Successfully Avoiding Panties
…
Greg and Sara plan their wedding one morning.
Number 11 in the Ducks in a Row Series
…………
Greg Sanders returned to the bedroom of Sara's apartment, two mugs full of coffee in his hands. Sara had made the bed, and was sitting cross-legged in his old sweatshirt and panties, curls wild all over her face. He grinned stupidly when he saw her, groaning once he remembered that they were planning the wedding today. All of it. He looked down at the bed, littered with invitations that he had to stuff into envelopes, the address book he had to sift through, the information from the caterer that they had to decide on, the documentation on their meeting with the reverend later that evening. He was going to cry. They had all this work to do, and Sara was sitting on the bed in panties. Panties! Sure, they were your basic Hanes cotton blend, but panties nonetheless. He shook his head, amused that she had expected him to sit on a bed with her in her panties and look over paperwork. Women.
He handed her the mug of coffee sweetened with sugar and lightened with milk, taking a sip of his own plain black as he sat down amidst the pile of empty envelopes and invitations. He cringed at the off taste of the decaf over his tongue.
"There isn't any caffeine in this, love." He said, looking at Sara with a perplexed expression on his face.
"Ugh. Don't remind me." She took a sip of the wretched stuff, and turned her attention back to the papers and folders in front of her. Greg rolled his eyes, but turned back to the task at hand. He picked up the list of people they wanted to invite, which, he was sorry to say, wasn't very long. When Sara had called her brother, he had hung up on her before she could say anything, so he was scratched off the list. When they had gone to visit her mother in prison in San Fransisco, she had refused to look Sara in the eye, and had asked to be put back in her cell. She obviously couldn't come, but her rejection caused Sara to cross out all her other family members from the list. His eyes scanned over their coworkers at the lab, a few of his own family members, and a couple of either hers or his friends from college who were local. There weren't more than thirty people on the list, which made Greg's task of stuffing envelopes and writing addresses fairly easy. He glanced over at Sara as she raised the mug to her lips, crinkling her brow in frustration at the caterers' paperwork.
"How many invitations going out?"
"Twenty seven."
"All of these places say they need at least fifty people. At most we'll have twenty seven." She tossed the caterer documents towards the trash bin.
"We'll do the cooking, we don't need a caterer anyway." He licked an envelope closed. "Besides, the party's at Catherine's, we'll just cook stuff and freeze it all week. It'll be fine." She looked at him, frustration all over her delicate features. "Grandma Elsa used to cook for sixty every Christmas. It'll be fine." He scribbled Sofia's address on an envelope, and slid an invitation into it.
"You're right." She tossed the whole catering folder on the floor behind her. She picked up the florist's suggestions, and the photos of the inside of the tiny church. He focused on writing with legible script, and they sorted it out in relative silence for several minutes. Sara let out an exasperate sigh, and he looked up at her from his position on his stomach, surprised to see her send the flowers folder to the same fate as the caterer's folder.
"No flowers, either?" Greg smiled encouragingly up at her.
"All we really need is a couple of daisies for Lindsey and one for me, and one for your jacket. We need the flower lady on Tropicana, not a florist." He nodded, licking another envelope.
"We could get this all organized within the hour if we keep throwing stuff out."
"Everything but the meeting with the Reverend." She picked up the folder with the ceremony information from the sweet old man at the tiny little chapel. Neither Greg nor Sara were particularly religious, but the little chapel was perfect, and they asked the little old Reverend at the little chapel to perform the ceremony. When he had called his sister in Rauma to tell her about the wedding, Malena Sanders had stated that she didn't want to come halfway around the world to go to one of those 24 hour drive thru jobs she had heard about.
"And the rings." Greg sat up, licking another envelope and closing it. "But we can't pick them up until tomorrow." They had brought the bands to an engraver, and had each secretively written down the inscription they wanted on the band they were giving. Greg grinned, thinking of her slim little wedding ring. He had had the shopkeeper engrave "de var alltid min en sann kjaerlhet;" which roughly translated 'you were always my one true love' in the Rauma dialect of Norweigan.
Sara returned his smile, and spread out the papers from the Reverend. She took a long sip of the decaf monstrosity, and picked up a pen.
"So, going with the standard vows, or writing our own?" Sara asked, looking at a list Rev. Hartford had given them of things they needed to discuss before the meeting that night. "Ugh. 'Love, honor, obey.' Yeah, I'm not 'obeying,' sorry."
"I already wrote mine." Greg didn't raise his eyes from the address book and envelope, as he addressed an invitation to Lindsey and Catherine.
"What?"
"We can use the standard ones if you want, but I finished writing my vows already." He smiled kindly at her, licking the envelope and tossing it in a pile of invitations in envelopes, in need of stamps. "I thought of that ahead of time. I didn't want to cram at the last minute. I wanted them to be perfect." He cocked his head to the side, grinning boyishly at her. "What?"
