“What’s the matter with you?” my grandmother asked. “Jealous of your sister?”
I rolled my eyes. “Absolutely not.”
“Good,” she said, patting my arm. “Don’t get married until you find a fella who has a twinkle in his eye. That was my mistake. Your grandpa didn’t. I should have held out for Frank Sinatra.”
I exhaled slowly through my mouth. Whose idea was it to bring Grandma along? I wondered. It was excruciating enough to have to sit through this with my mom and Amy.
Eventually we were escorted to a different sofa and armchair, and thankfully offered coffee, despite the dictum of the fanciest salons. I grasped it like it contained the antidote to this whole experience—I hadn’t wanted to be lectured for coming in with Starbucks again—and gave this shop an extra star in my mental ranking. The saleslady whisked Amy into a dressing room as my mother and Ashlee continued flipping through the ridiculously profligate binder and my grandmother tried to pretend she knew what was going on without her hearing aids.
I could have been invisible, so I slipped my phone out of my bag. Save me from my mother and sister, I texted Megan. My mom printed out my sister’s ENTIRE Pinterest board and laminated the sheets in a binder.
Stop it, Megan replied immediately. She did not. I snapped a stealthy shot of the binder and sent it to her. So wait, she’s actually pretending Amy is getting married? And they let Amy bring her pet Chihuahua into the store?
I stifled a laugh. Megan had dated Ashlee’s older brother briefly in high school and was merciless. And the resemblance to a Chihuahua was somewhat striking.
Amy also said mermaid dresses are for older brides and it’d be perfect for me if I was getting married.
She’s dead, Megan said. DEAD. Megan had taken an extremely targeted approach to dress shopping, in true Megan fashion. She found the handful of dresses that she wanted to try on in a single store, called them in advance, told them which dresses to have in a fitting room for her when she arrived, then went with just me and her mom, tried on four dresses and bought one. The saleslady told her she couldn’t take a picture of it, but Megan told her she was buying it so she could do what she wanted, snapped a pic over her protests, and sent it to all of the bridesmaids with the caption, “Said yes to the dress, now what are you gonna wear?” It was a strapless mermaid gown with intricate beadwork on the bodice and hips. Please tell me you told her it was okay because she could wear a mermaid dress in ten years when she gets married for real?
My mom would have murdered me with her binder.
Megan sent an eye-roll emoji. Joan needs to get over it. She has two daughters, not just the teenager.
I set the phone down as Amy emerged in a dress that would require she enlist several octopi as additional bridesmaids to hold it if she planned to pee on her wedding day.
The next seven that she tried on were almost identical. My mother cried and declared her the most beautiful girl she had ever seen in each one. I debated reminding her that I was sitting there too, but I would have just gotten another reproach. So I said she looked gorgeous in all of them and tried to keep my actual opinions to a minimum.
My grandmother, on the other hand, had no such filter.
“You look like a powdered donut,” she told Amy as she emerged in a dress with a colored sash. “How are you going to dance in that?”
I stifled a laugh as my mother turned on her. “Mom! I told you if you came with us you had to behave!”
“I’m just supposed to lie to my granddaughter about her wedding dress?”
“Yes!”
Amy’s face fell and I felt the first real sympathy I had ever felt for her. I still didn’t think for a minute this wedding was actually happening, but she clearly did. And my grandmother referring to her as a pastry wasn’t how she envisioned dress shopping, even before my mother’s impassioned, utterly unconvincing argument.
I rose and went to Amy. I was a pro at wedding dress shopping by now. “How do you feel in the dress, Ames?” She shook her head and I lowered mine closer to hers and spoke quietly. Not that it mattered, because my mother and grandmother were arguing too loudly to hear us. “She can’t see anything anyway and she won’t wear her glasses because she says they make her look old.” Amy’s lips turned up in a hint of a smile. Our grandmother was eighty-eight, but she was also an incorrigible flirt and the vanity was real. “How did you feel before she said that?”
“This one wasn’t my favorite.”
“Then who cares what she says? Go try on another.” Amy nodded and went back to the dressing room, and I turned to my mother and grandmother. “You two cut it out.”
My grandmother sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, a bemused smile on her face. “You hear that, Joan?” she asked my mother. “Cut it out.” I wondered suddenly how much of my grandmother’s hearing loss was an affectation, because I hadn’t spoken loudly.
“Don’t you start,” my mother said to me wearily, sinking onto the sofa. “I told Amy it should be just me and her doing this. No offense, Ashlee.”
I felt my hackles rising, but I bit the inside of my lip to keep from arguing with her. My mother knew how to push all of my buttons, whether she was doing it intentionally or not. Besides, I had four other weddings to deal with and would have felt no compunction whatsoever at missing this particular outing.
And I knew for a fact that she was the one who had insisted my grandmother be there for dress shopping, because she turned it into a dig against me during a three-way phone call. My cousins lived out of state and my mother insisted that my grandmother should be able to go wedding dress shopping for at least one of her granddaughters, and who knew if she would still be alive when Lily got married?
I was saved by Amy walking out in an elaborate princess dress that was much more flattering than the previous dress. “I think this is it,” she said slowly, examining herself in the three-way mirror. My mother promptly burst into tears, then Ashlee, and finally Amy began to cry as well. My grandmother pursed her lips at me but said nothing.
For once, I was thankful that my mother’s attention was so laser focused on Amy that she didn’t notice my lack of genuine enthusiasm. But Amy was the youngest and the golden child and of course my mother was overly emotional that her baby was about to be the most beautiful bride she had ever seen.
Was I jealous, like my grandmother had asked? Not of her getting married, certainly, but yes. I was. My mother never fawned over me like this. And Amy just lived this charmed little life in which everything worked out perfectly. I was definitely jealous of her ability to do that, even if it wasn’t specifically how I wanted to live my life.
As they took Amy’s measurements and began the process of ordering the dress, I picked up my phone and began typing a post.
You know those cartoons where the character runs right off the cliff and doesn’t start falling until he looks down?
That’s my little sister. Except she never bothers to look down. Instead, she merrily skips along until she’s back on solid ground, never realizing she left it in the first place.
So for her, getting married is a pretty little fairy-tale ending to her perfect romance. Which is complete bullshit because she’s been with this dude for a year and has lived at home the whole time. So like, if they want to sleep together, do they have to wait until my parents aren’t home? Like they’re in high school? Sounds super romantic to me. (Actually, it’s gross and for once I’m thrilled that my childhood bedroom is now my mom’s treadmill room because if they were doing it on my old bed, I would puke.)
But I don’t understand how you live your life like that. How do you not check for the ground beneath your feet? Even the coyote knew to do that, and he was such an optimist, always believing he would finally get that roadrunner. Or maybe he was just a very hungry realist with an Amazon Prime account. But either way, I can’t do that. I look down.
Which is probably why she’s getting married (ostensibly—I still don’t totally believe it) and I
’m on my way to dying alone with a cat that will eat my face before anyone discovers me—truly a terrible fate because I hate cats. And there was that article that says they really will eat you.
But even when I try not to look down, it doesn’t matter because someone always taps me on the shoulder and points out that I’ve run off the cliff. Remember that groomsman I hooked up with? Well, I found out which one it was, and he’s the single grossest guy (Not physically. Physically he’s not terrible. But he’s like Jabba the Hut in a decent body.) I’ve ever met, and that’s who I get drunk and hook up with.
Maybe being a cat lady with a half-eaten face won’t be so bad after all.
