Chapter Two

"Take it easy, Angela," Tony finally managed to advise Angela, as she turned to look out the window and immediately flinched in pain. "Try opening your eyes one at a time, and whatever you do, don't think about food. That was my mistake." He placed a hand between her shoulders to help her find her balance. Then he discovered she was topless, and retracted said hand as if it had been burned.

Angela opened one eye, as he'd suggested, then the other. She managed to meet his gaze steadily for a brief moment. Then her eyes flicked lower, and she abruptly squeezed them shut and slapped both hands over them for good measure. "Oh my God!"

It was only then Tony realized he himself was buck naked. "Oh, geez. Sorry." He tried to pull a corner of blanket over his own nudity, but she clung to it stubbornly, unwilling to give up an inch. Boy, she's strong as an ox when she's embarrassed, he observed. Must be adrenaline. After a brief, blind, absurd tug-o-war, he managed to separate the sheet from the comforter and wrap it around its waist. "Okay, all clear. You can open your eyes now."

"Do I have to?"

Tony scowled at her, though he knew she couldn't see it. "I know this is a terrible shock for both of us, so I'll try not to take that as an insult."

That finally coaxed her eyes open, wide and alarmed. "Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that, Tony. You're as handsome as I imagined. I mean, as handsome as I would have imagined. What I'm trying to say is that you've certainly got nothing to be embarrassed about in that respect. Not that I was looking!" She finally gave up on the entire conversation and clamped a hand over her mouth, blushing furiously.

She needn't have worried. Tony was barely listening to her words. Most of his attention was fixated on the tantalizing bits of skin the blanket wasn't covering. He'd never realized before that her blush went all the way down the front of her body. Awkwardly, he rearranged the folds of the sheet around his waist, trying to hide his increasingly visible approval of the view. "Angela, will you settle down and help me make some sense of this, already? What are we doing here?"

Angela shrugged, and—oh, marone a mi—the blanket wrapped around her midsection slipped even lower. "Tell me and we'll both know! I was about to ask you the same question."

Her eyes were pleading with him to tell her it wasn't what it looked like. He tried to think, but then she sat up straighter and one of her bare legs slipped out from under the blanket. He turned to the window, the majestic view outside being less distracting that the one on the bed with him. And then something clicked into place, like two Legos snapping together in the back of his mind. "Angela, I think I know where we are."

"You've been here before?"

"No, but I saw this place on a postcard once. From my pal Tiny. Announcing his second marriage. Angela, that's Niagara Falls."

"Oh!" The worry momentarily lifted from her shoulders, and she cheered up a bit. "Well, this is a pleasant surprise. I've always wanted to see Niagara Falls in person. It's criminal that we live so close by and we've never been." She found her glasses on the nightstand and slipped them on, turning to admire the panorama outside. "We should run home and bring the kids back with us. Make a day of it, or maybe a weekend." She paused uncertainly. "It is still the weekend, isn't it?"

"Beats me, Angela. Will you pipe down and focus, here? We've got bigger problems!"

She reached out to squeeze his bare arm soothingly. "Tony, please, try not to panic. This could all be perfectly innocent. We probably just fell asleep together, like that time years ago in Sam's room, remember?" She forced a chuckle. "I don't know which of us was more embarrassed, me or you."

He knew what she was doing. She was trying to get him laughing because she knew it would settle his nerves. While he appreciated the effort, it wasn't going to be that easy. "Angela, we didn't just wake up in bed together this time. We woke up in a bed at Niagara Falls."

"What's your point?"

Tony was ready to shake her until her teeth rattled. His nerves were shot, and she wasn't helping matters by forcing him to spell it out for the both of them in the plainest language possible. "Angela, you're a smart woman. Why do people usually run off to a fancy hotel in Niagara Falls, in the middle of the night? Do I gotta sing "Shuffle off to Buffalo" for you?!"

"Oh, I love that song," Angela sighed. "The tunes at the party last night were nice, in their own way, but nothing beats the classics. Right, Tony?"

Okay, apparently he did have to sing it for her, if he wanted her to take the hint. " Now that we've had the rice and flowers, and the knot is tied…"

"Oh!" He could see the exact moment when the realization struck her. She jolted as if she'd been beaned with a particularly large and heavy rock.

"So, what d'you say? Can we panic now?"

