Chapter 2
Travis
"Would you be quiet?" I hear someone whisper, and my eyes spring open. I take a minute to look around and see if I was dreaming or if it was actually coming from someplace in my house. "We should make coffee." I hear another whisper, and I look over and see that it’s almost seven o’clock. The sun from outside is slowly trying to creep in from the blinds. My head turns toward the bedroom door as I listen to make sure.
"Oh, we should maybe make him something to eat." I close my eyes, blinking away the sleep, before sitting up in bed, and tossing the top cover to the side. Sliding out of bed, I tiptoe toward the front door while I hear another whisper. I stand in the doorway, making sure I recognize the voices before I walk out.
"We should have brought doughnuts or something." I shake my head and look out of the bedroom, seeing my three sisters all huddled at the front door. "You go and get him." Presley pushes Shelby toward the stairs, and if I hadn’t just awoken from a deep sleep, I would laugh at the three of them.
"What the hell are you guys doing here?" I say, stepping out of my bedroom and looking down over the railing. The sound of all three of my sisters yelling fills the house. They all look up at me, huddled together.
"Jesus fucking Christ,” Shelby, my oldest sister, says, putting her hand to her chest. "You gave me a fucking heart attack." Her black hair is tied up on top of her head, and she wears black yoga pants with a white shirt. Her blue eyes glare at me as if I did something wrong.
"Why the hell are you sneaking into my house?" I put my hand on the wooden banister and look down at them.
"We aren’t sneaking." Clarabella shakes her head. "Who sneaks in by using a key?" She holds up the key she got from under the mat outside.
"You are lucky that I didn’t come down with the baseball bat I have in the bedroom." I look at each of them.
"One." My youngest sister, Presley, puts up a manicured finger. "You suck at baseball," she reminds me. "You lost the game for us last year, and two"—she puts up another finger—"go get dressed. I’m about to throw up my croissant I just ate."
"I’m in my boxers," I say, looking down at myself. "And you are in my house. Imagine if I was naked." I throw my hands up, and my voice goes louder. The three of them all grimace with the fact that I could have been naked. "And two, I did not lose that game. It was the three of you thinking you can each catch a ball and fall into each other." I point at the three of them, all of them rolling their eyes.
"Go get dressed. We’ll start the coffee,” Shelby says, walking into the house and toward the kitchen.
I shake my head and walk back into my bedroom, going straight for the bathroom. I wash my face and run my hands through my hair before grabbing my blue sweatpants and going back downstairs. The smell of coffee fills the whole house. "Okay," Shelby says. "Rock-paper-scissors on who gets to say."
"No way," Presley says. "You’re the oldest." She points at her, and I walk into the kitchen. The three of them stop talking as soon as they see me standing here.
"What the hell is going on?" I look at my sisters as they each look at each other, neither of them wanting to talk. Walking to the coffee machine, I pour myself a cup of steaming hot coffee. I don’t bother with the milk when I turn and lean back on the counter. "Okay, go." I take another gulp.
"Okay, don’t freak out," Clarabella starts. "But the fridges at the venue stopped working."
I look at them, not sure what she is saying as she walks out of the kitchen and goes to the living room, sitting on the L-shaped gray couch. "Okay, and…?" I look at Shelby.
"All the food for the wedding is spoiled." She says the words, and I close my eyes. This is definitely not something you want to hear on your wedding day.
"But the good news," Clarabella says, "is that we already called our supplier, and from what he said, he should be able to get us most of the stuff."
"Most of the stuff," I repeat. "What about the rest of it?"
"Well, that is going to be our problem," Shelby says. "All you have to worry about is showing up on time."
"God, I’m starving," Clarabella announces, going to the fridge and opening it. "Why don’t we have a nice family breakfast before our brother finally ties the knot?" She smiles.
"Oh, we should have brought champagne," Presley says from the couch. "We did not put our best foot forward." She lies down on the couch. "I can’t believe you are giving away this couch."
