Last Call (Cocktail #5) by Alice Clayton Page A

and then hung off the back of the couch until he picked me up and carried me upstairs piggyback. He had his last trip before the wedding, a two-week shoot in Vietnam. I hated that I couldn’t come along. National Geographic was sending him to do astudy on the newly developed cave system in Son Doong, just opened for tours in the last two years or so, and the hottest ticket in Vietnamese tourism right now. There were entire sections that hadn’t been photographed yet, underground rain forests and rivers that hadn’t been seen by hardly anyone. Rappelling down rocky slippery cliffs, wading through dark rushing water, dodging bats and bugs the size of dinner plates—it was exactly the kind of thing Simon loved. And he’d capture it on film in his unique way, taking viewers along with him to the deepest, darkest recesses under the earth.
    “I still can’t believe you can’t put this trip off until after the wedding.” I sighed, still perched on his back as he navigated the upstairs hallway.
    “I think it’s more that you can’t believe you aren’t coming with me,” he replied.
    “True, but mostly I just wish you were here to help me finish up this last little bit of planning.”
    “Babe, you’ve got Frick and Frack the planning twins competing to alphabetize your favors. I think you’ll be okay,” he said, grabbing his duffel bag from his closet and dropping it onto the bed. He dropped me onto the bed a moment later.
    It was true, my mother and Mimi were running things pretty well at this point. And as busy as I’d stayed at work, I was glad for the help. But still, there were last-minute things still to do and he was getting to skip out on some of them.
    “Remember when we said this wedding would be about us, and what we wanted?” I asked, watching as T-shirts and shorts went into the bag.
    “I think we waved bye-bye to that a few months ago, babe, when we had three separate discussions about Jordan almonds and what color netting they needed to be wrapped in.”
    “I know, I know. I don’t even like almonds. But it’s . . . I mean . . . it’s still us, right?”
    “Yes, it’s still us. Us, and three hundred of our closest friends.”
    “Ugh. Three hundred. It sounds insane when I say it, but when I go through the list, I don’t know who we’d cut out at this point,” I cried, laying back against the pillows. The guest list had ballooned up and up until it was beyond ridiculous. Most of Simon’s old school pals and their wives were coming west for the wedding, which was wonderful to see. His childhood neighbors, the Whites, were coming as well. He was very happy when he saw their RSVP.
    “How many Jillian Design clients are on the list? How many of your parents’ friends made the cut? There’s tons of people on there that we don’t know. Don’t know well, let’s say.”
    “Let’s not have this discussion again, okay?” The guest list, the menu, the parking attendants, everything was just getting bigger and bigger. And the bigger it became, the more I could tell Simon was putting on hisgame face, making it seem like he was okay with everything. But when it was just the two of us, and the planning committee had retired for the night, he admitted it was a bit overwhelming. But he was in for a penny, in for a pound, and insisted we keep everything as it was. But that didn’t mean he didn’t get a little disgruntled from time to time. We’d had several tense conversations over the last few months, mostly over the guest list. He didn’t understand, not coming from a large family that all lived within an hour of where we now lived, why it was necessary to invite so many people.
    Mostly, though, I think seeing how many guests were in his column, and how many were in my column was difficult to see. It was like a black-and-white reminder of who he’d lost. And who wouldn’t be there. He was a trooper. He was my trooper.
    And it was all happening in a month. And then we could begin to