Page 42 of Fathers of the Bride
It had been nice. Mostly. And I barely understood that. He’d made my favorite dinner. Why would he do that? Yes, we’d called a truce but that didn’t require all my favorites—cheesecake! Oh my God, he’d probably made a cheesecake and I’d run out before dessert. I’m an idiot. An absolute bone-headed idiot.
Having ideas together—that was wonderful. Like old times. Not to mention his ideas were so much better than Raj’s ideas. Even if he was hamstrung by it being a small wedding. If only Kelly wanted more. Miles could really go to town. It would be wonderful.
“I get to have input, you know,” Raj pouted.
“What?” I asked. I hadn’t been paying attention.
“I said, I get to have input. I mean, I’ll be Instagramming the whole thing. It needs to be visual. I think Kelly deserves to go viral. Don’t you?”
“I doubt she wants to go viral.” And, did he really get to have input? He wasn’t family. Or at least not Kelly’s family. “Raj, I’m not actually sure you get to have input. And you haven’t officially been asked to film the wedding.”
“Yes, I have. Pudge asked me.”
“She did? She shouldn’t have done that.”
“What do you mean she shouldn’t have done that? She’s the mother of the groom. Or Lissa is… one of them is. I forget—”
“Let’s talk about this later. I’d like to just get into bed.”
“Bed? But I ordered Thai. You must be starving.”
“Oh. Yes, I suppose I must be.”
That night, lying in bed with my stomach distended and my entire digestive system gurgling like bad plumbing, I began wondering about what Miles had said about it being our fault Kelly didn’t have much interest in the wedding. Yes, I know I’d dismissed the idea, but that’s what you had to do with Miles. Whenever he began to worry about something you had minimize it immediately. Otherwise, it grew, grew and grew. Like a chia pet. Well, like a chia pet in the commercial. Who knows how long they take in real life?
And what about the maid of honor? Was Kelly really going to ask Avery’s cousin? She said she was calling friends. How was that going? Who was she was calling? I mean, she had friends. Just not a whole lot.
While Kelly was in school there hadn’t really been any problem with our being dads. Well, no overt problems. There was always some parent who was too busy for play dates and just coincidentally kept their child out of all the activities Kelly participated in. Occasionally, those were the children she’d liked best but hadn’t been able to form a real friendship with.
Maybe it was our fault she was so… singular. Though, I don’t know what we might have done differently. We certainly couldn’t control other people’s behavior. And yet, we probably shouldn’t have been so content for it to be the three of us. But even now, thinking of the three of us gave me a warm, happy feeling.
And then I remembered all the times we’d brought her with us to the studio while we shotThe Happy Home. Was that wrong? Should we have been sending her off to be with other children? We wanted her to know we were always there for her. And we always have been.
Was that wrong?
I finally fell asleep around three. The next morning, Raj roused me awake. “It just arrived! My contract! Via messenger!”
“What contract?” I asked, attempting to open my eyes.
“My contract to stream the engagement partyandthe wedding! Pudge has agreed to pay me. Isn’t that fabulous?”
I managed to focus. In his hands was a legal document with a blue cover page folded back. I grabbed it out of his hands. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my contacts in so I couldn’t read a word. I decided to do the expedient thing and rip it up.
“What are you doing?!”
“They can’t make this contract. They’ve agreed that they’re only doing the engagement party. This would put them in breach of their verbal contract with Kelly.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous. Nobody honors verbal contracts.”
“If they want to hire you to stream the engagement party that’s their business. But the wedding is off limits.”
“That’s a violation of freedom of speech.Andrestraint of trade.”
“It’s a private wedding, Raj, so it’s neither.” I sat up in bed. My stomach was better but not by much. Skipping breakfast seemed like a plan.
“You haven’t gotten Kelly’s approval for live-streaming the wedding, have you?”
“Bae… I was hoping you’d help with that.”
