My One For Half A Million

Planning

I woke up to the sound of Xylar shutting the door to my apartment.

This happened a lot before, he had work and didn't want to wake me. It made sense, and really, I'd always been somewhat touched by his consideration in the past. But I found myself vaguely wistful this morning... I'd kind of fallen asleep thinking about waking up to cuddle with the hulk of a man.

No matter.

I turned around and picked up my phone, skipping through all the congratulations texts I'd received overnight.

Two in particular caught my eye. One, from my mom, because well, it was from my mom. The other, from my cousin. Not Aunt Fi's brats, but one of my cousins on my dad side, Leah. Leah was significantly older than me, I'd always thought of her more as an aunt than a cousin. She offered her services as a wedding planner, half off as a wedding present.

I accepted, and she asked for my address, saying we could start right away or later or whenever I wanted, and would I mind if she brought her daughter who was on a school break.

Fifteen minutes later she was at my door with a sheet of cookies.

She kicked off her mom-ish sandals, leaving them and the massive bag (suitcase?) she'd brought at the door, and went in for a quick hug. Her daughter, Azalea, threw up a peace sign and a 'yo', not looking up from her phone, and not taking off her headphones, which was fine by me. Too many damn hugs in this family.

"Well uh, hi guys."

"Hello hello hello, Zo!" Leah laughed at her own joke (joke?). I was getting some real hippy mom vibes from her. It had been a while. "What do you want to start on? Any themes, ideas, must-haves, must-nots?"

I stared at her.

"I... have no clue, honestly. It was kind of an impromptu thing, we'd barely even talked about marriage beforehand..."

"No problemo!" She picked up her suitcase by the handle and grinned. "Do you have a free table?"

...

We ended up sitting on the floor between my couch and coffee table. Not her daughter. Azalea sat curled up in my chair, her thumbs flying across the face of her phone. I was jealous, to he honest. The sheets of laminated papers across my table weren't very appealing.

"Does your fiancé have an opinion?" Leah asked.

"Xy? Oh... probably. Probably more than I do." I flushed. He'd been so good. Even in just the couple hours we had spent at the party yesterday, he'd been way better at playing the doting, adoring boyfriend (and then fiancé) than I could ever hope to. I was making a fool of myself. Probably everyone could see right through me.

"Do you know when he'll be home?"

Shit, shit, shit. "I'll text. Sometimes he... stays... late." I cringed at my own worthlessness.

"Okay!" She smiled at me. I stared at her. It took a while for me to pull my phone out and text him.

XY. I hoped the intensity in my text was obvious.

I waited for what felt like an hour (it was 30 seconds at most) before he started typing.

Mmmyes, miss?

Can you come over? Like right now? My aunt/cousin is going to help us plan and I have no idea what to do.

How is she both your aunt AND your cousin!?!?!?

Shes my cousin, but she acts like my aunt.