Before You Get To Baby...

The hair on the back of his arm stood up. Planting himself more firmly against Frannie’s surprising strength, Drew quickly questioned, “For the jacket and pants? What does that mean? What else is there? I mean, the shirt’ll be white. Dress shirts are always white. And the cummerbund. Black, right?”

“Welll…” Evie hesitated and Drew panicked.

“I was kind of thinking…”

God save him from women who thought. “What? What were you thinking?”

“Well, you know how men’s formal shirts have those rows of ruffles down the fronts?”

Drew was getting a very bad feeling here. “Yeah? Maybe we could just wear plain white shirts. I don’t see why that wouldn’t work, do you, Rick?” He turned to his best friend, hoping for salvation but finding only a wicked grin.

“It’s only for a few hours, old buddy. Whatever she’s got in mind, it’ll only hurt for a little while. Promise.”

Frannie huffed, “Honestly, what a couple of babies.”

“I’ll make a deal,” Evie said. “No ruffles on the shirts, just tucks…”

“Tucks?”

“Tucks,” Evie repeated firmly. “In exchange for which you will, without complaint, wear a cummerbund that matches the bridesmaids’ dresses.

“Take it,” Rick advised. “It’s a good deal. Think of it as the fee us guys have to pay to get exclusive rights.” He gave his fiancée a sick smile. “We’re both going to live.”

Then he whispered quietly, “Just agree, will you? The quicker they’re satisfied, the quicker we can get back to the game.”

Drew took a deep breath. “Okay, so what’s the color scheme?” He wasn’t at all sure he really wanted to know.

“Well, I really, really love pink, you know…”

“Pink?” Drew exploded.

Frannie rolled her eyes.

Evie patted her hair. “But I think it would clash with my hair so Frannie and I have decided on lettuce.”

“Lettuce? That’s a color?”

Frannie patted Drew’s arm. She’d all but given up on dragging him out of the room. “A very pale green, Drew. Nothing too threatening, just green. Evie and I thought that since her hair was red, we should surround her with its complementary color, green. The wedding pictures are going to be gorgeous.” No need to tell him pink had never really been in the running. It had only been thrown in to make the green sound good by comparison.

“Evie’s beautiful no matter what she wears,” Rick declared loyally.

“Very good, dear,” Evie said and kissed him soundly. “That got you two extra brownie points.”

Rick hitched up his jeans. “Yeah? How many do I need for another round of me on top?”

“You were listening.”

“I always listen to you, sweetheart.”

It was difficult to feminize a snort, but Evie managed. Frannie was impressed.

“Okay, so lettuce is a girl word for green, right? I can live with green.”

“For heaven’s sake, Drew, your masculinity will survive.” Frannie gave him a hard tug, caught him by surprise and actually moved him. “Now, come on.”

“No, Frannie, wait. This is a learning experience. I want to hear more about this point thing.”

She pulled again, gained another few inches. “We are not going to stand here and listen in like a couple of voyeurs while they discuss the merits of…whatever. Remember my virgin ears. Now come on!”

Frannie finally got Drew into the kitchen. “Here, sit down.” She pulled out two chairs from the kitchen table, pushing him into one. “I’ve done some figuring. Tell me what you think.”

Drew rested his head on his hands. “About what?”

“I went out and bought a tape measure.”

“Yeah?” Drew was thirsty. He thought about getting up and checking the refrigerator for another beer but it seemed like an awful lot of effort.

“Yes. So I measured. My waist is twenty-four inches. I wasn’t too sure exactly where to get the hips, but I figured take the biggest measurement, right?”

He forgot about the beer. “Uh, sure.” Twenty-four-inch waist? That was pretty good, he thought. His own was ten inches larger. Man, he wouldn’t miss spanning Frannie’s waist with his two hands by much. Should he ever get the urge to try, that was.

“And that would be thirty-seven.”

“Thirty-seven?” Thirty-seven what? Oh, hips. That’s what they’d been talking about. Wow. He could hardly wait to hear the math on that.

“Yeah, so anyway, I divided it out and got sixty-five percent. That’s pretty good, don’t you think? You said you thought it was between sixty and seventy percent and I got dead center. But the thing is…”

Drew pulled out a pen from the checkbook in his pocket and did some quick calculations on a napkin from the napkin holder. Sixty-four-point-eight-six percent rounded off to sixty-five, all right. “Hmm? What thing?”

“Well, do you know anything about the bust?”

Staring at Frannie blankly, Drew asked, “What?”

“Didn’t it say anything in your reading about ideal bust measurements? You know, bust-to-waist or bust-to-hip ratio?”

Man, he was dying here. Sixty-five percent waist-to-hips ratio and she wanted to talk breasts?

“Uh…”

“I’m a thirty-six C. How does that sound?”

It sounded fine to him. Better than fine. How in heck could he not have noticed a C-cup right under his nose all this time? “Thirty-six? C?”

Frannie sat up straight, smoothed her hands down the sides of her chest, an act that pulled her snug knit shirt even more tautly across her breasts. “I was always under the impression that most men were interested in a woman’s chest. I mean they certainly stare at it enough. But all you’ve said so far was this waist-to-hip thing. So I was just wondering.”

Drew swallowed. Hard. When had Frannie started wearing tight tops? A man would have to be dead—or very involved in avoiding lettuce wear—what was wrong with khaki, for God’s sake?—not to notice Frannie’s chest in that shirt. “Uh—” he grabbed the first piece of trivia he could recall and was extremely grateful he could even remember his name, let alone a bit of trivia “—I think I read somewhere that average is good.”

Frannie pouted a bit at that. “Average?” Women spent an awful lot of time and effort to make an impression and appear unique. Bummer.