Page 33 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“Everyone’s going to leave anyway when they figure out there’s nothing to eat. How do you have a wedding at dinnertime and not provide a dinner?” Liv asked us, but there was no good answer to that.

“Well, we can drink,” Ava suggested. “We can ask for a lot of fruit twists—”

“I tried that,” Jeff told her. “They’re already out of cherries.”

“At least there will be cake,” Mr. Lassiter said, but Jeff only winced. “Holy Mary, mother of God! Do you mean to say there’s no cake at this wedding? What’s happening with the world?”

“There could be some cupcakes later,” Jeff said. “The groom’s dad went to the grocery store, but he probably won’t be able to get enough for all the guests.”

“If anybody from their side of the family ever gets snarky about the people on our side of the family, all I’m saying is ‘no cake,’” Liv announced, and we all nodded.

“Never mind the food. Let’s dance,” Levi said to me, and we rejoined the other couples moving to the music of the trio.

“Of all the weddings I’ve been to, I never went to one where I left hungry,” I mused. I looked around. “Do you think that the bride and groom are hiding in shame?”

“Nope. There’s Britainy now, about to make a big entrance.

” He pointed to the door and the music quieted as the best man went to the microphone.

He already looked tipsy, and the guitarist had to show him how to turn it on several times before he could announce the bride and groom.

Everyone clapped after he spoke and Britainy waved like royalty. Her new husband seemed bored.

The best man dropped the mike with a horrible screech and the band resumed playing.

“The only reason I was here was to fill a hole in the seating chart and to minimize the effects of your rude family on you,” I said.

“Now there’s no seating and this wedding is so huge that you probably won’t run into your aunt and cousins again. ”

“No, you spoke too soon,” Levi sighed. “Braylen’s coming right now, and he’s going to use some dipshit line about cutting in.”

The bride’s brother looked a lot like her, and I could see why their mom would have been jealous when she compared her kids to the Lassiters.

Really, there was no comparison between them at all!

Levi was so handsome and besides that, he had a quality that made you very attracted. This guy did not.

“Milady,” his cousin said, and bowed. “We haven’t yet been introduced.”

“Hello, Braylen,” Levi told him. “Good to see you. We heard there’s no food here.”

“I remember how you were always hungry,” Braylen answered. “My mother thought you had worms.”

“No, it was that I was going through a grown spurt,” Levi said, and stood very straight. “Not everyone did.”

Braylen flushed with anger. “How’s your new job, Levi? Starting at the very bottom, right?”

I wished, for maybe the thousandth time in my life, that I was good at repartee like Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby . I was not, and I stood there angry and struggling to construct a pithy, caustic response. Nothing sprang to mind.

Levi had it covered. “We all have to start somewhere, Braydo. I remember a guy whose dad owns a delivery company and let him crash three vans but keep his job. Do you remember that, too?”

“I’m lucky to have a family that loves me,” his cousin flamed back.

“You’re lucky to have a license.”

Braylen decided to ignore that and turned to me. “Milady,” he repeated, and also repeated his weird bow. “May I have the pleasure?”

“No, she’s not going to pleasure you. We’re busy, so move on,” Levi said. He swung me around, right off my feet, and he held me in the air and danced us away.

“I don’t like him,” I stated breathlessly as he lowered me. “Did he hurt your feelings?”

“Braylen? No,” he answered. “Did you want to go with him?”

“No!” I said, so emphatically that it made him laugh. I was very content to be in Levi’s arms, and I didn’t want anyone else’s.

We danced a lot, until the trio of guys in the band took a break. I saw them arguing, first at the bar, and then with Aunt Kellie. Not too long after that, they went to the stage and started to pack up their instruments.

“I bet they found out about the paid-drinks-slash-no-food situation,” Levi said.

He was leaning against a wall, since there were no chairs, and I was standing on one foot and then the other to relieve the pressure on my toes and arches.

The crowd had already thinned considerably and without the band, I had to think it would shrink a lot more.

The bride remonstrated with the drummer in front of the stage, the beads on her gown trembling as she stamped her feet.

They mostly ignored her and the groom was no help.

He stood in the corner passing a bottle with his fifteen attendants, and nearby, the photographer was also putting away her cameras.

