Chapter 12
"Funny I should mention that? See, you say that and I get nervous. Do I have a reason to be nervous Joshua?"
"No need to be nervous," he says to her.
"But you did do something?" she asks him. Toby continues eating. I swear he couldn't care less.
Josh looks at me and flashes his dimples. We have a plan. You remember, the Being Together For The Rest Of Our Lives Without Ruining Our Careers plan. I'm not sure where he gets the titles for these whacked out plans of his, but that's another point all together. Back to the plan. Remember, step one of the plan was to get married in a planned out, pictures taken, proper attire sort of way to avoid any hint of a scandal. You know, like getting drunk out of your mind and accidentally getting married. Right, we were trying to avoid that. Step two of the plan included lots and lots of wedding night sex, which I assured Josh didn't need to be part of the actual plan, but he insisted we leave it there in case I needed reminded. Yeah, right. Part three of the plan is CJ/Toby. We tell them and then they help us tell Leo. Another part of the plan, and this is non-negotiable, is that we're happy. This is not bad news; it's great news. There will be no groveling, no apologizing, no talk of mistakes, and no talk of taking anything back. "Actually, we did something," Josh says to her, stressing the 'we.' Then he hands her a manila envelope with some of our wedding photos. We paid extra to have them delivered to the hotel this morning.
She takes the envelope from Josh and pulls out several pictures. The one on top is my favorite. It's of the two of us, obviously. I'm in front of him and his arms are wrapped around me from behind with his chin resting on my shoulder. Instead of looking into the camera, we're looking down at the rings on our joined left hands and smiling like…well, newlyweds.
She stares at this one for a minute, then calmly hands it to Toby and moves on to the next one. I don't think she knew exactly what it was. Yes, we're holding one another, but it's not the typical bride/groom photo. But this one will do it. In this second one, we're standing at the altar, half facing each other, and I'm holding my bouquet. We're looking into the camera and smiling, and Josh has his dimples out in full force. There's no denyinghe was not only happy, but thought he was all that. This one should bring it all into focus for her.
She looks at it a minute, shaking her head and smiling, then passes it to Toby, who puts it on the table and looks at it while eating his hash browns. What the hell? Why isn't she reaching across the table and choking Josh? Why isn't she screaming? Why isn't she threatening him?
She looks at the next picture, where we're standing at the altar facing each other, kissing. My arms are around his neck with my bouquet in my hand, and his arms are around my waist. I'm a fan of this picture simply because we got a little carried away. It was supposed to be a chaste kiss for the camera, but it turned into a not so chaste kiss that ended only when the Justice of the Peace, his wife and the photographer all cleared their throats. CJ sees this one, she smiles and nods. What's going on? I'm in the twilight zone. I'm afraid; this is like the calm before the storm.
After several seconds she passes it on to Toby and looks at the fourth one, which is of us, our Justice of the Peace, and our witness, who's married to the Justice of the Peace and whose name is Blanche. Not only that, but she reminded me of Dorothy from the Golden Girls. I just got a kick out of the fact that she was like Dorothy and had Blanche's… never mind.
She quickly goes through the rest of the pictures, which are mostly of us walking down the short isle together, holding hands as we walked outside, getting in the limo, things like that, and then puts them down and looks up at us. No one's said a word since Josh handed her the envelope, but finally she speaks. "I'm impressed, Lyman," she says with a nod.
Josh smiles and holds my hand on top of the table. Hmm… maybe there was no need to panic. CJ's our friend first, right? Wrong! She's about to pounce, she's taking us by surprise. Josh is going to be limping out of here. "Why thank you, I think I did rather well myself," he says, then leans over and kisses me on the cheek.
"Toby," I say. "You're pretty quiet over there."
"What's there to say? I knew something like this was going to happen. I wouldn't have expected anything less." He takes a bite of his bacon. "Nice dress. You didn't bring it with you, did you?"
"No," CJ says. "She bought this dress yesterday with the excuse of needing it for the next White House shindig." Then she turns towards me. "That was rather sneaky of you," she says with a smile.
I laugh but shake my head. "The fact that it was white was a complete coincidence."
"Really?" she asks me, skeptically.
"Really! Josh planned the whole thing. And I have to admit, he did a wonderful job." I pat his hand and he picks mine up and kisses it. CJ raises her eyebrows.
