Chapter Fourteen
As best man, Grady began the toasts - complete with sparkling cider. "I remember when Eric first started tutoring this girl in high school," he said. "He kept using all these buts. Grady, man, she's beautiful, but….She's smart, but…She's compassionate, but… That's how I knew he was in love with her."
Tami laughed and took Eric's hand.
"They had some obstacles on the way," Grady said. "But they got back on the road, and I think it's gonna be a long road for you two. A really long road you'll be traveling together. So congratulations." He raised his glass.
Next, Shelley gave the maid of honor toast. Tami braced herself for whatever nonsense her sister was going to say. "Eric, you and I don't always get along," she said. "You hog the TV. But I can see you love and respect Tami and she loves you, so I'm happy for you both. Congratulations and good luck." When she sat down, Tami turned to Eric.
"That's it?" he asked.
"Thank God," Tami muttered.
There was of course no father of the bride toast, but, to her surprise, her father-in-law rose for a short speech. "Tami," he said, "I'm pleased to be welcoming you to our family today."
Tami wondered if he meant that, or if they were mere rehearsed words.
"Eric, son, treat her well. If you have sons, they'll learn how to treat their own wives by the way you treat her. If you have daughters, they'll choose husbands who treat them the way you treat her. And she's no wilting violet, that one, so if you want to keep her, treat her well."
Eric smiled and nodded.
"A wife of noble character who can find?" Mr. Taylor continued. "She is worth more than rubies. That's in the Bible somewhere." He glanced at the mother of the bride. "Catholics do read the Bible, believe it or not."
There was laughter from part of the room, mostly Eric's family, but also some of their friends.
"Remember that, son. The Bible also says, Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Remember that too." Mr. Taylor looked at his own wife. "Marriage will transform you," he continued. "Both of you. Let it." He raised his glass to the couple. "To the bride and the groom, to many happy years, and to mutual comfort through the unhappy ones."
[*]
Eric and Tami honeymooned in Corpus Christi for three days, in a hotel on the beach, using their wedding gift money. It was oppressively hot, so they spent most of their time making love in their hotel bedroom and lounging at the indoor pool, though they did take late night walks along the beach. They might have taken a longer vacation, but Tami had to get back to Houston in time for summer school.
[*]
The next semester was a blur. Tami crammed in a maximum course load of 21 credits. She skipped lunch and snacked on trail mix.
Meanwhile, Eric worked forty to fifty hours a week at the UH bookstore and tutored high school students for extra cash whenever he could. They were busy, but they were young. They had hungry sex on Friday and Saturday nights, and lazy sex on Sunday mornings, and it's-been-a-while sex on Wednesdays. They forgot to check-in with their parents and got worried monthly calls from their mothers.
Despite her heavy course load, Tami joined a sorority. Eric teased her mercilessly about it, reminding her of the comment she'd once leveled at Jenny about "buying friends," and Tami claimed she was only joining because the sorority did "really important volunteer work."
Eric laughed. "Really?"
"Yes. And, well…I like to go to parties. I'm studying so much. It's one way to blow off steam."
He smiled. "I can think of another."
Eric's social calendar was considerably more limited. He mostly restricted himself to attending football games and playing Thursday night poker with Grady. When he did go to parties with Tami, he nursed his beer, and every few minutes, he would ask, "Are you ready to go yet?"
"I don't understand why you don't like parties," she said as he was driving them home one night from one of her sorority functions.
"Because the only reason to go to parties is to pick up girls, and I already have a girl."
"That's not the only reason to go," she insisted. "There's dancing, and talking, and people. Don't you like to see people?"
"I see people every day. There are people everywhere I go. Lots of people at football games."
"Yeah, and you like that! So what's the big difference?"
"Can't we just stay in next weekend? Grady and Angie don't go out every weekend."
"Fine," she grumbled, though staying in turned out to be fun. The four of them drank beer and played Monopoly at the kitchen table in their cramped breakfast nook.
Tami leaned against Eric's shoulder and kissed his cheek. "I'll give you St. James for Park Place."