I don’t say anything. Instead, I look around at the brown boxes stacked all over the place. Jennifer’s things were delivered over a month ago and have yet to be unboxed. Every single time we had plans to unpack, something would come up. I walk over to the couch and sit down, looking around at the bare walls. All the things I had hanging I took down to make Jennifer feel more at home. "I swear you guys will be married five years, and I have a feeling these boxes will still be here," Presley says quietly from beside me.
"We’ve been busy," I remind her. "I was the only vet at the practice for over a month. I worked seven days a week." When I passed the exam, I stayed at the emergency clinic. They hired me full-time, and I can’t tell you how much I loved it. But I knew that there was no way I would be able to move up, so two years after that, I got the opportunity to open a practice near my hometown with two other vets.
The three of us never expected it to become as big as it did. We were so in demand that we outgrew the little place we rented after six months and bought our own land and built it to our liking. "Michelle had her baby early, and Roy broke his foot. What did you want from me?"
"You’ve been engaged for six months, and she has yet to move in," Presley states, pointing at all the boxes starting to collect dust.
"She had a lease, and she couldn’t break it," I repeat the same thing I’ve been telling my mother and anyone else who asked about why she wasn’t living with me. "And she didn’t want to leave her roommate high and dry."
"I just find it crazy that you are marrying someone you haven’t even lived with." She sits up. "It’s insane to me. What if you get on her nerves, or she gets on yours?"
I take another gulp of coffee, hoping she doesn’t see that I have had the conversation with myself over and over again. "It’ll be fine. It’s a learning curve."
"A learning curve." She gets up and laughs. "A learning curve is getting bangs. Moving in with someone is a huge deal."
"Aren’t you supposed to be calming me down on my wedding day and telling me that everything is going to be okay, instead of making me second-guess it?” I ask her, and she just shrugs.
"Fine." She rolls her eyes. "It’s a great idea that you didn’t live with each other and the longest you spent in the same house at one time is two weeks because you were both on vacation and stuck on an island."
I pfft out and laugh all at the same time nervously. "She stays over all the time," I say, and she puts her hands on her hips.
"I bet you one hundred dollars that she doesn’t even have a toothbrush here." She puts out her hand for me to smack it.
"Mom said I’m not allowed to take any money from you," I say, refusing to admit that she is right, and also it goes to say I also don’t have one at her place.
"Presley," Shelby calls her. "You are in charge of making toast." Shelby then looks at me. "You"—she points at me—"over easy or scrambled?"
"Either is good," I reply as Presley walks into the kitchen to help my sisters with breakfast.
Today is my wedding day, I think to myself, leaning over and putting my coffee cup on the little table that will soon be leaving. Married, I let the word sink in. It feels like just yesterday we met, and now we are getting married. The nerves start to kick in my stomach. The feeling slowly climbs up, and the pressure starts in my chest.
"Come and eat," Clarabella calls from the kitchen over her shoulder. I grab my cup, getting up and zigzagging toward the kitchen. Grabbing one of the plates on the counter, I fill it up with eggs, bacon, and sausage.
I walk over to the little dinette table I have off to the side, pulling out a chair. My sisters join me a minute later. "Your last meal as a single person," Clarabella says, sighing.
"Can we not make it sound like I’m having my last meal before I’m executed?” I say, grabbing my fork, and the three of them laugh.
"You ready for today?" Shelby asks as she takes a bite of her toast.
"The question I should be asking is are you guys ready for today?" I look at them. When it came to planning the wedding, I left them in charge of it because they were the professionals after all. I had no idea what I was doing, and if a decision needed to be made, they called Jennifer.
"Everything is going to be perfect," Clarabella claims. "I double-checked everything last night before I went home." She smiles at me, and then her phone rings in her hand.
"Private caller," she says, swiping on the phone. "Hello," she answers, and I can see it happen all before my eyes. "What are you talking about?" Her face goes white as she looks at my sister. "Oh my God, we will be right there." The way her voice sounds, you know that it’s not good. She’s already out of her seat, and so are we when she looks at me. "Don’t freak out," she says, and I don’t know if she is telling me this or herself. It really feels like it’s the calm before the storm because as soon as she says the words, chaos erupts: "The kitchen is on fire."