For the Love of Friends

I texted Alex as I left the salon. So what CAN you dissolve a body in? Asking for a friend . . .

He replied immediately. According to AMC, a plastic bin. Went that well, huh?

She asked if I was pregnant.

He sent back a shocked emoji. Meet you in the bin section at Home Depot in an hour?

Oh, so you’re a full-service kind of lawyer.

Only for my favorite clients. And if you invent a new product for disposing of horrible mothers, I can help you patent it too.

What a pal.

I crossed the street toward my car feeling moderately better. I couldn’t wait to peel the Spanx off, but the pregnancy comment had put me over the edge. I was going home to change and then going to the gym. Maybe if I added a couple of workouts a week, everyone would leave me alone about how I looked.

You feel like going to a movie tonight?

That felt date-like and I hesitated. Is that still a thing?

Yeah. But going alone sucks.

I’ve never gone alone. Not brave enough.

Really? I go alone all the time.

God, I don’t even remember the last time I saw a movie in the theater. If you don’t have a boyfriend, you basically never see a movie when you’re an adult.

Guess I need a boyfriend, he replied with a winky face. Or we could, you know, be rebels and go as friends.

I laughed and agreed, on the condition that I got peanut M&Ms. I could do a short workout at the gym before the movie. You need to start slow, after all.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


From: Caryn Donaldson [[email protected]]

To: [bridesmaids]

Subject: Wedding newsletter volume 5

Date: December 18

We are officially in the homestretch, ladies! Less than six months to go until I say I do!

The hard parts (for me at least ;-p) are all over! The venue is booked, the dresses are ordered, the photographer and makeup artists are hired, and the menu is set. Whew! I’m tired just typing all of that!

Now, I wanted to make you all aware of a few dates for your collective and individual planning purposes.

I’d like my shower to take place at least a month, but no more than six weeks before the wedding itself. That gives us time to update the registry before the wedding, but not so much time that we lose momentum for the big day. Which means it will need to be either the last weekend in April or the first weekend in May. I’ll let you decide from there.

For the bachelorette party, it should be sometime after the shower, but not less than two weeks before the wedding. I want to be able to have a few drinks at it and still have time to completely detox so there’s no trace of puffiness in my pictures—and that gives you all time to detox. I’m thinking something small and intimate, and dear God, no male nudity!

Speaking of pictures, let’s talk beauty regimens. I’ll let you work out the best timing for Botox and fillers with your doctors, but keep in mind that you don’t want your Botox TOO close to the wedding or you’ll have that dead-eye look in pictures and no one wants that. Plan your eyelash fills accordingly too. And don’t forget the spray tans! They’ll need to be fresh, but not so fresh that they could rub off on dresses. Also, be mindful of your keratin treatments. It’s outside by the water, so we don’t want frizz, but we DEFINITELY don’t want that greasy, just-done hair! If you start planning it out now, maybe we could all do a spa day before the wedding and do our keratin together—it’ll make it go so much quicker!

You’re the best, and I don’t know how I could have done any of this without you!

Love and kisses!

—Caryn

I read the email again. This wasn’t real, was it? She wanted us to get Botox? No, I read that part again—she was just saying if some of them already got it, to time it accordingly, right? I pulled out my cell phone and opened the front camera. I mean, sure, there were some faint lines on my forehead, but those weren’t wrinkles, were they? Everyone had those. Didn’t they?

Okay, Caryn didn’t. Wow. Caryn got Botox? She was two years younger than me! Had I missed something? Was this a thing people our age did?

I forwarded the email to Megan, then texted her and told her to read it.

My phone rang a couple of minutes later.

“She’s out of her mind,” Megan said instead of a greeting.

I got up and shut my office door. “I mean—that’s crazy, right?”

“Mad as a hatter. Punch me in the face if I ever get that bad.”

“Gladly.” I paused. “Do you get Botox?” She didn’t reply. “Megs!”

“I haven’t yet. But I’m going with Kelly next week.”

I felt a twinge of jealousy mixed with my surprise. Kelly lived in Columbia, right near where Megan and Tim had moved, and based on what I had seen on social media, they had become inseparable over the last couple of months. Was she taking my place?

“Do you want to come? I can call the doctor’s office and see if we can do one more.”

I lifted my eyebrows experimentally, annoyed that I was an afterthought. “Do you think I need it?”

“God no, what’s the matter with you? I’m just doing it for the wedding pictures. It’ll be half worn off by then anyway.”

“And eyelash extensions?”

“I mean, they look good. But they’re so much maintenance. We can just wear fake ones for the wedding. The makeup artist will put them on. But if you’re going to get them for hers, you can totally keep them for mine and it’ll be fine.”

Just like the minimizing bra, I thought, unkindly.

“Gotcha,” I said.

“That’s also so rude, telling you when the shower and bachelorette have to be. You’re in four other weddings. What if the dates don’t work for you?”

That hadn’t occurred to me. In my relief that none of the weddings conflicted, it hadn’t dawned on me that I had ten other parties in the weeks leading up to the weddings, which I would be expected to help plan. Some of those were going to overlap. It was just inevitable. “In that case, I doubt any of the other bridesmaids would miss me.”

“But like, ask, don’t tell. We don’t own you.”

“Megs, what am I doing in this wedding? Like seriously. I don’t want to put poison in my face.”

“I mean, she didn’t tell you that you had to. She was just saying to plan it out if you were going to.”

“Yeah, but am I going to look like an old crone next to everyone else in the pictures now?”

“No. You’re going to look like a normal human being who doesn’t get work done and is happy with how she looks. I’m jealous, honestly. I wish I didn’t care how old I looked.”

I didn’t respond. There was no way she meant that as an insult. Megan just sometimes had foot-in-mouth disease. And I didn’t think she realized how beaten down I still was about my looks by the attack of the horror-show mothers. “Thanks, I think,” I said eventually. Another phone rang in the background on Megan’s end.

“Ugh, I’ve got to go actually work. Don’t change a thing—you’re perfect and I love you!”

I slumped over my desk. Wahhhhh, I thought. I was so sick of weddings and brides and bridesmaids.

After all of the dresses had been found, my official bridesmaid duties had hit a bit of a lull, which I thought would be a well-deserved reprieve.

It wasn’t.

I may have gotten a two-month break from people harping on how I looked, but my friends had all suddenly disappeared.

Oh, they were still there, physically at least. But who were these people? I literally hadn’t had a single conversation with Megan, Caryn, or Sharon that didn’t immediately revert back to weddings. None of them ever had time to hang out, unless I wanted to be a third wheel with their fiancés, which I really didn’t, or unless I wanted to join them at bridal expos, which I was willing to do once, but had no desire to do repeatedly.

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