The Reunion Read online

  The Reunion

  Amy Matayo

  Contents

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  2. (Springfield)

  3. (Seattle)

  4. (Nashville)

  5. (Springfield)

  6. (Nashville)

  Chapter 7

  8. (Somewhere in Tennessee)

  Chapter 9

  10. (The Wedding Day)

  11. (The Wedding)

  Other books by Amy Matayo:

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Chapter 12

  THE REUNION

  To everyone currently stuck at home during #coronavirus2020:

  happy social distancing and happy reading!

  To the year 2020:

  my gosh, do better.

  Copyright © 2020 by Amy Matayo Print Edition

  All rights reserved.

  Visit my website at www.amymatayo.com

  Cover Designer: Murphy Rae/Indie Solutions

  Editor: Kristin Avila

  Proofreader: Stephanne Smith

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

  The Reunion

  by Amy Matayo

  Chapter One

  (Nashville)

  Dillon

  I glance down at my phone again, trying to be discreet. It’s early Friday afternoon, exactly five days before my wedding, and I kinda forgot to do something. I sorta maybe a little bit forgot to order the cake. I mean, I ordered it. I told the bakery that I wanted one and I went there a few times to eat samples and I remember saying I needed a cake big enough to serve two hundred people because that’s the number my mother gave me. And I gave them my wedding date and paid a small deposit. I remember all of this.

  I just don’t remember telling them what kind to bake.

  I chose lemon. I think I chose lemon.

  But then Teddy told me he wouldn’t come if I didn’t pick chocolate, and I’m already making him be a bridesmaid, so I figured I should comply with his request, at least for one tier. I told them chocolate on the bottom layer. But then my grandmother reminded me she’s allergic to chocolate. So, I called them back, and just as they answered, my doorbell rang. It was Liam stopping by to tell me he was heading to Springfield, Missouri to attend a benefit concert with Teddy and Chad. I hung up on the bakery and kissed Liam for quite a while because three days was a long time to go without seeing someone you love, and I was a little bit sad about it. After that, I’m blank.

  I don’t remember calling them back.

  Last night I had a dream that I was slowly drowning in a pool of melted chocolate. It was pulling me under like quicksand, and I couldn’t get out even though I kept drinking it through a straw out of desperation. I woke up with a cold sweat and a phantom stomach ache, and that’s when I remembered the cake. Darn Teddy and his willingness to help people. If he hadn’t headlined that concert for Riley’s bakery—in my defense, back then I had no idea who Riley was—none of this would have happened. So even though she’s likely to be indirectly part of my weird family in the future, I blame her. Or maybe I blame Springfield. Or maybe tornados.

  It’s all much easier than blaming myself.

  Weddings are stressful, and I shouldn’t be expected to keep track of everything. That’s what my mother is for. The rest of the fault lies with her and Teddy and my grandmother. At least, that’s what I’ve decided. I’m not the one with the chocolate allergy.

  Right now, I’m waiting for a call from the bakery to either assuage or confirm my fears. I glance at the phone again and force myself to breathe. Still nothing.

  “Dillon put your phone away. I need you to concentrate.”

  Sometimes I forget that my mother has laser-beam vision and can spot a millisecond of distraction in, well…a millisecond. It’s the one curse of being her daughter. That, and her enthusiasm for weddings. If enthusiasm means smothering interest, which is how I would describe her involvement the last four months. If someone would create a wedding show where two middle-aged strangers get married for money, let’s just say that my mother would be the first to sign up. Not for the money, nor for the groom. She doesn’t need either one of those. My mother is already married to my father.

  She lives for planning weddings. Specifically, this one.

  She has a notebook filled with twenty-two-year-old magazine articles she’s kept since I was six. Pictures of hideously outdated wedding dresses and big, poufy veils. Recipes for appetizers like fancy pigs-in-a-blanket (made with canned crescent rolls) and punch that involves Kool-Aid as the main ingredient. Tips on how to politely RSVP that include sending a letter with a twenty-five-cent stamp. When I informed my mother we sent our invitations electronically and therefore the RSVPs would be coming that way, she came close to fainting. Once her lightheadedness passed, she gave me a long lecture on etiquette I won’t soon forget. Coincidently, I feel another one forthcoming. The only tactic I can think of is to try to ward it off.

  “Concentrate on what? This isn’t brain surgery, Mother. Just pick one and cut the tag off already.”

