May the bridesmaid force be with you!
Alex texted me just after I hit “Publish,” with a picture of him holding two ties up to his neck. Which one?
The blue. Better with your eyes.
Does it go with what you’re wearing? He had a benefit for work that night and I had agreed to go as his date.
I made a face. You were married too long. We’re not framing pictures from tonight to put on the mantle.
Good point.
I still need to do my hair, so I’m gonna go shower. I’ll see you at six.
He sent a thumbs-up emoji.
“You look beautiful,” Alex said when he picked me up. I twirled for full effect. It was the only event all year where I could wear a cocktail dress of my own choosing, even if it was a few years old. And, though I would never admit it to Caroline, with the Spanx that Caryn had guilt-tripped me into buying, I felt really good in it. Was the underwear remotely sexy? No. But it wasn’t like my dress was coming off until I was alone, so who cared?
I straightened his tie. “You clean up well too.” He wore a suit to work every day, but this was a nicer one. His hair was freshly trimmed, and he had shaved off the little bit of stubble he usually kept, the aftershave smell lingering alluringly.
“Shall we?” he asked, offering his arm. I took it and we went to the car.
The benefit was at the same hotel where Sharon was getting married. I had originally suggested Metroing so we could drink, but Alex said he wasn’t having more than a drink or two at a work event. Mildly shamed, I agreed to stick to that plan as well.
“Just don’t get engagement-party drunk and you’re fine,” he said. I elbowed him playfully. His face grew more serious. “Are you ready for everyone to assume we’re together?”
“Does it help you career-wise if I say we are?”
“It’s not the fifties. They know I’m divorced. They’re just going to make assumptions when they see us.”
“In that case, let’s tell everyone I’m your sister and then make out all night.”
“Oh okay, good, that’ll go over well.” I laughed. “Don’t be too much of a jerk please,” he said.
“I’ll be like Goldilocks. Just right.”
He brushed a hair off my forehead. “She was breaking and entering. It was the baby bear whose stuff was just right.”
“I said what I said.”
After the dinner part of the evening ended, I turned to Alex and said, “Thirty-six.”
“Thirty-six what?”
“Thirty-six people asked how long we’ve been dating.”
“And what did you say the latter thirty-five times to that?” He knew me well.
“That we’ve been together since high school, and I was really upset when you and my sister wife split up so we’re looking for someone new to add to our marriage.”
He covered his eyes with a hand. “Seriously?”
I rolled my eyes. “No. I said a few months to everyone.”
“Excellent. Want to keep up the lie and dance?” I looked to the dance floor, where about a dozen couples were dancing, and made a face. “Come on,” he said. “It’s good practice for Tim and Megan’s wedding.”
I agreed and followed him out to the floor. “It’s weird,” I said, as we swayed to the music. “I’ve never once referred to them as ‘Tim and Megan.’ It’s ‘Megan and Tim’ to me. Is it always like that with the person you knew first?”
He thought for a minute. “I think so.”
“What happens if you’ve known both people an equal length of time?”
“Maybe that’s when they get one of those celeb nicknames like Brangelina.”
“I guess. So we’d be Lily and Alex to my friends and Alex and Lily to yours?”
“And Ally to the people who knew us the same amount of time. Or Lilex.”
I laughed. “Lilex sounds like a knockoff watch brand. Ally it is.”
We danced without talking for a couple of minutes. I was glad he would be at Megan’s wedding with me. Going completely dateless to four of them was going to be rough. And I thought, for the millionth time, about lying to my family and saying Alex was my boyfriend.
The idea had some appeal to it. It would mean having a date to Jake’s and Amy’s weddings and being an awkward single only at Caryn’s and Sharon’s. Yeah, we would get asked when we were getting married, but we could play along with that. Help getting my grandma to Mexico would be useful as well. She was a handful.
I pulled back slightly to look at him. There was no denying that he was handsome. I mean, he wasn’t a Hemsworth, but who, other than the Hemsworths, was? He was already the first person I texted most mornings and the last person I texted at night. Did it have to be fake? What would it be like to kiss him?
He caught me looking at him. “What are you thinking?” he asked warily.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, more at myself than at him. What a dumb idea. He wasn’t into me like that anyway. Plus, Megan would murder me.
I glanced over his shoulder at the movement I saw back at the tables. “Ooh, dessert time!” I took the hand that had been in mine to dance and pulled him back toward the table, away from the dance floor of dangerous plans.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
March came to an end, flouting the “in like a lion, out like a lamb” cliché, as it does so often in DC, and ushered in a minor April snowstorm that left my mother in fits about our trip to Chicago for Madison’s bridal shower.
“We’re not leaving for another week,” I told her on a three-way call with Amy. “It won’t still be snowing by then.”
“What if it’s snowing in Chicago? It’s colder up there.”
“They know how to deal with snow in Chicago. Remember when Obama called us snow wimps? You’re giving him more material.”
My mother harrumphed at that. “It’ll be fine, Mom,” Amy said soothingly. “And worst-case scenario, at least it won’t snow next month when we go to the actual wedding.”
“It would be just our luck to get stranded in Chicago, when we have so much to do,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t go.”
