My mom had a fifty-one share, William forty-nine, and she got her name on the door. But the legalese basically ended there. Whatever foxhole a particular wedding was, they were in it together. They made dreams come true, they liked to tell each other and anyone else who would listen, and they weren’t wrong. This ability never did cross over to their own love lives, however. My mom had barely dated since splitting with my dad, and when she did, she made a point of picking people she knew wouldn’t stick around—“to take the guesswork out of it,” in her words. Meanwhile William, who had been out since about age eight, had yet to meet any man who could come close to meeting his exacting standards. He dealt with this by also leaning toward less than ideal choices with no chance of long-term relationship potential. Real love didn’t exist, they maintained, despite building an entire livelihood based on that very illusion. So why waste time looking for it? And besides, they had each other.
Even as a kid, I knew this was dysfunctional. But unfortunately, I’d been indoctrinated from a young age with my mom and William’s strong, oft-repeated cynical views on romance, forever, love, and other keywords. It was confusing, to say the least. On the one hand, I lived and breathed the wedding dream, dragged along to ceremonies and venues, privy to meetings on every excruciating detail from Save the Date cards to cake toppers. But away from the clients and the work, there was a constant, repetitive commentary about how it was a sham, no good men really existed, and we were all better off alone. It was no wonder that a few years earlier, when my best friend Jilly had suddenly gone completely boy-crazy, I’d been reluctant to join her. I was a fourteen-year-old girl with the world-weariness of a bitter midlife divorcée, repeating all the things I’d heard over and over, like a mantra. “Well, he’ll only disappoint you, so you should just expect it,” I’d say, shaking my head as she texted with some thick-necked soccer player. Or I’d warn: “Don’t give what you’re not ready to lose,” when she considered, with great drama, whether to confess to a boy that she “liked” him. My peers might have been flirting either in pairs or big groups, but I stood apart, figuratively and literally, the buzzkill at the end of every rom-com movie or final chorus of a love song. After all, I’d learned from the best. It wasn’t my fault, which did not make it any less annoying.
But then, the previous summer, on a hot August night, all of that had changed. Suddenly, I did believe, at least for a little while. The result was the most broken of hearts, made even worse by the knowledge that I had no one to blame for it but myself. If I’d only walked away, said no twice instead of only once, gone home to my bed and left that wide stretch of stars behind when I had the chance. Oh, well.
Now my mother downed the rest of her drink and put her glass aside. “Past midnight,” she observed, taking a glance at her watch. “Are we ready to go?”
“One last sweep and we will be,” William replied, standing up and brushing off his suit. As a rule, we all dressed for events as if we were guests, but modest ones. The goal was to blend in, but not too much. Like everything in this business, a delicate balance. “Louna, you take the lobby and outside. I’ll check here and the bathrooms.”
I nodded, then headed across the ballroom, now empty except for a few servers stacking chairs and clearing glasses. The lights were bright overhead, and as I walked I could see flower petals and crumpled napkins here and there on the floor, along with a few stray glasses and beer cans. Outside, the lobby was deserted, except for some guy leaning out a half-open door with a cigar, under a NO SMOKING sign.
I continued out the front doors, where the night felt cool. The parking lot was quiet as well, no one around. Or so I thought, until I started back in and glimpsed one of Deborah’s bridesmaids, a tall black girl with braids and a nose ring—Malika? Malina?—standing by a nearby planter. She had a tissue in her hand and was dabbing at her eyes, and I wondered, not for the first time, what it was about weddings that made everything so emotional. It was like tears were contagious.
She looked up suddenly, seeing me. I raised my eyebrows, and she gave me a sad smile, shaking her head: she didn’t need my help. There are times when you intervene and times when you don’t, and I’d long ago learned the difference. Some people like their sadness out in the open, but the vast majority prefer to cry alone. Unless it was my job to do otherwise, I’d let them.
CHAPTER
2
“YOU KNOW,” Jilly said, from inside my closet, “this job of yours is really putting a damper on my love life.”
“You always say that,” I told her.
“And I always mean it.” There was a thump, followed by the sound of something falling. “Wow. Is this pink one really strapless? How unlike you. I’m trying it on. Crawford, about face.”
I looked over at her ten-year-old little brother, who was standing by my desk, studying my math textbook. He pushed up his glasses, sighed, then turned around. Meanwhile, I shifted her baby sister, Bean, to my other hip, trying to extract my hair from her tight grip. As I did, she gummed my shoulder, leaving a streak of spittle across my shirtsleeve. Since she had two working parents juggling their empire of food trucks, a visit from Jilly was always a family affair.
“Okay,” she announced after a moment, emerging in a watermelon-colored sundress that was too small for her. Also, not strapless last I checked. But Jilly liked things tight and short, all the better to accentuate her ample curves. As much as it was not my personal style—by a long shot—I had to admire her body confidence. Most girls at our school were constantly talking diets and thigh gaps, but my best friend had always been one to zig where others zagged. It was but one of about a million things I loved about her. “What do you think?”
“That there are straps,” I pointed out, coming over and wriggling one loose. “See?”
She glanced over a freckled shoulder. “Oh. Well, they’re slim at least. Pop that other one up for me?”
I did as I was told as Bean tried to reach for her, chubby fingers grabbing. Jilly always came to my house in one outfit and left in another. I had an entire rack in the closet of her clothes, as organized as my own, which she ignored every time she went in there.
“So, about tonight,” she said, wriggling an arm under the strap and adjusting her ample chest into the bodice. I was a hopeful C cup at best, and she was a legit D, so she always added to my clothes a va-va-voom factor I couldn’t even hope for. “The guys are meeting us late night at Bendo, after the last band plays. It’s that Catastrophe one.”
“Brilliant or Catastrophic,” I corrected her.
“Right.” She turned around, presenting her back to me to do the zipper. “You can come after the event. You said you’d be done early, right?”
“No. I said it was a six o’clock wedding. It’ll be ten or after.”
“That dress is too tight,” Crawford said in his signature flat monotone. It was the way he’d talked since he was a baby and the family had moved in behind us, just over the slim creek that separated our two houses. At the time, Jilly and I were ten, he was two, and the twins and Bean not even around yet. Jilly’s parents were busy when it came to everything, including procreating.
“Don’t worry about me. Just read your book,” she told him in reply, pushing up her boobs a bit.
“It’s Louna’s book,” he grumbled, and flipped a page. “Also Bean needs changing.”