Hurriedly, I turned back to the computer and began pulling up vendor receipts. Shit. Shit! They were all wrong. Every single one of them.
“Jen?” Ginny asked, a tremble in her voice.
“I’ve been planning it wrong,” I whispered, closing my eyes as the awful truth sank in. “All of it. I’ve been planning the wrong date.”
Ginny gasped.
“What the hell do you mean?” Josh demanded, his voice low and sharp.
“I mixed up the days. I’ve been planning your wedding for the thirtieth, not the twenty-third. The twenty-third is Kiki’s rehearsal dinner…”
“Goddamn it, Jen,” Annie said loudly. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I shook my head mutely.
“What does that mean though?” Ginny asked, her voice shaking.
I couldn’t answer her, couldn’t bear to.
“I would assume,” Annie said, her voice like acid, “that it means she’s booked all your vendors for the wrong day. Would that be correct, Jen?”
I nodded, hating myself, wishing I could run away from this, from everything.
“The flowers?” Ginny asked. “The DJ? The food? All…all of it?”
“When we went to look at sites you said the thirtieth—” I began.
“And then that very same day I came down and told you we wanted to do it the twenty-third, instead. Remember? Because Josh found a deal for the honeymoon. Remember?”
Ginny’s voice was slowly rising in both volume and pitch. I searched my memory, trying to remember. I had been online looking at veils for Ginny, then I had gotten an email from Kiki. And Ginny came and told me something…
“Yes,” I whispered. “Oh my God, Ginny, I’m so sorry—”
“You bitch,” she hissed. I was shocked—she may as well have slapped me. Ginny had never talked to me this way before. “You horrible, selfish cow.”
She burst into tears and Josh wrapped an arm around her, pulling her face into his chest.
“Ginny—”
“Don’t you dare tell me how sorry you are,” she cried, looking up from Josh’s shoulder. “Don’t you dare. I don’t want to hear it. You’ve ruined my wedding. Ruined it!”
In Josh’s arms, Danny started to cry.
“There is no wedding,” Ginny continued. “My God, we don’t even have a venue, do we?”
“No,” I whispered. Having not listened to Ginny when she told me about the date, I had gone ahead and scheduled it. The venue, like everything else, was booked for the following week.
“Can we just postpone?” Josh asked bleakly. “If everything is set for next week…”
“Not everything,” Annie said, closing her eyes. “The invitations had the correct date—I did those. And the officiant, because you and Ginny took care of that when Jen was too busy. And your honeymoon is booked—you leave Sunday morning.”
“Then we’re screwed!” Ginny cried. “Everyone is going to show up on Friday for a wedding that can’t take place!”
“No,” I said. “No, Ginny, I’ll fix this. I’ll figure something out.”
“You know what, Jen?” Josh said, his voice colder than I had ever heard it. “Don’t even bother. Okay? Don’t try to help, don’t try to do anything. We don’t want your help.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe I had been so stupid, so careless.
Just then, my phone rang. Kiki.
“You should answer that,” Annie sneered. “It’s probably something really important.”
I felt like I was falling, like the floor was crashing away beneath me. How could I fix this? What could I do?
Danny and Ginny were still crying, everyone looking at me, hating me, I could tell.
“Come on,” Josh said at last, his voice laced with anger. “Let’s let Jen get back to work.”
As one, they turned their backs to go, turned their backs on me.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” Ginny said suddenly, whirling around to face me again, her face ablaze with anger. “It’s not that you fucked up, Jen. Anyone could do that. It’s that I now have confirmation that you haven’t been listening to me at all for the last five months. I’ve said the date to you so many times, you must not ever have been listening.”
I sat frozen, watching as Annie, Ginny, and Josh all walked with Danny upstairs to Gin’s room. After a moment, I heard her door click shut.
