Chapter Eight

Richard Castle could be called many things: famous novelist, millionaire, playboy, and now party planner. Specifically: bachelorette weekend planner. This, however, was not a title he planned on retaining once the weekend was over—assuming he survived.

On Thursday, the day after the disastrous basketball game, Kate dropped the latest wedding bomb: not only was she getting married in two weeks and two days, but she was only spending ten of those remaining days in the city. After that, she would be flying back to England to coordinate wedding plans there. After all, it was difficult to interview florists and caterers while in a completely different country let alone continent.

Though Castle remained confident he would be able to stop the wedding, he did accept the possibility that there was a small—less than one percent, by his estimation—possibility Kate would in fact marry William. If that was the case, Castle did not want her to miss out on any pre-wedding traditions, particularly if those wedding traditions were to be planned or managed by the maid of honor. The last thing he wanted to do was fail her.

Thus, he sprang into action to plan a wedding shower and a bachelorette party, but Kate reined him in. She did not want to have a wedding shower both due to the short time frame and because no one from William's side of the family could attend. She also protested the bachelorette party, but Castle would hear none of it; getting out of that, he said, was not an option.

As she was leaving the following Sunday morning, they needed to have the party that weekend. They had already made rough plans to go out to the Hamptons that Friday and Saturday, so Castle decided to plan the whole event into one giant celebration. He invited all her female friends he could get ahold of to a Saturday evening bash at his estate. The women could think of this as a combination bachelorette party and wedding shower and bring presents accordingly if they so choose. Otherwise, they could just show up and be prepared for some mildly naughty entertainment.

"I cannot believe you hired a male stripper; you should have your man card revoked for that," Javier commented with disgust the moment he heard the party's itinerary. For obvious reasons, the boys were not joining the Hampton's crowd for the weekend. He had, however, managed to talk them into helping him collect the gift baskets for the women in attendance and load them into his car.

"It's not like I'm staying for the show." Castle rationalized. "I'm playing bartender for the first hour and then as soon as that dude slips on his G-string I'm out."

"Well just in case you change your mind, be sure to have plenty of singles in your wallet," Kevin said as he hefted the final box into the trunk of Castle's Mercedes.

While Javier snorted with laughter, Castle shot the smaller man a glare.

By Saturday afternoon, Castle no longer recognized his home. The elegant beachfront estate normally decorated with white furniture and soft hues of blue and yellow was now adored with more phallic shaped decorations than he could even count. It was on some level deeply disturbing, but as he had never attended or planned a bachelorette party before, he was taking a "When in Rome…" attitude towards the situation. Plus, he knew everything would be back to normal soon.

Castle could not fully take credit for the debauchery about to take place in his home. During his forty-eight hours of planning, he had consulted Lanie, Javier's ex-wife and Kate's wildest friend. At least, the wildest friend of hers he knew well enough to converse with about penis-shaped cakes. As with everything she did, Lanie became very excited about the prospect of decorations and party favors, so much so that Castle had to calm her down. While Kate might get a chuckle at some phallic drinking cups and roll her eyes but be a good sport about a penis cake, he knew matching five foot blow up penis statues at the entrance to his home would push her over the edge.

"Well Darling, you certainly have outdone yourself," his mother, Martha, commented on walking into the fully decorated space. She was staying in the home that weekend in addition to Kate, William, and Kevin's wife Jenny. As that many guests filled his home, the other bachelorette attendees were staying at the home of one of Kate's friends a few blocks away.

As was her way, Martha had more or less invited herself to Kate's bash. Castle was initially uncertain that having a parent at the party would spoil the fun (though calling his mother a parent was admittedly a stretch of the term) but Kate insisted she didn't mind. As she put it: his mother knew how to have one hell of a good time, and Kate imagined this factor would only increase when strippers and alcohol were involved.

To show her gratitude that she was not forced out by way of her son banning her from his home for the weekend, Martha volunteered to take Kate out of the house for the afternoon so that she could be surprised by the decorations. Once again Castle felt the need to step in as any more than one hour of one-on-one time with Martha Rodgers could be qualified as too much, but Kate insisted it was fine. His mother was, after all, taking her for a manicure and massage.

"Is it too much?" Castle questioned with a grimace, craning his neck to see just how far behind his mother Kate was approaching. Maybe if she walked slow enough he had a few free seconds to rip down the penis lights lining the edge of the bar.

"It's…something," Martha commented as her wide eyes scanned the room. "But a girl only has one bachelorette party, right?"

"Well unless she's you," he commented. His mother smacked his arm playfully. A moment later, Kate stepped into the entry way.

"Dear god." She stopped dead and dropped her purse from her well-manicured hand.

Castle grimaced. "Too many penises?"

Her jaw hanging limp, Kate shook her head dumbly. "Where did you get all this stuff?"

"A really disturbing party store. Plus, Lanie contributed some. Evidently she's frequently involved in bachelorette parties…" As Castle watched her scan the room with mixed horror, he quickly added, "I can take some of it down."

She turned to him, a smile on her face (though he suspected it may have been forced on some level). "No, no it's fine; the girls will love it. I'm just glad William isn't here to see it."