“This is over. I’m going to tell my mom that we’re really leaving,” Levi said. “We’ve done our part with funding the bar. I’ve spent more on cheap liquor tonight than I spent in the last month on groceries.”

That was true, which I knew for sure since I was now keeping the books for him. And I was also aware that I’d done my part, because even with so much soda and ice in the glasses, I was feeling it.

“I’ll stay here,” I said. My feet needed a break and my hip was starting to bother me.

I tried his spot, leaning against the wall, and another woman leaned next to me.

It turned out that she was one of the groom’s cousins who’d also been forced by her parents to stay and show support.

Then she told me the story of her boyfriend, her escort to this event whom she’d been dating for five years.

“I was talking about marriage and children, and how we could start to save for a wedding and a house,” she said. “I have a lot put away for our future and I knew he was saving, too. And then do you know what he did?”

I shook my head. There were a lot of possibilities but from the look on her face, I could tell that “he bought a ring and got down on one knee” was not one of them.

She mirrored me by shaking her head back. “He went and got a Cobra!”

When I listened to strangers’ information dumps, I usually tried to refrain from making judgements. But this time, I felt I had to speak up. “That’s so dangerous!” I told her. “I hope you’re not living together and you don’t have to be around it.”

She stared at me for a moment and then said, “Oh, no. I meant a car. A Shelby Cobra.” My confusion didn’t slow the story much and she told me all about this old-fashioned race car that was, in her case, the end of her dreams. “He wouldn’t have poured out everything in his bank account into a two-seater where you could never, ever install a car seat if he was seriously thinking about a future with me. ”

She mentioned the amount he’d spent and again, I shook my head.

Grant’s friends usually didn’t talk about how much things cost, because they never really noticed—for people who had a lot of money and had grown up with the sky as the limit on spending, price tags were meaningless.

As someone who hadn’t grown up like that, I’d researched the costs of their new cars, remodeled kitchens, and vacation homes, and I’d wondered how it felt not to worry.

They’d seemed to be unsatisfied in spite of it all.

As she told me about the trip he’d taken to the Bahamas with his friends (leaving her on read and with his location turned off), I glanced around, wondering where Levi had gone.

Guests had been steadily streaming through the exit and the skeleton crew of catering staff had already started their breakdown.

In not too long, the woman talking to me was interrupted by her boyfriend, who was also ready to go.

She said a quick goodbye and took off without looking back, which I’d expected.

She wasn’t going to want to see me again after admitting that her heart had been broken by the man she was leaving with.

Finally, Levi reappeared. “Sorry,” he told me.

“My mom was stuck trying to comfort Aunt Kellie, who’s so upset that she even hugged me and thanked me for coming.

Then she went to deal with Britainy and my mom told me that this shit has only gotten worse.

My cousin just locked herself in the only women’s bathroom and there are a ton of people who need to use the facilities. ”

“What about the men’s room?” I suggested.

“The groom is in there throwing up. Everywhere,” he said, grimacing. “Sounds like the beginning of a successful marriage. Let’s go.”

“Your mom doesn’t want us to stay?”

“Aves and Liv are already gone. They pretended they had babysitter problems but I know it’s because they were hungry.”

“I am, too,” I admitted. “Let’s stop on the way home, because I need something to absorb all the liquor. And I want to go to a bathroom where there’s no petulant bride or puking groom.”

He laughed. “We’re out, milady.”

We stopped at a Coney Island and it had two functioning bathrooms that were wonderful.

It was a little hard to fit in the stall in my dress but I’d gotten used to functioning in fancy clothes as the years had passed.

The wobbling I was doing in my shoes wasn’t totally due to their height or my bad hip, but because I’d really had too much to drink.

I announced that to Levi when I got back to our booth. “I had too much to drink.” Then my heart leapt in happiness when I saw what was on the table. “You already got french fries? Thank you!”

“I asked for an order, stat,” Levi said. “You look a little…well, when my grandpa had a lot of bourbon, he used to say he was riding full choke. It’s a motorcycle thing,” he explained.

“I know that he used to have one of those. Ava told me on the day I met her.”

“How do you remember that?” he asked.