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Chapter 192 – Wedding BellsAlex cringed as Rita gaped at her.
But Willow just kept going. “An’ I never woulda met Jack if it wasn’ fer you, an’ …”
Janet calmly insisted, “Willow, you need to stop revealing important secrets.”
“Doesn’t ever’body here know? It’s just you an’ me and my bestie Alex …” She turned her head and stopped. “Oh, yeah, an’ Rita who’s so nice and you mean Graham din’t tell her already?”
Rita gasped, “Holy shit! I mean … Holy shit!”
Alex tried, “I’m not really Terawatt. It’s just an in-joke Willow and I have, and I don’t know why she’s pulling it now.”
Rita looked at Janet’s expression. “You sure know. Am I the last person in the SRI to find out? Does Corinne know?”
Janet glanced over at Alex with a ‘this is hopeless’ look.
Alex sighed. “Let’s go up to my room and talk.” She lifted Willow with her TK and slid Willow into her arms so it looked like Alex was carrying Willow in her arms instead of floating her.
“Holy shit.”
Janet scowled. “It could’ve been worse. She might have decided to tell the entire strip club. She was pretty cranky about having to go to a place you couldn’t get into.”
They walked across the lawns and up the back stairs, with Alex using her TK to hold Willow instead of her muscles. But Rita swore ‘holy shit’ about four more times before Alex got everyone into her room. She didn’t bother with her keycard. She just used some spare TK to open the door from the inside.
Alex put Willow down on the couch with a pillow behind her head, while Rita wrung out a washrag to wipe off Willow’s face and Janet rushed up to her room to get some aspirin. Alex got a trash can and put it over by Willow’s head in case Willow needed to urp some more.
Willow slurred, “Those Cosmolopanuns … those Cosimolapans … those drinks were really great. An’ they have cranberry juice so they’re good for ya ’cuz nobody likes yeast infections. ’Specially when Jack is totally of the stallion-esque in bed.”
Alex managed not to wince much. At least Willow didn’t start giving out details.
Janet came back with several aspirin, two bottles of water, and a worried teenager.
Rita looked at Hanna, then back at Alex, then back at Hanna, and guessed, “Action Girl, right? Is Klar here, too? Or Ultraman? I know nobody here’s big enough to be Azure Crush in a disguise.”
Hanna looked at Janet. “Mom?”
Janet sighed. “Turns out Willow’s a very chatty drunk. And she didn’t realize Rita wasn’t read in.” She got Willow to sit up and take the aspirin with all of one bottle of water. “Now we need to keep an eye on her. We really have no idea how much alcohol’s in her system, or if there’s anything else she got dosed with, and she could have respiratory distress or something just as serious.”
Hanna frowned. “Someone poisoned Willow? Do I need to go … do something?”
Janet pointed at the floor. “Sit. No tracking down suspects and beating confessions out of ’em.”
“I wasn’t gonna do that!” Hanna protested. “Much …”
Janet checked Willow’s pulse and explained, “Someone needs to watch her and make sure her breathing stays around twelve or more breaths per minute. If her breathing gets too slow or too irregular, we’ll have to call 911.”
Rita worried, “What’s too slow? Or too irregular?”
“Eight or fewer breaths per minute, or irregular with gaps of more than ten seconds between breaths. And we need to make sure she’s responsive, even after she falls asleep. That means once in a while someone needs to do this …” She turned to Willow and loudly said, “Willow! Open your eyes!” And she poked Willow.
Willow opened her eyes and complained, “Hey! Do I poke you? You probably need ta get poked. I sure like getting poked. But Jack says no playing matchmaker even if I told Jer’my he really oughta ask Jo out ’cuz he thinks she’s amazing.”
Rita asked, “That’s our Jo? Lieutenant Lupo? And the general’s IT guru?”
Willow grinned, as Janet got her to drink the second bottle of water. “Yup! Jer’my’s really smart, and he likes smart women, and he doesn’t care if they can benchpress ’im, and Jo jus’ needs ta fin’ out there ’re nice guys out there who’d treat ’er right.”
“Anything else we need to worry about?” Alex asked Janet.
“Yeah. Rapid pulse, blue lips or fingertips, hands and feet getting cold and clammy, vomiting while asleep …”
“I need ta pee!” Willow announced suddenly and struggled to get to her feet.
