On the Rocks (27 page)

“Hey there!” she said cheerily as she patted me on my ass. “How’re you doing?” She leaned her hand on the bar. Her martini sloshed back and forth in her glass, two olives nestled in the bottom of the liquid. We clinked our glasses together and both took large sips.

“I’m great!” I sang as I threw my non-flute-holding hand up in the air over my head like I was holding a pom-pom.

“Well, you look great. Have you been working on being more social like we talked about at lunch?”

“I’ve been trying.”

“Any luck?”

“So far just a whole lot of frogs.”

She bobbed her olive skewer up and down in her vodka and olive juice. I wondered if Bobby would call that a filthy whore or just a dirty slut martini. “Well, that’s okay. Like I said, the frogs can be fun too. What are you doing over here?”

“Hiding,” I admitted. “Not that that’s possible in this dress, but I’m trying my best.” I realized that hiding from anyone became impossible the second I left the house. The days of embarrassing moments living only on the pages of family photo albums were long gone, and I had no doubt that thanks to Katie’s Facebook- and MySpace-obsessed friends, pictures of me in this dress were already splashed all over the Internet for any cyber-stalker to see. It was only a matter of time before some guy Googled me, discovered a picture of me in this dress, and understandably ran for his life.

“You know, no one likes a lady alone at a bar. It looks desperate.”

I shrugged. “Ordinarily I’d agree with you, but I don’t think that sitting alone in the bathroom looks particularly great either. I’m thirty-one years old, and my fiancé ditched me. I look desperate just by virtue of leaving the house.”

“And why are those your only two options? How do you know there aren’t cute single boys in the ballroom? Do you know how many people meet their husbands at weddings? It’s a perfect social situation: it’s a romantic happy occasion, everyone is already prescreened by nature of being invited, and there’s free alcohol. It’s a single girl’s dream! So why aren’t you mingling? she asked. “I thought you were going to try to improve your attitude this summer. You promised me,” she added.

“I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying to meet people and be less negative and go on dates this summer, and every guy I meet has some tragic flaw that I can’t seem to get past. I’m not being too picky either. I’m telling you, some of the guys are moat monsters.”

“Let me ask you this: are you still hung up on Ben? Maybe that’s part of your problem.”

“I really don’t think I am. I think I’m finally at the point where I’m over him. Still, I don’t love the idea of starting over. It’s hard, Aunt Patrice. And exhausting. I’m mad at myself for wasting as much time on Ben as I did, and now I’m worried it might be too late for me.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous. You’re thirty-one, not sixty-five. Things happen when you least expect it. Relax. I’m not worried about you.”

“My mother is,” I said flatly.

“Your mother is having some kind of midlife crisis. I caught her staring at her reflection in a butter knife before. And don’t get me started on her dress. For the life of me I can’t figure out what she was thinking. Katie must have wanted to kill her.”

“It crossed both of our minds. More than once. There was nothing I could do, though.”

“Well, there’s something I can do.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

She smiled mischievously. “I may or may not have accidentally drizzled some pinot noir all over the back of her dress. To be honest, I felt bad about it, but this time she deserves it. I imagine the neighbors will hear her screaming when she gets home and realizes she waltzed around here looking like Lady Macbeth all night.”

“You didn’t!” I said as I laughed wide-eyed and clutched Aunt Patrice’s free hand.

“You bet I did. You’re never too old to have your big sister teach you a lesson. I justified my actions by telling myself that it was sort of a wedding gift to your sister.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You have no idea how much we appreciate it.”

“No problem. Now listen, I know it’s hard for girls like you. You have high expectations, and you’re smart and beautiful and funny, and a lot of guys who are insecure don’t have the confidence to handle you. If they can’t play knight in shining armor, a lot of them will run. You just need to find someone who isn’t afraid of the whole package. Girls like you send out a signal without realizing it.”

“What kind of signal? I didn’t send Ben a signal. It wasn’t my fault,” I said. I was starting to believe that more.

