But one thing was certain. In making the blog about me, I had proven I didn’t deserve the position any of my friends or siblings had elevated me to by asking me to be in their weddings.
No wonder I’m alone, I thought.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to be able to fix everything. That much was obvious. Sharon and Caryn would probably never speak to me again, and they’d be entirely right not to. But my family would have to get over it eventually.
At least I hoped they would.
Phone calls in which my brother conveyed information from me to Madison had historically not worked in my favor. Jake and Madison were leaving the following day to go back to Chicago until Amy’s wedding, so I decided to kill several birds with one stone and just show up at my parents’ house to beg forgiveness from everyone at once.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
My apartment was only about twenty minutes away from my childhood home, which, on the drive that day, felt metaphorical for how far I hadn’t come from childhood. When you’re a kid, you think you’ll know how to do everything once you’re an adult. But I must have screwed up somewhere along the way because Amy was the only one actually speaking to me, and I was driving to my parents’ house to apologize for being the biggest jerk on the planet. Not to mention the distinct possibility that I would need Amy’s recently vacated room, depending on how things played out at work.
I parked in the driveway next to Jake’s rental car and took a moment to steel myself. I reached for the doorknob to let myself in—I had never knocked at my parents’ house unless I had forgotten my key—but this wasn’t a normal visit. So I removed my hand and pushed the doorbell, then waited.
My father opened the door, his glasses absentmindedly far down his nose. “Lily?” he asked, pushing the glasses up. “What are you doing here? And why did you ring the bell?”
“I didn’t think I should just walk into the arena unannounced. The lions should know I’m coming.”
He patted my shoulder and gestured for me to come in. “It’s not as bad as all that. Your mother—well—you know how she gets. Everything is the end of the world. Until the next big crisis, at which point that’s the end of the world. Hopefully the florist screws up something for Amy’s wedding and she’ll forget all about this.”
My eyes welled up in gratitude. He patted me again awkwardly. “I’m sorry you had to see all that though,” I said. “I never would have said as much if I thought people would know it was me—it wasn’t all true, you know.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t read a word. I’m just going off what your mother told me.”
“But she said you read it all.”
“Good God, no. Sweetheart, I didn’t survive having two teenage daughters by going snooping through your private thoughts. If I found a diary, and I did from time to time, I kept it closed.”
I looked at him in wonder. I didn’t understand how two such polar opposites as he and my mom could be so content after thirty-five years of marriage, yet here they were. Somehow they worked.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“You’ll make it right. I believe in you.”
I let out a choked sound. “And if they fire me tomorrow, can I come home?”
“Absolutely not. I barely survived you and your mother living under the same roof the first time around. If something happens, we’ll figure out how to help you get by.”
I came as close as I had to smiling since before Alex kissed me, and I wrapped my arms around his waist in a tight hug. He hugged me back, then peeled my arms off. “Enough of that,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to get in trouble for fraternizing with the enemy. The lions might eat me, too, and then where would we be?”
“Eddie?” my mother’s voice called down from upstairs. “Who was at the door?”
He nudged me forward and retreated into his study.
“It’s me, Mom.”
She appeared at the top of the stairs. “Well. You’ve got some nerve—”
“Actually, I need to talk to Jake and Madison first.” She looked at me, taken aback. “I’m making amends in the order of who I offended most to least, and they outrank you.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but snapped it shut again and crossed her arms. Then she tilted her head and nodded a single time.
“We’re in the kitchen,” Jake’s voice rang out.
I looked back up at my mother. “Don’t worry, you’re next on my list.” She huffed and went back to her room.
I went past the stairs and into the kitchen. Jake and Madison were at the table. Madison had her hands wrapped around a cup of tea and Jake had a beer, even though it was still pretty early in the day. Madison’s eyes were red and puffy.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I talk to you guys?”
Jake raised an eyebrow. Madison didn’t look at me, but she nodded. I pulled out a seat at the table.
“I want to apologize to both of you, but especially to Madison.”
“Hey—” Jake started to say.
I turned to him. “You and I both know you couldn’t care less what I wrote in a blog unless it hurt her feelings.”
He leaned back in his seat. “Continue.”
“Madison, I’m really sorry. You were the most blameless of any of the five brides, and if I’d had a decent bone in my body, I would have left you out of the whole thing and just said I was in four weddings.”
“That’s not better,” Jake said.
“I know. The blog shouldn’t have existed in the first place.”
“No, you idiot, it shouldn’t have. But you should have taken the time to get to know Mads if you were going to post about her.”
I looked from him to Madison. “I’m sorry, I’m lost here.”
“She’s not upset that you included her—she’s upset that you had absolutely nothing to say about her because you never made any effort at all to get to know her.”
I threw my hands up, exasperated. “Maybe if you ever let her speak for herself, that wouldn’t have been a problem!”
Madison’s eyes scrunched up like she was in pain, but she put a hand over Jake’s, stopping him from responding.
