Jeremiah just smiled and put a pillow over my feet. Then he changed the channel and we watched TV without saying anything more about it. When it was time to go to bed, he went to his room, and I went to mine.
I slept better than I had in weeks.
chaptertwenty-eight
CONRAD
I asked Jere if he wanted to surf because I wanted to get him alone so I could find out what the hell was going on. I hadn’t talked to him since he made his grand announcement at the restaurant. But now that we were alone, I didn’t know what to say.
We bobbed on our surfboards, waiting for the next wave. It had been slow out there so far.
I cleared my throat. “So how pissed is Laurel?”
“Pissed,” Jere said, grimacing. “Belly and her had a pretty big fight yesterday.”
“In front of you?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.” I wasn’t surprised, though. There was no way Laurel was going to be like, sure, I’ll throw my teenaged daughter a wedding.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“What does Dad say about all this?”
He gave me a funny look. “Since when do you care what Dad says?”
I looked out toward the house. I hesitated before saying, “I don’t know. If Laurel’s against it and Dad’s against it, maybe you shouldn’t do it. I mean, you guys are still in college. You don’t even have a job. When you think about it, it’s kind of ridiculous.” My voice trailed off. Jere was shooting daggers at me.
“Stay out of it, Conrad,” he said. He was practically spitting.
“All right. Sorry. I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry.”
“I never asked for your opinion. This is between me and Belly.”
I said, “You’re right. Forget it.”
Jeremiah didn’t answer. He looked over his shoulder, and then he started to paddle away. As the wave crested, he popped up and rode it to shore.
I punched my hand through the water. I wanted to kick his ass.This is between me and Belly. Smug piece of shit.
He was marrying my girl, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I just had to watch it happen, because he was my brother, because I promised.Take care of him, Connie. I’m counting on you.
chaptertwenty-nine
When I got up the next morning, the boys were still surfing, so I took my binder and my legal pad and a glass of milk out to the deck.
According to Taylor’s checklist, we had to get the guest list figured out before we could do anything else. That made sense. Otherwise, how would we know how much food we needed and everything?
So far, my list was short. Taylor, her mom, a couple of the girls we’d grown up with—Marcy and Blair and maybe Katie—Anika, my dad, Steven, and my mother. And I didn’t even know if my mother was coming. My dad would—I knew he would. No matter what my mother said, he’d be there. I wanted my grandma to come too, but she’d moved out of her house in Florida and into a nursing home the year before. She’d neverliked traveling, and now she couldn’t. In her invitation I decided I would write a note promising to visit with Jeremiah over fall break.
That was pretty much it for me. I had a few cousins on my dad’s side but none I was particularly close to.
Jeremiah had Conrad, three of his fraternity brothers like we agreed, his freshman-year roommate, and his dad. Last night Jere told me he could tell his dad was softening. He said Mr. Fisher asked about who was marrying us and how much we were planning on spending on this so-called wedding. Jere told him our budget. One thousand dollars. Mr. Fisher had snorted. To me, a thousand dollars was a lot of money. Last year, it took me the whole summer to save that much waitressing at Behrs.
Our guest list would be under twenty people. With twenty people we could have a clambake and feed everyone, easy. We could get a few kegs and some cheap champagne. Since we’d be marrying on the beach, we wouldn’t even need decorations. Just some flowers for the picnic tables, or shells. Shells and flowers. I was on a roll with this wedding. Taylor was going to be proud of me.
I was writing down my ideas as Jeremiah came up the steps. The sun blazed behind him, so bright it hurt my eyes. “Morning,” I said, squinting up at him. “Where’s Con?”