Janet glanced at Alex. “Help her into the bathroom and watch her the whole time. Head injuries are a lot more likely to happen from a fall on bathroom tile than on a soft rug.”
Alex grabbed Willow with her TK and gave her a steadying hand, but Willow seemed a little better than when she was puking her guts out in the parking lot. Still, Willow was pretty rocky, and Alex worried the whole time Willow went pee and washed her hands that there was going to be a toppling Willow doing a ‘Timber!’ into the wall or the side of the tub or something.
Willow wobbled back out and plopped down on the couch. “I am SO drunk. Is Jack home? Is he drunk? Can I go take advan’age of him? ’Cuz with him in Charlie’s room I haven’ gotten any for like … umm … two nights?”
Janet grumbled, “Two nights? I haven’t gotten any for a couple of years!”
Willow slurred, “An’ Alex is still a virg’n. She’s a good girl. A good girl! I was like ’at. Boy, if I’d known how great it was, I so woulda let Jono slip me the ol’ lap rocket, if ya know what I mean …”
Janet pointed out, “Hanna’s in the room. Can we talk about something else?”
“How ’bout computer architecture? Biochemistry? Alex’s dad and big sis are totally slammin’ on the biochem. I mean better-than-Atron biochem. How ’bout astrophysics? Alex rescued Sam Carter, y’know. Tera-Alex! Faster ’n … something really fast …”
Alex whispered, “Is Jack okay?”
Janet whispered back, “They’re still out, but I left a message for Jack to call me on my cell. He’s not going to be a happy camper when he finds out Becky got Willow this plastered.”
Alex grimaced. “Not a happy camper? Becky’s gonna be lucky if she just gets audited by the IRS and has someone trash her Facebook page.”
Rita suggested, “Let’s talk about Terawatt and Action Girl.”
“Yeah,” Willow nodded eagerly. “So, first thing you gotta know, is I got shitcanned from my company even if I was tha CEO, an’ it was MY company. So there I was, sittin’ on forty boxes of books and stuff, an’ not having a car to get ’em home, and cryin’ my eyes out, and Alex and her mom came ta my rescue …”
* * *
Alex just let Willow tell Alex-stories for the next hour or so, even if it was mega-embarrassing. Willow slowly got more and more sober, until she was eating a banana and having another bottle of water while telling Rita the Alex-saves-the-planet-from-silicates story. The way Willow was telling it totally made Terawatt sound way more awesome than Alex remembered being.
Jack finally showed up at two in the morning, looking totally sober and smelling like cigars. Willow clambered out of her chair and threw herself into Jack’s arms. “Jack! Are you really, really drunk so I can schtup your brains out? I only had three Cosmos, but I am hammered.”
Jack held Willow in his arms, even while she was trying to unbutton his shirt. “Will, hold that thought till we’re somewhere more private. And can someone tell me why my fiancée is three sheets to the wind?”
Janet angrily told Jack everything, including Willow spilling about Terawatt in front of Rita.
“So how much alcohol did she down?” Jack asked.
Janet and Rita looked at each other. Janet replied, “We’re guessing about nine Cosmopolitans worth.”
“And how much did you two lovely ladies have?”
Rita admitted, “Three Black Russians.”
Janet said, “One amaretto sour and then two diet sodas. I figured somebody needed to stay sober, since Becky took us to a really raunchy strip club.”
Willow cheered, “Let’s program our phones to call Becky’s room every half hour!”
Janet fumed, “I already tried calling her room, and no one’s answering. I don’t know if she’s still out on the town, or she’s disconnected her phone, or she’s passed out on her floor. And if it’s Option Three, someone ought to check on her and see if she needs medical help.”
“Let’s make it look like she called 911 from her room!” Willow happily suggested.
Alex pointed out, “Jack, you look totally non-hammered.”
He shrugged. “I had two beers. I think Riley had four Dr. Peppers. He found this pretty cool place that lets you set up your own movie night with popcorn and bad food and drinks and cigars and whatever. So we watched guy movies and ate junk food.”
