Frenemies(17)

Amy Lee glanced over and then looked back at me. She frowned. She was suitably attired in the same black dress she trotted out to every single semiformal and/or formal occasion she’d attended since sophomore year in college. The only things she ever changed were her accessories. She claimed she’d learned this trick from Coco Chanel, and when she made that claim she liked to make it sound as if she’d learned it from Coco personally, instead of reading the same selection of quotations in fashion magazines everyone else had.

“What the hell are you wearing, Gus?” she asked. “Is that taffeta?”

“Oh,” I said blandly. “Why? You don’t like it?”

Next to me, I saw Georgia hide a smile behind her hand.

“It’s hideous,” Amy Lee said flatly.

“You always claimed we could wear them again,” I told her sweetly, “and check it out, you were right!”

There was an extended silence, as Amy Lee took a long, hard look at the atrocity she’d foisted upon her closest friends, all in the name of her Day of Love.

“Doesn’t look so good outside the wedding madness, does it?” Georgia asked in an arch tone.

“Once again,” Amy Lee said, “I saved you from the chartreuse chiffon my mother fell in love with. How come no one remembers that?”

“You have a picture of your special day on your wall, Amy Lee, in which you and Oscar seem to be beaming amid a sea of blueberries,” I pointed out. “A sea of puffy, taffeta blueberries. I have to spend eternity as one of those blueberries.”

“What sucks for you,” Amy Lee retorted, “is that you are just a lone blueberry tonight. Bet this was a whole lot funnier when you were getting dressed, wasn’t it?”

I glared at Georgia, who had the grace to look slightly ashamed. In truth, it was difficult to maintain my righteous indignation when I knew I looked like a righteously indignant blueberry.

Then I looked back at Amy Lee and shrugged. “That’s pretty much the story of my life,” I told her.

“If it helps,” she said then, “I never liked those dresses as much as I pretended to.”


Some hours later, I was taking a break from the blueberry fun at the table we’d been assigned with a selection of other BU graduates who were also friends with the Happy Couple. Everyone I knew was off dancing, while I took the opportunity to wonder why, exactly, I always found it necessary to take things just that extra bit too far. It was amusing to stand in one’s own apartment, imagining the reaction a best friend might have when one turned up to a formal event kitted out in the dress she’d foisted upon her bridesmaids. So amusing, in fact, that I’d told myself I didn’t care at all that Nate and Helen would be present to see me in said bridesmaid dress, and that my wearing it knowing they would see me looking absurd was a power move. It was proving far less amusing, and not at all empowering, however, to parade around a party all decked out as a blueberry. Because all of my friends might have known why I was dressed up like a refugee from an eighties movie, but the rest of Chloe and Sam’s extended family thought I was just a pathetic creature with an unusual and/or alarming fondness for royal blue taffeta.

I stared across the crowded banquet room toward the main table and located Georgia easily enough. She was right where I’d left her: flirting shamelessly with a very hot consultant who worked with the groom-to-be. His name was Justin or Jordan or something like that, and he had ambitious corporate shark tattooed all over his excellently maintained body.

“That’s an accident waiting to happen,” Amy Lee said with a sigh, sitting next to me and also looking at Georgia.

“I’ll collect the chocolate and the Aimee Mann CDs,” I agreed. “You work on the speech.”

“I’ve been telling her to look for a different type of guy for the past ten years!” Amy Lee protested.

“Which is why the speech needs work.”

We sat there for a moment. I tried to send positive thoughts Georgia’s way, on the off chance Jonah or Jesse (or whoever) was just a lamb in shark’s clothing. But it was unlikely. As a rule of thumb, if Georgia was attracted to him, the guy had to be a jackass. Witness Henry, the ultimate case in point.

“I have to say, I was looking for a little more excitement,” Amy Lee said. “If I have to put on formalwear, there should at least be something to gossip about.” She shook her head when I nodded over at Georgia. “I can’t bring myself to gossip about something we both know we’ll end up dealing with when it all goes horribly wrong.”

“I agree. I expected someone to be swinging from a chandelier, or falling down drunk on the dance floor,” I complained, looking around at the sedate gathering. People laughed and sipped drinks on all sides, looking as perfectly well-behaved and about as likely to throw down and get rowdy as a Junior League convention.

“Henry was panting all over some stick figure with boobs,” Amy Lee threw out there. “But I guess that’s not exactly interesting or new, is it?”

“He is Satan, after all,” I agreed, without the slightest pang of guilt. The other pang, I ignored. Fostering my friends’ dislike of my enemies was a responsibility I took seriously. There was no time for inconvenient pangs. I sighed. “This party is way too … civilized.”

Usually when a group of such size was convened by a member of our wider group, you could count on scandal and intrigue. Someone was always kissing drastically above or below their station, and at a different engagement party last winter someone had actually spiked the punch.