  I know it’s the wrong thing to say the moment the words leave my lips and inwardly curse myself for three long seconds. When that’s finished, I wait. The lecture should start in five, four, three—

  “Pick one? Cut it off?” She was early this time. “I can’t just cut it off unless we’re certain it’s the right one. What if it’s the wrong color? What if it looks too old-fashioned? What if—”

  “Mom, we’ve been staring at these same two dresses for weeks now.” I know what’s really going on here. The issue is not that she can’t decide on a dress. The issue is that this is the last decision she has left to make. Once she chooses a dress, the only thing left to do is wait for Saturday. My mother has come alive in the four months we’ve spent planning this wedding. What if her reason for living is gone? I could tell her about the cake and have her deal with it, but then my reason for living would be gone as well because she would kill me. “The wedding is Saturday. Your window for returning a dress closes tonight at ten. Just pick one and cut off the price tag.” I’m struck with an idea. “Here, I’ll do it.” I pick up a pair of scissors, do a quick eeny meany miney mo in my head, decide the results of that game don’t matter, and reach for the tag on the uglier dress. I hate this one, but I wouldn’t dare tell her this. I make a dramatic display of lowering the scissors, and then make to cut the tag off when—

  “Not that one!” My mother stops me. I knew it, she hates this one too. It’s pink and has two rows of ruffles along the bottom, for heaven’s sake. “Cut the tag on the other one, and I’ll take this one back today.”

  With a smirk, I lift the tag on the pretty dress and snip. “There. Done.” I roll up the ugly dress and stuff it in a bag. “I should have done that last Friday when we had this same conversation. Or last Tuesday. Or last month when you first bought these things.” I hand her the bag. “Take this back to the store before it’s too late. And while you’re out, can you pick up my veil at She Said Yes? It was ready yesterday, but I haven’t had time to swing by there yet.”

  This is me giving her something to do.

  Her eyes light up, and she takes the bag from me. “Sure, I’ll be back in an hour. While I’m gone, make sure you call the
caterer to double-check the menu. And remember to add two more guests because your aunt Margaret decided to come after all and she’s bringing her new boyfriend. Which also means we’ll need two more bottles of wine.”

  “How young is this one?” I ask. My aunt is a serial dater of much younger men. And how much are they planning to drink? A bottle of wine apiece seems a little excessive.

  “Thirty-one.”

  “Ew. He’s only three years older than me.”

  “Yeah, but she’s happy. Maybe this one will stick.”

  “Like Carl stuck, and Nigel stuck, and Greg stuck, and what’s-his-name from Nicaragua stuck, you mean?”

  “I seem to remember you dating a few frogs before you found your prince too, Dillon.” My mother says this so passive-aggressively I’m almost positive a bruise forms on my arm. “Remember Judah with that awful mole?”

  I narrow my gaze. We have had this conversation for nearly a year now. A word of warning: if you ever approach my mother with an unsightly mole on your face, you’d better be prepared to be analyzed, diagnosed, and lectured immediately. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  “Yes, I remember, and today is the last day we will ever speak of him. I did hear he had it removed, though.”

  She sighs. “Oh, thank goodness. At least I won’t have to worry about his impending cancer anymore.”

  This is my mother, folks. She worries about everything, even imaginary medical issues of people she barely knows.

  “Maybe now you’ll get some sleep tonight.”

  “I don’t like your sarcastic tone, young lady.”

  “Why is Dillon being sarcastic this time?” My grandmother says, waltzing into my mother’s bedroom without knocking. Showing up unannounced is a disease that runs among the women in this family; I try to abstain as a rule, but my future children will undoubtedly hate me for it one day.

  “Margaret and her latest boyfriend,” my mother says with an exasperated sigh. I shoot her a bug-eyed look. I’m sorry, but the age difference is gross.

  “I’m all for women’s empowerment,” my grandmother says, “but that boy is way too young for her.”

  “He’s barely older than Dillon,” my mother says, finally having the decency to look appalled. “He’s probably after her money.”

  “She doesn’t have any money,” I say with an eye roll.

  “Her body, then,” my grandmother says, and it’s all I can do not to dry heave all over my mother’s dress.

  “Whose body?” Liam says, walking into the room without knocking. We have an affliction, the lot of us. And we’re passing it on to someone as pure and decent as my fiancé. In a few short years, I’m afraid we’ll have ruined him. Our future kids will probably hate him too.

  “Aunt Margaret’s,” I say. “Her new boyfriend is thirty-one.”

  “Lucky guy. Can’t say I blame him.”

  “What?” I’m irritated and a little jealous. Does he have a secret thing for my fifty-seven-year-old aunt?

  He shrugs. “She looks just like you, babe. If you’re that hot at almost sixty, I’ll be the luckiest man in the retirement home.”

  Well, then. I blush at the words and thank the gods of good genes for my future popularity among the rubber-soled crowd.

  “I think she looks just like me,” my mother mutters, always knowing how to take down a compliment.

  “No one’s that lucky,” Liam quips, knowing even more how to dish them out.

  My mother can’t keep a grin from trying to appear, though she gives it her best effort.

  “Hey babe,” Liam says, “I got a call from the bakery a few minutes ago. I guess they mixed up our phone numbers…”

  This is where my eyes go wide. Where I send him desperate messages with my razor-sharp brain waves. Where my head begins to shake in subtle yet violent back-and-forth movements. Where my hands would have started waving a warning if my mother hadn’t been standing right there. Where I stop breathing and my heartbeat skyrockets. Where he really should have gotten all these signals but didn’t because men are somehow incapable of receiving telepathic messages.

