Page 9 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘Babe, I know we’ve had our … ups and downs. Like the micropayments situation on Roblox. And the other night at Misty’s, with the waitress. And with the whole Amber situation.’
Veronica frowned. ‘What Amber situation?’
‘The Amber situation indeed,’ whispered Lily, unfolding her arms just so that she could refold them emphatically.
‘Not relevant now.’ Nate waved Veronica off.
‘But, like, I want you, babe. I think we’re good together.
You’re amazing at keeping on top of the bills.
And no one cooks breakfast like you. And the way you massage my calves after leg day – a guy would kill for a girl like that. What I’m asking is … what do you say?’
He thrust the ring box at her. As Veronica reached tentatively towards it, he chomped it on her hand.
‘Ow!’ Veronica yanked her hand away, sucking on her finger. ‘What the hell , Nate?’
‘That was meant to be like … the Pretty Woman scene.’ Nate shrugged. ‘But we’re good, right? We’re doing this? Because the lease still has six months on it …’
Veronica shook her head in disbelief.
Something brushed against Lily’s leg: Mort’s cat, Esmeralda. Thank goodness, because Lily needed something to do with her hands other than clench them into fists of second-hand rage.
Lily stooped to pick up the fluffy feline, stroking her black-and-white mottled fur – she was the cutest Rorschach kitty Lily had ever seen. As she stroked, Esmeralda’s fur crackled. ‘Ooh, you’ve got some static in your fur …’
Overhead, clouds gathered in the formerly flawlessly blue sky. Lily’s wrist ached where she’d broken it during her short-lived roller derby career as a teen. The pin in it acted as a handy, if painful, barometer.
‘We’re about to get a storm,’ she whispered.
‘I can see that,’ said Mort, who was riveted by the way this whole proposal was going. ‘This proposal has more drama than a Greek tragedy.’
Lily grimaced. ‘I was always more of a romcom girl.’
Nate turned to flash a thumbs up at the crowd before returning his attention to Veronica, who was looking very squirmy. He grabbed her hands. ‘So, what do you say, babe? Are we going to put those missteps behind us, and you know … you and me?’
Esmeralda was vibrating with purrs. They were getting louder and louder, to the point that Lily thought she might get dinged for doing construction without a permit.
‘Babe. The crowd’s getting antsy.’
Veronica swallowed. She looked at the ring – very large, very flashy. Then she looked at Nate’s shit-eating grin – also very large and very flashy.
Then, and rightly so if you asked Lily, Veronica’s eyes became very large and very flashy.
‘You’re dead to me,’ she snarled, slapping the ring box out of Nate’s hand.
Esmeralda’s purring hit a crescendo, vibrating not just through Lily, but through the very air around them.
The crystal on her collar flashed and spun, casting a rainbow that almost felt like a spell.
Its spinning glow tinted the clouds, which turned quickly and ominously from fluffy white to Seattle grey to midnight black.
Lightning crackled at their edges, and thunder rolled like timpani, giving the accordion player a tempestuous backbeat to play along with.
The gentle breeze kicked up a gear into a hat-snatching, hair-buffeting affair.
(One of the perpetually stationed chess players swore as it knocked over his king, forcing a forfeit.)
The gathered crowd let out a marvelling ooh! , and a weather alert siren went off on someone’s phone, making everyone around them jump.
‘My Achilles!’ moaned one of the jumpers, clutching at his lower leg. ‘I have a game tomorrow!’
‘It’s the rapture!’ screamed a woman in an all-white outfit. She held up a small gold cross to the flashing clouds. (She had apparently failed the storm safety class at school.) ‘I’ve changed my mind! Don’t take me! I’ve barely had a chance to sin!’
A handful of people went racing for shelter – but others stood by, more interested in sharing their videos of the failed proposal with the world than in running from the imminent storm.
Veronica stared up at the sky, apparently trying to figure out whether Nate had done some cloud seeding as part of his proposal.
Boom! A particularly loud thunderclap sent Lily cowering, with a shriek, into Mort’s side. Down the way, poor Jenkins let out a mournful howl.
‘Comfortable?’ Mort asked, as Lily wrapped her arms around him as though she were a giant squid seeking the solace of a ship’s prow during a particularly gnarly tempest.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, unhitching her arms. ‘Should we get back in—’
But before she could finish her sentence—
Blam! Another zap of lightning, so bright it was like 4th of July fireworks in a city with an epic fireworks budget and very little interest in public safety.
