On the Rocks (25 page)

“No. Worse,” I said, slowly, delaying telling him the story for as long as possible.

“Did he ask you to leave the tip? That’s not the worst thing in the world. I know a lot of guys who do that, and a lot of girls who like to do it. Some empowerment bullshit or something.”

“Worse,” I replied.

“He made you pay for the entire dinner? That’s unacceptable. There’s absolutely no excuse for that.”

“Worse.”

“I can’t really think of anything worse than a guy making a girl pay for dinner on the first date, unless of course he went to the bathroom when the check came and climbed out the window. He didn’t climb out the window, Abby, did he?”

“You have no idea. The bill came, and his entire demeanor changed. It was like someone flipped a switch and turned him into a crazy person. He basically snarled at me!”

“Did you order a ten-pound lobster or something? Maybe I should’ve pointed out that most girls don’t really eat much on first dates. I’m not sure why. Someone must have told them that guys think it’s hot if they think their date has an eating disorder or something.”

“Hardly. He looked at the bill and started yelling. He said he was going to have to take out a second mortgage on his apartment to pay for it. Now, at first I thought he was kidding, and I actually thought it was funny because that meant that he owns his apartment and being invested in real estate is not a bad thing.”

“That’s what you thought about? The fact that he owned his own apartment?” Bobby shook his head.

“That was my way of trying to find the silver lining.”

“There’s no silver lining to a man yelling at a woman he doesn’t know over a dinner bill.”

“Yeah, I’m aware.”

“This is great. I wish I had popcorn.” He laughed as he crossed his arms over his chest and threw his feet up on the table.

“He complained that I picked out a bottle of wine that was way too expensive, and that I had some nerve to assume he wanted to spend that much on a girl he didn’t even know.”

“What? How much was the bottle?”

“Forty dollars!” I finally collapsed in a chair. Reliving the embarrassment made me want a beer from the cooler.

“Oh, come on. This guy is an architect and he was complaining about a forty-dollar bottle of wine in a restaurant? What kind of wine can you even get for less than that during high season at the Black Pearl? Something that comes in a box?”

“I have no idea what the hell he expected me to order, or why he didn’t just order it himself if he was going to be such a price whore. That’s not even the worst of it. Then he signed the check, crumpled up the receipt, and threw it into the candle on the middle of the table.”

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, his face contorting from trying to stifle his laughter.

“Bobby, he lit the check on fire. I had to throw my water on it to put it out.”

“You’re lying,” Bobby said as he burst into hysterics, finding humor in my misery like the good friend he’d become.

“Like I could make this up.”

“What a dick move. You should have hit him with the flowers instead of hitting the lamppost.”

“I couldn’t because before I knew what was happening, he just up and left. He left me sitting at the table trying to put out the embers. All of the waiters were staring at me. It was completely mortifying. I swear to God this doesn’t happen to anyone except me.”

“Oh relax. It absolutely does,” he said. “I bet you a million women across the country had bad dates this week. It’s not your fault he’s a cheap asshole.”

“I have endured my fair share of ridiculous in the dating world, Bobby. Don’t I deserve to have a few nights here and there go smoothly? What is wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you. And I’d like to point out that I didn’t go anywhere near the restaurant, as promised, and instead have been sitting on your porch drinking your beer for the last two hours, of no help to you at all. If you had let me come chaperone your date, I’d have thrown him through the window the second he torched your check. See, my offer to come with you doesn’t seem so silly now, does it?”

“This isn’t funny!” I squealed, even though I realized it sort of was.

“It’s a little funny. You have to see that.”

“Why couldn’t he just be normal? We didn’t need to get married or anything, but why couldn’t he at least be a normal human being? Is that too much to ask for?”

“I have no idea why Scrooge McArchitect couldn’t spring for a nice bottle of wine. Unfortunately that is a question I can’t answer for you, lover girl.”

“I’ve been trying to stay positive, I really have. And I followed your advice and tried to go for the opposite of what I’m typically attracted to. Well, I’m sorry. The purple-flower-buying, pink-pants-wearing architect was as opposite as I could possibly get, and I was pretty sure he had potential. I’m done trying. I’ve accepted my future as a cat lady.”