I felt a little guilty putting my sister’s business out there like that. But it was anonymous and, if I was being honest, it wasn’t like that many people were really reading it anyway. I hit “Publish.” Besides, it felt good to be writing, and it was certainly better than holding all of that annoyance in. And hey, maybe I’d break a dollar today.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The following Tuesday, I was in line at Starbucks when I heard someone call my name from behind. I had earned my first latte from the blog (and Friday was payday, so my account was less terrifying as long as I didn’t go shopping all week), so I decided to treat myself. I turned around and saw Alex, wearing a suit and waving, with three people in line between us.
I looked at him, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting coffee. What are you doing here? I don’t think they serve martinis.”
The man standing behind me snickered and the woman with a small child behind him gave me a dirty look. I glanced surreptitiously at my watch, but I wasn’t running late for once, so I gestured for the people between us—rude as they were—to go ahead of me and moved back to where he stood in line.
“Cute. Very cute. I’m actually not an alcoholic, for the record.”
“For the record,” he repeated with a grin, “I didn’t actually think you were. Unless you’re having another—what did you call it? Existential crisis?”
I laughed and elbowed him sharply. “You’re a jerk, you know that?”
“Yup. Which is why I’m not protecting you from Justin the next time you see him.”
“Did I say jerk? I meant gem. You’re a gem.”
“That’s more like it,” he said. “Do you work around here? Or are you just hanging around until the nearest bar opens?”
I rolled my eyes as we moved closer in line. “Work. The Foundation for Scientific Technology.”
He eyed me with surprised respect. “I didn’t have you pegged as a scientist.”
“Particle astrophysics. You shouldn’t be so judgmental.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m their head of PR. I write a lot of press releases and make really miniscule discoveries sound interesting to laypeople.”
“That’s still higher-tech than I would have guessed.”
“What was your guess?”
He looked me up and down. “Gossip columnist. Or fashion blogger.”
I burst out laughing. “Yup, that’s me. In my outfit from TJ Maxx.” Just the woman with the young son remained in line in front of us. “What do you do?”
“Stalk PR people for scientific organizations at coffee shops before murdering them at weddings.”
“Pays well, does it? That’s a nice suit.”
He laughed. “I’m a lawyer. At Waters and Flynn.”
“Never heard of them,” I said. “But cool. They’re near here?”
“Two blocks down on M.”
“Ah. I’m on L Street.”
“I know,” he said. “We represent some of your scientists. Patent law.”
“Oh—maybe I have—oh shoot—sorry, a grande skinny vanilla latte,” I said, turning to the barista.
I pulled out my wallet, but Alex edged in next to me, flashing the app on his phone. “And a venti Americano.” He looked down at me. “I’ve got this.”
“Are you—I mean—okay. Thanks.”
We moved aside to wait for our drinks, in a mildly awkward silence now that he had bought me a coffee.
I broke the peace first. “So do you come to this Starbucks a lot?” Ugh. That sounded like a pickup line. I didn’t want him to think I was interested. I mean, maybe under other circumstances I could have been, but sleeping with Justin irreparably negated any potential that could have existed with the other groomsmen.
“Yeah. It’s right between the Metro and work.”
“Same. I’m just usually running later than this.”
“So if I want to run into you again, I should be late to work?”
“Probably. Or wait until the wedding.”
The barista put our drinks on the counter. Alex took them both and handed me mine. He took the hint. “Gotcha. Well, maybe I’ll see you around.”
I nodded, feeling a tinge of disappointment. “Yup. Thanks for the coffee.”
“No problem. Have a good day, Lily.”
“You too.” He held the door for me, and we went our separate ways.
Good job, Lily. You meet a nice guy who buys your coffee and holds the door for you, but you can’t like him because you slept with the slimy creep who is in the same wedding with both you and the nice guy. And you wonder why you’re single.
I had planned on Tuesday being a one-time splurge, but I was able to justify going Wednesday because I hadn’t paid for my coffee on Tuesday. Thursday—well—Thursday, maybe I was hoping I would see Alex again.
“Grande skinny vanilla latte,” I told the barista absently while fishing my wallet out of my bag.
