Always the Last to Know (Always the Bridesmaid)

by Bowling, Crystal

  “I should probably get this over with.” He sighs and runs a hand through his curly dark hair. Nope, not a toupee, just gorgeous natural hair. “Don’t laugh too hard.”

  “I’m not going to make any promises.” I’m actually getting out words, and they’re in complete, coherent sentences. Two points for Jess.

  He cracks a smile, displaying his super white straight teeth, and heads toward the dressing room that Riley has just walked out of, now back in his normal, non-purple clothes. They do that weird guy nod to acknowledge the other’s existence while I plop down on the small sofa outside the changing rooms.

  Riley groans as he sits down at the other end of the sofa, and throws his feet up in my lap. I push his Converse-clad feet off me. He rolls his eyes and props his feet back on my lap. I decide that fighting him isn’t worth it.

  “Did you make a new friend?” Riley asks sarcastically as he unbuttons the top button of his shirt, exposing just a sliver of his chest. I don’t miss the slight chest hair peeking out and am just surprised that Riley can even grow chest hair.

  I raise an eyebrow at him. “What?”

  “The Mark guy -- “

  “Matt.”

  “Whatever. You were ogling him.”

  “I was not.”

  “You were too, Reynolds. I haven’t seen you stare so hard at a guy since the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie.”

  I shoot him a look. He’s comfortable (of course he is, he’s using my lap as his personal ottoman) but has an annoyed expression tied onto his face.

  “He did have a little bit of an Orlando Bloom look to him, now that I think of it.” I say, mostly to annoy Riley, but damn if it isn’t a little bit true.

  “Just be careful, Reynolds. I don’t want to have to deal with you getting hurt.”

  “What?”

  “You get attached too fast and you know it. Remember what happened when you were dating Clifford and. . .”

  I cut him off, “It was Cliff. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Because Riley and I grew up together, we know everything about each other. I know that he took dance lessons when he was seven and he knows that I couldn’t tie my shoelaces until I was eight. It’s great since we have so much dirt on the other person. At the same time, however, we know every mistake the other person has ever made.

  Clifford Jenkins was my biggest mistake.

  Cliff transferred to Bronson High School my senior year. He moved here from Seattle with his dad who was constantly job jumping. I met him in my World History class. He sat next to me and asked for a piece of paper, and I was convinced that it was love, pure and simple as the wide-ruled notebook page I gave to him.

  Cliff was a nice guy who listened to bands I had never heard of and haven’t listened to since he left. We would hang out in his room and watch these indie films that he found poignant while I thought they were confusing and lacking explosives. We went to prom together. And, I guess that I got caught up in the streamers in the gym and the novelty rap the DJ was playing, not to mention the spiked punch, that I ended up sleeping with him. I’m still not sure that I ever fully consented to what happened that night.

  A week later, his dad found a new job in Florida and I never heard from him again.

  “Shit, Jess, I’m sorry. I was just. . .” Riley takes his feet off my lap and scoots closer to me. He puts an arm over my shoulder as I quickly wipe away the tears that had escaped my eyes. It’s been four years and I’m still not over it.

  “I don’t need you to remind me of my past mistakes, Callahan.” I say firmly as I shake his arm off of me.

  “I said I was sorry.” He crosses his arms over his chest and matches my glare with one of his own. “I was just trying to look out for you.”

  I narrow my eyes, “Thanks for the guilt trip.”

  He gives me that half-smile of his, “I do what I can.”

  “You’re an idiot.” I mumble just as Matt walks out of the changing room in the lavender nightmare.

  He smiles at us, “How do I look?”

  Riley whispers in my ear, “Like a mistake.”

  I elbow him in the ribcage but never take my eyes off of Matt.

  “It’s no Armani, I’ll admit, but the length is good.” Matt says, to himself or to me and Riley, I have no idea, as he inspects himself in the mirror.

  “Like I said: frilly umbrella.” I smile at him.

  He lets out a hearty laugh, “You dirty girl.”

  The last dressing room door creaks open. Carla pops out quickly, both her hands wrapped around a purple-sleeved arm.

