I call Lori while Phillip is in a meeting. “Do you think our past matters? Like, does it freak you out that Danny slept with a lot of different girls?”
“Not really. His past is what makes him who he is. Plus, I figure he got it all out of his system. I don’t think your past has to define you. I wasn’t exactly a saint either.”
“That’s for sure, and that’s a good way to look at it. You kinda threw me under the bus the other day. Phillip and Danny didn’t know about Bradley.”
“You hooked up with him off and on for two years! How did they not know that?”
“I never told them. I always said I was staying at the sorority house if I wasn’t coming home. They don’t know much about the hook-ups side of my past. Like, the guys I was in relationships with, they knew about. The hook-ups, not so much.”
“Did he get mad?”
“No, we had stupid couples counseling last night. He sorta brought up how he’d thought he knew everything about me, but he really doesn’t. Then, I think he started remembering Monday night, and it distracted him. While we’d had our tastings, I’d told Phillip I wanted to cover him in whipped cream and chocolate and make him my dessert. He’d stopped and bought stuff on the way home, so I did. It was so fun. Phillip is so damn sexy. I can hardly stand it.”
“Did you really? Didn’t that make a mess?”
“It would have, if we’d been in bed.”
“Where were you?”
“The kitchen. Like, mostly the counter—well, and then the floor. We cleaned it all up, but I still keep finding little random chocolate smudges. They make me laugh.”
“Jade, I’m a little worried about you. Do you really think couples counseling is stupid?”
“Yeah, didn’t you?”
“No, not really. I kinda enjoyed it. It was fun, learning about ways to be a better couple. He made us think about issues that we hadn’t thought to discuss, and I was glad we did.”
“You were always a better student than me.”
“I studied harder; that’s for sure. You hardly ever studied, but you got good grades. That used to piss me off,” she says.
“I just have a really good short-term memory. I can’t remember any of it now.”
“Well, I think you should take counseling more seriously. You and Phillip need to be able to work through things, not just have whipped-cream sex.”
“Danny told me you solve your conflicts with sex.”
“No, we don’t. He just thinks we do. If we talk it out first, then I reward him with sex. The sex is all he remembers. I think he has a short-term memory, too.”
“You’re a tricky girl.”
She laughs. “So, this weekend! You ready to find the dress of your dreams?”
“I am. Do you really think we’ll find a dress?”
“I know we will!”
Tonight, we’re both sitting in bed. I’m on my iPad, flipping through wedding cake designs, while Phillip is watching—well, I have no idea what he’s watching.
He’s on the Discovery channel, and every time I glance up, I see huge crocodiles eating something.
It’s really disturbing me, so I try not to glance up, but, yuck, I accidentally do.
So, it’s really no wonder that, with all this wedding planning going on in my mind, my subconscious would wreak havoc with my dreams.
I walk out onto a stage as an announcer says, “And, on today’s journey through the dark recesses of Bridalville, we find our heroine, Princess Jadyn, on the search for the perfect wedding dessert.”
I sit at a big golden banquet table, eating dessert after sinful dessert. An audience claps for me when I choose to have purple edible flowers flown in from Guam for my special day.
“She’s so creative,” the announcer says.
Then, it’s my wedding day. Phillip pulls out my chair at our sweetheart table. We sit down, and I feel so lucky. Phillip is beaming at me. Our friends and families are at all the surrounding tables, waiting to be served dinner.
Our amazing Kansas City strip steaks are being delivered. For some reason, we decided it would be very cool to have the steaks carved like an ice sculpture. The steaks are somehow standing on end, and they’ve been carved to look like a crocodile. Now, you would think this might look a little scary, but at the time we picked it out, Phillip and I thought it was adorable because it looked like the crocodile was smiling at us and wishing us a happy life. He was a cute crocodile, like the one from Peter Pan.
But, just as our guests are oohing and aahing over our creativity and how real they look, the crocs come to life, jump up off the wedding plates, and start to eat up all our guests. One by one, I watch my guests get swallowed up by their crocodile steaks.
I start to scream.
Phillip wakes me up.
I tell him about my horrible dream. “What do you think it means?”
“Maybe you’re afraid no one will come to the wedding. That we won’t have any guests.”
“No, that can’t be it. These people were already at the reception, and who comes to the wedding and skips the reception? I mean, the reception is the best part.”
“People who don’t wanna get eaten by a crocodile perhaps?”
“Smart-ass. Well, all I know is, I’m not getting the steak.”
“I guess I might have to agree with that. Maybe we should call Amy in the morning and go with the filet medallions instead.”
I look at Phillip. He has bedhead, and the side of his cheek has red lines across it from where he was sleeping on his hand.
I grin at him and move my hands under the sheets. “You know, I think I’m so scared; I might not be able to go back to sleep. You might have to distract me.”
He pulls me closer to him as I run my hands down his abs. “How am I supposed to do that?”
I press my lips against his yummy-smelling neck, graze my tongue down the side of it, and rub my hand between his legs. “I bet you can think of something.”