I rolled my eyes. “Mom, we booked the tickets. We’re going.”
“Well of course we’re going,” she said, as if she hadn’t just suggested not going. “I’m just saying, is all.”
“Okay, I’m going to go pack.”
“Wait,” Amy said. “Are you bringing your flat iron? If you’re bringing yours, I won’t bother bringing mine.”
“Oh, good, I need one too,” my mother said. “That’s perfect. Lily, you’ll bring yours.”
“Want me to bring a communal hairbrush too?”
My sarcasm was lost on them. “Do you have a good one?” Amy asked.
“I’m hanging up now.”
Dearest blog readers, I have made some terrible decisions in my day. Sleeping with that groomsman. Agreeing to be in Bride A’s wedding. Not running for the hills when I met Bride B’s mom a dozen years ago. Overplucking my eyebrows in the early 2000s (seriously, when do those hairs grow back???).
But this? Oh, this is a whole new circle of hell that I have descended into. I am sharing a hotel room for two nights with my mother and baby sister.
I’m fully aware that that doesn’t sound so bad. I’m sure there are people out there who would LOVE to spend a weekend in Chicago with the two of them. Would they feel the same way after the two days were over? Sure—if they belong in Azkaban. Remember Helena Bonham Carter’s wanted poster? That’s me, right now. Hair and all. Because my little sister left my flat iron on and now it’s dead.
Note: She has a better flat iron than I do, but she didn’t want to bring hers, so I was instructed to bring mine. Now I have none.
Of course, I’ve traveled with her before, albeit not in several years, so I planned ahead. I packed twice as many outfits as I needed, knowing she would take at least one. (My first choice for future sister-in-law’s bridal shower? Little sis looked lovely in it. Almost as lovely as the c
lothes’ owner would have looked. But by the time I got out of the shower, she was already in my outfit and “It would take too long to change, so couldn’t I just wear something else?”)
And to add insult to injury, my mother didn’t pack any makeup because “Yours always looks so nice. You can just do mine.” You may have birthed me, but that doesn’t mean I want to share a mascara wand with you. That’s how you get pinkeye.
Blah blah blah, the shower was lovely and all, even if I looked like someone pieced me together from Goodwill.
And even bigger shocker—you know how my future sister-in-law doesn’t speak? I may have solved the mystery because her mother NEVER STOPS. Oh my. I felt like she was taking a medical history and worried that I was going to have to provide a urine sample. Maybe future sister-in-law never got a chance to speak growing up and doesn’t know how?
Gotta go, though—I’m extremely worried that if I take my eyes off my toothbrush, one of them will use that next.
To be fair, my mother had forgotten her makeup and was in hysterics, so I offered my services. And Amy had always stolen my clothes, so I was entirely prepared with an equally cute backup outfit, knowing she would take one of mine rather than wear her own clothes.
Madison was really happy that we made the effort to come to the shower—granted, we heard that through Jake, who wrapped me in a bear hug before giving me shit about taking time out of my busy schedule to do something for my family, and through her mother, who knew a shocking amount about me before I opened my mouth in an attempt to get a word in edgewise. Apparently Jake talked about me with some frequency, which made me feel like a jerk—I wasn’t sure some of my friends even knew his name.
But the whole truth didn’t play as well, and I felt like taking some creative license.
The blog was slowly picking up steam, thanks to my efforts at networking. I was up to fifty-eight followers and usually added one or two with each post now. But more importantly, I was excited about writing for the first time since college, when I was on the campus newspaper staff. The only writing I had done since then was for the foundation, and it was refreshing to write something that I so thoroughly enjoyed. And strangers on the internet were appreciating what I was writing, too, which was quite the ego boost.
Unfortunately, having an audience also wiped away any sense of decency that I had in mocking others. But, as I rationalized it to myself, with fifty-eight followers, the odds of the guilty parties ever seeing what I wrote about them were miniscule at best. And maybe if they weren’t being so toxic, I wouldn’t have written about them in the first place.
Plus the flat iron really was a point of contention. Amy swore she turned it off, yet it somehow stopped working between her using it before the bridal shower and that evening when I tried to touch up my hair before dinner. To stop the bickering, my mother finally snapped at us, “If it’s that big of a deal, I’ll buy you a new flat iron! Why can’t you two get along?”
Going to kill them, I texted Megan from the bed I was sharing with Amy after we shut out the light.
She didn’t reply. That was happening more and more frequently these days. Was it wedding stress or living with Tim or just us growing apart? I didn’t know.
Thank God for Alex. I copied my text to Megan and sent it to him.
Chicago is a good place for that, he said. What’d they do? I explained the clothes and flat iron debacles. Why didn’t you just say no?
I rolled my eyes. Doesn’t make a difference when I do.
Have you actually tried it? Or if they say to bring your flat iron so they don’t have to bring theirs, just don’t bring one.
Isn’t that totally passive-aggressive?
Says the girl who told me there’s always money to passive-aggressively troll someone? No, if you actually say the word “no” to them and then follow through, that’s the exact opposite of passive-aggressive.
But it’s my mom and sister.
