After This Night

CHAPTER SIX

Before the wedding she played another poker game. She was on some kind of streak the last few weeks, and she won most nights. “I only have $10,000 left,” she said to Charlie at the end of the cash out. She couldn’t hide the smile that curved her lips.

“You can count. But I also gave you a deadline and you have two more weeks to clear it.”

“May isn’t over yet,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You could always ask your sister. I did a little research on her business. Seems she sold it for a pretty penny. Or perhaps you could just transfer your debt to the peppy Fashion Hound,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he crisply punctuated the name of McKenna’s fashion blog, making it clear he knew everything about the people she cared about. “I could find all sorts of ways for her to work for me. She has a nice dog, too.”

Julia snapped, lunging for Charlie’s throat in the restaurant. “Leave my sister and her dog out of this.”

He cackled, grabbing her hands and flicking them off his skin. “I won’t have to involve anyone if you do your job, Red.”

She was tempted to ask McKenna for a loan, but she’d gotten this far on her own. She’d managed to keep her sister and Kim and everyone she loved out of Charlie’s crosshairs. You don’t run the first twenty-five miles of a marathon to send reinforcements in to finish the last mile. Even if that last mile feels like five hundred.

“I will do my job if it’s the last damn thing I do,” she said, and some days it felt like it would be. Like she’d be under his thumb until the day she died.

“Perfect.”

Gayle rested her hands on Julia’s shoulders, admiring her work in the mirror. “Want to see the back?”

“Hell yeah,” Julia said, and Gayle swiveled her around and held up a silver hand mirror for her to use to see the French twist.

“I love it,” she said, carefully touching the tendrils that fell on her neck.

“You do?”

“Of course! I love everything you do.”

“Don’t mess it up on the drive to the Presidio,” Gayle said, wagging a finger playfully in admonishment, though she surely meant the directive too. Hairstyles were to be taken seriously.

“It’s fifteen minutes away! What do you think I’m going to do? Hang my head out the limo window like a dog?”

“If you do that please make sure everyone knows I was not responsible for the mess. I only want credit for the good hair days,” Gayle said.

“Thank you for coming in early for me on a Saturday to do this, when you’re not even working,” Julia said, gesturing to the empty salon. The front door was locked.

“Anything for you. Now I’ll walk you out. And by the way, I want an update on your guy.”

Her guy. Was Clay her guy? She didn’t know what he was, except a sexy voice on the end of the phone. She’d gotten to know more about him in this last month from their easy chatter and conversations, and everything she learned made her long for him more. They never talked about a relationship. Never brought up seeing each other. Actual contact was off the table; they were only phone buddies.

But she didn’t have time to fashion an answer to Gayle’s question because when she opened the door to Fillmore Street, Skunk was pacing on the sidewalk like a big bored lion, walking back and forth in a zoo.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled in worry. Of all the days for Charlie to harass her. The bastard. A sister’s wedding day should be a sacred one. A day even Charlie could respect.

Gayle didn’t notice him at first while she locked up. Then she turned around, and Skunk spoke to the hairdresser.

“I was hoping I could get a haircut,” he said gesturing to the salon with its pretty feminine windows decorated with silhouettes of women. This was clearly a salon catering mostly to the fairer sex, though Julia had seen a few men inside from time to time. They didn’t look like Skunk, though. They weren’t big beefy men with faces like slabs of meat, and ankle holsters holding guns. The men who walked through these doors were metrosexuals. Her eyes darted to his feet, and she saw the barest outline of his weapon. He never left home without it.

“We’re closed now. Open again in an hour,” Gayle said. “Someone will be here then to cut your hair.”

“I’d really like one now,” he said, then scrunched up his nose, squeezed shut his eyes, and covered his face with a hand as he sneezed so loudly it sounded like a honk. His forehead was sweaty, and he looked pale.

“I’m sure you do, sweetie, and ordinarily I’d open right up for you,” she said in her best calm voice as she dipped a hand into her purse. She quickly found a tissue, and gave it to Skunk. He took it and muttered a thanks. “But I need to get some coffee in me, and if I don’t my hands might be unsteady. So why don’t you come back and someone else can take care of you then?”

He blew his nose, then rubbed the tissue across it. His eyes looked red and watery. “Or, maybe go home, take a hot bath and have some tea and come back tomorrow? You might be getting a nasty cold, honey.”

“I think I have the flu,” he said.

“Here.” She reached in her pocket for a slip of paper and handed that to him. “A twenty percent off coupon, just for you. For when you’re feeling better. You go get in bed and take care of that flu.”

Skunk relented, nodding. “Thank you. I’ll be back.”

He lumbered away, and Julia had a sinking feel that I’ll be back referred to something other than where he’d be an hour from now.

They were circling her, trying to trip her up however they could.

Charlie had sent this message—his sick way of letting her know he’d uncovered another soft spot of hers in her friendship with her stylist. His subtle, or not-so-subtle way of reminding her that he had no mercy. He was willing to do whatever it took to get his money by his deadline.

The deadline was looming ever closer.

Julia pet her sister’s dog over and over, as if the animal might have a calming effect. Dogs sometimes did that, right? Settled nerves and made people happier. She needed some of that right now, so she sat on the edge of the antique white couch stroking Ms. Pac-Man’s soft fur, hoping it would turn these jitters inside her belly into a thing of the past.

She wasn’t even the one walking down the aisle. She was the damn maid-of-honor and she was supposed to reassure the bride. But McKenna was ready, eager, and not a wink nervous, while all Julia could think about was the ticking clock. She’d texted Gayle a few times, ostensibly about her hair, but really to make sure her stylist was fine. Gayle was getting ready for an Arcade Fire concert, she’d said, so all was well.

Still, Julia couldn’t help feeling as if someone was watching her. Waiting for her. Poised to take her down.

Focus on the bride.

Decked out in a vintage-style tea-length dress, McKenna applied her lip gloss then twirled once in front of the antique, gilded mirror in her suite at the swank Golden Gate Club in the Presidio, a coveted venue for weddings with its view of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.

“You look so beautiful, and this dress is so completely you,” Julia said, even though she’d seen it many times. But that was her job—to shower the bride with extravagant compliments on her wedding day. It would also force her mind off the heightened state of panic inside her body.

“You’re next, Jules,” she said, and Julia scoffed.

She didn’t even know how to respond. The notion of her being married was so foreign, her sister might as well be talking about orbiting Saturn right now. “Let’s get you down the aisle,” she said.

Julia washed her hands one final time. Yes, Ms. Pac-Man had had a pre-wedding bath, but even so she didn’t want scent of a pooch on her as she held a bouquet. She grabbed her daisies, the perfect flowers for McKenna’s sunny disposition, and held open the door for the other bridesmaids: McKenna’s good friends Hayden and Erin, and Chris’s sister, Jill, who had flown out from New York for the weekend, taking two days off from her starring role in the musical Crash the Moon.

They headed to the expansive grounds, across the rolling green hills, to the bluff overlooking the water. The waves lolled peacefully against the shore in the distance, and the afternoon sun warmed them. The weather gods were on their side today—the sky was a crystal blue, and there was no wind. A rare blessing in this windiest of cities, and Julia was grateful.

White chairs were spread across the lawn, and their friends and family were there. Julia spotted Davis in the second row, and instantly her thoughts flicked to Clay. The two men were best friends, and she found herself wondering if her name had ever come up in their conversations.

The music began and the other bridesmaids walked down the white runner spread out on the lawn. Julia turned to McKenna and whispered in her ear. “I love you. I’m so happy for you,” she said, then she squeezed her hand.

“I love you too,” McKenna said, and her voice threatened to break. Julia reached out, and gently wiped the start of a happy tear from her sister’s eye. “Don’t ruin your mascara.”

“I won’t.”

Julia took her turn down the runner, thrilled to finally see this day arrive. Though it hadn’t been a lengthy engagement—in fact it had been markedly short, clocking in at two mere months—this was a day that she’d longed to see. Nearly two years ago, the man McKenna had been involved with dumped her via voicemail twenty-four hours before their wedding, leaving her with a houseful of mixers, pasta makers and place settings she’d never use. Her sister had been devastated. Chris wasn’t like that, not in the least, but Julia had asked a few days ago if she’d had any lingering worries.

“You nervous at all now that it’s so close?”

“Nope. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” McKenna had said.

She looked it, too, radiant in her joy today.

When Julia reached the raised stage, her throat hitched, and a tear slipped down her cheek as she turned to watch McKenna walk down the aisle. She delighted at the song that filled the air. McKenna hadn’t picked Pachelbel’s Canon or the wedding march. She’d chosen hers and Chris’s song—Can’t Help Falling in Love.

That was the best kind of love, wasn’t it? The kind where the love was its own entity, a living, breathing presence between two people, demanding to be felt. A life force of its own. That’s what her sister and Chris had, and her heart soared with happiness that McKenna had found the one.

Chris couldn’t take his eyes off his bride as he waited at the edge of the bluff, watching her every step as she walked closer. The last words of the Elvis song faded out as she stepped next to him. Take my hand, take my whole life too. He whispered something to her, and she whispered back, and Julia was no longer jam-packed with worries over Charlie and Skunk. It had all been replaced by this torrent of happiness she felt for the two of them.

As the justice of the peace cleared his throat, Julia quickly peeked at the crowd, spotting familiar faces–Chris’s family, McKenna’s videographer, her dog trainer, her friends from the fashion world, along with Chris’s brother who stood next to him, some of his surfing buddies in the seats, and people he worked with on his TV show. Then her eyes landed on the profile of a handsome man in the back row who was taking a seat. A latecomer, he’d just arrived. The man raised his face and Julia’s heart stopped with a quick shudder.

Then it started again when, somehow, across the crowd of people, the sea of suited men and elegantly-dressed women, of family and friends and new faces, he made eye contact with her, locking his gaze on hers. The sounds of the ceremony, of the vows being exchanged turned to white noise, and all she could see, hear, and feel was him. No longer separated by a continent. No longer connected only by the tether of email. He was one hundred feet away, and he never once stopped looking at her.

Her skin was hot, and her heart was beating loudly, and as soon as the groom kissed the bride and walked back down the aisle, she was damn near ready to launch herself into his arms.