I lift up my foot, taking a peek, just to reassure myself. It wasn’t even a big cut, and it’s not even bled through the plaster I put on last night. No stitches required.
Bitterly, I think that Mother Hen Lucy probably would’ve clucked that she was also a trained first aider and able to do that for me to save me a hospital visit, but I quickly remind myself that’s not fair either. She was very sweet last night, the first one to hop up and go looking under my kitchen sink for a dustpan and brush to clean it all up, and then gently advising me to clean the cut on my foot with an antiseptic wipe and some cream before I put a plaster on.
I definitely shouldn’t be getting annoyed at Lucy right now.
Besides me, she might be the only rational person in this damn apartment. (I’m not sure rational is a word I’d use to describe Addison at any point in time, to be honest.) God, I wish I’d never agreed to all this.
I look now at the clutter of empty buy-one-get-one-half-price prosecco bottles in my recycling bin and sigh. My head is throbbing just looking at them, although I’m sure the booze isn’t the real reason for my headache this morning.
I wince, remembering the sound of the bottle smashing against the wall, Kim wailing.
No, sod her. I hope she wakes up feeling even worse than me. She bloody well deserves to. None of this was my fault, I was just being honest, and she was completely out of line.
I don’t have the energy to be angry again. I don’t have the time to mull over it too much longer, either, not when I have to start work soon. And, honestly, I’d much rather throw myself into trying to concentrate on work than dwell on last night’s argument.
It’s not like Kim and I have never argued before, but it’s never gotten so personal, or so nasty. And neither of us will even really get the space to sit with it, when we’re still stuck inside for a couple more days.
Not being able to run away from the fight is probably a good thing, but it doesn’t feel like it right now. It just feels like it enforces an expectation that we have to forgive and forget, and move on, and have everything be just fine again.
I want us to talk things out and swap apologies and move on, of course I do, but I don’t want it to happen just for the sake of keeping the peace, rather than because we want to sort this out, because we care about our friendship. But, I should’ve known it was only a matter of time before Kim’s bridezilla attitude turned on me. I’d just figured it would be on the bachelorette party, and that she’d be mad over someone not showing up and that would somehow be my fault, or because I didn’t book her a stripper. (Even though she’s maintained every damn time it comes up that she does not want a stripper at the bachelorette party, “No matter what Addison says.”) While I had a feeling it would happen at some point, I just didn’t think it would go down like this.
What a complete shitshow.
Maybe . . . maybe if I ignore it for long enough, just go about my day, I can put off having to deal with it for just a little while.
Quietly, I fix myself some cereal, not daring to use the toaster in case the pop of it wakes any of the others.
I can’t believe I ever thought hosting this cute little weekend for the bridal party was a good idea. Just two days! No big deal! They’d be gone soon enough. I can’t believe I ever thought it was going well, that I was having fun with it.
Oh God, I wish they were gone.
Chomping down on a spoonful of cornflakes, I scowl out of the window, and then turn when I hear someone walking into the kitchen behind me. It’s Addison, in her slouchy pajama shirt and teeny-tiny pink shorts, hair piled up in a lopsided bun on top of her head. She yawns loudly, her neck popping as she rolls it.
I really hate when she does that.
It was a weird party trick the first time she did it, on Saturday morning. She’s done it a dozen or more times since then, though, and the novelty quickly wore off.
I grimace. But instead of, Can you maybe not do that? , I figure it’s probably best I don’t incite another argument and say, “Morning.
Didn’t hear you get up.”
“Oh, sure,” she says, too loudly, in her thick southern-American drawl, “I’m an early bird after I’ve had a few drinks! It’s, like, the main reason I can go out drinking on a work night, ha ha!”
She wasn’t an early bird on the weekend, or after the signature wedding cocktails, I want to say. She’s slept in late consistently all week. But I don’t have the energy to argue with her about it; and besides, it’s probably just another one of her try-hard, weird jokes.
I offer up a weak smile, trying not to freak out as I watch her rummage around my kitchen to find the bagels, which she promptly puts in the toaster. Could she make any more noise? She’ll wake the whole damn building up at this rate.
She starts to make coffee, and after setting a mug out for herself, she gestures at me with another. “You want one?”
“Yeah, go on then. Please,” I add, as an afterthought.
Coffee made, I take the mug off her when she hands it over. Her bright purple manicure is chipped, her fingers brushing against mine, and once she’s passed over my drink she runs her hand through her hair, effortlessly pulling out the hair tie and shaking out her long blond waves. I have to admire how soft and smooth her hair looks right now.
As annoying as she is, I suddenly find myself picturing what it would be like to run my hands through her hair, hold her close, how soft her lips would be.
She pops her neck again, effectively yanking me out of the daydream and back to this reality, where I definitely don’t plan to act on whatever this is, because even if she’s attractive, she’s absolutely not my type. She’s just so . . . everything. So much.
Too much for me, anyway.
She stands munching on her cream cheese–smothered bagel while I sip my coffee, both of us leaning against the kitchen counter in our pajamas.
“I know all this wedding stuff has been stressing her out, but I really didn’t expect her to lose it like that last night,” Addison mumbles, this time quiet enough that there’s no chance of her voice carrying out to the bedroom, where Kim’s still fast asleep (we hope). She catches my eye, her face twisting in sympathy. “I mean, it’s not like you were being that unreasonable. She has been a bridezilla. And it might all get canceled. Even Jere said so.”
“Wait, he did?”
“Sure he did. When they went to get the groceries from him on Wednesday.”
Addison shrugs like this is no big thing.
Jeremy has been our knight in shining disposable face mask and latex gloves this week, doing supermarket runs for us and bringing us several bags of food—once on Sunday afternoon, when he also brought clothes for Kim and Lucy, and again on Wednesday.
Our savior—or so I’d thought. I’m willing to bet that whatever he said to Kim contributed to last night’s meltdown.
“Nobody told me he said anything about calling off the wedding,”