On the Rocks(70)

“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.