It all felt surreal. Surely I couldn’t have let this happen. Surely I wasn’t this bad of a friend. It just wasn’t possible. But it was all there in front of me on the computer screen, in black and white. Five months’ worth of my mistakes. My mistakes which had now, officially, ruined the wedding of my best friend.
***
Kiki called me three more times in the next five minutes. On her third try, I finally snapped out of it and answered the phone.
“Jen, where are you?” she asked. “I thought we were meeting at the salon!”
“Something came up,” I told her, my voice empty. “I’ll…I’ll be right there, okay? Just go in and get started, I’m on my way.”
I hung up, feeling numb. What should I do? What could I do? I could hear voices from upstairs, knew that the three of them were up there in Ginny’s room trying to figure something out. I had a sudden urge to join them. Ginny was upset, really upset, and I needed to be with her, to fix this.
But they didn’t want me, I realized, my heart sinking. Josh would probably slam the door in my face if I went up there.
Not knowing what else to do, I numbly stood up and went to my bedroom, pulling on jeans and a sweater. As I passed the stairs I looked up, but couldn’t hear anything. Feeling numb and empty, I grabbed my purse and headed out to my car to meet Kiki.
***
I sat in the salon, mutely watching the stylist work while Kiki kept up a steady stream of chatter. I barely heard her. My mind was going around and around the words Ginny had said to me. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t been around. I had spent the last five months completely ignoring her. I went with her to the vendors, helped her pick stuff out, then blindly signed the orders for the wrong day. And at no time during any of that had I heard a word she said.
What the hell was wrong with me? How could I have done something so completely terrible? The numbness was slowly giving away to nausea. I felt like I was going to throw up.
“Kiki, I can’t do this,” I said suddenly.
She looked over at me in alarm. “What do you mean? Does it look bad?”
“No, you look perfect,” I said, really looking at her for the first time. “But I…I…Oh, Kiki, I’ve screwed everything up!” And with that I burst into tears.
“Jen!” Kiki gasped. “Will you give us a minute?” she asked the stylist, who promptly walked away, looking at me curiously.
“What’s wrong?” Kiki asked, putting her arm around me.
“I’ve ruined everything,” I wailed, covering my face.
“The wedding?” she asked, trepidation in her voice. I shook my head.
“Not your wedding. Your wedding is perfect,” I sniffed. Kiki pulled a Kleenex from a packet in her purse and handed it to me.
“Jen, tell me what happened.”
I took a deep breath. “The night of your rehearsal dinner is my best friend’s wedding. My best friend in the whole world. Ginny’s like my sister. And I promised her I would plan her day for her, and I’ve been so distracted by everything that I never even noticed I had the days wrong.” I closed my eyes, struck anew by how stupid I had been, how completely awful. “I’ve been planning my best friend’s wedding on the wrong day. I didn’t realize until this morning that they were the same night.”
“Oh, Jen,” she whispered. “This is all my fault.”
I stared at her. “Are you crazy? I’m the one who screwed up. I’m the one who ruined everything.”
“I knew you were working too hard on my wedding, I knew it. I should have told you to take some time off, to relax. But I love having you around so much I ju
st kept asking you to come to stuff. I was totally selfish, Jen, I was a terrible friend to you.”
I shook my head. “No way. I was doing my job. And your wedding was my dream job, Kiki, I swear. I’ve been waiting my whole life for a job like this. If I was getting pressure from anywhere, it was from my bosses, not from you. I promise.” She looked slightly mollified. “But now everything is ruined and I have no idea what to do.” I felt a fresh wave of tears overtake me. “I’m the worst friend in the world.”
Kiki wrapped both arms around me. “You poor, poor thing,” she murmured, resting her perfectly coiffed head on top of mine. “Jen, you’re not a horrible friend. We can figure this out, I know we can.”
I looked up at her. “But Kiki, it’s the night of your rehearsal dinner,” I said again, sure she wasn’t understanding.
She shrugged. “So you don’t go, big deal. You’ve been to every other little thing. Don’t worry about the rehearsal, let’s just figure out how we can fix Ginny’s day.”
