Yes, it needed to be done. And it needed to be done before I could apologize to anyone. Before I even listened to the rest of the messages. I typed my password and kissed my first attempt at personal writing in more than a decade goodbye.
I picked my phone back up, then put it down without unlocking it. Instead I opened my email on my laptop, letting the now 1,963 emails download. Most were comments on the blog. I skimmed through a couple dozen, which were split pretty evenly between encouraging responses, similar horror stories, or compliments on my humor or writing, and negative responses. The negative half were more in the vein of what I deserved, wondering why anyone liked me enough to want me in their weddings in the first place. I concurred wholeheartedly.
When I filtered out the WordPress notifications, there were two from Buzzfeed writers, one from someone at AOL News (which I didn’t know was still a thing), and one from a Washington Post reporter trying to confirm my identity as the author of the blog. That last one scared me. A lot. If Buzzfeed figured out who I was because I posted from work, this could have negative splash-back there. Could I get fired? I was supposed to represent the public image of the foundation, and my own public image had just gone viral for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t imagine that going over well. And while yes, I had contemplated quitting over Caryn, I hadn’t been serious. How would I pay my rent? I put my head in my hands again and tried to get my breathing under control.
What had I done?
The worst of the voicemails was my mother’s. “I don’t even know what to say to you. How could you do this to your brother and sister and to me? Your grandmother saw what you wrote about her. And about that—man—who you—your father read that. Is this who I raised? What am I supposed to tell people? Amy is saying she doesn’t want you in her wedding and how will we explain that? I don’t know what to say.”
There’s something about a mother’s disappointment that cuts you to the bone, no matter how old you are. That’s not to say I wasn’t used to disappointing her, but I wanted to crawl into a hole to live out the rest of my days among the grubworms when she told me my father had read the post about Justin. And when she mentioned my grandmother, I realized I had to start an actual list of people I had wronged. Because she hadn’t even crossed my mind. Granted, if I lost my job, I was about to have nothing but time to make it up to them and would probably wind up moving in with my grandma because there was no way my mother would take me now. Grandma, well, she would probably get over it.
Jake’s voicemail was concise, at least. “Madison has been crying for an hour. Why can’t you just be a normal sister and make her feel welcome? I can’t believe how selfish you are.”
I grabbed a notepad and started my apology list. Caryn had probably gotten the worst of it in the blog and I was sure her friends were giving her holy hell, so she belonged at the top. Then I wrote Amy’s name above hers. I had forgotten to check if I had called her out about that Luke guy before hitting “Delete,” but if I had, that was actually the worst. Sharon was next, then Jake and Madison. Megan came fifth. She would forgive me no matter what, in the end. Then, after I had made amends with all of the brides, next up were my mother, my grandmother, and my father. I didn’t even write Alex’s name on the list. I was beyond salvation there.
It was one o’clock, and I had a lot of work ahead of me.
I tried Amy’s cell phone. She let it ring twice and then sent it to voicemail. I pressed the call button again. Same result. She picked up the third time, however. “What, Lily?”
“Don’t hang up,” I said quickly. “Amy, I’m so, so sorry.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Is that all?”
“No. I didn’t have any right to—”
“No, you didn’t have any right! If you hated me that much, you didn’t have to be in my wedding at all!”
I hesitated. “I don’t hate you, Ames. If anything, I think I’m jealous. Everything always comes so easy to you.”
“Nothing comes easy to me! I’m working a part-time job and lived at home until two weeks ago! I took five years to graduate college and can’t find an actual career. You walked out of college into a job, you never had to move back home, and all anyone does is talk about how successful you are. But me? No one has ever said anything like that about me. I’m the screw-up baby sister. And God forbid one good thing happens—I find a great guy—and you try to ruin that just because I was talking to someone I knew in college?”
“I didn’t try to ruin—”
“Then why would you say that on the internet, Lily? Do you know how hard that was to explain to Tyler?”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I can talk to Tyler and explain it wasn’t like that.”
“I already talked to Tyler. He loves me, and he trusts me. Which is way more than I can say for you.”
“I—” I took a deep breath. “I’m not going to make any excuses. I was wrong. What can I do to make this right?”
“I don’t know,” Amy said. “It’s not my job to tell you how to fix it when you mess up. You have to figure that out.”
I paused, taken aback. Of all the people to hit me with that truth bomb, she was the last one I would have expected. Which just showed how wrong I had been all along.
“Do you want me to drop out of the wedding?” I asked quietly. “I will if it’s what you want.”
She hesitated. “No. I want you to be my big sister and be happy for me, which you haven’t done yet.”
I felt my shoulders slump. She was right. Not once in this whole crazy year had I taken a moment to be happy that my little sister was happy. I said she was too young, and I said I didn’t think she would actually get as far as a wedding, let alone spending her life with someone, and I was snarky about much of it, even to her face. And if what she said earlier was true, about thinking everything came so easily to me—wow.
“You’re right. And I’m so sorry. I got so wrapped up in feeling like the victim because I was in so many weddings and am so much older and have no prospect of getting married anytime soon that I didn’t think about what was actually important.” She didn’t say anything. “You. Being happy. That’s what’s important. If that wasn’t clear. Because you’re my sister, and I love you, and—I—I—” Tears were flowing down my cheeks and I trailed off, unable to say more.
Amy let me cry for a couple of minutes, and I heard her sniffle. “I love you too. I still hate you right now, but I love you. Don’t you know how jealous I always was of you? You were off living this glamorous life and you didn’t need any guy to make you whole. I—I don’t know who I am if I’m not with someone. And that’s scary because I love Tyler so much and what if it doesn’t work out? You, at least, know how to be on your own.”
“Not entirely by choice,” I admitted quietly. “I want to find all of that. I just—can’t.”
“What about that Alex guy?”
“He—well, he saw the blog too.”
“And—?”
I sniffed hard, trying not to lose it completely. “No, that’s done now.”
“I’m sorry,” Amy said.
“Me too.”
“You know what could start making it up to me?”
“What?”
“Let me be there when you explain this to Grandma. I’m dying to know what she says about the sleeping-with-that-other-groomsman thing after the post you did about her at Jake’s wedding.”
I laughed through my tears. “Okay.”
“I’m not serious—well, a little. Just tell me what she says.”
“I will.”
“Lily?”
“Yeah?”
“It was good. I mean, not the parts where you made fun of me. But the writing was really good.”
I thanked her and got off the phone before I started to cry in earnest again. I wasn’t even sure which part I was crying over anymore, but I cried harder than I had after telling Alex I couldn’t be with him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE