The big white haired man had to literally drag the big blond man into the room. Catherine Charles stifled a laugh from behind her desk. The blond man was in a biker jacket, t-shirt and jeans. The white-haired man was in a tailored shirt, vest, suit pants.
She looked down at her appointment book. “Misters King and Knight?”
“Yeah,” said the blond, dropping into the chair, looking sullen. The white haired man held his hand out to shake hers, “I’m Malcolm King. Pardon my excited fiance.” Malcolm ribbed him. The man grunted and sunk lower in his chair.
“It’s all right. I see this kind of thing all the time.” She bent down and grabbed a huge binder. “We’ll start with Soiree, and go from there. We work with many invitation printers.”
“Can’t believe I’m doin’ this,” said Mr. Knight, as Malcolm reached for binder. He started looking through it, and soon enough, the big blond started looking, first from the side of his eye, then focusing on page after page of invitations.
“Tha’ one looks like it sh’d be for a funeral,” Knight said.
“It does, doesn’t it.” Mal paged through some more.
“Ugly,” they both said, and paged on.
“Hold it,” said Knight.
“Too busy,” said Malcolm. “But you like that kind of crisp style?”
“Yeah. It ain’ fancy.”
Malcolm nodded, paging through the book.
“Gettin’ closer,” Knight said.
“Too swirly,” Knight commented.
“Maybe it’s just the names.”
“Mal, they’ll put a fuckin’ twirl at th’ end of th’ fuckin’ ‘k’ in my name.” Knight gave him a look that Mal could read easily.
“I see your point…”
“Wait.” And Catherine punched up something on the computer. “Since this is a non-traditional marriage, let’s go for some semi-non tradition, shall we?”
She hit a few keys, and then smiled. “Ah, here we are:”
Knight stared at it…
“We can change it so that the ‘and’ splits in between both of your names,” said Catherine.
“Son of a bitch,” Knight said quietly, staring at the paper.
“Yeah,” said Mal, staring at it as well.
They both looked at each other. Catherine had seen that look before. It was, she called it, The Epiphany – when both parties realized what they were getting into.
“Do you need some time with this?” Catherine asked.
“Yeah,” said the blond quickly, and Malcolm whipped his head to stare at him. “I like it, bu’…gimme a minute.”
“We need to talk.” Mal put a hand on Knight’s thigh.
“Yeah, gimme a minute.” He got up, nearly bolting out of the chair, and almost ran to the door. Malcolm watched him go. Catherine smiled at Malcolm. “They’re always skittish when they come in here.”
Malcolm got up. “We might get that one. What website is that?”
She scribbled down the website. “If you go through us, you get 30 percent off, just remember that.”
“I will, thanks.”
Catherine smiled, watching them go. She knew Malcolm would be back, with or without his significant other, but she knew from the look on his face that someone was getting married.