“I know it wasn’t, darling. But you do. You give off the ‘don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes’ signal. But those aren’t the types of guys you want to be with anyway! Eventually, you’ll meet someone, and everything will just click. Until then, think of all these dates as good practice.”

“Everyone keeps saying that, but I’ve had years of practice. That should be enough,” I growled. “It’s just so unfair.”

“Abby, you need to let it go. It’s over. You’re holding on to something that’s not there anymore. Stop being sad and get pissed.”

“I am,” I said as I squeezed her shoulder. “I swear I am.”

“That’s my girl. In the meantime, my favorite niece does not hide in the ladies’ room, okay?”

She put her hand on my waist and walked me back into the party, her martini still sloshing and her high heels clacking on the hardwood floor. I took my seat at the dreaded singles table and shook hands with the guy sitting on my right. His name was Larry, and he was an aspiring artist who liked to spend his free time partaking in jousting competitions at medieval times events. That was all I needed to know about Larry. On my left was Kyle. Kyle was a thirty-four-year-old student who had a later start in the grad school game because it had taken him six years to get out of college and he had spent the next few years traveling the world in search of himself. Maybe my aunt was right. Maybe it was unacceptable for me to hide in the ladies’ room, but she was wrong about something too: there was absolutely, positively no way in hell that I was going to meet anyone at this wedding. And I really couldn’t have cared less.

Three hours and countless glasses of alcohol later, Katie asked me to help her change into her departure outfit. She swished in front of me down the hall and into the lounge, and I scurried after her, knowing that this was going to be my final duty as maid of honor, the last time it was going to be my job to take care of her. As soon as we entered the lounge she collapsed on the chaise and let out a shriek. “Abby, do you believe I’m married?”

“I kind of don’t. It was hard to tell you and Mom apart. You were the one on the altar, right?”

“That’s so not funny,” she said with a smile. She hesitated for a moment before she asked the same question I had been asking myself for a while. “Abby, do you think she’d be different if Dad were still alive?”

“I don’t know. I do know that Dad would have loved to be with us today, and that he would never have let her wear that dress. That’s for sure.”

“Someday I think I’ll laugh about it. Just not anytime soon,” she said.

“Me too. Someday years from now, we will find it funny. I feel that way about a lot of things.”

She turned her back to me again, this time so I could unhook and unbutton the elaborate mechanisms that held up her gown. When they had all been unfastened, I gently slid the dress down her tiny frame and let her lean her weight on my shoulder as she stepped out of the dress, now pooled around her on the floor like a satin puddle. I helped her lower her short white cocktail dress over her head, taking care, once again, to not disrupt her curls. She reapplied her lip gloss and turned to me one last time before departing for Hawaii.

“I’m happy, Abby. I hope you know that. And I hope you’re happy for me.”

“I am,” I said. I surprised myself, because I meant it.

“You were a really great maid of honor. I’m sorry if I made things harder on you than they already are.”

She reached over, and we hugged tightly, something she and I had not done for a very long time. Weddings really do bring out the sap in people.

I released myself from her embrace and fixed one stray curl that had fallen down behind her ear. “Go, have a great time on your honeymoon. Call me when you get back. I want to hear all about it.”

“I will, I promise,” she said as she once again left me alone in the ladies’ lounge, surrounded by the white remnants of her wedding day.

I picked her dress up off the floor and put it in the garment bag we’d brought from home. I folded the bag, fastened the buckles, and handed it to my mother in the vestibule by the doors.

“Can you take this home, please?” I asked. “It needs to go to the dry cleaner, and I’m heading back to the beach on Monday morning.”

My mother took the bag from me, but clearly had a problem with that. I imagined I would’ve been able to see the shock on her face if her face was able to register any type of expression whatsoever.

“What do you want me to do with this until I leave? I can’t just stand here holding a travel bag. I look like an out-of-town guest,” she said.

“Don’t worry, Mom. There’s not a person here tonight who doesn’t know who you are. Give it to one of the waiters to stash somewhere if you don’t want to hold on to it, but I can’t take it home with me.” I turned and headed back to the lounge to make sure Katie hadn’t left anything else behind.