“Are you Lily?” she asked.
I looked up warily. Was I coming to this Starbucks too often? “Ye-es. Why?”
“Your coffee is already paid for. We just need to make it.” She turned toward the staff making the drinks. “Lily is here!”
“What’s going on?”
“Your friend paid for your drink and left you a note on the cup.”
“My—do you have the right Lily?”
The barista nodded. “He said you got a grande skinny vanilla latte and that you had dark hair and eyes and a red bag.”
“What did he look like?”
“She said he left you a note, which probably has his name on it, so can you do this later?” the man in line behind me asked impatiently.
I normally would have told him where he could shove his attitude, but I was too flustered. Instead I apologized reflexively and stepped toward the pickup area to wait.
“Lily,” a different barista called out, and I snatched the cup before she could even set it down.
On the sleeve, in black Sharpie, all capital letters, it read, START GETTING TO WORK ON TIME! —Alex.
I set the cup down on an open spot at the bar by the window and snapped a picture. I sent it to Becca first. What does THIS mean???? Then I texted Caryn as well. I wanted to send it to Megan, but I didn’t want to put her in the middle with Alex if I could avoid it.
That groomsman from Megan’s party? Becca replied immediately. I told her yes. Ugh why are guys never that cute and sweet with me?
Is it cute and sweet or weird?
Cute and sweet. Definitely.
But what does it MEAN?
Caryn texted back. Means get to work on time so I don’t have to cover for you every day. She put a winky face to show she was teasing.
He likes you, duh, Becca said.
Does he though? He didn’t, like, put his phone number on it or anything.
Yeah, but he’s saying he wants to see you again.
I hesitated. I can’t, I wrote eventually.
Why not?
Because I already hooked up with the gross groomsman from Megan’s wedding.
Would she actually care?
I thought for a minute. Megan would absolutely want me to be happy. But what would happen when it didn’t work out and I suddenly had two groomsmen whom I had to tell Megan not to pair me with for the ceremony? And I
would have two of Tim’s friends I needed to avoid. It would be putting Megan in a rough spot, and I didn’t want to make her choose sides. Plus, I remembered how I felt the morning after her engagement party. And how much worse I felt seeing Justin at the housewarming party. That icky feeling wouldn’t just be doubled, it would grow exponentially with a second groomsman’s notch on my bed. Nope. Couldn’t do it.
Probably not if I really liked him. But what are the odds of it actually working out? Besides, I don’t want to be the girl who got involved with two different groomsmen.
That’s fair . . . So what are you going to do?
I hesitated again. Doing nothing sent a clear “not interested” message, but it would be rude to not acknowledge him, especially when he had bought me two coffees this week. And even if I wasn’t interested per se, there was something about Alex that I did like. He would make an awesome friend.
I looked at the line, which had died down to only three people, then checked my watch. Hell with it, I thought, and got back in line.
“Do you remember the guy who bought me my coffee?” I asked when I reached the barista.
“Of course,” she said. “He’s in here every day.”
“Can I pay for his order for tomorrow and leave him a note?”
She grinned and handed me a sleeve and a Sharpie. Her name tag said she was Taylor. “This is like Romeo and Juliet.”
I rolled my eyes. “That makes you the nurse and means we’re all dead by act five. He’s just a friend.”
“Wish I had a friend like that.” She grinned. “He’s cute.”
“All yours,” I said, starting to write: Why? Being late works out well when I get free coffee for it—you’re encouraging bad habits! —Lily. Too flirty, I told myself, then grabbed another sleeve. Taylor smiled irritatingly and I tried again. Never gonna happen . . . but thanks for the coffee! —Lily. Much better. I handed it to Taylor.
“I liked the first one better,” she said.
“Just friends,” I said again. I paid for the coffee and left, much later for work than usual.
I made it until lunch before I texted Megan. What’s Alex’s story?
For the Love of Friends Page 8