“There’s nothing to be done,” I said bleakly.
“Jen, there’s no problem too big to be solved,” she said firmly. “Have you tried to call the vendors and see if they have any openings Friday?”
I shook my head slowly. I had just assumed everything would be booked…
“Well, that’s where you start then. See what can be salvaged. I’ll get on the phone with Eric and see what we can come up with. He is, like, totally smart in a crisis.”
I stared at her in amazement. “You’re not…you’re not mad at me?”
“Of course not! You’ve put so much work into the rehearsal already—it’s going to be just perfect, I know it. And Jason will be there to handle any last minute problems. It’s about time he did some actual work—seeing as how he’s supposed to be in charge.”
I burst out laughing. “Kiki!”
“Oh, don’t think I don’t see how it works. You’ve done everything for me, and he gets the credit. But don’t you worry, Daddy is going to put a great word in for you with your boss.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, overwhelmed by her kindness. “But I’m not sure it will matter. Once they hear about this, I’m pretty sure I’ll be kissing my job goodbye.”
“Absolutely not!” she cried, outraged. “They wouldn’t dare! Oh, I’ll make sure of it. You’re the heart and soul of this wedding, Jen. If they even say a word to you, we’ll pull our business so fast they won’t know what hit them. And make it clear that we’ll tell all our friends.”
I looked at her in amazement, completely lost for words.
“Sweetie,” she said, leaning towards me conspiratorially. “What’s the point of being totally loaded if you can’t ever use it to get what you want?”
Chapter Twenty-five
I broke about a dozen traffic laws in my rush to get home. I knew Annie and Ginny would still be furious with me, but I didn’t care anymore. I had to get to them. I had to make this right.
When I finally pulled onto our street, I was surprised to see that no cars were in our drive. Where had they gone?
Slowly, I walked into the house. My conversation with Kiki had buoyed me, encouraged me. I had been so sure that once I saw the girls we’d be able to come up with something. Now I felt deflated once again.
I sat down at the dining room table, where my laptop was still plugged in. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to try…I pulled up my excel sheets and started dialing numbers, hoping against hope that some of our vendors would have openings on Friday. I had little luck. The cake decorator said they could fit us in on the earlier day, but only if we could accept delivery of the cake first thing in the morning. It did little to cheer me up—what good was a cake if we didn’t have a venue to eat it at?
I looked over my paperwork. We had clothes for the wedding party, a cake, an officiant, and invitations. That was it. And we only had three days.
Finally, overcome with the emotion of the morning, I put my head flat on the table and gave into the sobs once again.
I wasn’t sure how long I cried like that, alone in the dining room. I had just started to quiet somewhat when I felt a gentle hand on my back. I looked up eagerly, expecting to see Ginny. It wasn’t her. It was Matt.
“Hey,” he said, smiling down at me. “I knocked but you didn’t answer, so I tried the door…I just talked to Kiki. How’s it going?”
Looking up into his kind brown eyes, this man who had judged me from the beginning as a superficial flake, this man who must now be thinking, Yup, I was right about her…it was too much, and the sobs overtook me again.
“Hey, hey,” he murmured, leaning down to rub my back. “Jen, come on. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure something out.”
“We?” I gulped, looking up into his eyes.
“You think I’d make you do all this by yourself?” he asked with a slight smile.
“There’s nothing to do, Matt,” I said. “I’ve ruined everything.”
“Come on, now,” he admonished. “That’s not the Jen Campbell attitude I was looking for. We’re going to figure something out, Jen. I promise.”
He looked so sure of himself, so confident, that I couldn’t help but believe him.
“You really want to help me?”
“Hey, I’m here, aren’t I?” He smiled again, his eyes warm and twinkling. I thought, fleetingly, of how gross I must look right now.
“Matt, this is…this is really nice of you. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” He held out his hand to help me up. “Now, we’ve got three days. Let’s plan a wedding.”