Grady laughed. He'd built quite an empire for himself of the light blues and dark purples. Angie had called him a slum lord.
"Hardly a fair trade," Eric said.
Angie smirked. "Throw in a blow job and I bet he'll make the deal."
Eric flushed.
"Yeah," Grady said. "How do you think I got both my monopolies? I had to promise a lot of sexual favors." He winked at Angie and she rolled her eyes.
The next Friday, Tami asked Eric to accompany her to another sorority function. "I volunteered to take an overtime shift at the bookstore Friday," he told her. It was open until eleven on weekends, because it also had a coffee shop where a lot of students hung out. "We need the money."
"Fine. I'll just go with my sorority sisters then."
[*]
Eric got a call on the bookstore phone at ten on Friday night. There was a lot of noise in the background. "Where are you?"
"In the kitchen," Tami said. "At this party at Tri-Delta." That wasn't even her sorority. "Can you please pick me up? Please!" She was slurring her words. He'd never heard her do that before. She'd get buzzed, but he'd never heard her sound like this. She was cautious about drinking too much too often because of her father's history.
"Babe, are you drunk? Already?"
"Please! Can you hurry?" He could only half make out what she was saying through the slurred speech, but he gathered the punch had been stronger than she expected and that some guy was creeping her out.
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
He kicked the kids out of the coffee shop, locked up the bookstore without emptying the register, and peeled off in his truck. He ran two red lights. It was a miracle he wasn't pulled over by campus police at either UH or MWU. He scoured the houses for Greek letters, dodging drunk kids until he found Tri-Delta. When he got inside, he couldn't find her. He weaved through the kitchen and living room calling her name, and he had just about decided to start busting down bedroom doors when he spied her through the sliding glass door on the back porch, up against a wooden pole that supported the awning, trying to put off some guy who kept placing his hand on her hip after she would weakly slap it off.
Eric slid the door violently open, grabbed the guy by the back of his neck, and shoved him into the brick wall at the side of the house.
"Damn!" the kid cried, holding his bloody nose. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"She's not interested."
"Is she your girlfriend or something?"
"She's my wife!"
He grabbed Tami's hand. He had to half support her through the house and to the truck.
"You didn't have to break his nose," she slurred when they were driving.
"You said he was creeping you out."
"Not that guy. Another guy."
"Well, that guy looked like he was trying to take advantage of you. What the hell, Tami? Why were you there alone? I thought you were going to be at your sorority."
"A couple of my sisters wanted to go to this party. But then they ditched me."
When they got home, he helped her to bed. He took off her shoes but otherwise left her in her clothes, and then he pulled the comforter up over her.
"The room's spinning a little," she said. "You might have to be romantic tonight and hold my hair. Oh God." She scooted over the side of the bed and vomited on the floor.
"Damn, Tami." He went to the kitchen where Grady kept the cleaning supplies in neatly labeled containers under the sink.
"Is Tami okay?" Grady asked. He was sitting at the kitchen table, doing his accounting homework.
"Where's Angie?" Eric asked. "Why didn't Angie go with her?"
"Angie's not her babysitter, man. Angie's already in bed. She has her internship interview at 7 AM tomorrow morning."
When he got back to the bedroom, Eric wiped up Tami's face with a washcloth while she lay on her back groaning, and then he scrubbed down the carpet. He brought her a glass of water and told her, "Small sips."
When he got in bed next to her, he said, "Don't go to anymore parties without me, okay?"
"You never want to go."
"I'll go, okay? I'll go. Just…don't go without me again, okay? You wanna get drunk, get drunk with me. Me or Angie or Grady. Someone you can trust."
"I didn't think…I didn't think I was drunk until I was."
"Did anything happen to you? Did that guy - "
"- No."
When she lay back down, he slid close to her and held her tight. "Damn, Tami."
"You're working so much lately. Overtime at the bookstore, tutoring on top..."
"I'll scale back. We'll go out more together. Whatever you want. Just don't put yourself in that situation again. Okay? Please?"
"Okay," she said, and then, "I feel sick."