Willow complained, “We can’t go back to your room, ’cause Charlie’s there and I gotta be a good stepmom. And we can’t go back to my room, because Mom and Dad are right on the other side of the wall. Even if one of the rules of Shabbat is you should have plenty of hot marital sex on Friday night after you go to Shabbat services and hang out with your friends and family.”
Whoa. Alex totally had never heard anything like that. It looked like the entire room except Willow was surprised by that one. And Alex was totally not asking Rabbi Sol if that was really true.
Jack kidded, “Boy, with rules like that, I should’ve converted to Judaism years ago.”
Willow complained, “No joking about that, ’cause I know you’re serious about your faith, just like me.” She paused and her eyes lit up. “Hey! I know!” She whispered into Jack’s ear.
Jack looked totally surprised. “That sounds like a pretty awesome idea, but you’re not very good at keeping quiet, and your filter is definitely off-line right now, so I think we need to wait until you’re completely sober before we give that one a whirl.”
Janet volunteered, “We can take Charlie for the night. We have two beds. He can have one, and Hanna and I will take the other.”
Alex suggested, “Charlie could have the couch in here.”
Jack smiled. “Thanks, both of you. But I think we need to just keep it in our pants for twenty-four hours.”
Janet suggested, “If we put her to bed, she should be okay. She’s not nearly as drunk as she was when we got her home.”
So Janet and Hanna walked Willow to her room. Jack just said, “Rita, Miller trusts you, so I trust you. Just remember: you can’t tell anyone. Not ever. Not even your diary. Not even Miller if it’s an unsecured phone connection. Not even the SRI members who haven’t been told, because this is eyes-only. And we’ll get you sworn in and a clearance and all that jazz after the wedding.”
Rita looked at Alex and asked her, “You’re not mad at me, are you?”
Alex winced a little. “I was hoping to retire. And not have people blabbing my secret all over the place, because Danielle Atron knows where Alex Mack’s family lives.”
Rita clapped her hands over her mouth and whimpered, “Oh, God. I didn’t even think of that.”
Jack suggested, “Why don’t you go talk to your boyfriend about Terawatt and keeping secrets and all kinds of fun SRI stuff?”
After Rita left and Jack pulled the door closed behind him, Alex looked at a clock and winced. It was nearly two thirty! She had to get up in time for the brunch. She scrubbed her face, pulled on her peejays, and went to bed. She was figuring she would stew about Rita for hours, or start crying about Shar, but she was so tired she conked out about the time her head touched the pillow.
* * *
Alex woke up when her alarm clock buzzed. She was tired, but she went through the fast version of her morning workout and then took a fast shower, and she washed her hair twice so it was all silky and mousse-free. For a few hours, because she was going to be moussing it up for the wedding because she wanted everything to look nice for Willow’s wedding. Even if that train was going to be a mega-pain.
The hotel had some amazing shampoo and soap and bodywash and stuff, but she still stuck with her special shampoo for treated hair, because even if she was never going to do Terawatt stuff again, she still couldn’t let people realize her hair was dyed.
And the brunch was really great. She had a bagel with cream cheese and some really yummy lox and some little capers. And she had four blintzes that had a cherry pie kind of filling, and they were scrumptious. She also had kugel and a couple of pancakes and some fruit salad.
Ira Rosenberg sat down next to her and smiled. “Where do you put it all, Alex?”
She noticed he had a slight limp. She figured Willow probably felt guilty every time she saw that. “Oh, I’m just a growing girl. I have to keep up my strength.”
Sheila Rosenberg sat down on Ira’s other side and lied, “You clearly haven’t seen how much this woman works out. She was running a couple of miles this morning before we were even showered. I saw her out the window. And she has abs that would make Victoria’s Secret models cry. She can probably do ten times as many sit-ups as you can.”
Ira laughed. “What? She can do ten sit-ups?”
Alex said, “When I worked up to about two hundred and fifty at a time, I switched to inverted sit-ups just because they were taking so much of my morning workout time.”
Sheila just about dropped her fork. “Inverted? Like the Navy SEALs do? Where you hang upside down and still do a sit-up? I couldn’t do that. I’m not even sure Jack could do that.”
Ira smiled. “And you probably do thirty or forty of them, right?”
Alex admitted, “I’m up to about sixty. But if you overdo them, your stomach muscles really hurt for a couple days.”