“Jesus, will you listen to yourself? Go take a shower, have a drink, and chill out,” he said. “Maybe in the morning you’ll realize how completely ridiculous you sound. You had a bad date. You can’t let it keep you from ever wanting to date again. I’ve had plenty of bad dates. Believe me, you’ll get over it.”

“No. I won’t.” I took a long swig from my beer and buried my hands in my now-crunchy beach hair. “I can’t do this. All that nights like this do is remind me that I’m better off at home alone on the couch with ice cream in one hand and my remote control in the other.”

“That’s not going to help you. If you keep that attitude and start housing sugar again, you’re going to end up with either an appearance on
The Biggest Loser
or type two diabetes. Whichever comes first. Just shrug it off and move on. Don’t dwell on it.”

“Sure. That’ll be easy,” I said as I went inside to take a scalding hot shower in the hopes I’d wash the night off me.

I didn’t even have time to dwell on it, though, since the next stop on the “things I’d rather drink bleach than do” tour was coming up. It was time to face the wedding music.

Chapter 16

The Overfed Flamingo

T
HE
A
LLIED
F
ORCES
spent less time preparing for D-Day than my sister did for her wedding, which I couldn’t understand for the life of me. We got dressed at my mom’s house and waited in the foyer for the florist to arrive, while Katie barked orders and fanned herself with a dinner napkin. I ran around like a lunatic trying to calm Katie’s nerves and earn some goodwill after tackling her in the dress salon. I was doing my best to suck up to her when, for once in her life, my mother finally did something to help me out. She pissed off Katie even more than I had.

“Ladies! What do you think? How do I look?” she called from the top of the curving staircase that led to the foyer. “Isn’t this stunning?”

My sister and I looked up the stairs to marvel at our mother, perched on the top step, with one hand in the air and the other on her hip. She wore a long, satin, cream-colored gown, complete with beading at the bust and crystals covering the skirt. Oh God. She was wearing a wedding dress.

Katie opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak. There she was, at the bottom of the stairs, in her fully mended satin wedding gown, and there was my mother, at the top of the stairs, in hers. It was like looking through a sick and twisted magic mirror. I looked at Katie, unable to breathe, let alone speak, and finally my big sisterly instincts kicked in. No one disrespects my sister on her wedding day. Especially not our clueless mother.

“Take it off,” I said, having a flashback to the bridal salon. Why was I constantly telling the women in my family to change?

“She . . . that . . . it’s . . .” Katie stuttered, still staring at herself twenty-five years in the future.

I stood frozen, alternating staring at the present-day Katie and the future Katie, unsure of what to do.
Damn you, Emily Post,
I thought.
Why do you refuse to address any of my bridal problems?
“You can’t wear that, Mom. You just can’t,” I said, still utterly flabbergasted.

“What’s the problem? This gown is gorgeous, and look at all the details!” she said as she turned to display the long satin train. Now I understood why she had suggested that Katie’s train might be too long. She didn’t want it to be longer than her own. I finally realized why my mother had been so obsessed with looking her best for this wedding: in her mind, it was the chance to have the wedding she’d always wanted. The one where she got to wear an elegant gown and have everyone think she was beautiful, instead of the one she actually had, pregnant in a polyester suit at city hall. For a moment, I felt bad for her, and so sad that this stunt was actually her pathetic and misguided attempt to recapture a moment of her youth that she hadn’t been allowed to have.

Then I got over it.

I moaned in complete frustration. “You can’t wear a long white dress to the wedding! You’re the mother of the bride, not the bride! You’re going to make a fool out of yourself!” That was saying something considering this was coming from someone who looked like an overfed flamingo.

“Don’t be ridiculous. First of all, this isn’t white, it’s cream, and second of all, as the mother of the bride, I can wear anything I want.”

“I honestly don’t know how your mind works. What were you thinking?” I hissed as my mother slowly descended the stairs.

