Three Girls And A Wedding (22 page)

Tuesday morning found me sitting at
the kitchen table in my bathrobe, furiously trying to fire off a round of
emails to vendors before I was due to meet Kiki for her hair appointment. She
had met with the stylist several times already, but today was the final
run-through for her wedding hairdo, veil and all, and she wanted me there to
approve it.

The welcome party the night before
had gone smoothly. Matt and I had not done a perfect job with the walls, but by
the time the linens, lighting and flowers were brought in, you could barely
tell. Kiki seemed very happy, surrounded by her family, and several people had
stopped to compliment me on the gift baskets they had found in their rooms upon
check-in.

“Well, look who’s actually here
during daylight hours,” Annie said, standing in the doorway to the kitchen with
raised eyebrows.

“Hey,” I said, turning back to my
laptop.

“Well, I’m glad to see you. We only
have a few days left and I want to nail down some of the details with you.”

“
Mmmhmm
,”
I murmured, concentrating on the email before me. I think Annie said something
else, but I didn’t hear her.

“Jen, are you listening to me at
all?” Annie sounded pissed, and I pulled my eyes away from the computer monitor
to focus on her.

“Sorry, Ann. What were you saying?”

“I said, what time are we supposed
to pick up the flowers? Or are you having them delivered.”

“Oh…flowers…um, let me see.”
Mentally, I tried to switch gears. Ginny’s wedding, Ginny’s wedding. Not Kiki,
Ginny. I pulled up the excel spreadsheet on my computer and found the notation
for flowers. “Okay, flowers…they’ll be delivered to the house at eleven a.m.
Then we’ll just bring them with us to the restaurant.”

“Fine. Thank you,” she said,
somewhat sarcastically. I sighed. I knew I was pissing Annie off, but what did
she expect of me? I was doing my best.

“
Whatcha
guys talking about?” Ginny asked, appearing in the doorway of the dining room,
Josh right behind her holding Danny.

“Just going over some details,”
Annie said. “Flowers and stuff.”

“God, can you believe it’s finally
here?” Ginny asked, shaking her head.

“I can’t,” Annie agreed, smiling at
her. “But its
gonna
be awesome. Perfect.”

“
Mmmhmm
,”
I agreed, turning my attention back to my computer. “Next week is
gonna
be perfect.”

“This week,” Josh corrected.

I barely heard him. But then…slowly
it dawned on me, what he had said.

“Wait, what?”

“You said next week,” he explained.
“You meant
this
Friday.”

I stared at him blankly. “What did
you say?”

“The wedding is
this
Friday. The twenty-third.”

It was one of those moments where
the world seemed to freeze around you. I could see, in minute detail, the
creases in Josh’s shirt, the smudges in Ginny’s fingernail polish.

“Jen, you okay? Your face is really
pale,” Ginny said, looking at me with concern.

“This Friday,” I murmured. “Your
wedding is this Friday.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking confused.
“Friday the twenty-third.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, panic
rising in my chest. “Oh my
God
.”

Annie was looking at me with
narrowed eyes. “Don’t tell me,” she muttered. “Jennifer Campbell, don’t you
dare tell me…”

“What’s going on?” Josh asked
sharply.

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 just 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.”