Ira warned her, “Oh, and you should have a heads-up. Willow was bragging to some of the family about how amazing you are. So don’t be surprised if some of the relatives are impressed with you, or beg you to tell them about Terawatt. And don’t be surprised if Becky is a jealous … female dog. She probably cut you out of the bachelorette party just to spite you.”
Alex complained, “Or maybe to get Willow sickeningly drunk without me around to play bodyguard.” She noticed without looking that someone else had just come into the banquet room.
Sheila looked up and muttered, “Speak of the devil …”
Ira looked over and quietly added, “M’dabrim al ha-khamor, ve-hinei hu ba.”
Sheila sputtered in laughter, so Ira translated for Alex. “It’s Hebrew. It literally means ‘talking about the donkey, and here it comes.’ And for some people that’s more appropriate than others.”
It was Becky. She was still in last night’s slutty party dress, and carrying a pair of crazy-high heels in one hand. She obviously hadn’t had a chance to wash her hair so last night’s fancy hairstyle was all over the place. She was still wearing last night’s makeup and it was totally smeared, so she looked like a raccoon. A raccoon going to an Ozzie Osbourne concert.
“Rebecca Isabel Teitlebaum!” yelled a woman who looked like she had to be Becky’s mother.
Becky dropped her shoes and clapped her hands to her head like she had the world’s worst hangover.
Sheila muttered, “Someone wasn’t living up to her middle name.”
Ira saw the puzzled look on Alex’s face and whispered, “Izabel. It’s a transliteration of the Hebrew for ‘chaste’.”
Becky wobbled over to her mother and whined, “Sorry! But you weren’t in your room. My keycard won’t work! I’m locked out!”
Alex winced a little. The keycard locks on the doors were electronic. And doors like that could maybe be fiddled with from the front desk. So a really good computer hacker who was grouchy at someone could probably get into the hotel intranet and change the lock code.
So Becky’s mom marched her off, yelling at her the whole time, even if Becky seemed to have the worst hangover ever. Which Alex totally thought she deserved.
Ira and Sheila went off to Saturday morning services, but Alex didn’t see Willow get on the shuttle bus, so she figured maybe Willow was sleeping in. Or having a bad hangover of her own. Or having some private time with Jack. Alex didn’t want to interrupt if it was door number three. So she called Jack’s room.
Charlie answered. “Yes, we will get down to brunch as soon as we can.”
Alex told him, “I don’t know who you expected, but it’s just me.”
Charlie griped, “Hanna’s waiting impatiently, and plenty of people seem to think Dad went out partying until dawn and is still comatose.”
“Is he okay?” Alex checked.
“Oh, sure, he’s fine, but he won’t tell me what he and Willow were doing after you guys spent hours getting her sober again.”
“Less drunk. She was still pretty tipsy and stuff when they left.”
Charlie muttered, “Well, whatever they were doing, it involved Willow’s laptop, which is in here now.”
Alex muttered, “Operational security.”
“Oh. Right. On the upside, I’ve learned a bunch of new cursewords. Do you know what schmuck means? I may never be able to look at a jar of Smucker’s jelly again without snickering.”
“Umm, yeah, I know what that means.” It was on one of Willow’s lists. The ‘do not put up with it if one of my relatives calls you one of these words’ list. Not that any of Willow’s relatives would do a thing like that. Except maybe Becky.
So then, since Willow wasn’t busy in bed with Jack, Alex called Willow. “Hi! Did I wake you up? Are you okay?”
“No, I’m up already, and some really nice doctor-person left me some Alka-Seltzer and a glass of water on my nightstand, so I feel a ton better, even if I didn’t feel totally horrible when I woke up, just some headachiness and a wobbly stomach, and my stomach’s all better and my headache’s already going away. And I think that’s because of some really great friends. I didn’t puke in your room, did I?”
“No, but you did tell Rita something about me you really weren’t supposed to.”
Willow cringed. “Oh, no! I’m the worst friend ever! I didn’t say anything else, did I?”
“Like Jack said, your filter was kind of off-line, but nothing bad.”
Willow complained, “Stinky Jack, he didn’t even get plastered, and he totally didn’t wanna try naked sex in the outside hot tub after it was supposed to be closed. Or in either pool. Or on the beach like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. At least he let me do some stuff on my computer. Which I am not talking about.”