"But we couldn't have possibly…could we?" Angela silently begged Tony to deny everything. He did not comply, staring at her in grim silence as he pointed to the garish pink and gold purse he had been lugging around for her all night last night, now sitting on her nightstand. There was an official-looking manila envelope protruding from the half-open zipper.

"Ah!" She scrambled away from her purse as if she had just realized it contained an enormous king cobra, with its fangs exposed and its hood flared. Unfortunately, this landed her squarely in Tony's lap. He jumped up, dropping her like a hot potato, and she toppled to the floor. Her protective layer of blankets fell away, and as she reached out to try and find a handhold to prevent her fall, she ended up seizing Tony's sheet and ripping it away.

He bent over to help her up, his eyes chivalrously closed. She took his hand, her own eyes also primly squeezed shut as he helped her to her feet. Unfortunately, their mutual respect for one another's privacy came with a price. As she stood, the crown of her head smacked into his forehead, and they both went crashing down.

The wind was briefly knocked out of Angela as Tony's full weight landed on her, like an anvil crushing Wile E Coyote. As uncomfortable as the position was, she couldn't help but notice that his entire body was remarkably firm, and in more ways than one. "Okay, this isn't working," she declared decisively, eyes still closed. "We need to try something else."

"Umph!" He removed himself from her with a grunt, landing heavily on the thickly-carpeted floor beside her. "Okay, I've got a plan, and here it is. Ladies go first, as it should be."

Something deep inside her twisted with excitement upon hearing those words from a drop-dead gorgeous man who was lying naked beside her. She ruthlessly suppressed it. "Okay, I'm getting up," she narrated for him, since his eyes were still shut, too. "I'm on the bed and tucked safely under the covers. You're clear for takeoff, Tony."

A shuffling noise indicated he was standing, and one of the sheets she was cowering under was tugged from her grasp again. "Okay, I'm more or less decent. You?"

"More or less."

"Okay, we open our eyes on three. One, two, three."

The piercing daylight streaming from the open window was slightly less painful the second time she exposed her eyes to it. Tony, for his part, looked like something out of a Calvin Klein ad, standing there shirtless and barefoot in front of an open window with billowing drapes; his midsection draped in a stark white bedsheet that contrasted handsomely with his deeply-tanned skin. Wow, this man missed his calling, she found herself thinking. Forget baseball, he should have been a supermodel. He can make any outfit look good—even when it's just a blank piece of cloth. She also couldn't help noticing, no matter how hard she tried to, that his shoulder blades were streaked with red welts that looked vaguely like the work of a woman's fingernails. There was also an angry purple love-bite on his left shoulder. Did I do that? She honestly couldn't remember. If it had been her, it was an impressive piece of work. If it had been anyone else, it was absolutely disgraceful.

Tony was examining her exposed skin with similarly mixed emotions in his eyes. "How about we continue this conversation after we get dressed?" he suggested anxiously.

"That's the best idea I've heard all morning." She spotted her skirt, bra, and blouse thrown over a bureau, while Tony found his pants, shirt and Jockeys in a heap on the floor. The tattered remnants of what had once been a fine pair of pantyhose lay in shreds beside the bed, completely unsalvageable. His jacket and her scarf seemed to have been lost to the ages, as had another important article of clothing she was growing increasingly frantic in her search for.

"Um, Angela," Tony ventured, more shyly than she'd ever seen or heard him before—even as an eleven-year-old. "I found these in my pants pocket. Are they yours?" She turned and found him holding out a pair of white lace panties.

She snatched them up, her cheeks blazing. "Well, we're the only two people here, and I dearly hope they're not yours!" Merciful heavens, was there a hole she could crawl into and die, or should she just throw herself over the falls and be done with it?

Tony backed away from her, keeping his hands where she could see them. He looked like a hunter who had encountered a particularly wild animal, and was doing his best to avoid getting gored. "You take the bathroom. I'll suit up out here."

She nodded, grateful for the suggestion, and proceeded to lock herself in the bathroom. The lock made her feel safer somehow, even though her mind and heart both knew she could trust Tony not to intrude on her. Well, again.