  “Come on, Evan. They’re not going to laugh at you.”

  “At least not in front of you.” Matt adds. Carla shoots him a look while Evan throws his middle finger in what he must assume to be Matt’s general direction.

  Carla turns back to the dressing room, “Come on, sweetie, you look great.”

  “I look like Willy Wonka.”

  “Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp?” I ask, earning myself a nasty scowl from Carla. “What? I’m genuinely curious.”

  Evan finally tromps out of the changing room, looking very much like an eccentric owner of a candy company, minus the oompa-loopas, that is. He is covered from head to toe in purple: purple top hat, purple suit, purple tie, and even dark purple shoes. The only thing that isn’t purple is his face, and that’s a bright shade of red.

  Evan’s misery is so obvious that Matt, Riley, and I can’t hide our amusement. It’s apparent that he wants to voice his outrage over the tux - oh, who am I kidding, it isn’t a tux, it’s a monstrosity – but when he looks at Carla, who just has all this love for him radiating in her eyes, he just sighs and looks down, defeated.

  “The sleeves are too tight.” Evan mutters, flexing his biceps for show. I can’t help but notice that both Matt and the little old tailor man roll their eyes at his comment.

  “Dude, saying that doesn’t make the suit any manlier.” Matt smiles at his best friend. Evan just grunts as a response.

  It’s times like these, when a grunt is a completely acceptable response, makes me wish that I were a dude. Seriously, a grunt can be an answer, comment, and even a form of emotion. Of course, if I were a dude, I would be an idiot and have to acknowledge other guys by doing that weird nod thing to them. Plus, I think it would be really weird to have a penis.

  “Do you guys want pizza or Chinese for dinner?” Carla asks while the tailor makes marks on Evan’s suit, grinning the entire time. The tailor, not Evan. Evan looks like he wants to cry.

  All of us, even Evan, give her a strange look.

  She looks at me and Riley, “I told you two about this last week when you were playing Super Mario Cars. . .”

  “Super Mario Kart.” Riley and I correct her in unison.

  Riley continues on, “And, what you really meant to say is, while I was schooling Reynolds in Super Mario Kart, you told us something. . .”

  “. . . which we didn’t hear because Riley started crying like a little girl when I totally kicked his ass at Super Mario Kart.” I finish his sentence for him, although that probably isn’t how he planned to end it, even though I did destroy him on the final race.

  “Whatever.” Carla says loud enough to make Riley not retaliate to my comment. “I told you two last week that I wanted to get you all together for food and drinks and stuff before the wedding so that you all can get to know each other better. I think it’s really important that the wedding party, especially the Best Man and Maid of Honor” Carla winks at me slyly, “get acquainted. It’ll make the wedding look more cohesive.”

  She got that idea out of a bridal magazine, I guaran-damn-tee it.

  Still, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. In fact, it might be one of the better ones that Carla has concocted concerning the entire wedding. I even tell her that it’s a stroke of pure genius. Of course, I can’t help but wonder why she isn’t inviting the bridesmaid and groomsman over for this grand introductory event. Not that I’m complaining sinc
e the groomsmen is one of Evan’s friends and therefore a flaming imbecile. Evan and Riley grunt a response to Carla’s announcement while Matt is still too amused by Evan’s predicament to comment.

  Matt is really cute, I can’t deny that. The dark curly hair, the broad shoulders, that bright smile, and a certain charisma that I just can’t place might just make him one of the most charming guys I have come into contact with in a long time. With the exception of that guy in my freshman English class who turned out to be gay, of course.

  Three

  Wednesday, June 24th

  “I cannot believe you, Callahan.” I glare at him while he unrolls my old sleeping bag on my bedroom floor and hums a little tune (“American Girl” by Tom Petty, like always). He looks up at me and smiles. Bastard.

  When we got back from the tux fitting, we ordered pizza, the guys drank beer and I made fruity drinks for Carla and myself, but I was the only one drinking them (straight out of the blender with a bendy straw) and that is why I lost the two games of Scrabble we all played. After all was said and done, no one was really capable of driving home. Which is why Riley is sitting up camp on my bedroom floor. You know, to keep me away from Matt who is asleep on the living room couch.

  “It’s not like I would do anything to him while Carla and Evan were here anyway. And, speaking of Carla, she’s your little sister. She and Evan are probably in there doing It right now.” He’s still humming. “I mean, Evan’s in there right now, more than likely polluting your baby sister.” Nothing. “And you’re just sitting there smiling at me like a complete jackass while your sister is being completely corrupted.” Silence. “I hate you.”

  Riley gets up and flicks the light switch off, “Night, Jess.”

  “Bite me.”

  All is silent for a few minutes, save for Riley thrashing around while trying to get comfortable in the child’s sleeping bag. I haven’t been camping since I was seven and the size, not to mention the subject, of the sleeping bag makes that quite obvious.

  I lean over the edge of my bed to look at Riley. There’s enough moonlight being cast through my window that I can see that he is lying on his back with a hand on his chest, staring back up at me.

  “Are you at all comfortable in that little sleeping bag?”

  He scrunches up his mouth in mock-thought, “Considering that it’s a child’s sleeping bag with Cinderella on it. . .”

  “It’s Sleeping Beauty, dumbass.” I correct him.

  “Besides being insecure about the pink princess on the sleeping bag, the fact that it’s about three feet too short doesn’t make me like it anymore.”

  “Why don’t you just sleep in my bed?”

  “With you? Wouldn’t that be weird?”

  “Weirder than a twenty-five year-old man in a sleeping bag meant for eight-year-old girls you mean?”

  “Touché, Reynolds.” Riley mumbles as he gets out of the sleeping bag. I can’t help but laugh as he purposely stomps on Sleeping Beauty’s face as he heads to the other side of my bed, still stomping around. I don’t turn to look at him because, well, it is kind of weird to share a bed with Riley, this time.

  To my surprise, he slides into bed rather smoothly. I figured he would plop right down and make a fuss of fighting with blankets. . .

  Not that there is much blanket to fight with since I’m hoarding it all, but still. He doesn’t even mutter anything about me being a cover hog.

  “If I wasn’t here, would Matt be sleeping with you tonight?”

  I am so shocked that I have to roll over at stare at Riley, with my eyes bugging out of my head and everything. When I look at him, my eyes pop out even more. When had he taken of his shirt? And where in the hell did he get those abs?

  I make a point to look at his face and not his chest and abs (Seriously, where had those things came from, and how is it that I’m having trouble looking away? It must be all the liquor I drank) to answer his question. He tries to look nonchalant while he sets the alarm clock on his phone, like he doesn’t know that I’m barely able to take my eyes off him.

  “You being here doesn’t affect what I choose to do.” I shrug, “Besides, I’m not going to sleep with Matt anyway.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. I just met him. And, you know, he’s kind of a jock. Oh, and a friend of Evan’s. You know what that means, right?”

  “That he has an IQ of eleven?”

  I snort, “Well, besides that. Only, I think that Matt actually has some intelligence to him. I mean, he totally schooled me in Scrabble. No one ever does that.”

  “Yeah, but you were a little drunk, Reynolds.” Riley smiles his half-smile. “Don’t get me wrong, Drunk Jess is one of my favorite sides of your personality. But, if memory serves me, Drunk Jess has been known to get a little slutty in the past.”

  My mouth falls open. Granted I am still a little tipsy and have invited Riley to sleep in my bed where I am now, currently kind of amazed by his defined chest and abs and all, but that is no reason to call me a drunken slut. Which I’m totally not. I just like to hug people after I’ve drank a few beers. There is a huge difference between a hugger and a slut.

  “Anyway,” Riley tries to steer away from the topic of me being a lush, “why is Matt being a jock a problem?”

  I stare at my nails, that I desperately need to stop biting, as I talk, “Because jock guys don’t like girls like me. They like those thin blonde types that can walk around in high heels without tripping.”

  “Jess, you can’t walk around without tripping when you’re barefoot. Putting you in a pair of high heels is like begging for a natural disaster.”

  I glare at him, “You know what I mean. Guys like Matt, they like pretty girls who are graceful and dainty and all that.”

  “That’s because they’re idiots.”

  “They’re not all idiots. I mean, that one groomsmen of Evan’s is heading to law school in the fall…”

  “…just to bail his friend out of jail for that hate crime, I’m sure.”

  Riley has never liked Evan’s friends. Hell, I’m not sure that Riley even likes Evan. Granted it’s probably hard to like the guy who is nailing your little sister but still. I assume that Riley thinks that Evan is like his friends, but he really isn’t. I mean, he is intelligent, nice, and according to Carla, funny. Carla had once said that Evan was really talkative, but shy around people he didn’t know that well.

  I have known him for four years and he is still quiet around me. He has practically been a third roommate for the past year, but he is silent around me. And Riley.

  Not that Riley has really tried to converse with him ever. Probably because of the ‘he’s the guy sleeping with my little sister’ thing, which is probably reason enough for siblings, especially older brothers. Being an only child, I wouldn’t know. And, knowing how Riley is with Carla, I’m quite glad I’m the only kid my parents could handle having.

  “You know that you’re not half bad, right?” Riley mutters, making a point to not look at me.

  I snort, “Wow, that was almost a compliment.”

  He rolls over onto his side, his back toward me, “Night, Jess.”

  I also roll over, my back facing his. “Night, Riley.”

  ***

  I don’t want to wake up at five in the morning. It’s wrong and unnatural. I try to will myself back to sleep by relaxing my muscles and letting the stress float out of my body from my head to my toes, a trick that I picked up from this website on astral projection. I never did figure out how to go about astral projection but, in the end, I realized that being able to fall asleep is way better than being able to travel outside your body. At five in the morning, however, I wish that my bladder could astral project itself to the bathroom so that I could go back to sleep.

  I know that if I get up, I won’t be going back to sleep. I’m one of those people that, once I’m up, I’m up. And I do not want to be fully conscious at five in the morning. Especially on a day that I don’t have to go in to work
.

  I rub my face and let my hand drop on my side. Only, it isn’t my side that I hit. I follow the hand to the arm to the shoulder to the body of Riley who is still asleep next to me.

  I move his arm off of me and place it on his side. Which is pointless since, a second later, he wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer to him.

  Great, I am officially Riley’s personal teddy bear.

  “Riley, get off of me.” I mutter, trying to wriggle away from him. His grip around me only tightens. And I thought he was annoying when he was awake.

  I sigh, defeated, and try to fall back into a slumber. My bladder can hold out until six, when Riley’s alarm is supposed to go off. Then I will be free from his kung-fu grip.

  Super, now he’s mumbling in his sleep. In my ear. Well, in the general direction of my ear. Either way, his breath on my ear and neck is giving me goosebumps.

  In a not entirely bad way.

  Despite the goose bumps, he is talking in his sleep (something about Tom Petty, his man crush) and has taken me prisoner and I HAVE TO PEE.

  I try to wriggle free once more, only to have his grip around me tighten again, to the point where I am having difficulty breathing (evidently, in his dream, I am Tom Petty and he wants to keep me from “Free Fallin’” or something) and the pressure on my bladder has increased by about a zillion.

  “That does it.” I whisper.

  I bring my arm toward me and jut out my elbow. Just as my elbow is flying back to hit Riley’s ribcage, he makes this weird, abrupt move in his sleep (I assume he is heading into “The Great Wide Open” with Tom) and it turns out that my elbow will not be meeting his ribs. No, instead it will be traveling a bit south of his ribcage to a place that I know Riley is quite fond of.

  As soon as my elbow reaches his nether regions (completely by accident, honest), he wakes up with a sharp intake of breath as his only response. Probably because he can’t form words. The important thing is that I am free from his grip. I fight out of my cocoon of covers and run out of the room, mumbling an apology to Riley before I shut the bathroom door across the hall.