Alex replied, “Yeah, that part worked really well. I’ll tell you later.”
“Have you eaten yet?”
Alex shrugged even if she was talking on a phone. “I could have a little snack, even if I had brunch with your parents before they went to services.”
“Did they say anything about me skipping out?”
Alex thought it over. “Nope. Not even a little. At least, not while I was there. Mainly the subject was your cousin Becky, who did the ‘walk of shame’ into the banquet room in her party dress because somehow her keycard wasn’t working. And her mom yelled at her a bunch including calling her all three names.”
“Someone’s in trouble!” Willow sing-songed. “She was a total bitch about Jack and she said someone like me needed to get laid by someone who wasn’t ‘near retirement age’ and could ‘really show me what I was missing’. I guess she was gonna get me all liquored up and buy me a stripper for the night. I mean, those guys were totally of the yum, but I like my Jack. And just because I’m … maybe sorta bi doesn’t mean I wanna get porked by complete strangers. Who have pecs you could crack walnuts with.”
Alex guessed, “Well, I think she got herself a stripper, because she only just got back to the hotel. And it was not her best look.”
“Ooh! Did you get photos?”
Alex frowned. “No. Why would I?”
Willow snickered. “So anonymous people could stick ’em up on her Facebook wall.”
Wow, Willow could be really not-nice when she was crabby about stuff. Alex totally didn’t want to know what Willow would have done if Senator Kinsey had been mega-jerky to Jack.
So Alex went back to the banquet room. No one was there from her first brunch visit, so she didn’t worry about getting another plate of food. She waited until Willow and Jack and Charlie came in before she got herself another bagel with lots of lox and cream cheese, and more of those mega-yummy blintzes. The ones with the cherry pie filling were even better than the ones with the creamy cheese filling. She totally needed to learn how to make blintzes. And she got some more fruit salad. Hanna and Janet came down, too, and Hanna made sure to sit next to Charlie, so close she was almost in his lap.
Oh. It turned out the two cousins Joyce and Deb thought Charlie was really hot, and Hanna was making it clear that she wasn’t sharing. Well, Charlie was really handsome. And funny. And charming. Alex figured Charlie got away with a lot of stuff just like Jack had when Jack was a handsome, charming teenager.
And after brunch, they all went over to the hospitality room and spent a couple of hours chatting with people who were just getting in for the wedding. There were about twenty Silicon Valley computer people who had just flown down for the wedding and were flying back after the dinner. And a dozen people flew in from Washington D.C., including a couple of Jack’s long-time military friends and also General Hammond. Some of the computer people really, really wanted to talk to Alex, because they thought she was some sort of heroic journalist who fought an Orphan to the death to save that computer conference.
So lunch in the banquet room was an even bigger deal, because there were a lot more people. Alex made sure to get a bunch of the chopped liver on crackers before it got inhaled, because a bunch of the computer people were Jewish, too, and they made a beeline for it.
* * *
They took the shuttle bus over to the synagogue, because they had everybody’s nice stuff to change into after they got there. That took up a lot of room. Especially Willow’s wedding dress.
Alex helped Sheila and Willow get all the ‘girl’ stuff over to the changing room, and then they went over to the rabbi’s office. It turned out that the ketubah thing was sort of ancient Jewish pre-nup stuff. Rabbi Sol said it even had stuff in it like the rights that the wife had. Alex hadn’t realized that anybody’s religion gave the wife rights way back in the old days. She’d thought it was all ‘you are just property now’ kind of stuff. Then there was the marriage certificate that she and Charlie had to witness and sign. Then she and Willow and Sheila went off to the changing room, with Jack making jokes about how they’d need hours, and he had it so easy with just needing five minutes to put on his uniform and then thirty minutes to get Charlie to tie his bow tie right.
It did take a while to get dressed and get Willow into all her stuff, even when Sheila had one of those long, thin pool floats they called a ‘water noodle’ cut to a little shorter than the width of the train, and they rolled the train up on it and pinned it in place at the sides. And then there was makeup and hairstyles and pinning the veil on right, and all that stuff. By the time they had Willow all done, they had to hurry to get their stuff done in time, even if Sheila wasn’t in the wedding.