The sky at the edges of the moody clouds glowed a million magnificent colours, like a kaleidoscope being twirled by a child hopped up on sugar. Both Mort and Lily were mesmerised: they couldn’t tear their eyes away from the tumultuous display.
Then, as prefaced by the dramatic thunder and lightning, the skies opened.
Rain pelted down on the remaining gawping onlookers who were valiantly livestreaming as Veronica ran off in the direction of 40 Licks, presumably both for shelter and for the largest, most sprinkle-topped sundae she could find.
‘I’m hideous! Don’t look at me!’ cried a middle-aged guy as his beard dye seeped out from his facial hair and down his neck.
A woman with a beehive she’d clearly been re-lacquering since the Sixties snatched up a tiny dog and shoved it down her shirt. ‘Make haste! Make haste! I just had Pookie perfumed, and she must not be tainted with wet dog smell! Here, give me those.’
She snatched a handful of cocktail umbrellas from some drenched picnic-goer, holding them over her head as she shoved past a nervous teenager sobbing on the phone with his mom, apologising for not telling her he loved her frequently enough.
The poor teen’s sobs deepened as an amateur tornado chaser shoved him out of the way to get a good shot of the furiously spinning clouds overhead.
Meanwhile, Nate was on his knees scouring around in the muddy garden beds for the missing ring, the stilts-wearer joining him with an alacrity that suggested she might be the Amber whom Nate had mentioned in his proposal.
Although, had it actually been a proposal when he hadn’t technically asked Veronica to marry him?
‘Damn, dude,’ said one of the surfer bros, pulling his T-shirt over his head to protect himself from the sheeting rain. ‘You shouldn’t have reused the ring.’
‘I mean, I couldn’t return it, bro,’ said the saturated Nate, chucking away a beer can ring-pull that had tempted with its shininess. ‘You know how bad the deal is on returned engagement rings? It’s criminal.’
Thunder boomed again, rattling the wind chimes strung from a nearby tree – and Lily’s nerves as well.
She half expected a witch to go zooming through the air, spilling purple exhaust from her broomstick.
Was this normal? This couldn’t be how things went here.
Unless Mirage-by-the-Sea had struck some sort of Faustian bargain where it enjoyed a perpetually idyllic existence so long as a freak storm could shake things up once a year or so?
(Something which surely should have been mentioned in the fine print of the lease she’d signed.)
‘Here.’ Draping his suit jacket over Lily, Mort drew her back under their shops’ shared awning, the gentle touch of his hand on her arm sending a vibration through her.
Lily couldn’t help but notice how the rain drenched his shirt, sculpting it to his skin and revealing the shape of the muscles that Lily had spent quite a bit of time hypothesising about since yesterday.
Or how the rain plastered his hair messily to his face, giving him a drenched Mr Darcy look that made Lily wish for a daily deluge.
‘My weather app didn’t say a thing about this.
’ Lily blinked as the rain poured off the awning in front of them, encasing them in their own private bubble.
She was a frequent checker of the thirty-day forecast: volatile weather was not a friend of outdoor weddings, and outdoor weddings were so far basically her whole thing.
Also fancy tents, but they were also not a friend of the rain.
Mort shook his head, sending water flying from the messy waves of his hair. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’
‘Well, it was worth getting drenched for the show, though,’ said Lily, with a rueful grin.
All right, so that was a lie. The Veronica–Nate situation had a sort of reality-TV appeal to it, but the real show was happening right here under the pink-and-white half of the awning that belonged to Lily’s shop.
She was extremely aware of Mort’s damp, unfairly good-looking presence.
Of the way his damp shirt clung to him, which was surely illegal in some parts of the country.
Of the way his bare forearm grazed against hers as he squinted to watch Nate’s latest shenanigans.
Of the way the spiced scent of his cologne – well, she hoped it was cologne, and not something funeral-related – emanated from the jacket she continued to hold around her shoulders, even though the rain couldn’t get to her here.
Mort’s dark eyes bored into hers. ‘Truly, although …’
He frowned, reaching out a hand to … to touch her face? Lily swallowed, knowing that she had to stop it – they worked next door to each other! And yet, she was simultaneously extremely okay with this. Ugh, of all the times to contain multitudes!
Lily closed her eyes, waiting. But when the anticipated skin-to-skin contact didn’t happen, she opened them again.
Mort was prodding at an inky raindrop in the palm of his hand.
‘Well, that’s not good,’ he said.