“You’re—a little scary,” she said haltingly. “And I’m shy. But you . . .” She trailed off.
“I’m—scary?”
“Not scary, exactly. But intimidating, I guess.”
“Me?”
She nodded. “The first time Jake brought me here to meet all of you, the whole dynamic changed the second you walked into the house.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I do,” Jake said. “Am I allowed to talk yet?”
“Have I ever been able to stop you before?”
“Lily, you take up all of the oxygen in the room.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, as soon as you walk in, it’s the Lily show. ‘Lily is so successful.’ ‘Why isn’t Lily married yet?’ ‘Lily was interviewed in the New York Times again.’ ‘Lily was on the news last week.’ At the risk of sounding like Jan Brady, well—you get it.”
“I’m the PR face of the foundation, that’s the only reason newspapers ever quote me. It’s not because I did anything. And I was on TV literally once.”
“Twice. And Mom still hasn’t shut up about it.”
“How is that my fault?”
“It’s not. But you flip your hair and bask in it, and that doesn’t leave room for anyone else to exist.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Look,” Jake said. “You’re my sister. And I love you, even though you’re a totally self-absorbed asshole. But you haven’t once tried to have a real conversation with Mads. Literally not once.”
I began to object, then stopped myself and turned to Madison. Even if I didn’t agree with everything Jake said, he wasn’t wrong about that. “I’m sorry. I’d like to try again. If I can.”
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
“Maybe—” I dug
for an idea. “Maybe email would be a good start? It might be a little less daunting?” I looked to Jake. “And there’s no oxygen to use up in an email.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m going to be hearing about that one for the next fifty years, aren’t I?”
“Probably.” I turned back to Madison. “Would that work? I’d offer to take you to lunch, but you live kind of far away and all.”
“Email sounds good.” She started to say something else, then stopped herself.
“Please just say it,” I said. “I promise I don’t bite, no matter what Jake tells you.”
He held up a wrist, which, admittedly, did have a bite scar from me. Madison smiled finally, apparently knowing the story.
“I liked the blog.” I shook my head, but she continued. “The part about our wedding—about your grandmother—maybe it was because I know her, but I laughed so hard.”
“As much as I hate to give you credit for anything right now, it’s true,” Jake said. “I came running in to see what she was laughing about because she had been so upset when the whole thing broke.”
“I have a feeling she’s going to kill me over that.”
“If she runs you over with her car, it’s fifty-fifty whether it was intentional or not. Did you see the mailbox?”
“No?”
“Exactly. She hit it yesterday and it’s gone.”
Madison started to giggle, and that was enough to make me laugh, though whether from the strain of it all or from the lack of mailbox, I didn’t know.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Oh, it’s my turn now?” my mother asked wryly when I walked into her bedroom. She was sitting in one of the club chairs in the sitting room area. I sank down wearily in the other and disloyally wished for a mother who would comfort me instead of needing comfort herself.
“To be fair, you’re further down the list, but I’m letting you line jump because Caryn isn’t answering my calls.”
“Everything is a joke to you, isn’t it?”
“Not everything.”
“You wouldn’t know it from the way you’re willing to treat people. This is why you’re still single, you know.”
I flinched. She wasn’t going to make this easy—but then again, when did she ever? “Mom, I’m struggling here. I could use some support, not a lecture about how it’s time for me to get married.”
“I have never lectured you to get married.”
“Fine—hinted, begged, implored, whatever terminology you want to use. But marrying just anyone isn’t going to make me happy. And I’m not going to have those grandkids you want if I’m not happy.”
“I obviously never meant for you to marry someone who didn’t make you happy. But maybe your standards are too high. You think your father is the perfect man? Don’t answer that. You probably do.” She crossed her arms. “It’s not easy for me, you know. You all act like he’s the second coming, and me? I’m just your shrew of a mother.”
I pressed a finger to my forehead between my eyebrows, struggling with what to say and what not to say. “Mom, how do you think all those little jabs about how at least one of your daughters was getting married felt? Or comparing my weight with Amy’s? Or telling me that I should be using these weddings as an opportunity to find a guy?”
She crossed her arms. “I never compared your weight with Amy’s.” Of course that was the one thing she heard.
I took a deep breath. “Mom, I feel like nothing I do is good enough if I’m not living your exact life. And I can’t do that.”
“What’s so wrong with my life?”
“Nothing. But it’s not mine.”
“Yours doesn’t sound so great when you spend your time saying horrible things about your mother on some blog.”
The blog wasn’t about you, Mom, rose up in my throat and tried to come out of my mouth, but I blocked it. Because that was the bigger problem here, wasn’t it? The weddings weren’t about me, but I made everything about me with the blog. And I didn’t grow to be that way in a vacuum.
“I painted a caricature in broad strokes,” I said finally. “You—and Grandma for that matter—worked best as humorous foils to my narrator—kind of like a Falstaff character—”
“English, please.” The irony was completely lost on her.