“Abby,” I heard my mother call from behind me. She came up to me and for the first time in a very long time wrapped her arms around me. “I know today was hard for you, and I’m proud of you for the way you handled yourself.”

“Really? Thank you. That means a lot,” I said. I squeezed her tightly. We may have had more differences than I could count, but I loved her and deep down still hoped that one day we could mend our fractured relationship.

“You’re welcome. And I want you to know that nobody could have pulled off that dress, but you came damn close.”

That day would not be today.

I decided that it was time for me to leave.

Chapter 17

Princess Leia Was a Whore

I
WAS ABLE
to get a cab as soon as I got outside, and once I was nestled in the backseat I immediately kicked off my shoes to rescue my throbbing feet and knees. I couldn’t wait to get home, ditch the dress, peel off my Spanx, and pour myself a glass of Cabernet. I got out on the corner and walked barefoot down the dirty, dusty street toward my building, staring at the ground as I walked. When I looked up, I found Bobby sitting on my stoop, smoking a cigarette and playing a game on his iPhone.

“Always a bridesmaid, huh?” he said as he blew a steady stream of smoke into the night air. “Why are you carrying your shoes?” he asked, eyeing the chunky pink shoes in my hand. “You’ll need a tetanus shot if you’re not careful.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, embarrassed to be seen in this get-up. He smirked at me, the freckles on his nose invisible in the dark. He smiled, enjoying his successful attempt to ambush me, and placed his pack of cigarettes in his pocket.

“That’s some dress. What does one even call that shade of pink?”

“I don’t even think the people at Crayola know what to call this shade of pink.”

“You look like you just escaped from a cotton candy machine.”

“Bobby, it’s been a long night. Did you come here just to make fun of me?” I asked. “I don’t need you to tell me I look ridiculous any more than I need you to tell me I’m actually a brunette and still slightly overweight,” I moaned. “Please be nice to me.”

“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I didn’t come here to make fun of you. I knew that you weren’t exactly thrilled about going to your sister’s wedding, and I happened to be in the city because I just found out I have a job interview on Monday. I figured the wedding would be over by midnight and you’d be coming home alone and would maybe want some company. So I took up residence on your stoop about a half-hour ago, and here you are.”

That was actually sweet. I appreciated Bobby going out of his way to help cheer me up, even if his methods were, as usual, a little strange. “It actually ended up being okay. Nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be,” I admitted.

“Good. Can we can go inside now?” he asked as he took the ugly pink satin pig shoes from my hand.

“Who said you were coming inside?” I asked.

“You’re not going to invite me in after I sat out here playing Words with Friends while I waited to check on you?” he countered.

“You’re right, where are my manners?” I said as I climbed the stoop to my front door. “I was planning on opening a bottle of wine. Do you want to come up and have a glass?”

“What kind of gentleman would I be if I made you drink alone?”

“You’re no gentleman,” I teased.

“Here I thought weddings were supposed to make girls all sappy and romantic. Typical, it turns you into a bubblegum-colored Rambo. Is there anything normal about you? Do you hate puppies?”

“Very funny.” I glanced down and noticed a zipped-up gym bag sitting at his feet. “What’s in the bag?” I asked.

“Something that’s going to make you feel very bad for just saying that I was an asshole.”

“I didn’t say that. I said you weren’t a gentleman. They’re not the same thing.”

“Sounds like it from where I’m standing.”

“Speaking of where you’re standing, can you please move so I can open the door? I really need to change. Come on up, even though you called me ugly.”

“Good God, woman, I did not say you were ugly. I said the dress was ugly. They’re not the same thing.”

“Sounds like it from where I’m standing,” I said as he grabbed the door and held it open for me. We walked up the three flights of stairs to my apartment. On the landing of the second floor, he held my pink shoes with their four-inch heels up to his face and examined them closely. “I will never understand how you guys walk in these things.”

“One of many sacrifices women must make,” I said.

“For who? Podiatrists and orthopedic surgeons?”

“Among others.” I threw open the door to my apartment and walked down the small hallway into the den.