Billy chuckles. “Let’s go, French Romeo.”
Billy shoves me toward the exit and I oblige, reaching back to lace my fingers with Gabriel’s. The girls and Nick are in front of us and after a few stairs and a maze of hallways we’re out on the street. A giant SUV is waiting there with Frankie’s bodyguard Jack in front of it. The club in a casino off the strip was the only way Frankie could convince her bodyguard to wait in the car, because the ‘threat’ was lessened at these less popular locations, and Nick, a former bodyguard and probably a former MI6 spy or something, was with them.
At this point, almost everything on the street is closed and even the street lights above seem dimmer. But there is one pink and gold neon sign still flashing brightly directly across the street from the place we just left. It catches Lucia’s eye and she stumbles toward it. Nick scoops her around the waist and stops her from walking straight out into the street. “Attention, chouette.”
“Is that French?” I ask because Nick is a Brit.
“Oui,” Gabriel answers.
“I need to learn a second language if I’m going to fit in,” I mutter. “How many do you speak?”
“Fluently?” Gabe asks, and I nod. “French, English, Italian, and Spanish. I am decent in German and Japanese. I can ask for the bathroom or a beer or a condom in Cantonese.”
“What else do you need?” I quip.
He laughs but our attention moves back to Lucia who is trying to free herself from Nick, but he doesn’t let her go. “Put me down! Let’s sneak in and see who gets married at two-thirty in the morning.”
He laughs but she wiggles harder and manages to break free and make a run for it. Frankie jogs across the street after her. Billy chases them both. Nick and Jack both swear and shake their heads. I tug on Gabriel’s hand. “I guess we’re crashing a wedding.”
Lucia has the tacky chapel door open and is slipping inside by the time I’m dragging Gabe up the rickety white steps. The interior lobby of this place looks like someone took the set of theBrady Bunchand every rhinestone on every jumpsuit Elvis ever owned, put it all in a blender and then threw it all over this room.
The carpet is deep green shag. The walls are wood paneled but they're covered in bejeweled velvet paintings. A cat with emerald stone eyes in a wedding veil marrying a Doberman with onyx eyes and a ruby studded collar. A flamingo in pink velvet with a diamond-encrusted tiara marrying a seagull in a bowtie made out of purple glimmering stones. Lucia has already advanced past all that visual chaos to the heavy wood doors in front.
A tired-looking older man in a very cheap suit behind a veneer desk that makes Ikea furniture look expensive asks if he can be of assistance. "I don't think so, my girlfriend just wants to crash a wedding," Nick explains.
“Oh there isn’t a wedding happening at the moment,” the man replies, standing up and shuffling out from behind his desk.
Lucia’s entire face drops in an almost comical fashion. “Nick, we’re going to have to get married.”
“What?” Frankie gasps.
Lucia just shrugs. “I want to see a wedding. Vegas without a wedding isn’t really Vegas, is it?”
"Honey, I will marry you in a heartbeat, and you know it," Nick says calmly like this isn't the most absurd thing he's ever heard. It's definitely the craziest thing I've heard.
“I hate to use the one sober brain cell I have left at the moment,” Frankie interjects, and she’s kind of wobbling so Billy steps up behind her and holds her shoulders. “But Dad will be devastated if you get married without him.”
“Call him,” Lucia suggests.
“Nope,” Frankie replies. “He’s in England, remember?”
“Well someone has to get married,” Lucia whines. “It will besoromantic.”
“We have commitment ceremonies too,” the man from the desk explains. “No paperwork required but all the romance.”
“We’ll take one of those!” Lucia announces.
I laugh. This girl is a hoot. Maybe a little nuts, but definitely a hoot. Frankie’s pretty face scrunches up. “I think I can allow that. If it’s not legally binding. But Dad might still murder us.”
“Or I can do it,” Gabriel announces.
"You can get married?" Billy asks and when he nods every single set of eyes in the place, even the stranger from the desk, turns to me.
“What? Who? Me? Us?” I question, startled by this turn of events.
“Well, I can’t marry Billy or Nick and I don’t think I’m Jack’s type,” Gabriel says and Frankie’s bodyguard nods.
“Affirmative,” Jack says flatly. “I’m a boob man and you don’t have those.”