Page 46 of Bossy Bride: Emma and Jesse

“I don’t see him,” Emma says.

I don’t either. I pull out my phone to check the time, just to make sure we’re still on schedule—we are. It’s only ten minutes to ten—and then a text pops up.

Meet Larry in front of the reception desk downstairs.

I hold up the phone for Emma so she can see the message. “I guess we go downstairs.”

Larry ends up being a short, pot-bellied Hispanic dude with a thick, black mustache wearing a blue velour track suit with a white stripe going up the middle of his body. He rushes us as we look around. “Jesse and Emma,” he says in a thick Spanish accent. “Follow me. We’re off to Treasure Island for a pirate wedding!”

Emma squeezes my hand. “That sounds fun!”

“We have to run,” Larry says. “It’s about to start. Let’s go.”

“Run?” Emma asks. But Larry is jogging towards the lobby entrance.

“Come on,” I say, taking off and dragging her behind me. “Pirate wedding totally sounds fun. And we’re in a hurry anyway, right?”

We have one hour before we need to be back at the airport and on our way to Florida.

CHAPTER TWLEVE - EMMA

OK, I get it. What we’re doing here in Vegas is the definition of budget wedding. But would it kill them to drive us over to Treasure Island in the Fingermobile? And/or give us the option of grabbing a cab? Because even though at one point on that coaster I could see Treasure Island down the Strip, it’s not at all close to New York, New York. Like over a mile. So by the time we skid into the lobby I have a cramp in my side and I feel like I’m about to die.

“No one said there was an athletic requirement!” I complain to Jesse as I bend over and try to breathe. He’s out of breath too, and we’re both slick with sweat even though it’s not even that hot out. You run a mile down the Las Vegas Strip and you’re a sticky mess when you arrive at your destination no matter what.

“This way,” Larry snaps.

“Come on,” Jesse says. “We only have forty-five minutes for two weddings. We have to make this quick!”

And even though everything does go very fast for the next five minutes—we make our way down a hallway and into the staging area for the Treasure Island pirate show—everything comes to a screeching halt once we arrive.

Again, there is already another wedding planned. And again, there is a bundle of money involved as Larry talks to the bride and groom.

But this time, they do not take the money. They stand firm. No way. No how. They are not gonna do it.

But Larry is cool and calm. He pulls out yet another bundle of money from a hidden pocket inside his blue velour track jacket.

Jesse says, “Shit. Do you think those are fifties? Or hundreds?”

I have no idea. But it doesn’t matter. The bride and groom hold firm and shake their heads again.

Larry approaches, frowning. “They want more because they had the deluxe package with a top-notch photographer and there’s no way to fit them in the schedule for later today. It’s full.”

“More than what?” Jesse asks. “Not that I care.” He looks at me with a smile. “I’m OK with paying them if we can get this moving. But… how much are we talking here?”

“I offered them twenty.”

“Twenty thousand dollars?” I ask.

“They said no.”

“OK. Double it,” Jesse says. “Give them forty.”

I look down at myself. I’m just wearing jeans and a t-shirt. And that’s fine, I guess. But I’m so hot and my hair is a mess. “If we get a professional photographer, I can’t get married in this! I’m all sweaty and gross from running down the Strip!” I shoot Larry a glare at that last part. Because what the fuck? Why have a Fingermobile if you’re not going to use it?

“I can ask if they will throw in the dress,” Larry offers. “But it might cost you another ten grand.”

I eyeball the bride’s dress. She looks like she stepped straight out of a heavy metal music video from nineteen eighty-eight. I’m talking a white high-low leather dress with a ragged sharkbite hem and shoulder pads with spiky metal studs lining the long sleeves of her arms. But the best part—ha—is the white leather thigh-high boots with matching metal spikes and the white-lace fingerless gloves. The groom looks like he might actually work somewhere nearby as a Bon Jovi lookalike.