Even better. They need tough love from someone who actually loves them.
Do I though?
Yes. Now go to bed and don’t add to Chicago’s murder stats.
Okay, okay. Good night.
“Who are you texting?” Amy whispered over our mother’s snores.
“A friend.”
“You smile like that for all your friends?”
“Yes,” I said defensively, setting my phone down.
“Oka-ay,” she murmured.
I waited a moment, listening to our mother’s half starts and then resumptions of the noise she was making.
“How are we going to sleep over that?”
“Right? How does Dad sleep every night?”
“He must be used to it by now.”
“Thank God Tyler doesn’t snore.”
We didn’t speak for another minute or two, and I thought about what Alex had said. “Hey Ames?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you please ask before you take my clothes? I don’t actually mind lending you stuff if you ask first. But today sucked.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, surprising me. “I was just trying your outfit on and then Mom said it was so much better than what I brought. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
I seldom saw my mother critique Amy in the same way she did me, but I thought back to my dad’s comment that she was hard on Amy in different ways. And I wondered if Amy saw how often she did it to me, or if we both thought we were the only one. How much of the tension between us is because of her?
And was she just doing what she had learned as a kid? My mother and her sister competed over absolutely everything. And my cousin, who was six months younger than me, was married, with her second baby on the way, which was probably part of why my mom was so upset that I was still single. It meant Anna was winning the Joan and Anna battle royale for sibling superiority. But Anna’s youngest was still single, so Amy’s impending wedding gave my mother a leg up, hence the current favoritism—at least as I saw it.
I wondered if it was something genetic and if I was destined to do the same thing to my eventual kids. My grandmother, as accepting as she was of me, picked my mother apart pretty regularly. And while my mother said she had learned to ignore her, I had seen her change her hairstyle after a comment from my grandma. Or remove an outfit from circulation entirely.
Maybe none of us had it easy.
But maybe being more aware of how we treated each other could help break the cycle.
“Thanks,” I told her, and I reached across the queen bed and squeezed her arm.
My last thought as I rolled over to go to sleep was to be relieved I hadn’t kissed Alex at his company benefit. I needed him too much.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The morning of Caryn’s shower was the first, and only, time I ever mentally thanked Caroline for anything. Because of the shower’s start time, I got to sleep gloriously late and wake up with a luxurious stretch and birds bringing me my breakfast.
Okay, maybe not the birds.
But I did sleep in and drink a cup of coffee out on the balcony, the first time it had been nice enough to do that all year. In the DC area, you tend to get about three days of true spring between winter, second winter, fake summer, monsoon season, third winter, and then swampy summer. And because it was shaping up to be one of the few true spring days, I used my free time to go for a run.
By the time I had eaten a light lunch and cleaned myself up, I felt ready to conquer the bridal shower, wicked bridesmaids of the west and all. I put on my first-ever piece of Lilly Pulitzer clothing (okay, so it was bought secondhand off Poshmark and was a few years old, but I couldn’t afford a new one and this was the only time I would ever actually wear it) and a pair of wedges and set off for the country club with my professionally wrapped gift in tow. I was even early—I knew Caroline was lying about not needing help setting up.
I gave my hair a last brush and touched up my lipstick before I handed the valet my keys and walked confidently inside.
A quick chec
k of my watch told me it was two thirty, but there was already a sign in the lobby pointing to the Donaldson-Greene Bridal Shower. Perfect, I thought, bypassing the front desk.
The gift blocked much of my view. I had gone with a registry vase that was just barely out of my price range, and the box was enormous, especially festooned with the multiple bows and spiraling ribbons that belied a talent far beyond my wrapping abilities.
I pushed through the glass-paneled door into the room where the shower would be held and stopped cold.
Busboys buzzed around the room, piling half-empty glasses and plates into bins, throwing away discarded napkins and wrapping paper, and pulling down decorations.
Setting the gift down, I checked my watch. Then I pulled out my phone and checked the time against that. Both read the same: 2:32.
They must be cleaning up from an earlier shower, I thought. I’m still early.
But there were bags of personalized cookies on the table closest to me, and I could see, even from the doorway, that they said “Caryn” against a pale-green background for a play on her new last name.
I felt sick.
How could I have messed this up? I did literally nothing all day and actually bought a dress to fit in. I knew that missing the bachelorette weekend upset Caryn, so it was incredibly important to me that I not make waves for her shower. Hot tears pricked at my eyes as I picked up the present and left the room. In the hall, I set it down again and pulled my phone back out, searching my emails for the one from Caroline that said the time.
I found it—3:00 p.m. I reread it, noticing suddenly that it had gone only to me, not to all of the other bridesmaids. And I realized, with a sense of foreboding, that that omission wasn’t because the other bridesmaids already knew the time.
She didn’t want them to see that she had just deliberately told me the wrong time.
My hands started shaking as I considered the implications of what she had done. Caryn was never going to forgive me. Which, okay, if she knew what I had been saying about her on the internet, I could understand, but she didn’t. Caroline did this to me entirely because she didn’t like me and knew she could get away with it. There was no way she would own it, even if I told Caryn everything.
For the Love of Friends Page 18
