This wedding is my first big test. I was tempted to pack gluten-free granola bars rather than make a fuss about the catering, but Shelby wouldn’t hear of it. (I’m still packing the granola bars, FYI, and my enzyme pills, because I’m not about to interrupt my best friend on the most important day of her life to ask for my chicken to be sent back and baked in olive oil instead of butter.)
I sip the last bit of my watered-down gin, the ice having melted, and pull out my phone. I’d silenced it, but it appears Huck’s been texting me a running commentary from the night. His sound engineer, Arlo, was holding a gender-reveal party at an ax-throwing place outside Nashville. A smile blooms across my face as I scroll.
HUCK: These guys are too manly for me. This place is bleeding masculinity and not just because nearly everyone is a lumberjack homosexual. They all have beards. And giant forearms. Did you know there was a wrong way to throw an ax?
I snicker. Arlo is a pretty small dude, but his husband, Josh, is a burly pediatrician who comes from a large family of strapping men. They’re having their first child via surrogate this fall and just had the ultrasound done this week. I’m dying to know what they’re having.
HUCK: Scratch that—the wrong way is throwing a sharp object in the first place.
HUCK: Update: they bought cigars. Know what’s more ridiculous than a scrawny white dude whose preferred drink of choice is “your driest Cab”? A thirty-six-year-old trying to smoke a cigar for the first time. This is like when I was twelve and my friend Joe rolled literal swamp grass in a poison ivy leaf and tried to convince me it was pot.
HUCK: Seriously though, these guys are so nice. Arlo married up. I knew that, of course, but …
HUCK: Your song was just on the radio.
HUCK: And now my song is on the radio.
HUCK: They’re song besties.
HUCK: I might be drunk. No one wants to share my wine. Not even Arlo. I need you.
HUCK: I mean.
HUCK: To help drink the wine.
HUCK: I don’t NEED you. You should be having fun with your ladies.
HUCK: Ladies is a dumb word. Women? Girls?
HUCK: They just started a competition to see who can chop through a log in a single swing. Help!
HUCK: Spoiler: I didn’t win.
I bite my lip to keep from giggling out loud. Man, he’s fucking cute.
LORELAI: When is the reveal happening???
HUCK:…
HUCK: No way. You have to wait until you come back before I tell you.
LORELAI: What? That’s not fair!
HUCK: Too bad. How’s your hen party?
LORELAI: Is that what you landed on? Hens? Not ladies?
HUCK: Still workshopping it.
LORELAI: Fun! Shelby is glowing and the blackberry gin fizzes are out of this world.
HUCK: Are you getting nervous for tomorrow?
I’m singing tomorrow at the wedding, and I’ve been stressing about it all week.
LORELAI: Yeah. Still don’t know why.
HUCK: Because you love them so much.
I bite my lip, warmed by how well he gets me.
LORELAI: That’s exactly it. You’re right. I should go. Maren’s back.
HUCK: Tell everyone I said hi. I’ll be around later tonight if you want to run through your performance.
I tuck my phone away and take another sip of my drink. Mindfuck indeed.
* * *
The following evening sparkles like the billions of stars in the crisp, clear northern night sky. Like the multi-facets of the glittering rock on my best friend’s finger. Like the fucking beams of joy glowing straight out of Cameron’s moony eyes when his bride literally danced down the aisle to his side.
It’s all incredibly romantic and I find myself floating around most of the day in my lavender chiffon bridesmaid dress, feeling as though I’m an extra in a 1950s Rodgers and Hammerstein. But I’m a little sad, too.
I stopped imagining my wedding the minute things broke off with Drake, but before that, it’s fair to say I was obsessed. As your typical small-town head cheerleader and prom queen, I used to sign up to model wedding dresses at bridal shows for extra cash on weekends during the season. After the runway shows, I’d walk around with my girlfriends, eating samples of sugary cakes and entering raffles for far-off Caribbean honeymoons. I had entire binders filled with clippings of my future wedding that I eventually replaced with multiple secret Pinterest boards.
And I know, now that I’m thirty-three and I’ve grown up and become someone who’s a far cry from that giggling teenager, all of that is pretty materialistic. But I was so close, you know? To making even the wildest of my dreams come true. It was within my grasp, and even understanding how shallow it was doesn’t seem to soothe the sting of not being wanted. Of not being worthy. I wasn’t the right kind of person to win Drake’s loyalty. He didn’t think I deserved that dream wedding with him by my side.
I know. Fuck that. Fuck it all straight to hell, obviously. Obviously.
But just for a moment, in my yards of chiffon and half-drunk on champagne bubbles, I get to feel sad, okay? I get to mourn the could have been and maybe even get all the way drunk on champagne bubbles. I’ll eat my lovely specially made gluten-free, vegan frosted cookies and watch the groom spin the bride around and around and remember that there was a time I hoped I could dazzle someone like that.
But I guess I couldn’t.
Okay. Pity party over. I pull out my phone and snap a few pictures to post to social media, because at the end of the day, I still need to make sure I’m relevant or whatever.
I zoom in on Shelby and Cam, completely absorbed in each other as they sway back and forth to a Maren Morris song and click. Then I take a picture of my cookies, tagging the caterer and raving about how delicious and allergy free they are. Hopefully, they’ll get a boost in their sales.
Finally I lean my head in one hand, tired, but still holding up nicely, and take an elegant selfie, tipping my champagne flute toward the camera in a toast, letting the twinkle lights soften my features and the alcohol widen my grin. I post the pictures, writing underneath:
Today was better than anything I could have dreamed up for my best friends. Only missing one scrawny thirty-six-year-old drinker of only the driest Cab.
Because I’m beginning to realize, whenever I’ve needed him, he’s always been there.
4
CRAIG
STONE
My phone rings, jarring in the silence of an empty studio, and I knock over a mostly empty cardboard coffee cup. I can practically hear my engineer Arlo Bishop’s lecture about the dangers of having liquids around his precious soundboard. In my (admittedly weak) defense, it’s Saturday night and I’m alone. I paid for said precious soundboard and I can spill room-temperature Americano on it if I damn well please.
Nevertheless, I quickly swipe at the single drop of hours-old coffee precariously rolling between two levers and threatening to collapse four years of blissful partnership before reaching for my phone. Arlo might look like a small, pleasant Danny Kaye type, but he’s a fucking barracuda on Jim Beam if you mess with his equipment.