Though she knew she'd regret it, she turned on the lights and looked in the mirror to check out the damage. And there was plenty of damage. Her hair was a mess, her eyes were bloodshot, and her normally rosy cheeks were as chalky-white as the sheet around her best friend's hips. Her mascara was smudged and the lipstick she had so painstakingly applied before the party last night—or had it been the night before?— was long gone. Oh, so that had been what the red stuff smeared all over Tony's neck and ear was?

She couldn't bring herself to feel too guilty for the mess she'd made of him. He looked to have given as good as he'd gotten. He'd repaid the garish purple love bite she had apparently inflicted on him by giving her several of her own, all over her neck and collarbone. Purple-grey, finger-shaped bruises dotted her hips—five on each side, as if someone with particularly large, strong hands had been either pinning her in place or squeezing her in encouragement. There was also a very faint pink rash covering her throat. Was that beard burn? She glanced lower. It was all over her breasts, too. And her inner thighs? Well, that was…interesting.

From the look of it, they'd had been a pretty memorable evening. Why couldn't she remember it?

Tony pulled his shirt over his head and double-checked to make sure his belt was fastened. While dressing, he had found several scratches on his body that all looked like the product of a woman's well-manicured fingernails. Angela's? That was pretty hard to dispute, no matter how much he'd have liked to. The question was, what had he done to her to earn them? Something very right? Or something very wrong?

He couldn't remember much about their evening after they'd arrived at Gamma House, and wasn't sure whether that was a blessing or a curse. Had she scratched him up in a fit of passion? He knew she was capable of plenty of passion, but was surprised he had been, after imbibing whatever the hell it was that he had imbibed at the party last night. Or was he off the mark, and it had been entirely innocent? For all he knew, she could have simply instigated an impromptu wrestling match while he'd been tucking her into bed, like the last time they'd been under the influence together.

It made his skin crawl to even think about it, but there was a third theory that had to be considered. Had he gotten out of line with her? Had she been forced to fight him off? Even worse, what if she had tried to fight him off, but hadn't succeeded? No. He wouldn't think any more about that until he absolutely had to. It wasn't likely. Even if he'd been capable of such a thing in his drunken stupor…drugged stupor? Drunken and drugged stupor? Whatever his condition, it certainly hadn't been fighting fit, and he doubted he would have come out the winner in any physical struggle. Then again, from the look of her, she'd been as bad off as he was…

Before he could continue contemplating the worst, Angela reappeared, looking more like her old self. Her clothes were as wrinkled as his, but she'd washed the sad remains of her makeup from her face, brushed her teeth, and combed the unruly blond mop on her head into submission. Searching for words, he found none, and had to settle for pulling out a chair from the little table by the window and gesturing for her to sit. When she complied instead of bolting for the door, he allowed himself to relax ever-so-slightly.

He straddled the chair across the table from her. She winced a little as she settled into her seat. "You okay, Ange?"

She stared out the window, blatantly avoiding looking him in the eye. He drew the curtains shut, and she shifted her gazed to the tabletop. "Let's just say, I'm sore in places that don't usually ache from doing hot yoga."

Tony wasn't sure whether to grin like an idiot or hang his head in shame. Jump one hurdle at a time, Micelli, he told himself, or you're gonna break a leg. "Angela, we've got to open this." He placed her purse on the table, removed the official-looking envelope bearing the stamp of the Niagara Falls City Clerk's Office, and laid it in the center of the table. They both stared at it as if it were a mountain to be climbed. "You wanna do the honors, or should I?"

She shook her head vigorously. "You open it. I can't look."

"Again, under the circumstances, I'll try not to take that personally." Tony took in a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth. Partly to steady his nerves, but mostly to stall for time.

"Tony, our hair is going to start going grey," Angela prodded him. "Let's get on with it, huh?"

"Right." With the air of a condemned man being forced to slice off his own head, he examined the envelope for weak spots. "You got a letter opener, Ange?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Tony!" She snatched it from him, stuck one of her long nails under the edge of the envelope, and removed the single sheet of paper inside.

Tony was cowering like a scared bunny; his shoulders hunched, head bowed, face screwed up as if anticipating a punch in the face. "Let's have it." Please be a parking ticket. For the love of God, please be a parking ticket.

"City of Niagara Falls, Office of the City Clerk." She read the certificate in an emotionless monotone, though she did stumble slightly over the next words. "M-Marriage License Bureau. Certificate of…Marriage Registration. This is to certify that Anthony Morton Micelli and Angela Katherine Micelli, nee Bower, were married on November 2nd, 1988…"

"Oh God, it's worse than I thought!" Tony moaned in utter anguish. "I revealed my middle name in public!"

Angela burst out laughing, though it had not been a joke. "On the plus side, I've been looking for an excuse to ditch Michael's last name for years. Looks like I finally found it."

Tony was getting annoyed. "Angela, this isn't funny."

"Two dull-as-dishwater suburbanites who have been trying for four years to convince the world that there is nothing between them suddenly get high and run off to Niagara Falls together? Check your dictionary, pal—that's hilarious!"

"It's not either!" he all but roared at her.

"Tony, get a grip. We lost our heads and had a little misadventure. It isn't the end of the world."

Maybe not to her. But he'd been fantasizing about calling her his wife since they'd stood up for the Fergusons two years ago. The dream of her in a gown and veil, bouquet in hand, promising to love and cherish him for the rest of their lives, had been the carrot on a stick that had seen him through some of the roughest moments of the last couple of years. He'd been working so hard to better himself, trying to grow into the kind of man she could be proud to one day call her own. Now that dream was gone. Worse than gone. It was a joke to be laughed at. He wondered whether there was a hole nearby that he could crawl into and die, or should he just throw himself over the falls and be done with it?

"I guess it's not," he finally managed to lie. What was left now but to save face and help her do the same? "Despite all this, at least we know we don't gotta worry about the scariest verse of 'Shuffle Off to Buffalo,' huh?"

"What? That song wasn't scary."

He was trying to be tactful, but since she was so shaken up, and probably as hungover as he was, she wasn't picking up on his attempts at subtlety. "I'm talking about the part where the stork pays a visit to leave a little, cute what-is-it?"

"Oh." Then it finally sunk in and, she started. "Oh!"

"Yeah, but we don't have to worry about that," he stressed again. "You're on the pill and have been taking it like clockwork for years now."

"Right." She still hadn't met his eyes. "Wait, how did you know that?"

"Not for nothing, Angela, but you're talking to the guy who cleans your medicine cabinet and runs your errands. Who picks up your prescriptions from the pharmacy every twenty-eight days." Was it creepy that he'd noticed? Yes, probably, if he had to ask himself. He supposed some part of him had wanted to be prepared if anything had ever happened between the two of them. Maybe he had always known something like this was inevitable.

"Oh. Right." She choked out the weirdest noise he'd ever heard from a human mouth. It was something between a sigh of relief and a half-drowned swimmer gasping for air. "Thank goodness for small favors, huh?"

"Speaking of which, I also know you haven't seen any action since you dumped that geek Geoffrey."

She folded her arms forlornly. "You couldn't possibly know that for sure."

Tony shrugged. "Well, you've never brought anyone home or introduced anyone to the family in all that time. And you're usually with me and the kids whenever you're not working."

"Hey!"

"No offense intended." He truly hadn't meant either observation as an insult. That she took time to get to know a guy before jumping into bed with him, and that she was so devoted to her family and career, were both things he admired about her.

"That doesn't prove anything!" said Angela through gritted teeth. "For all you know, I could be having a seedy affair with some sweaty gigolo I picked up in a dirty back-alley one morning on the way to the office! I could be nailing him on my desk during my lunch hour every single day!"

Now, it was Tony's turn to laugh. "No, you couldn't. Mona commutes with you, and she'd never be able to keep something like that quiet. She'd be way too proud of you." Angela let her head fall to the table with a bang, moaning in humiliation. "It wasn't a personal insult, Angela. I was just going to say that I got a pretty thorough checkup a little over a year ago and haven't been with anyone since, so between the two of us, I don't think we need to worry about HIV or anything like that."

She lifted her head, looking annoyed. "Over a year? You? Please, we both know you're just saying that to make me feel better."

"Come on. When have I had time to go cruising for chicks lately, Angela?" Despite the ridiculous circumstances, he felt compelled to defend his social life, or lack thereof. "I barely have time to sleep, much less with anybody. I've been working, going to school, running the Parents' Association, coaching a Little League team, raising two kids." The last woman he'd scored with had had to buy him at an auction, and that wasn't the kind of thing he felt like admitting. Especially to his wife. Marone a mi… "Three kids, if you count Mona."

That got a muted smile out of her, which he much preferred to the hysterical laughter. "Okay, fair enough. So, what you're saying is, nothing bad is going to come of whatever happened last night, and there's no point in dwelling on it any further. So we should put it behind us and get on with our lives."

"Exactly!" The lingering effects of whatever drug they had been under the influence of must have been fading away. Her mind was getting back to its usual sharp state. "Honestly, I think we might be jumping the gun a little. I mean, we don't even know for sure if anything actually happened last night."

There was an angry thump on the wall by the head of the bed. " We do!" a muffled voice called out. "We had to listen to your antics all night, damn it!"

"Us too!" There was another angry thump and another angry voice from behind the opposite wall. "My God, man, what were you people doing to each other over there?!"

"Whatever it was, I don't think it was legal!" the first voice hollered.

Angela was looking at the window like she was thinking about jumping from it. Tony slammed it shut, just to be safe. "Well, sounds like we've worn out our welcome around here, Angela," he observed with a heavy sigh. "Should we head out?"

"Yes!" their two neighbors bellowed in unison.

"Ay-oh, put a lid on it!" Tony fired back at them. "You stiffs don't wanna get into a shouting match with a Brooklyn boy!"

"Tony, please quiet down," Angela begged, clutching her head.

"Sorry. But they started it!" said Tony petulantly.

As Angela was seriously considering making a widow of herself, there came a knock at the door. "Come in," she invited, since she couldn't possibly be any more humiliated than she already was.

"Are you sure?" the voice replied meekly. "The do-not-disturb sign is out, but it has been for a while now, and we weren't sure whether you had just forgotten…"

"You two should hang that do-not-disturb sign on the ceiling over your bed as a reminder!" one of the disgruntled neighbors barked snidely.

"Hey, stifle it!" Tony hollered back at him.

"Sorry!" the voice at the door apologized hastily. "If you guys need more time to wrap things up, I'll come back in twenty minutes."

"He didn't mean you!" said Angela, pitying all of the poor bystanders who had been impacted by their moment of insanity. Speaking of innocent bystanders, what was going to happen when the kids got wind of this? "Come in, please," she called out, desperate for something else to think about.

A uniformed hotel clerk appeared pushing a heavily-laden cart. "Room service!" he greeted brightly. "Good morning to you, Mr. and Mrs. Micelli. Or, well, afternoon." The clerk, a young man of an age with the various frat boys who had gotten them into this mess, favored them with a wink.

"What's so good about it?" Tony snapped.

"Tony, please," said Angela. While she understood all too well the reason for his black mood, it wasn't this poor kid's fault they'd made idiots out of themselves. "Be nice."

To his credit, Tony looked suitably guilty. "Sorry."

"Oh, no, I'm the one who's sorry. Interrupting your honeymoon and all. Congratulations to both of you, by the way." The kid gave Angela a winning smile, as he busied himself setting the table, and she returned it in spite of herself. "But I didn't want you to miss brunch. It comes free as part of the honeymoon package you purchased."

Angela's stomach lurched at the mention of brunch. Tony's initial warning when she'd awakened had been correct. Thinking about food was a mistake. "Brunch?" she said uncertainly. Was there a graceful way to get out of this? It was free, so they couldn't use the old my wallet's in my other pants excuse.

"Not just brunch. A champagne brunch," said the young clerk, plucking a bottle of 1982 Dom Perignon from a bucket of ice and holding it up for their perusal. Tony kept politely silent, but the look of sheer horror in his eyes spoke for itself. As for Angela, something was starting to bubble up in the back of her throat, and she gulped it down with the determination of a warrior fighting for her life.

The clerk then proceeded to remove polished covers from various silver trays. "Mm, smell that? Chef outdid himself today. We've got fresh fruit cups, heavy on the whipped cream…"

Ick.

"Chef's famous cinnamon rolls, still warm from the oven and positively oozing with thick vanilla icing."

Double ick!

"Scrambled eggs with fresh parsley and dill, accompanied by crisp, smoky bacon…"

Angela swayed in her seat. Dear God, no!

"And Chef's specialty—seafood crepes smothered with shrimp, crabmeat and scallops!"

That was the last straw. Angela leapt from her seat and made a mad dash for the bathroom.

As she slammed the door behind her, she distantly heard the clerk ask Tony, "uh…was it something I said?"