At Jimmy’s, neither of us ordered crabs. I got fried scallops and iced tea, and Jeremiah got a lobster roll and beer. The server asked for his ID and smirked when he saw it, but he still served him a beer.
I shook a few sugar packets into my iced tea, tasted it, then added two more.
“I’m wiped,” Jeremiah said, leaning back into the booth and closing his eyes.
“Well, wake up. We have work to do.”
He opened his eyes. “Like what?”
“What do you mean, like what? Tons of stuff. At David’s Bridal they were asking me all these questions. Like, what’s our color palette? And are you going to wear a suit or a tuxedo?”
Jeremiah snorted. “A tuxedo? On the beach? I probably won’t even wear shoes.”
“Well, yeah, I know, but you should probably figure out what you’re going to wear.”
“I don’t know. You tell me. I’ll wear whatever you and Taylor want me to wear. It’s your guys’s day, right?”
“Ha ha,” I said. “Very funny.” It wasn’t like I really cared what he wore. I just wanted him to figure it out and let me know so I could check it off my list.
Drumming his fingers on the table, he said, “I was thinking white shirts and khaki shorts. Nice and simple, like we said.”
“Okay.”
Jeremiah gulped his beer. “Hey, can we dance to ‘You Never Can Tell’ at the reception?”
“I don’t know that song,” I said.
“Sure you do. It’s from my favorite movie. Hint: we had the soundtrack on repeat in our frat house media room all semester.” When I still stared at him blankly, Jeremiah sang, “It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well.”
“Oh, yeah. Pulp Fiction.”
“So can we?”
“Are you serious?”
“Come on, Bells. Be a sport. We can put it on YouTube. I bet we’ll get a shit ton of hits. It’ll be funny!”
I gave him a look. “Funny? You want our wedding to be funny?”
“Come on. You’re making all the decisions, and all I want is this one thing,” he said, pouting, and I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. Either way, it pissed me off. Plus, I was still pissed he hadn’t made it in time to help me at Michaels.
The server came by with our food, and Jeremiah dug right in to his lobster roll.
“What other decisions have I made?” I asked him.
“You decided that the cake was going to be carrot,” he reminded me, mayonnaise dripping down his chin. “I like chocolate cake.”
“I don’t want to be the one making all the decisions! I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
“Then I’ll help more. Just tell me what to do. Hey, I’ve got an idea. What if the wedding was Tarantino themed?” he said.
“Yeah, what if,” I said sourly. I stabbed a scallop with my fork.
“You could be the Bride like in Kill Bill.” He looked up from his plate. “Kidding, kidding. But this whole thing is still gonna be pretty chill, right? We said we just wanted it to be casual.”
“Yeah, but people still need to, like, eat.”
“Don’t worry about the food and stuff. My dad will hire somebody to take care of all that.”
I could feel irritation start to prickle beneath my skin like a heat rash. I let out a short breath. “It’s easy for you to say don’t worry. You’re not the one planning our wedding.”
Jeremiah put down his sandwich and sat up straight. “I told you I’d help. And like I said, my dad will take care of a lot of it.”
“I don’t want him to,” I said. “I want us to do it together. And joking about Quent Tarantino movies doesn’t really count as helping.”
“It’s Quentin,” Jeremiah corrected.
I shot him a dirty look.
“I wasn’t joking about the first dance,” he said. “I still think it would be cool. And Bells, I have been doing stuff. I figured out what to do for music. My buddy Pete deejays on the weekends. He said he’d bring his speakers and just hook up his iPod and take care of the whole thing. He already has the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, by the way.”
Jeremiah raised his eyebrows at me comically. I knew he was waiting for a laugh or at least a smile. And I was about to give in, just so this fight could be over and I could eat my scallops without feeling angry, when he said innocently, “Oh, wait, did you want to check with Taylor first? See if she’d be okay with it?”
I glared at him. He needed to quit with the jokes and start acting a lot more appreciative, because Taylor was the one who was actually helping, unlike him. “I don’t need to check with her on this. It’s a dumb idea, and it’s not happening.”
Jeremiah whistled under his breath. “All righty, Bridezilla.”
“I’m not a Bridezilla! I don’t even want to do any of this. You do it.”
He stared at me. “What do you mean, you don’t want to do any of this?”
My heart was beating really fast all of a sudden. “I mean the planning. I don’t want to do any of this stupid planning. Not the actual getting married part. I still want to do that.”
“Good. Me too.” He reached across the table, plucked a scallop off my plate, and popped it into his mouth.
I stuffed the last scallop into my mouth before he could take that, too. Then I grabbed a bunch of fries off of his plate, even though I had fries of my own.
“Hey,” he said with a frown. “You’ve got your own fries.”
“Yours are crispier,” I said, but really it was more out of spite. I wondered—the rest of our lives, was Jeremiah going to try and eat my last scallop or my last bite of steak? I liked finishing all the food on my plate—I wasn’t one of those girls who left a few bites behind just to be polite.
I had a fry in my mouth when Jeremiah asked, “Has Laurel called at all?”
I swallowed. Suddenly I wasn’t so hungry anymore. “No.”
“She must have gotten the invite by now.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, hopefully she’ll call this week,” Jere said, stuffing the rest of his lobster roll into his mouth. “I mean, I’m sure she will.”
“Hopefully,” I said. I sipped on my iced tea and added, “Our first dance can be ‘You Never Can Tell’ if you really want.”
Jere pumped his fist in the air. “See, that’s why I’m marrying you!”
A smile creeped across my face. “Because I’m generous?”
“Because you’re very generous, and you get me,” he said, taking back a few of his fries.
When we got back to the house, Conrad’s car was gone.