"I haven't even begun to think about them yet." She returned his grin, and wrote that they were not using standard vows on the paper.
"Well mine are done. Completely."
"Can I see them?"
"No way! Then you'll know what I'm going to say. That's not the idea."
"I don't want mine to suck, Greg."
"They won't."
"Seriously, let me see."
"Absolutely not. You'll ruin your own surprise." He paused, taking a sip from the coffee mug. "I finished my vows because I love you more than you love me." She shot him a scandalized look, and threw a tee shirt from the floor at him.
"I can't believe you said that." The grin on her face, however, betrayed her words.
"Just telling it like it is. There is no way, Sara Jane, that you could possibly love me more that I love you. I've been in love with you way longer."
"I'm sorry I took so long." She had let the grin fall from her features, and bit her bottom lip, regarding him seriously. Greg licked another envelope, and sealed it, tossing it aside.
"Time doesn't matter. We're here now, and that's all I ever wanted." He chuckled to himself. "Actually, all I really wanted was a coffee date. Can you imagine? I've got you, and the baby, and we're going to start a life together, and all I wanted was a grande dark from Starbucks."
"Greg, I-"
"I'd do it again in a heartbeat, especially since now I know that everything becomes a happy ending." He smiled innocently, but Sara saw that the prospect of waiting longer than he did wore tiredly on him. He flipped through the addresses again. "I'd wait at least another thirty or so years. But, if you weren't coming around to the truth by retirement, I was going to give up on you and marry a showgirl. What's the next matter we have to discuss on that paper?"
"Umm… The wedding party."
"We don't have one of those."
"No. Did we want one?"
"Like bridesmaids and groomsmen?"
"Yeah."
"Lindsey will be the flower girl, who else would we need?" Greg sipped his now cold coffee, considering his fiancée.
"We don't have a ring bearer."
"We can't carry our own rings?"
"Greg, have you ever been to a wedding?" Sara laughed. "Seriously."
"We'll get Nick to do it." He scribbled the last address on the last envelope, and tossed it in the pile, reaching over for the roll of stamps.
"Ok."
"What else?" He started sticking stamps to envelopes as Sara scanned the paperwork.
"A bunch of questions about the order of the ceremony."
"We don't need anything fancy."
"What about all that traditional stuff Malena told me about?"
"She's been in Norway for way too long. Besides, for all that, you need a stave church, and preferably both parties fluent in Norweigan."
"Are you sure?"
"Have you ever been to a traditional rural Norweigan wedding, Sara?" He peeled the last stamp, and stuck it on the last invitation. "Seriously." The sparkle in his eye told her he was joking with her. He stacked the invitations, and tied a rubber band around them, tossing them on the end of the bed. "Trust me, we are lucky enough that little old man agreed to do the ceremony, we don't need to bombard him with wild ethnic stuff. Besides," He pushed the paperwork aside, and crawled across the bed, pushing her over on her back. He kissed her slowly, breaking away after a few moments. "The minimum requirement of guests is fifty." Sara rolled her eyes from under him, and pushed him off her.
"Not funny, Gregory." But she was laughing.
"You'll thank me someday when we have to go to Rauma for Malena's wedding, trust me. Us Northern folk tend to be overwhelming."
"If we strip this down to the bare and simple, the ceremony is only going to be twenty minutes at most."
"Sara, honey, time doesn't matter." He stood from the bed, and drained his cup, holding out his hand for hers. "Refill?"
"Please." She gave him her empty coffee mug, and watched him as he retreated to the kitchen, running his hand through his hair, making it stick up in odd places. Sara turned her attention back to the paperwork. Who knew there was so much to getting married? No wonder people did it through those 24-hour deals. Greg was right. All this stuff, it didn't matter. She glanced at Grandma Elsa's sparkly diamond. All that mattered was they had gotten here, and they were headed in the same direction.
Greg returned moments later with her mug filled with fresh coffee. He handed her the mug, then pulled up the old hoodie and pressed a kiss to her abdomen, which was still flat, not yet showing the signs of pregnancy. He replaced the bottom of the hoodie over her stomach, and pressed a kiss to her head before climbing onto the other side of the bed. She felt tears well up in her eyes, and she quickly wiped them away.
"What's wrong, Sara?" Concern flashed across Greg's features, but he didn't move from his spot on the other side of the bed.
"Nothing." She wiped away more tears, and choked out a laugh. "I'm just so happy." There was nothing she wanted but to spend the rest of her life with a man who would bring her coffee in bed.
…………
A/N: had wicked fun with this one… hope you liked it as much as I liked writing it… more to come… the baby has a name::grins madly: