20
Like all couples, were couples will argue. Unfortunately for the males, female weres are much better at holding out for an apology, which leads to groveling.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
After so many tours of bridesmaid duty, I didn’t feel I needed to attend wedding rehearsals anymore. I was so, so wrong.
Zeb and Jolene were marrying in a clearing a respectable distance away from the house but very near the barn. With fairy lights strung in the trees and luminaries in the nearby pond, the night took on a sort of cozy Lord of the Rings quality … or maybe it was Lord of the Flies.
The bride’s side was eager to get through the rehearsal as it put them one step closer to eating. The groom’s side was sparse. Mama Ginger had apparently told most of her relatives that the wedding was canceled after Jolene was committed to a hospital for the criminally insane.
The first surprise of the evening was Dick’s arrival with Andrea on his arm. She looked cool and composed in her floaty dawn-colored sundress, not giving any hint of being held hostage or blackmailed. I could only assume that Dick had finally charmed her into submission. Of course, Dick was still Dick. He wore a vintage “fake tuxedo imprinted on a T-shirt” shirt. But he seemed ecstatically happy as he seated Andrea on the groom’s side and took his place with the gathering bridal party.
I winked at him. “It’s good to know that occasionally, love—or relentless, unremitting courtship bordering on harassment—will win out. I take it she’s coming to the wedding, too?”
“I think she’s waiting to see how it goes. She said she’d let me know after the dinner,” Dick said. Gabriel snickered, making Dick consider his words. “You know, it sounds sad when I say it out loud like that.”
“So, it’s like an audition date. It’s Shakespearean, sacrificing yourself on the altar of dignity,” I assured him.
“I’ve been with hundr—” He shot a speculative look at me. “Well, a lot of women. I like women.”
“Obviously,” Gabriel muttered.
“I like them. I like the way they dress, the way they smell, the sound of their voices, their laughter. But if a woman doesn’t like me, I’m fine with that. Plenty of fish in the sea,” he said. “I don’t know why this one woman’s not liking me has made me crazy.”
“I think it’s nice,” I said. “I just wish I was gorgeous with a rare blood type. Then I could make men my bitch puppets.”
“I’m no one’s bitch puppet,” he growled.
“Yes, you are.” Gabriel laughed.
He groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah, I am.”
“I’m glad Andrea’s giving you a chance. I think you’re just different enough to work. Do I have to give you the ‘Hurt my friend, and you will wake up with my foot lodged in your nether regions’ speech?” I asked.
“No,” he promised. “But I think you need to retitle some of your speeches. They’re starting to sound sort of repetitive.”
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“No, thanks, I’m seeing someone,” he snarked.
A slightly frantic Jolene appeared and arranged us into our marching order. Zeb was calm, even happy, making Jolene laugh as he helped her work out where we would stand and how we would hold our arms. (Seriously, bouquet grip was a five-minute debate.) I hoped that his strange behavior over the last few months had been just cold feet and that now that the wedding was here, he would be the old lovable Zeb again.
Just as Uncle Creed, the oldest male in Jolene’s pack, who’d been ordained through a mail-order company, was about to run through the ceremony, a rust and blue minivan rolled up to the main house in a cloud of dust.
An “uh-oh” line formed between Jolene’s brows. “Um, I don’t know who that is.”
“That’s Eula with the cake!” Mama Ginger trilled.
Between her family’s open hostility toward Zeb and Mama Ginger’s finding fault with everything from the nautical decorations to the fact that the outdoor wedding site had a dirt floor, Jolene’s last nerve was frayed. I squeezed her shoulder, told her I would take the delivery, and negotiated the yard as best I could in three-inch heels. Smoke rolled out in a choking cloud as Eula opened the back of the van.
“Where do you want this?” she asked, without bothering to remove the Marlboro Light dangling from her lip.
“Oh … no.” Jolene’s cake was an exercise in “yikes.” The icing gleamed greasily, actually oozing essence of Crisco through the cardboard fruit crate Eula was using to cart it around. Jolene had planned to have twisted fondant ropes around the bottom of each tier, which looked like a toddler’s Play-Doh craft. Instead of the subtle hints of navy and ice blue, everything was an electric Cookie Monster shade that must have required most of the bottle of food coloring.
The tiers were assembled at a forty-degree angle. And the whole thing reeked of cigarette smoke. Jolene crossed the yard and was at my side in a blink. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re going to want to—” I waved toward the van. Jolene’s jaw dropped as she took in the sight of the cake. “Yeah.”
I made a quick exit, because my support as best maid only went so far.
“What’s going on?” Zeb asked as he watched Jolene try to absorb the sight of her wedding cake. Mimi followed Jolene’s high-pitched cries to the van, where she had a similar reaction to the cake.
“She may be a few minutes,” I told Zeb.
Zeb watched as Jolene, Mimi, and Eula had a very loud “discussion.” “Should I go …”
“Jane, honey, why don’t you just stand in for her?” Mama Ginger suggested, to Zeb’s horror.
“Mama, I don’t think that’s—”
“You can’t do that!” Uncle Creed cried.
“We can’t have the rehearsal without the bride,” I insisted.
“No, don’t be silly,” Mama Ginger warbled, pushing me into the spot next to Zeb. “There, that looks so much better anyway! Just like I always said, you and Jane are like two peas in a pod.”
Zeb’s brow furrowed. He was wearing his “trying to remember something” expression, or possibly his “I smell something funny” expression. Either way, the way he was looking at me was disquieting. His eyes were unfocused as he stared at me, dazed. “I can’t marry Jolene.”
Mama Ginger gave a victorious squeal as I spluttered, “S-say what now?”
Zeb clasped my hands in his, despite my repeated attempts to yank them loose. “I can’t marry Jolene. I can’t live a lie, Jane. I can’t be with anybody but you.”
A symphony of gasps and angry growls rippled through the bride’s family. My knees turned to jelly. The wedding party was silent and aghast, besides Gabriel’s shocked “Beg pardon?”
“No no no no no no. You and I have never felt that way about each other,” I said in my slow and deliberate voice. I turned to Gabriel as Zeb kissed the back of my hand. Dick stared at us, slackjawed, unsure whether to laugh or, well, laugh. I asked, “Is it some sort of thrall or whammy? Please tell me it’s a whammy.”
Zeb wrapped his arms around me, looking into my eyes with a level of tenderness only seen when politicians are publicly apologizing to their wives. “I’m sorry I let this go so far, Jane. Jolene’s a nice girl, but I wanted to get back at you for spending so much time with Gabriel, for not loving me back. We have such a long history together, Janie. Friendship and companionship, that’s what’s going to keep us happy for the rest of our lives. It’s always been you, Janie. You were always the girl I’ve wanted to spend my life with. You were always the girl I wanted waiting for me at the end of the aisle.”
This was all starting to sound horribly familiar. Mama Ginger “awwwed” and demanded that Floyd get up and use the disposable camera to record this beautiful moment. Jolene, who had left the Great Cake Debate to investigate why the groom was snuggling up to another woman, cried, “Zeb, honey, what the hell are you doing?”
Lonnie got to his feet and glared at Zeb with a predator’s eye. “What’s going on here?”
Zeb looked pained, panicked, at the sight of his bride-to-be. He pressed his lips together, then blurted, “I can’t do this, Jolene. I can’t. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t be with you. I can’t go through with this wedding.”
Jolene chuckled, looking to me to say that this was all joke. I shook my head, bewildered. “Zeb, this isn’t funny.”
“It’s not a joke. Jolene, I can’t marry you. This whole thing, it’s wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” Jolene demanded. “I love you!”
Sweat broke out on Zeb’s forehead as he vomited out the words: “I don’t love you.”
Jolene let loose a strangled cry as she sank into a chair near her father. If looks could kill, Zeb would be hogtied at Lonnie’s feet with an apple stuffed in his mouth. Mimi wrapped her arms around the distressed bride and murmured soothing sounds into her neck. Behind them, a wall of indignant, insulted werewolf relatives rose to their feet, glowering at Zeb and me with curled lips and bared teeth.
“You’re doing the right thing, Zeb,” Mama Ginger cooed. “I’ve told you from the beginning, this whole wedding has been a mistake.”
Mimi turned on Mama Ginger and snarled. But Mama Ginger was too wrapped up in her triumph to notice.
“Let’s get out of here, Jane.” Zeb took my hand and tried to pull me away. Gabriel’s hands clamped around my shoulders as I yanked away.
Gabriel’s voice was low and stripped of the barest hint of kindness. “Leave now, Zeb. I don’t think we can protect you if you say much more.”
“I’m not sure if I want to,” Dick muttered. “Even I have standards.”
Backing toward his car, Zeb sent Jolene a last sorrowful look. “I’m sorry.”
Mama Ginger and the rest of the Lavelles were packed up and peeling away from the farm in seconds. Jolene soaked her mother’s shoulder with hoarse, body-wracking sobs. I glared at the girl cousins, who were snickering behind their hands, and wrapped an arm around the bride. “I don’t know what to say.”
From behind us, I could hear Uncle Luke demanding, “Well, what does she expect?”
“Luke,” Jolene’s father growled.
“No, no, I’ve held my tongue long enough,” Luke said. “It’s not right, the daughter of our alpha mating outside the pack, marrying herself to some filthy two-foot-walking human. And now he’s done exactly what we all said he would do.”
“Hey, no one talks about my friend that way!” I cried. “He’s being a bit of a jerk right now, but he’s still my friend.”