  “They said you never ordered the cake?”

  I look at him and feel my insides deflate. Are we even soulmates?

  It would have been such a great life with Liam.

  But now it won’t be.

  He’ll never make it to the retirement home since now I have to kill him.

  * * *

  Liam

  “It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.” I’ve said this at least a hundred times in the past ten minutes, and even I don’t believe it. Who forgets to order a wedding cake? We sampled no less than a dozen types on three different trips. We talked about it, asked other people’s opinions, decided together on a flavor I can no longer recall. Lemon? Chocolate? No, I think someone is allergic to chocolate. Strawberry? No matter, the cake is like the most important part aside from the rings and the after-party sex. I can tell you one thing: you won’t catch me forgetting about that. No way.

  Not a chance.

  I laugh to myself and resume comforting Dillon. She probably wouldn’t appreciate my sex thoughts in her current state. Not with her mother undoing everything I’m attempting to handle.

  “How on earth did you forget the cake?” The woman asks this every time I say it will be okay. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was undermining me on purpose. She’s sweet in her own way, but all thoughts of everything and everyone have taken a back seat to this wedding. It’s been a long four months, and she’s stressed through each one. I never should have blurted out the cake thing with Dillon’s mother in the room. I knew it before the words finished leaving my mouth.

  “I didn’t know I forgot it,” Dillon says, sniffing into her sleeve. We’re all sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed—me, Dillon, her mother, and her grandmother—listening to Dillon cry. The two older women can’t stop clucking tongues and sighing. It seems to be their alternative to if you can’t say anything nice… I’m trying hard to come up with a solution that doesn’t suck.

  So far, I’ve got nothing. I can’t cook. Lord knows Dillon can’t cook. Her grandmother offered to make a dozen pies, but who’s ever heard of wedding pies? And what kind would you even make? Strawberry? Chocolate? Mincemeat? What even is mincemeat? A conglomerate of all kinds of actual meat smashed together? That doesn’t sound good at all. If I seem close to panicking, that’s because I am.

  We’re almost out of time.

  “Just let me make pies,” her grandmother says again. “I can ask both your aunts to help, and Sabrina will be here tomorrow. She can help too.”

  Dillon shakes her head. “Sabrina’s taking me to a spa tomorrow, and I want a cake. I want to smash it in Liam’s face to show everyone how much I love him. It’s every bride’s dream.”

  I frown at this. I highly doubt it’s every bride’s dream, but it must be a weird one of hers, so I keep my mouth shut. I just hope she knows that if she gets to shove cake in my face, I also get to shove it in hers. Turnabout is fair play, even if you are wearing expensive clothing.

  Not to brag, but my suit is a Tom Ford original.

  Before you think I’m a fashion snob, I told Teddy I bought a suit off the rack at Dillard’s, and he demanded I return it and meet him at his tailor’s.

  I don’t even know who Tom Ford is.

  The suit was freaking expensive.

  I rub my hands together and stand up. “Then we’ll get a cake.”

  Three female heads tip up to look at me, all with questions in their eyes. Dillon’s mother mutters, “Who do you think you are, Emeril Lagasse?” but I ignore her. First, because it’s a valid question and second, because I’m not even sure Emeril Lagasse makes cakes. All I know is he says “Bam!” a lot.

  “How?” Dillon says. “The only place that could make one now is the supermarket, and even then, we’d have to buy off the shelf.”

  “You can’t get a wedding cake at a supermarket.” Dillon’s mother groans and dro
ps her head into her hand.

  “Anything but a supermarket.” Her grandmother says, clucking that tongue again.

  What’s wrong with a supermarket? Even I’m not dumb enough to ask.

  “Just…let me take care of it.” I mentally check call a supermarket off my options list—which was the only item on the list because it was my only idea—and kiss Dillon on the forehead. She likes it when I kiss her that way, says it’s the most romantic kiss a man can give the woman he loves. I just think it’s a kiss on the forehead, but I’m a guy, so what do I know? “You just worry about the wedding and let me worry about the cake.”

  “Okay.” More sniffles. “I need to get my veil anyway…” Dillon says absentmindedly.

  “I thought I was getting the veil?” Her mother asks. “Or did you already forget that too?”

  “No Mother, I didn’t forget. I just—”

  “I’ll get it,” her grandmother says. “Give me an address, and…”

  And this is where I stop listening because I’m already halfway to the front door. I let myself out of the house and slide into my car, then bang my head on the steering wheel a couple times. I have a problem. A man should know better than to make promises he can’t deliver. Picking up my phone, I type the word bakery into Google and call one. Then another and another.

  It isn’t that I have a problem with people, I just have a problem with people who listen to my request and promptly laugh in my ear. There’s no variation in their responses, each person asking if I’m kidding.“Do you know how long it takes to make a four-tiered wedding cake?” They’re all booked; they all tell me I can come in and buy one off the shelf. I tell the last one I will and fully intend to head that direction.