I got another kiss on my forehead, plus a brief one on my lips, then he was off, rubbing his lower back.
A second later, I heard something that sent a chill down my spine.
My mother.
Yelling: “Petra Grace Luanne Clever Monroe!”
I turned around to find a middle-aged woman with freshly-streaked hair marching in my direction. (Yes, I have three middle names. Long story.)
“Mom, your hair looks great! Did you get a trim?”
She shook her phone at me. “Thissss!” She pointed to the phone as she got closer. “Thissssssssss.”
“Mom, you sound like Golem, with his Preciousssss.”
She stopped in front of me and shook her phone at my face. When the phone finally held still for more than a second, I was able to make out a photo of me and Dalton, posing together in San Francisco. Judging from that clue, as well as the fact her expression matched the one she gets when talking about my father’s ugly recliner or his methods for watering the hedges, it was safe to say she knew about the engagement.
“Surprise!” I said.
“My hairdresser.” She shook her head, to upset for complete sentences. “I said of course not.” She shook the phone some more. “Your own mother!” She made a choking sound, then some more garbled words.
“I was going to tell you, Mom. I’ve just been so busy, with the—”
“San Francisco!”
“You can come with me on the next trip. The plane seats six, plus the butler. I mean, the pilot. The pilot-butler.”
She started crying. “My baby’s getting married!” she wailed.
“Actually—”
“In two weeks!” She threw her arms around me, gripping me in one of the tightest hugs I’d ever experienced in my twenty-two years on the planet.
She gushed, “We don’t have long, and I need to find the perfect Mother of the Bride dress, and it’s short notice for the family back east, but I’m sure a few will come, and there’s so much to arrange, and—” Her words choked off in a happy sob.
“Two weeks?” That was funny, since I didn’t remember setting a date for my PR wedding. Fuck me like a pinkie finger in a powdered donut hole.
I really needed to get Shayla working for me on a regular basis. I needed someone to google me and filter out all the mean gossip while keeping me up to speed on my wedding dates and whatnot.
My mother asked, “Will Kyle be the ring bearer? I’ll have to get him a tuxedo. What are the colors?”
I couldn’t see her face, because she kept squeezing me, twirling us in a circle in her excitement.
“Mom, you’re making me dizzy.” I pushed her away and held her at a distance, my hands on her shoulders. “You’re not mad at me?”
“Of course I am. Furious. Can’t you tell?” Her flushed cheeks rose like apples on either side of a huge smile, and her eyes held happy tears.
“I’m getting married in two weeks.” Saying the words out loud didn’t make the situation any less surreal.
“We haven’t even met Dalton’s family yet, and your father and I barely met him that once. Why such a rush? Is there something else I should know about?”
She gave my midsection an accusatory look.
“Mom, I’m not pregnant, I swear.”
“You can understand why I wouldn’t take you for your word.”
“I’ll pee on a stick if you want.” I leaned in and whispered. “Aunt Flo is in town at the moment, so I’m pretty sure.”
“You probably didn’t tell us about the wedding because you thought I’d disapprove, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Now, you know I love your father—love him to pieces—but plenty of days I find myself wondering what might have happened if I’d married that famous actor, instead of just getting rogered by him.”
I looked around the street, feeling self-conscious about people overhearing us. “Mom, do you want to go somewhere a little less sidewalk-y to discuss getting rogered?”
“Good idea. My car’s back at the hairdresser’s.”
We walked up to her car and got in. She started driving, and told me there’d been more to the story of her affair with a famous art restoration client than she’d originally let on. The man hadn’t just rogered her at the art studio. He’d also flown her to Europe, and rogered her in the Swiss Alps, and in a small, very hot Venice apartment above a glass-blowing studio. Name a major city in Europe, and he’d rogered my mother there.
We pulled into a parking spot at the Barking Dog, an English-style pub near the edge of town. I begged her to stop talking about the specifics of her European tour.
“Mom, all this time, I thought you saw those museums and art galleries on a backpacking tour with your girlfriends.”
“That’s what your father thinks, too, so let’s not tell him. You know men. They get so jealous and possessive.”
“Be honest with me. Dad is still my father, isn’t he?”
“Sweetheart, you’ve got his brains. Isn’t that evidence enough? Besides, everything ended with (the movie star; name redacted to protect my mother from Scientologists) long before I even met your father. He’s the one who healed my heart, you know.” She popped open the car door. “Kyle’s with your father. Let’s get dinner here. I’d love to eat a meal I don’t have to cook or wash up after.” She gasped. “Lucky you, marrying rich. You won’t have to scrub anyone’s dirty gonchies. The maid will do that for you.”
We walked into the pub, me shaking my head as my mother listed all the things other people would take care of for me.
Once we were seated, I said, “Money isn’t everything. Aren’t you worried that we don’t know Dalton very well?”
“My first impressions are rarely wrong,” she said, sounding confident. “He seemed lovely at your cousin Marita’s wedding, and he was nice to Kyle, and he loves my beautiful daughter—though who wouldn’t—so I’m not worried.”
“What about Dad?”
“No boy will ever be good enough for his daughter, but he got over his fury about you parading around in your underpants, so he’ll come around.”
“He was upset about me modeling?”
“Livid. I had to give him a Time Out.”
“Wow.” A Time Out was something relatively new to the Monroe household, invented to calm down Kyle when he went through a tantrum phase. When you get a Time Out, you have to sit quietly with a blanket covering your entire body. You can wail and cry and rant as much as you want, but you can’t come out of the blanket until you’ve settled down.