Ah yes, Castle thought to himself, the stick-in-the-mud would loathe this, wouldn't he? From the moment he arrived in the Hamptons, William had made it abundantly clear that he wanted absolutely zero involvement in Kate's "hen night" as it was called in the UK. The moment Kate and Martha went out the door, so did he along with his laptop, bound for a quiet coffee shop to work on a paper with a subject so boring Castle did not retain it.

"Well you can go ahead up to your room and change—your penis dress is waiting."

"My WHAT?!" Kate shrieked at him.

Castle laughed. "Kidding. I truly hope there isn't such a thing, though given what I've seen from those bachelorette party websites…there probably is. Fair warning: I think Lanie has some dick-shaped hat she's going to try to get you to wear."

"Great," Kate grumbled.

Ninety minutes later the party was in full swing. All the girls had arrived. The caterers were passing out food and the stripper had arrived a few minutes earlier. Castle preformed one last check to make sure each woman had a full drink in her hand before returning to the kitchen and pulling off his tacky sequin-covered bow tie. (Much to the disappointment of Kate's friends, he had left his shirt on so as not to go full Chippendale; he'd leave that to the man with the g-string.)

Just as he was making sure the refrigerator was stocked with enough water and booze to last the evening, a distinct throat clearing caught his attention. Glancing towards the hall he saw Kate, her eyes searching his nervously as she chewed on her bottom lip. Though he had seen her several times in the prior hour, it never failed to amuse him how absolutely absurd she looked in the princess tiara and pink sash Lanie forced on her once she refused the penis hat.

"Hey…did you need something? I was on my way out but…"

"Yeah, uh, just had a question," she said, taking a step towards him. "You're probably more familiar with strippers than I am but…are they supposed to be fully nude?"

"WHAT?!" Castle bellowed before hurrying towards the main sitting room of the home, taking the corner into the hall so quickly he needed to use both palms flat against it to keep from crashing. Upon stepping around the corner to the open space, Castle's eyes first fell on the bare ass of Hans, their male entertainment for the night. When the performer turned to gyrate his junk in the face of his mother, Castle felt his stomach lurch in his gut. He wasn't sure what was most disturbing: the fact that the stripper was, as Kate said, fully nude or the fact that his mother was cheering equally as loud as if not louder than the other guests.

Shortly before midnight that night Castle stepped out onto the back deck of his beach home, glass of scotch in hand, and let out a long, well-deserved exhale. All the party guests were finally gone along with the caterers and stripper (thank god!), the decorations were partially taken down and everything was reasonably put back together; the rest could wait until morning. The evening certainly had not turned out exactly as he expected but, hey, at least they had a damn good story.

As he took a sip from his glass he heard a soft, "Do the penis ice cubes taste better than regular ones?" from across the deck. He turned his head to see a smirking Kate sitting on a chaise lounge, her legs tucked underneath her, blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

"They do, actually." He joked before approaching. "Thought you went to bed."

She shook her head. "Was afraid I'd have nightmares."

"I know I will." He returned, shivering at the memory of what his poor eyes had witnessed earlier that night. Despite Castle requesting that the stripper keep the evening R-rated instead of X-rated, he was outvoted by Kate's squealing girlfriends and thus the man continued his show in the buff.

Castle took a seat on the bottom edge of Kate's chaise lounge and looked over at her. "Guess I kind of made a mess of things, didn't I?"

She let out a breathy laugh. "Actually, in a way, it was hilarious. And your mother certainly enjoyed it." No question existed in Kate's mind; Martha Rodgers had the most fun of all of them.

He gulped as his stomach jolted again. "Jesus, don't remind me."

"Where did you find that guy, anyway?"

"Lanie," he confessed with a slight grumble.

Kate let out a louder laugh. "Oh then she was definitely playing you; she probably knew he'd go Full Monte."

He sighed into his drink. "Great."

After a moment of silence, Kate said, "Thanks for the party Castle. I really needed it."

His brow rose. "This? Really?"

She smiled. "Well, I'm not going to lie—the evening would have been better with slightly less penis in it, but yeah, this. It was a good goodbye."

At the final word in her statement Castle sat up a bit straighter. "Goodbye?"

She leaned forward and wrung he hands together. "Castle…for the fall semester…"

"You're spending it in England," he concluded sadly. Well, that was definitely a blow and as far as Castle was concerned a "worst case scenario." If she was, in fact, going through with the wedding, which remained to be seen. But if she was planning on the wedding—which clearly she was—did that mean she had already told Columbia she would not be returning that fall? And what about her apartment? Would she sublet while she was away?

Before any of those questions could be answered, Kate replied, "Cairo, actually."

Castle nearly choked. "Cairo!? What the hell is in Cairo?"

"William has a position there—it's temporary, but we could be there for as long as a year. That's why we wanted to get married so quickly; because he has to move on August twentieth to be there in time for the start of the year."

"I…ah…wow…ah, wow." Castle stammered in the face of this monumental news. Gazing over at her in the dim light he couldn't think of a single thing to say. Of all the wedding bombshells, this was definitely the largest.

"I know I should have told you sooner; I just didn't know how," she confessed. Then, she kissed his cheek and thanked him again for the party before tip-toeing her way inside, leaving Castle sitting speechless in the near darkness listening to the distant waves crash against the sand.