broad.

“Oh,” he says, his blue eyes twinkling at me. “You don’t think that would be a very good idea? Why? You think you’re such a sex god you should just have all the great girls for yourself, even after you’re done with them, is that it?”

Laughing, I gasp, “Chaz, don’t!” and reach out to wrestle the phone away from him.

“No?” Chaz is saying into the phone, even as he wraps an arm around my waist and wrestles me noisily to the floor. “Oh, because she’s in a very fragile state right now? I don’t think she’s in quite as fragile a state as you might think. What was that noise? Oh, I think that was just… my upstairs neighbor. Yeah, he just brought home another trannie from that bar down the street. Hey, Johnny”—Chaz takes the phone away from his face and yells at the walls as he tickles me mercilessly, while I try not to blow our cover by laughing—“it’s called abstinence! You should give it try! Oops, Luke, I gotta go, he’s puking in the hallway. Yeah, he’s sliding around in his puke. I’ll call you later.”

Chaz hangs up, throws his cell phone over his shoulder, then dives on top of me, burying his face in my neck. I can barely breathe I’m laughing so hard.

And I realize something: I’ve never had such a good time in my entire life.

Which is a lot to say, considering the day I’ve had.

Anyone familiar with her historical romances knows that any young bride worth her salt went to Scotland to elope in nineteenth-century Europe (even back then girls under eighteen weren’t allowed to wed without their parents’ permission). Even Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice despairs when she learns her flighty sister Lydia has not gone to Gretna Green with her lover, Wickham, for it meant he had no intention of marrying her.

Scotland is still a popular wedding destination for Americans, and many travel packages for that purpose can be purchased. Although care should be taken to fill out the necessary paperwork stateside before going, or the unwary bride could find herself in the same situation as poor, unhappy Lydia.

Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster

Eloping doesn’t necessarily mean a couple has to miss out on the fun of wedding gifts! The couple’s parents or other relatives or friends can still choose to host a reception for them upon their return. They can even still register for gifts and be within the confines of good taste and etiquette. With weddings growing to be so costly these days, some parents are finding it less expensive to pay their daughters to elope.

We should all be so lucky.

LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS ™

I find Monsieur Henri in his back garden the next morning, precisely where his wife said he’d be: practicing on his homemade pétanque lane.

He seems surprised to see me.

Well, I don’t suppose it’s often he receives visitors from Manhattan to his suburban Cranbury, New Jersey, home.

Especially while he’s still in his terrycloth bathrobe.

“Elizabeth!” he cries, dropping the pétanque ball in the dust and hurrying to close his robe. He casts an indignant look at his wife, coming up behind us with a tray of iced tea.

“I’m sorry, Jean,” she says. But if you ask me, she doesn’t look the least bit sorry. “Elizabeth phoned earlier this morning to say she was coming with something important to discuss with us. I did call out to you. But I suppose you didn’t hear me.”

Monsieur Henri watches, dumbfounded, as his wife sets the tray down on the small metal table beneath the rose-covered arbor at the end of his pétanque lane, then takes a seat on the bench beside it. Always a large man, her husband has lost a lot of weight since his surgery. But he is still sweating in the summer heat, even in the shade of the arbor. He looks down at the three glasses of iced tea before him.

“Well,” he says. “I suppose I can take a break. For a moment.”

“That would be nice,” I say. I flick a glance toward the house. Chaz is driving around the neighborhood, having assured me he’d be back in half an hour to pick me up in the car we rented from Avis that morning. “I’ll just cruise the strip malls,” he’d said. “Pick you up a thong from Victoria’s Secret. I’ve never seen you in a thong. Or anything from Victoria’s Secret, for that matter.”

There’s a reason for that, I’d assured him.

I take a seat on the bench beside Madame Henri, after carefully tucking my vintage Lilly Pulitzer wraparound skirt beneath me, waiting until Monsieur Henri has lowered himself carefully into the teak Adirondack chair opposite us before I speak.

“I’m so sorry to bother you here at your home, Monsieur Henri,” I say. “But it’s about the building—”

“Now, Elizabeth,” Monsieur Henri says with hearty kindness as he reaches for one of the glasses of iced tea and swirls around the twig of mint his wife has plopped into it. “I really don’t think there’s anything more we can say about that. We’re listing it with Goldmark, and that’s that. I’m very sorry about your having to find another job and an apartment, but like we said, we’ll put in a good word for you with Maurice—you’ll have the best references there are… you’ll have no trouble at all finding a job—and you will just have to be satisfied with that. Really, this begging… it’s not attractive. I’m rather surprised at you, I must say.”

“Actually,” I say, reaching for my own glass of iced tea, pleased to see that my hand isn’t shaking at all as I hold it. Way to go, Lizzie! “I’m not here to beg for my job, Monsieur Henri. I’ve found another job. I’m here to make an offer on your building.”

Monsieur Henri nearly drops the glass he’s holding. Madame Henri chokes a little on the mouthful of iced tea she’s just taken.

“I… I beg your pardon, Elizabeth?” She coughs.

“I know I ought to have gone through your Realtor,” I say quickly. “But the thing is, I don’t have all the money. Yet. But I will. Soon. And the rest I can pay as we go along, but it will have to be over a period of a few years. Which I know isn’t exactly what you were hoping for, but”—I lean forward, speaking to both of them in a low, urgent voice, while somewhere off in the distance, a lawn mower roars to life and a bird begins a plaintive but still melodious song—“the advantage of selling to me, as opposed to some stranger, is that you won’t be paying any Realtor fees. We can cut out the middleman completely, and you’ll be saving yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m willing to make you an offer right now, here, today, no inspection, no nothing, of four point five million dollars. And before you say you think the building is worth more,” I say, cutting off both of them, since I hear them inhale, “allow me to point out that I live and work there. I don’t need an inspection because I know how much work the place needs. I’ve seen the cracks, plugged up the leaks, called the exterminator myself for the rats down in the basement more times than I can count. And I’m making my offer to you now, today, with my guarantee that you will have the whole amount five years from today. I’ll sign anything you want guaranteeing it. All I ask is that you remember where the two of you were when I first walked through your door a year ago. And where you both are now.”