Chapter Three

 

 

When Your Tolerance Is Too High To Blame It On The Liquor

Toy’s scream nearly burst my eardrum when I asked her to be a witness. I watched from my perch at the edge of my bed as she stormed around our room in the hotel suite we were sharing with our youngest sister, Tasha, ripping through her suitcase, holding up articles of clothing for inspection and discarding them on the bed next to mine when they didn’t pass muster. It hadn’t taken me long to find her after I agreed to Jereth’s proposal. Instead of traipsing about the hotel in search of another prospect for me—as she told Jereth she would do—she’d been glued to a slot machine with a handful of three-digit payouts sticking out of her closed fist. Anticipating a less than excited response to my news, I’d brought her upstairs to enlighten her in the comfort of our almost soundproof suite.

“You were supposed to get dick, not a husband!”

My chuckle was surprisingly light and devoid of the paranoia that agreeing to marry a stranger should have brought on. Thank God I’d had the foresight to get her behind closed doors; I could only imagine the shock on the faces of innocent bystanders as she shouted that out loud.

“Technically, I only got a fiancé.” For now. The added words went without saying, but I might as well have said them aloud.

Narrowed dark-brown eyes, nearly identical to my own, sliced through the air and landed on me. “And technically, I ought to beat your ass for stressing me out this way! I brought that man over there to talk you out of your panties, not talk you out of your hand in marriage!”

Just the thought of handing Jereth my panties had my face warm. I’d never seen a man so fine. Tall, dark and handsome—just how a good man should be. His smooth, mahogany skin that reached to the top of his sexy-ass bald head, those almond-shaped, chestnut-brown eyes, those tight pants displaying a sizable package and even tighter butt, and those slugs! The Lord knew I loved a man with gold teeth. I might not have been raised in the hood but the hood was in me, and the moment I saw those slugs I was ready to slide him my panties and tell him to handle up, modesty be damned.

“Jereth said that he had turned down your proposition of sex with me. Which, by the way, remind me to fight you for that. You really had me out here looking like a whole-ass prostitute with a pint-sized pimp.”

Rising from the suitcase, she whipped around to face me, the sew-in she’d had installed just before this trip fanning around her shoulders elegantly. Her stylist, Keema, truly had the Midas touch. “Pint-sized?! We’re the same damn height!”

Rolling my eyes, I leaned back on my elbows. “Did I stutter?”

The wet sound of her sucking her teeth filled the space left empty from her lack of response. “Anyway, what else did Mr. Jereth say that made you take leave of your God-given sense and agree to marry him after a two-hour conversation? Hmm?” She stood, glaring at me, a ball of white fabric fisted at her hip.

I sighed. “It wasn’t so much what he said; it was how he said it. The way he looked at me was…” I broke off with a shake of my head. My body was tingling from just the memory of his gaze on me. “Toy. He looked at me like I was the missing link to the greatest mystery.”

“That sounds great, TT, really. So, why couldn’t you just fuck him and move on? Why marry this strange-ass man?!”

Not having an answer for her, all I could do was shrug. “He asked me.”

“Tonya! You gotta come on, man. You can’t tell me this shit doesn’t sound crazy to you!”

“I mean, yeah, maybe.”

“Maybe?! You don’t even know this man!”

“You weren’t thinking about that when you were being a dick recruiter!”

“Because it was just for sex!” She flailed her arms, waving the garment in the air like a forgotten flag. “You insert the penis, take it out, put it back in, everyone comes, and goes on about their merry way! You don’t have to know someone to get an orgasm off of them.”

I smirked at her minimalist description. “That’s what’s wrong with your ass now; listening to that damn sex podcast got your head all fucked up. In theory, sex is that simple but in execution, it’s far from it.”

She shook her head. “For us grown-ups, it really is that simple.”

My sigh was resolute. “Toy, the first time I got married, it was to a man I’d known for years and had been in a relationship with at the time, but it still didn’t work out. I learned the hard way that no matter how well you think you know someone, there is always a chance that you don’t really know shit about them. To me, there isn’t a difference in marrying a virtual stranger because Evan turned out to be a stranger as well.” Sitting up, I propped my head on my hand and stuck my tongue out at her. “Besides, you wanted me to ‘cut loose’ and have a good time. I can’t think of anything more fun than getting married in Las Vegas. Hell, with as many people who do it every day, it must be the funnest thing in the world.”

Toy released a long-suffering sigh and held the ball of fabric out to me. That was her way of telling me that she was done with the subject and wanted to move on. “Here, go put this on.”

Instantly, I shook my head, not even reaching for the…whatever it was that she shoved at me.

“I’m not wearing that.”

“What? Why not? It’s cute, white, and it’s as close to traditional as you’re going to get for free.” Grasping the fabric, she shook it out to reveal a sleeveless, A-line dress in the style of a button-down shirt, complete with stiff collar and lapels. It would have been modest if not for the deep plunge in the front. Traditional, my ass.

I gave her a look. “Do you honestly think I give a damn about some tradition?” Sliding off the bed, I made my way over to my suitcase, which was zipped closed and sitting on a stand in the corner. Rifling through the few backup outfits I’d brought with me, my eyes landed on a three-quarter sleeve, bodycon midi dress in my favorite color. It was perfect, and I grasped the neckline and lifted it out of my luggage, allowing it to unravel from its rolled state.

“I’m wearing this.”

Toy’s eyes bugged. “You’re going to wear a purple dress to get married in?!”

“It’s not purple, Toy; it’s burgundy, and it’s perfect.”

Without another word, I changed into the dress, pairing it with the black platform Mary Jane-style pumps that I’d packed for the trip but hadn’t yet worn. After brushing my teeth and fingering my twist-out to perfection, I was ready to go.

Toy snatched her key card from the coffee table and shoved it into the pocket of her jumper then crossed the room to change out of her rhinestone-covered slides and into a pair of mesh wedges that zipped closed on top.

“Where’s Tasha?” I hadn’t seen our youngest sister since the entire bachelorette party split up after the Magic Mike XL show ended just after midnight and Toy and I headed back to the hotel. Three hours had passed since then, and it didn’t look like she had been to our suite, since her bed still had that freshly-made look that the housekeepers had perfected. Tasha might have been a neat freak, but she wasn’t folding any sheets into geometric shapes.

“Her and Gigi went to some waffle place off The Strip. I texted her when you were in the bathroom and she said she’d meet us at the chapel.”

Giselle, or Gigi, as we in the family called her, and Tasha were often attached at the hip. We had all made the trip out west for her older sister Danielle’s bachelorette party. Danielle was a family lawyer with her own practice and was marrying a local judge in a few days. My sisters and I were extremely proud of my cousin for grinding it out for her career with an almost single-minded focus, and if anyone deserved a happily ever after that included becoming a power couple of black excellence, it was her.

“Good. Let’s head down; I don’t want to keep Jereth waiting.”

Toy rolled her eyes but wisely kept her mouth shut. There was no changing my mind about this.