Ride On

Chapter Sixteen

"Get up!" I shouted, throwing a pillow onto Chris's face. He'd slept in for three hours. It was ten in the morning. What a lazy bum.

I'd allowed it to slide, since yesterday and last night were extremely important to me. But I was having none of that anymore.

He groaned, rolling over and pleading for five more minutes. I ignored his begging and continued to slap him with the pillow.

"Okay, okay! I'm up, I'm up." Chris grumbled, rolling out of bed. "What is so urgent that you had to waken me?" He asked, raising his eyebrows.

"It's ten." I replied, folding my arms. "Now make my bed." I commanded.

"I'm not your maid." He retorted.

"You slept in there, didn't you?" I shot back, heading for the door. I made sure to swing my hips a tad more than normal; for some reason it made me feel more persuasive.

Besides, if I came back tonight to a messy bed, he'd never hear the end of it.

I stopped before going down for the second time today. Carefully, I had hidden my ring during breakfast. But I'm not sure how well my dad will take the news. It was daunting.

Shaking my head, I plodded down with a sigh. I would just have to hope everything went down easily.

Chris joined me a moment later, as I had paused again at the bottom of the stairs. "I'm not sure how well my dad will take this." I explained in a hushed whisper, noticing Chris's confusion. "He wanted to fire you as soon as he found out about..." I trailed off, brushing my wrists. "Let's not talk about it." I coughed, waving the thought away.

"We can't not talk about it forever." Chris pointed out.

"I know." I replied harshly. "Just not right now."

Collecting my breath, and any scrap of confidence I had left, I strode into the kitchen with Chris in tow. Pablo looked up from his book, stared, and then smiled. He then proceeded to return to his fancy new reading tablet. He got his bonus a while back.

My father hadn't even noticed us, with his nose buried in the paper. I sighed, relieved. There would be no turning around and gawking in shock.

I tapped his shoulder, receiving little reaction. "Daddy?" I asked quietly, hoping like heck he wouldn't be furious.

"Yeah?" He responded, still glued to his paper. I gently removed it from his hands.

"You're going to want to hear this, I promise." I told him.

"Hey, the expansion of the cow pasture is done. I bought some beef cattle. They'll be here by Thursday." He notified me, sitting back. His brow furrowed when Chris sat next to me. "I thought you two couldn't stand each other." His gaze moved down to my finger, where he spotted my ring in it's rightful place.

"That's great, Dad." I said, my face twitching in a smile for a moment. "And we couldn't. But we worked it out." I explained, trying to get it out as softly as possible.

"But he hurt you." My father asked, voice cracking. I sighed.

"And I punched him. Now we're even. Besides, we worked it out. But there's a slight problem." I admitted, wondering how to tell him that the wedding date was moved to next Saturday.

"That's my girl." He chuckled, quickly switching moods. "But what's wrong?"

"Chris, I'll let you take this one." I smirked, patting his shoulder. With a small nod, I encouraged him to explain the situation to my father.

"Eve and I...uh...we decided to move the wedding date." Chris stumbled over his words, glancing down at his thumbs. Inside I was cracking up.

"To when?" Dad asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Next Saturday." Chris replied, more confident this time.

"WHAT??" Dad screamed, standing up and banging his fists on the table. I buried my face in my hands. "How are we going to get everything ready by then? We don't even have a location. Invitations. Guest list. Are you crazy??" He yelled.

"Yes!" I quipped loudly. "Relax! We've got most of it planned out. We just need to finish buying it all." I explained, standing up. My father's face was beet red.

"Well you're definitely not going to be able to do that." Dad frowned.

"Why not?" I asked, disappointed.

"All of Chris's money got drained when he decided to pay for Trigger." Dad reminded me. "I'll have to cover it."

"I have money too." I pointed out, sticking a finger up.

"No you don't." Dad waved me off, ignoring me. "Now I've got a billion more calls to make. Thanks, you two, for making my life so much more difficult."

"You're welcome!" I chuckled as he retreated downstairs, muttering to himself. As I left to feed the horses earlier that morning, I skipped up to my bedroom and emailed all of the wedding stuff to my dad.

Eek! I can't believe this is really happening! I screamed in my head. Of course, I couldn't have everything I wanted. I wanted Trigger and Spurs to pull a carriage, number one. That isn't a possibility anymore. Here's the checklist.

Trigger and Spurs to pull a carriage - nope.
Bullet as a ring bearer and Alaska as a flower girl - maybe, if we called a trainer right now. I still had that chick Dani West's number.

Actually that was about the only two things that were controversial. We can rent a horse carriage to take us to the church and then to the reception location. And we can have the reception at the house. But if we don't get the dogs trained soon, we'll actually have to find some kids to do it for us.

The problem with that is...there aren't really any kids in either of our families. Nobody's had a baby since I was born. Everyone is old. Well, except for my high school friends, who I don't even talk to anymore unless they're Paula. Which reminded me...I needed to text her that the wedding was back on. And we needed to go back and get the dresses we picked out.

Or rather...she picked out. I trusted her judgement, so I didn't really care that I had no say in the matter. And nobody could see the dresses besides her until I walked down the aisle. It's very bad luck.

At least I've heard that.

I shot Paula a text, to which she immediately replied with YAEEEE SO HAPPY 4 Y!!!! And then corrected it with a **u^^ , which I didn't even understand. Texting lingo escapes me.

I sent her a reply asking if she wanted to go back to the Bridal Shop and get those dresses we were looking at, followed by a winky face. She immediately agreed with a long, yaaaaaaaaasssssssssssss!

...Which I ignored and gave her a time. She said she'd be there, on the dot.

Look what I've gotten myself into. A wedding in a week and dress shopping/purchasing in an hour. Have I gone mad?