“What do you mean? You can’t possibly say you have a problem with this. I told you about this, Abby,” my mother said nonchalantly as she swished past me. Five seconds later her train followed.

“You knew about this?” Katie screamed, turning her fury on me now. Any goodwill I had incurred was gone.

“No, you did not! I specifically asked you what you were wearing, and you said you wanted to surprise us!” I said, still in shock. “I knew nothing about this!”

“We spoke on the phone about it over a month ago,” my mother replied innocently.

“No, we spoke about what color
car
would be best. A car, not a dress. And I said black. Has all that Botox seeped into your brain?”

“Oh, calm down. What’s the big deal? I want to make sure that everyone knows that I am the mother of the bride. That’s all. It’s not like I’m wearing a veil or anything!”

Oh my God,
I thought. My mom was one of those T-shirt-wearing chicks from the bachelorette party. I should probably consider myself lucky she didn’t have a tiara perched on top of her lacquered bob.

“This isn’t happening,” Katie whispered. The Wilkes sisters were apparently wedding-cursed. At least I’d finally found something we had in common.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Katie, realizing that we were going to lose this battle. “Just stand next to me all night. Look at the bright side: now you have an excuse not to go anywhere near her.”

“Abby, she . . . I think I saw that dress in Vera Wang.”

“It’s not that bad. You make a way prettier bride than she does, I swear.” I could not believe I just said that.

“Why don’t you just tackle her and rip it so she has to change?” Katie sobbed.

“Okay, it’s your day, so I’m going to let that go,” I replied, trying to keep the very tenuous peace agreement between us intact.

“I’m not kidding, Abby.
Do it,
” Katie ordered. I thought about it for a second. My mother wasn’t anywhere near as strong as Katie was, and I was pretty sure I could take her.

The doorbell rang, and I ran to answer it, happy to buy some time so I could figure out a way to persuade my mother to change. When the small, stocky woman appeared on the doorstep with our bouquets, my sister grabbed mine and stared at it like she had never seen a peony before. My fear had been realized. My mother wearing a long white dress had finally caused Katie to have a psychotic breakdown.

“These are completely hideous!” she wailed to the poor woman who didn’t realize she was delivering flowers to a Bridezilla in the midst of a nervous breakdown. “What the hell are these?”

“They’re peonies, and they’re fine,” I said flatly. Katie’s nerves and adrenaline were quickly turning her into a lunatic. Of course, Mom’s dress didn’t help with that either.

“These are awful!” Katie wailed, throwing the bouquet back in the box with such force that random petals actually exploded from the box and showered the floor.

What the hell is happening?
I thought.

“I specifically said I wanted cotton candy–colored flowers. What the hell would you call these?” she asked me as she stared at the bouquet.

“I’d call them pink,” I said, my own nerves beginning to fray.

“This is nowhere near the color I asked for. These are raspberry.”

“They’re pink, Katie. No one is going to notice the difference, I promise.” That was true. For the first time in the history of weddings, no one would be looking at the bride because they’d be too busy gawking at her older sister, a shrew dressed head to toe in a color that
definitely
couldn’t be called pink, standing next to her mother, who was also clad in a wedding dress.

Next time I was so going to elope.

“They’re too pink! They don’t work!” She actually stamped her foot the way she used to when she was little and didn’t get her way. I forgot how much it bugged me.

“Who the hell are you, Goldilocks? You’re getting married, Katie. Who cares if your attendants’ flowers are two shades darker than you thought they’d be?”

“Who would be caught dead carrying flowers this color? They’re vile!”

“This coming from the girl who picked this gem out for me?” I asked, grabbing the sides of my skirt like I was about to curtsy to the captain of the Good Ship Lollipop. “I look like a walking Pepto-Bismol bottle.”

“I thought that color would look nice on you!” she lied.

“This color wouldn’t look nice coating a doughnut and covered with sprinkles!” I screamed, regretting the words the second they escaped my lips.

“I’m not letting you ruin this for me. This is
my
day,” she said defiantly.

“Are you sure? Then why are you wearing
my
dress?” Unfortunately, the truce was over.