Sheila came out of the bathroom in her tea-length dress and started to ask Willow “Aren’t you nerv–…” But she stopped. Because Willow was totally not nervous. She was just so happy she was practically glowing. And the standing-for-pictures part was good, just because Willow and Jack were so happy together you could see it. Two guys were putting the chuppah up and it was like a little square tent with no canvas, and a pretty rectangle of fabric draped artistically on the top, so the photographer could get pictures of Jack and Willow in the chuppah, too. Then they all had to go back to their rooms and wait for the people to get seated.
And when it was time, Sheila and Alex walked Willow in and got her set up at the top of the aisle and unpinned the train and unrolled the whole thing and arranged it in big folds so it would flow properly when she walked forward. Then an usher took Sheila to her seat, and they played the processional music. Alex walked down the aisle with Charlie and took her spot to the right of the chuppah. Jack took his place at the front of the steps and waited. Ira walked Willow down to Jack and hardly limped at all. Then Jack walked Willow up into the chuppah while Alex took Willow’s flowers and made sure the train was doing what it was supposed to.
The service went off without a hitch, even if the whole temple laughed plenty of times while Jack pronounced the wedding vows he wrote. Boy, Jack could even be naughty in a wedding ceremony. He even slipped in the “I promise not to do the ‘breaking the glass and yet my mother-in-law was still there’ joke”. But Willow got even when she said, “I even promise to laugh at your weird movie and TV references.”
Alex made another mental note to herself about weddings. If she and Ray wrote their own vows, she totally needed to look over his before the wedding. And she needed to tell Ray ‘no taking wedding vow advice from Jack’.
The whole back wall opened up as the tall panels folded up into the sides of the room, which Alex should have guessed was possible. And once she had Willow’s train arranged right and Willow and Jack in the reception line, she grabbed a copy of the seating chart and helped people find their tables once they’d gone through the line. She didn’t have to, but it was a lot easier than looking at a reception line and thinking about Shar. Then they got Willow’s train rolled up and pinned again, so she could sit at the head table with Jack and eat something. Even if Willow and Jack mainly just stared at each other and sort of forgot to eat.
After Charlie gave a short, funny speech, Alex stood up and said, “Willow is a very special person, and anyone should be proud to know her, much less get to be her friend. I have to admit I certainly didn’t think Jack was good enough for her when she first told me about the two of them. But the more I see them together, the more I realize they really are perfect for each other. Jack may be a bad influence on her when it comes to throwing out movie quotes, but he’s a great influence on her in every other way. She’s really blossomed since Jack came into her life. And they complement each other in so many ways. Like the way their first date went. I don’t know if anyone else in the room knows this story, but after they had dinner, they were just walking down the street talking, and they passed a bar that was advertising a ‘quiz night’. Naturally, they went in, and naturally, they won. Everything Willow didn’t know, Jack did: movies and television, and politics, and apparently someone tossed in a real stumper about American military ranks that somehow Jack knew. And there were penalties for wrong answers and for other teams getting the right answers, and Jack naturally protected Willow and took by far most of the penalties, because that’s the kind of man he is. They only won a dinner at a sushi restaurant, but that night really cemented their relationship. So here’s to Jack and Willow, and may they continue to do wonderful things together.”
And after the dinner, there was dancing. Jack danced with Willow, and Alex danced with Charlie, and Alex danced with Jack’s foster dad and Willow’s dad, and she learned how to dance the hora, and there was a dance with Jack and Willow on chairs and guys holding the chairs up in the air. Riley helped on Jack’s chair, and Graham and Forrest helped on Willow’s chair, so Alex wasn’t worried about anyone falling off their chair and getting hurt. And then a whole bunch of guys wanted to dance with Alex, even if she didn’t really feel like dancing, but she didn’t feel up to being mean and telling everyone ‘no’. Then there was the ‘throwing the bouquet’ thing, and Alex just let Hanna and Becky fight it out for the thing, and Hanna subtly hip-checked Becky hard enough that she slid across the floor and into a table. And the ‘taking the garter off the bride and throwing it’ thing, which Jack and Willow made a little sexier than maybe it was supposed to be.
Alex just knew that Jack and Willow’s kids were going to be the naughtiest children in the history of naughtiness.