“I used the two of you for comic relief rather than creating an accurate portrayal.”
“And do you see how hurtful that is?”
I exhaled heavily. “I do.”
She seemed mildly satisfied with that, then moved down her mental checklist to the next of my sins. “And your poor sister, to even imply such a thing about her at her bachelorette party—”
“Amy and I talked before I came over here.”
“Well, she didn’t tell me that. When I talked to her this morning, she said she never wanted to speak to you again.” Amy didn’t come by her flair for the dramatic in a vacuum either.
“We had a heart-to-heart and I apologized. She accepted it.”
“Are you still in her wedding then?”
“Yes.”
She sniffed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that the whole thing about that groomsman was a caricature too?”
I looked down. I was too tired to lie about any of it. “No. That happened.”
“Didn’t I raise you better than that? To have some self-respect?”
“Mom, I’m thirty-two, not sixteen. I made a decision—albeit a terrible one—but I’m not the first thirty-something to have sex. You had two of your three kids by my age.”
“I was married!”
“You used to love Sex and the City, so please spare me your outrage about sleeping with someone without a ring. I made a really bad decision, and I’m paying the price for it in spades.”
“Thank God you didn’t sleep with the other groomsman too. At least there’s that.”
I felt my face screwing up as I fought to keep from crying, but there was no stopping it. “Mom, you have to stop. You have to. You’re all over me all the time and it’s too much. I can’t be you. I can’t be Amy. All I can be is me. And I’m sorry me isn’t enough for you, but it’s all I am.”
She was stunned into silence and I hung my head. I don’t know what I expected her to say. It wasn’t like she was going to change. I didn’t think she was capable of it at that point. She was who she was, just like I had said about myself.
But the silence was more than I could bear and the truth started pouring out of me. “I wish I could be the person you want me to be and be married with kids already, but I don’t wish it for me at all. I wish it for you. Because even though I like who I am, I wish I could make you happy.”
She still hadn’t spoken, and I went back to the last thing she had said. “And no, I didn’t sleep with Alex. I—I love him. He’s—he’s my best friend. And he said I’m his. And I ruined it all. So please, Mom, please, please, please, don’t make this about what I did to you.”
I got up to try to leave, but she put a hand on my arm, stopping me, her face stricken. “You—love—him?”
My shoulders dropped and I nodded. I hadn’t even let myself think that word. But it came out on its own, and there was no way to shove it back into Pandora’s box.
Her entire countenance changed—this was right in her wheelhouse, after all. And I, unlike Amy, never allowed her to share in my romantic mishaps. She rose and wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, Lily.”
It was the comfort that I wanted, but a heavy price to pay to get it. My aunt, siblings, and grandmother would all know the details of the Alex situation, probably heavily embellished with additional details that had never happened, by the time I was halfway down the street on my way home, no matter how she might swear never to tell a soul. But it wasn’t like Alex would be my date to Amy’s wedding anymore—if that had been the case, this would have been its own new disaster.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, when I was able to stop my eyes from overflowing. “It’s over now.”
“Wh
o is this person talking to me? Not my daughter, who never gives up until she gets her way. No, he’ll come around.”
It was the first time in my memory that my mother had offered praise of my tenacity instead of bemoaning my stubbornness. If Jake and Amy were to be believed, she talked me up constantly when I wasn’t around. To my face, however, an interaction with her always left me feeling like I had been pecked at by a small but ferocious bird, who knew exactly where my weakest spots were. With love, of course, and the desire to make me better. But it still left me with the sensation that if I drank a glass of water after seeing her, it would come pouring out of the holes she had left like a sieve. So this—this was new territory. And a tiny ray of hope bolstered me.
But I shook my head. That was a pipe dream. Squaring your shoulders and vowing that you would get the guy back might work for Scarlett O’Hara, but real life didn’t work that way. “No. I messed up too much.”
“Nonsense. Even if he said that, he didn’t mean it.”
“He made it pretty clear he’s done with me.”
The corners of her mouth rose into a frighteningly determined grin, her eyes lighting at the challenge. “Isn’t he a groomsman in Megan’s wedding?” I nodded. “And aren’t you giving a speech at that wedding?”
I looked away. “I don’t know anymore.”
“What did Megan say?”
“I haven’t talked to her yet.”
“Lily! She’s been your friend for how many years?”
I looked back up, bemused. “And you wanted your apology before Madison’s?”
She waved a hand in the air. “You have to talk to Megan.”
“I’m going to.” It was too complicated to explain why I wasn’t ready yet.
“Good. Then you can use your speech to win him back.” She kept talking, pacing as she formulated her plan of how I would convince Alex to love me back, and I watched her. This strange, indomitable woman whose body I came from. She would never understand defeat—I didn’t think it was even in her vocabulary—any more than she would understand why using my maid of honor speech (if I was still giving one) to win Alex back would only prove to everyone, including Alex, that I had learned nothing.
For the Love of Friends Page 26
