On the Rocks(26)
“Yeah, but other than her. There was a time when I would’ve been leading the pack on that dance floor. I would’ve been the life of the party. Now all I can think about is what movie I’m missing on TV. I can’t compete with these kids and their miniature outfits.”
“Abby, I think you look very nice. Don’t worry about those other girls, just relax and have fun. There are plenty of people our age here,” he said, bobbing his head to the music, smiling at everyone who walked by.
“They’re staff,” I said with a sigh.
“Not just them. You’re prettier than those drunk kids anyway.”
“Thanks, Wolf.” I reached over and patted his arm, happy to have a genuinely nice guy as a friend.
“I mean it,” he said with a smile, instantly putting me at ease. “Any guy here would be lucky to have you.”
“Why aren’t you dating anyone? Haven’t you found any nice American girls to go out with?” I asked, hoping that I wasn’t intruding on his personal life the way I felt Bobby continually intruded on mine.
“Not yet, but I’m having fun looking.”
“That’s the attitude I should have,” I said. He was right. I needed to relax.
“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Wolf said.
“Sure.”
“What’s that over there?” he asked, pointing to the other side of the bar.
Oh God.
There were more than a few things I didn’t know about Newport nightlife. I didn’t know which bars were popular on which nights, I didn’t know which places had the good bands or the bartenders with the heavy pours, and I was fine with that. What I wasn’t fine with was no one bothering to tell me that Newport was apparently a hot spot for bachelor and bachelorette parties. I scanned the crowd and discovered you couldn’t swing a bat (which I had unfortunately neglected to throw in my clutch before leaving the house, though I won’t be making that mistake again) without smacking a girl wearing some kind of accessory letting the world know that she was about to be married. Stepping into the middle of the bachelorette party mecca of the Northeast wasn’t really how I’d envisioned the first night of my project going. I knew I’d remember this night forever, just not for the reasons I had hoped. You can only watch so many girls swing pink feather boas around like spastic Vegas showgirl outcasts before the image is permanently imprinted in your cerebral cortex. Right next to the part that stores vital information like your name, your age, and the number of fat grams in a pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream.
I wove through the crowd, found Grace, and grabbed her by the arm as she stood with Bobby on the edge of the makeshift dance floor, singing along with the music. “You didn’t tell me this place was going to be like a Girls Gone Wild episode.”
“What, the bachelorette parties? It’s a beach destination in the dead of summer. You can’t go anywhere and not run into bachelorette parties. What’s the big deal?”
“This isn’t exactly helping to take my mind off of things. How am I supposed to be perky and pleasant when I’m standing in the middle of a bridal carnival? Is the entire summer going to be like this?”
“I sure as hell hope so,” Bobby said as he adjusted the collar on his striped shirt and smoothed his dark hair out of his eyes. “I love bachelorette parties. Girls who are secretly jealous that their friend is getting married before they do are the easiest scores on earth. You guys are on your own tonight, there are lonely hearts everywhere. It’s time I find one to help cheer up.” Bobby darted away from us, very much a single guy on the singles circuit. I wished I could be more like Bobby, but I actually cared what people thought about me. I felt deflated.
“I’m going to sit down over there,” I said, pointing to a cluster of small cocktail tables dotting the periphery of the bar. I collapsed in one of the metal chairs and took out my lip gloss. There was an exceedingly large group of girls gathered around the table next to me, squealing and laughing and doing exactly what girls were supposed to be doing on a Saturday night in summer: getting drunk. I glanced in their direction and realized with horror that they weren’t just a large, rowdy group of girls. They were members of one of the bachelorette parties—one with a T-shirt-wearing ensemble cast and a very drunk, boa-clad bride. Apparently, no place was safe.
I placed the bride’s age somewhere around twenty-five by virtue of her wearing purple nail polish with sequins attached to each thumb and extremely pink lip gloss thick enough to make her hair stick to it like flypaper. I reapplied my lip gloss and figured, if you can’t join ’em, eavesdrop on ’em.
“Okay, ladies!” the maid of honor said as she clanked her fork on her nearly empty champagne flute. I wasn’t using woman’s intuition or my razor-sharp detective skills to deduce that she was the maid of honor. I simply read it off her T-shirt. Apparently, being a maid of honor now warranted your own T-shirt, like you were the most special of the nonbrides in the group. I wondered if this little tradition would snowball until the entire wedding party was wearing T-shirts denoting their place in the wedding caste system. I felt bad for the girl who got stuck wearing the shirt that said OBLIGATORY BRIDESMAID SO AS TO AVOID PISSING OFF FUTURE IN-LAWS. It was only a matter of time before the bridal T-shirt people stopped being polite and just put the truth out there like Letterman. And Joan Rivers. And Taylor Swift after some guy pisses her off.