After a couple of hours that really weren’t as horrible as she’d thought they’d be, Jack tapped her on the shoulder, and she rushed off to help Willow get out of the wedding dress and into regular clothes. That went really fast with just a little TK help, and so a few minutes later, Alex was sneaking Willow and Jack out a side door to where Jack had a taxi waiting, because they were taking a late flight to L.A. and then flying to Belize in the morning. Alex hugged both of them and tried not to cry.
The party went for another few hours, and Alex realized that Charlie and Hanna and Sheila and Janet and Rita were all kind of ‘protecting’ her by sitting with her and chatting with her and talking to guys who wanted to ask her to dance and telling some of the guys not to push their luck. Alex didn’t get why guys wanted to ask her to dance when Hanna was right there looking amazingly gorgeous, even if Hanna also looked totally taken.
The D.C. military guys left to catch their military jet back, and the computer guys left to catch their flight back to Silicon Valley, and Alex got a chance to talk with some of the locals who had just driven from their houses to the wedding, like Jonathan Levinson and his wife. Boy, Jon was really short, and about as nerdy as some of the Computer Club guys, but he was really nice. Fritz and Dave were there, too, and Jesse. Jesse even told her a couple of ‘little Xander and Willow’ stories. The only one of Willow’s old school friends who wasn’t there was Marcy Ross. None of them knew what had happened to Marcy. She’d gone off to college and not come back and just disappeared from their lives. Alex sort of remembered about other-Buffy and other-Willow’s story about other-Marcy, so she figured she needed to get her Willow to look into that one of these days, just in case.
They got back to the hotel and Alex changed into her jeans and then helped Sheila close up the hospitality room for the night. Afterward, Sheila hugged her and told her she thought Willow had made the best choice possible for a maid of honor, and Alex got all teary-eyed. Then Alex headed back to her room and took a long shower and got her hair really clean, because she’d been using more hair product than usual.
She was totally surprised that she didn’t feel so horrible. Just seeing how happy Jack and Willow were together was maybe the thing she needed. And seeing how happy Jack’s family and Willow’s family were for the two of them — not counting Becky. Maybe Alex had really needed to be reminded that life went on. That even in the middle of death and horror, there was still life and love and rebirth and people falling madly in love until they glowed with happiness. Still, she knew it would be a long, long time before she could feel that happy.
* * *
Alex woke up when her alarm buzzed. She just pulled on her casual stuff and checked her hair and headed down for brunch, because she wanted a chance to say bye to so many people. And she needed to say goodbye for keeps to Riley and Graham and Forrest, because with Terawatt gone, plain old Alex Mack was never going to see them again.
She took her good camera with her 50mm lens and took a ton of pictures. Okay, she ate, and then took pictures, and then she talked with people, and then she took more pictures, and she ate again, and she took some more pictures.
At the end of the brunch, Sheila and Ira hugged her and thanked her for everything. Even if Sheila might have meant more by ‘everything’ than Ira did, because Alex was pretty sure Sheila hadn’t told anyone Alex’s secret.
Then Alex walked back to her room to get all her stuff out to her car, and Hanna and Janet were waiting. Alex let them in so she could hug them goodbye properly.
Hanna hugged Alex pretty hard and sobbed a little. “We are never going to see you again, are we? Jack said Terawatt is gone, and you are going to be too busy with college and Ray and photography, and you will never visit me again, will you?”
Alex insisted, “No! I’ll always have time for Willow and you and Janet. And maybe even Jack.” Janet snickered. “And you can drive down and visit me. I have a hide-a-bed, and I can show you around and stuff. Both of you could come, if Jack ever gives Janet any time off. And you know Willow’s gonna come down and see me, so you could come, too.”
They hugged her and promised they would visit, and they helped carry stuff to Alex’s car like the fruit basket stuff that hadn’t gotten devoured and a huge box of candy and food from the hospitality room that Sheila had given her.
But as she drove home, she worried. Would she lose people like Jack and Willow and Hanna and Janet? And Sam and Hermione and Grover and Cindy and Jo and Riley and the others? Would they even want her around if Terawatt was gone and they thought they really needed a superheroine instead of some whiny photojournalist?
She felt a lot worse by the time she got home.