Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble

“Actually,” Andy points out, his words muffled by the dish towel, “you said you’d give it to me. But a loan’s all right, too. I feel terrible about asking, but in a way, you do sort of owe me the money. I mean, I did open up my home to you, and there was the gas money, you know, Dad spent picking you up from the airport, and-”

“Can I hit him now?” Chaz wants to know. “ Please, Lizzie?”

“No, you can’t,” I say to Chaz.

Although it must be obvious from my stunned expression that I’m not about to pony up the money, since Andy’s hangdog expression has completely disappeared. In fact, his eyes have squeezed shut above the dish towel.

Shari gasps.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Andy, are you crying ?”

It’s clear when he speaks that he is.

“Are you telling me,” he says, weeping, “that I hitched all the way here and you’re not going to give me the money after all?”

I’m shocked. Crying? He’s crying?

Luke must have hit him harder than any of us thought.

“You said on the phone that you couldn’t talk about it!” Andy sobs. “That’s all! You never said-”

“Andy.” I shake my head. Can this really be happening? “I mean, Andy, we broke up. What did you think was going to happen?”

“You don’t understand,” Andy cries. “If I don’t pay these blokes the money I owe them, they’re…they’re going to break my legs.”

I exchange confused looks with Shari and Chaz. “The bursar’s office is going to break your legs if you don’t pay your matriculation fees?”

“No.” Andy takes a shuddering breath from behind the dish towel. “I…I wasn’t quite truthful about that bit. It’s the blokes that run the poker ring that I owe the money to, actually. They’re…well, they’re quite serious about getting it back. I can’t go to Mum and Dad for it-they’ll throw me out. And my mates are all tapped out as well. Really, Lizzie…you were my last hope.”

I stare at him as his words sink in. Then I glance at Chaz and Shari, to see that both of them are looking at me, Chaz with a little grin on his face, Shari with a glower that clearly says, Don’t you back down. Don’t you do it, Nichols. Not this time.

I turn back to Andy and say, “Oh, Andy. I’m so sorry!” I reach up and give him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. I can’t believe I once loved that shoulder.

And I can’t believe he really thinks I’m such a sap I’ll actually give him a dime. Who does he think I am, anyway? Some kind of pushover?

“At least,” I say, “have some wedding cake before you go. Good-bye.”

Then I slip out the back door, where Patapouf and Minouche are waiting, eager for scraps dropped by the caterers. Behind me, I hear Chaz saying in a hearty voice, “Andy, my boy. I’m open-minded, man. And I happen to be loaded. So let’s talk business. What’ve you got in the way of collateral? Is that jacket you’ve got there worth anything, by any chance?”

Agnes is outside, leaning against the butter-yellow Mercedes. She perks up when she sees me, eager for more gossip. I realize Luke’s fight with Andy is the most exciting thing that’s happened at Mirac in a long time. She’s going to have a lot to tell her girlfriends when school starts again in the fall.

“Does the Englishman need to go to hospital?” she asks me brightly. “Because I can call my father, and he can come to take your friend to hospital.”

“He’s not my friend,” I say. “And he doesn’t need to go to hospital. I mean, to the hospital. Chaz is going to take him to the train station, and that will be the last we’ll see of him.”

Agnes looks disappointed. “Oh,” she says, “I was hoping for more of the fighting.”

“I think there’s been enough fighting for one day,” I say. “Speaking of which, did you see where Luke went after the fight?”

Agnes brightens again. “Oh yes! I see him go to the vineyard. I think he is in the cask room.”

“Thanks, Agnes,” I say, and start around the side of the house, to the lawn.

The wedding reception is in full swing and going well now that Satan’s Shadow has gotten the hang of playing covers. One of Vicky’s sorority sisters is onstage, shrieking lines from Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” Not exactly wedding fare, but everyone appears far too drunk to notice. Most of them, thanks to the mimosas, had been too drunk even to realize there’d been a fight. Only a few people who happened to be standing nearby noticed, and Chaz’s quick intervention had put a damper on any hopes for a continuation of the dramatic scene, and so they had all turned their attention back to what was happening onstage.

Still, even though no one seems aware of the fight, they all seem to know who I am. Well, I guess that’s what happens when you make a complete and utter ass of yourself onstage in front of two hundred total strangers. They all feel like you’re their best friend.

Or maybe it’s just that word of my prowess with cream of tartar has spread. Because every woman there seems to have some question for me about an antique wedding dress-how they can get out a stain or insert a gusset; how they can update it without damaging the fine material; even how they can find a vintage wedding gown of their own.

I wrestle with these as best I can and finally manage to cross the lawn and reach the cask room-a thick-walled, cavernous structure, as centuries-old as the house itself-and pull open the heavy oak and iron door.

Inside, it’s still as a mausoleum-although unlike in a mausoleum, golden light filters in through mullion-paned windows high up along the walls. You can’t hear the sound of the band outside-which you can probably hear clear across the valley-or the chatter of the wedding guests. The walls are lined with waist-high oak wine casks, the contents of many of which Luke’s father had insisted I try during my tour two days before. The glasses we-and then all the wedding guests Monsieur de Villiers had brought through for subsequent tours-used are piled up beside a stone sink at the far end of the room.

The stone sink at which Luke is running water over his hand.

He doesn’t hear me come in. Or, at least, if he did, he doesn’t react. He is standing with his back to me, his dark head ducked, letting the water run over his hand. He must, I realize, have really hurt himself on Andy’s teeth.

Which is when I forget that my heart is in my throat at the prospect of talking to him after all the nasty things I accused him of last night, and hurry forward.

“Let me see,” I say when I reach his side.

He jumps.

“Jesus,” he says, looking down at me in surprise. “Sneak up on a guy, why don’t you?”

I pull his hand from the stream of water gurgling out of the old-fashioned faucet. His knuckle, I see, is red and swollen. But the skin’s not broken.

“You’re lucky,” I say, looking down at his hand. “He says his teeth are loose. You could have cut yourself on them.”

“I know,” Luke says, reaching out with his left hand to turn off the water. “I should have known better than to aim for the mouth. I should have gone for his nose.”

“You shouldn’t have ‘gone for’ anything,” I say. I let go of his hand. “I had the situation totally under control, you know.”

Luke doesn’t even try to argue. He dries his hand on a nearby dish towel.

“I know,” he says sheepishly. “I don’t know what came over me. I just couldn’t believe he’d have the nerve to show up here. Unless…”

I stare at him. I can’t help noticing how thick and dark his hair looks in the bright shafts of sunlight coming down from the windows so close to the ceiling.

“Unless what?”