"You didn't know when we were at that shop yesterday?" she asks me.
"The shop?"
"The one on the boardwalk with the certificates."
"The wedding certificates?" I kind of choke out. "I uhh…I wondered if you saw those," I say a little weakly.
"Of course I did. You didn't know then?"
"About the wedding?"
"Of course about the wedding."
The first or the second? No need to bring that up, so I simply shake my head. "I didn't know anything about this wedding until dinner last night. It was a surprise from my amazing husband," I say, looping my arm through his.
She looks at the picture in front of her and then up at Josh. "This must've taken quite a bit of planning on your part," she says a bit cryptically.
"Nothing's too good for my bride," he says, squeezing my hand.
She laughs a little. "A limo, a chapel, flowers…you even rented a tux. This must've cost a small fortune."
"Well, how many times does a man marry the love of his life? Anyway, she thinks I look hot in a tux." When he says that, Toby snorts.
"Who are the old people in the pictures?" he asks, his mouth full of food.
"Our Justice of the Peace and his wife. She was our witness," I tell him.
"He looks Justice of the Peace like," CJ says as I reach over and steal a piece of bacon from Toby's plate.
He reaches across and slaps my hand away. "Hey, that's my turkey-bacon. You want some, steal if from…" he trails off.
"My husband?" I ask.
"Yeah," says CJ, laughing. "Your husband."
I smile and reach for bacon on Josh's plate. He picks up his last piece, takes a bite and puts the rest in my mouth. Then he kisses me while I chew it up, which only makes me laugh. When we're done kissing, I look up and CJ's staring at us with amusement in her eyes. Toby's looking at me like… well, I'm not sure what.
"CJ," Toby says.
"Having fun playing your part there, Romeo?" CJ asks Josh, ignoring Toby.
"Actually, yes," he replies and kisses me again.
"Ok, I think we've had enough of that. You've made your point."
"Get used to it, my friend. We are newlyweds and we intend on acting like it." To accentuate his point, he links his fingers through mine.
"CJ," Toby says. I look over at him and he's looking at the pictures again.
She ignores him again and keeps talking. "So, when did you figure it out?" she asks Josh.
Josh smiles at me. "About ten minutes after we met."
I lean against him a little. "It took me a bit longer. He was dating her who shall never be mentioned when we met. It was hard to see the wonderfulness through that. Plus, he's…you know, him."
"You're very funny, you know that?" he asks me.
"Why yes I do, thank you," I say and kiss him on the cheek.
"CJ," Toby says again.
Again, CJ talks to Josh. "Well, you got me, I admit it. I knew it would happen, but I wasn't expecting it today and certainly not done so well. I thought it would take you ages to plan something this good."
"Well, we could've done big and fancy, but it was so much more… us like this. Simple and to the point. Just the two of us. It was, if I might be so bold, perfect."
"CJ," Toby says, this time louder.
She turns to him. "What?"
He turns and speaks very quietly to her. "The rings."
"What?"
"The rings," he says louder.
"What about them?"
He points to my hand. "Those aren't the…"
"What the hell?" CJ interrupts, grabbing my hand and staring at my ring set.
I smile and Josh gets that look on his face that he gets when he kicks ass and knows it. Our rings are beautiful, he's very proud of himself. "Beautiful, aren't they?" I ask.
She looks up at me and then back at my hand. "These aren't… where did… what the…" I'm not real sure what's going on right now, but I think it's possibleCJ's been in shock this entire conversation and is just now coming out of it. Which means, of course, Josh could still be limping out of here.
Toby hands her back the pictures. "I can't believe this," he mumbles to her.
"These are real, they're not hideous," CJ says to me, still in shock I think.
I smile. "Well I'd hope not. I have to wear them the rest of my life."
"They're not gold plated," she says to Josh.
"What kind of cheap bastard do you think I am?"
"But…"
"What?"
Finally she drops my hand and looks at Toby. "These aren't the same rings."
He shakes his head and runs his hands over his head. "No."
"The same rings? What do you mean 'the same rings'," I ask. How do they know about the other rings?
"The rings we…you're really married," she says in a dazed voice to the two of us.
"Yes we're really married," Josh says. "What do you think we've been talking about for the last ten minutes?"
Her eyes get big and she screams, "Retribution, you idiot! I thought we were talking about retribution!"