“If you were a man, I’d slap you until you were spitting those fangs out the left side of your mouth,” Luke snarled.
“If you were a man, I’d slap you right back—hey!” I stepped out of the way when he did try to backhand me.
Without preamble, furry bodies flew at me from all sides. Several of Jolene’s aunts and cousins, wolfed out, leaped onto their uncle’s back. It had nothing to do with me personally. Attacking a guest on pack property was another clan shame. (I needed to start keeping a list.) Their response brought out several uncles and cousins who secretly agreed with Luke’s position and the cousins who were just itching for a good fight. I ducked around a tractor when I saw Lucy, one of the bridesmaid cousins who was still in human form, grab a bottle of Boone’s Farm and clobber Vance over the head.
“Is this normal?” I yelled to Gabriel over the din.
“It’s not abnormal,” he said. “Mind your head.”
I dipped just in time to miss the shattering plastic bomb of Aunt Vonnie’s cherished punch bowl. Vonnie, on seeing this, howled with rage, wolfed out, and went after the unfortunate uncle who had tossed it. Gabriel and I crawled under a table, where Dick had already dragged Andrea to relative safety.
“What do we do?” I asked. “Call the cops? Get a bunch of rolled-up newspapers?”
Gabriel covered me against the shrapnel from a thrown hurricane lamp. “Do you really think introducing police to the mix will improve the situation?”
“Good point,” I said, ducking the flying tissue-paper bells.
“I say we wait it out,” he said, handing me a little flask.
“What if Jolene gets a black eye for her wedding photos?” Andrea asked in a slightly addled voice.
“I think when the groom walks out of the wedding rehearsal, the last thing the bride has to worry about is pretty pictures,” Dick said.
“Wow,” Andrea marveled as Jolene hefted a tractor tire over her head and launched it at her uncle Tom.
“Well, she’s pretty worked up,” I said. “And she’s got all that werewolf strength. I just can’t believe Zeb did this. This isn’t him. He loves Jolene. He doesn’t have the kind of heart that just stops loving.”
Gabriel nodded. “It’s different now, stronger. It’s as if his thoughts are … filtered. Some of them are not his own. Have you noticed?”
“I try not to look into my friends’ heads. You tend to find out things that upset you.”
“I told you we’d have an unforgettable evening,” Dick said, elbowing Andrea.
“Yes. I think I won’t be able to forget this, no matter how much medication I’m prescribed.” Andrea winced as she downed a glass of room-temperature “Fuzzy Navel”–flavored wine.
“Five bucks says Papa McClaine takes Vance out with a farm implement of some type,” Dick offered in an effort to lighten the mood.
“Ten says he uses his bare fangs,” Gabriel countered.
I separated their shaking hands. “Uh-uh, you two are just now talking again. No betting. Besides, shouldn’t we go after Zeb?”
After the dust (and potato salad) had been cleared, Jolene was left sitting on a broken picnic table in an empty clearing. And she was naked again. That could not be sanitary.
“Oh, honey.” I clutched her close to me (after I’d wrapped her in a stray tablecloth).
“I don’t understand what happened.” Jolene sniffled. “Everythin’ was so perfect.”
“Do you think Zeb could be usin’ drugs?” I asked. Jolene stared at me. “OK, it’s not exactly within the realm of his character, but I would guess ‘hard-core crack smoker’ way before ‘idiot who dumped the love of his life at the altar.’”
“You think I’m the love of his life?”
“Of course I do. Who else would it be? It sure the hell isn’t me. What do you think made Zeb … just what the heck happened?”
“Zeb hasn’t been right in months. It’s little things. But I never thought—I never thought he would do somethin’ like this.”
“You know all that stuff Zeb was saying, that was just crazy talk, right? Zeb doesn’t really love me. It was as if he had some sort of dissociative episode or started channeling Mama Ginger or something. Maybe he just got cold feet.”
“The Zeb I love would not have cold feet. He was excited about getting married. How could someone just change like that? Maybe I should have married my cousin Vance, like Uncle Luke said.” Jolene paled. “I’ve got to call everythin’ off. I’m goin’ to have to call two hundred of my relatives and tell them the weddin’s off. And all that food! And the little mints. And the iceberg! What am I goin’ to do with a thirty-foot Styrofoam iceberg?”
“What were you going to do with it after the wedding?” I asked. She glared at me through her tears. “Look, let’s just hold off on canceling anything. All of the food, the drinks, everything will keep for two days, right? You just sit tight for the rest of the weekend. Don’t make any decisions or announcements. Give me two days. If by Sunday I do not have a willing and groveling groom kneeling at your feet, then I will help you sink that dang Styrofoam iceberg.”
Jolene chewed her lip.
“He loves you, Jolene. He’s never loved anybody in his whole life the way he loves you.”
“Two days,” she agreed. “Now I just have to keep my family from killin’ him.”
“That would help, yes.”