***
“She’s still not answering,” I said to Matt. “I know she’s pissed at me, but come on!”
“Do you have Josh’s number?” he asked. “Have you tried Annie yet?”
“I’ll just keep dialing all three numbers until someone answers,” I said grimly.
Matt and I were in his pick-up, speeding down the highway. I wasn’t exactly sure where we were going, but Matt assured me our destination would help with the wedding.
“Okay, let’s go over this again,” Matt said. “We need a venue. We need food. We need a DJ, a photographer, flowers…”
“Centerpieces,” I added. “Favors, seating cards, tablecloths, dishes, silverware…” I trailed off, feeling overwhelmed. Matt reached over and took my hand.
“One thing at a time,” he said firmly. He didn’t let go of my hand as he turned off on the next exit. “Let’s focus on the venue right now. That’s probably the most important thing, right?”
I nodded. We couldn’t do anything without a venue. Matt had taken us into Detroit, not too far from the original venue site. “Where are we going?” I asked.
Matt didn’t answer, but he turned onto a side street and parked in front of a large, nondescript brick building. He turned to me. “Okay, I know it doesn’t look like much. And it needs a lot of work. But I think this might work.”
I looked at him blankly.
“Come on,” he said, opening his door and climbing out. I followed him to the door of the building, which he unlocked with a key on a large, crowded key ring. He opened the door and gestured me inside in front of him.
We were standing in a small foyer which opened up into a large, empty room. It was clearly in the middle of a renovation: the brick walls were exposed, there was drywall equipment and paint laying on the floor, and one wall was covered in scaffolding.
“Okay, have an open mind,” Matt said. “Try to picture it without all the crap in it. If we bring in tables and string up a bunch of lanterns and Christmas lights, maybe bring in some candles… I think we can leave the brick exposed, it adds a cool vibe, right? The bathrooms and the kitchen are done, so there’s no problem there.” He looked at me eagerly. “Whaddya think? Could it work?”
I stared at him, bewildered. “Matt, what is this place?”
“It’s going to be a club,” he said. “When my crew gets finished with it.” When I still looked confused he added, “It�
��s one of Mr. Barker’s developments. I’ve been working on it for the last month. I know it’s not perfect, but I really think it could work for the venue. There’s even a patio in the back we can use for the ceremony.”
When I didn’t respond, he continued. “I already talked to Mr. Barker; he’s totally up for you using it. He insisted, in fact. And said you better not try to offer him any money,” Matt added with a grin.
I was so overwhelmed, I couldn’t speak.
“Do you think it’s too rustic?” Matt asked, his face falling. “I understand. We can keep—” Before he could say another word, I flung my arms around his neck, holding him tight.
“This is perfect,” I whispered, not trusting myself not to cry. “Oh, Matt, thank you so much.”
He squeezed me back. “No problem, Jen,” he said. “No problem at all.”
I pulled back, grinning at him. “This is going to be really, really great. I can tell. And it’s totally Ginny and Josh.” I ran to my purse. “I have to try Ginny again, she better answer her phone.”
“I have an idea,” Matt said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Why don’t you try calling from my phone? She won’t recognize the number so maybe she won’t ignore it.”
“Good thinking,” I said, too excited to even feel sad that there was a better chance Ginny would answer for a stranger.
Matt’s plan worked; Ginny answered on the second ring.
“Gin, it’s Jen,” I said quickly. “Don’t you dare hang up. We have a venue and a plan, we can totally make this work.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Ginny?” I asked, afraid she had hung up.
“Where are you?” she finally asked.
“Let me give you to Matt,” I told her, immeasurably relieved. “He can give you the address.”
“Matt?” she asked, clearly surprised.
“I’ll explain everything when you get here,” I told her, then handed the phone to Matt. While he said hello and gave her the address, I pulled my laptop out of my bag and fired it up, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room.
Three Girls And A Wedding Page 17
