This Will Only Hurt a Little(59)
She glared at me. “You know, Busy, I think you’re kind of a bitch.”
I got up to smoke outside and cried as I looked out over the sad little winery hills in Temecula. I hadn’t meant to be a bitch. I was just trying to join in with all of the friends. Later, at that same dinner, I got Marc’s age wrong and she corrected me in front of everyone. I laughed and corrected myself, but as I looked at her I thought, Well, whatever, you’re all so much fucking older than me, what’s the fucking difference? When I got back to Los Angeles, I told Marc I couldn’t do this. It was her or me. He looked at me and sweetly kissed me, “Oh, Buddy. You have my heart, I promise. You already know me in a way she never has. But she’s my writing partner, that’s how I make a living. And that’s not going to end now.”
Abby had a really beautiful destination wedding in Napa Valley in December. Marc and I had been dating for about six months at that point. Since I had to tape Love, Inc., I couldn’t go up with everyone on the Friday morning to be there for all the hiking and massages and golf and activities before the rehearsal dinner that night. I had to fly up right after the taping, on the last flight out of LAX to Oakland. I was super nervous about attending the wedding for many reasons. There’s the obvious thing that like half of the people invited to this wedding had also been invited to the wedding Abby had been supposed to have with my now boyfriend. It felt very fraught to me. Emily helped me pick out a new dress to wear—a really tasteful tea-length, light-bluish-green dress with a built-in corset.
By the time I arrived at the hotel that night, Marc was drunk and going on and on about how the rehearsal was the best thing he’d ever been to—all the speeches were incredible, he couldn’t believe I missed it, oh MY GOD! The speech Paul gave was the BEST SPEECH ANYONE HAD EVER GIVEN EVER AT ANY WEDDING EVER. So, needless to say, I was feeling a bit left out.
So I guess, maybe I went into the wedding a little hot. Like, I think I had a cocktail in the lobby of the hotel and then we got on buses to take us to the winery and there were those little Sofia Coppola champagne cans and I think I had one of those and then when we got there I had another drink. Really just trying to soothe my nerves and catch up to the fun time everyone had the night before. The ceremony was beautiful. I cried. The vows her new husband, Jason, wrote were perfect.
Afterward, we found we’d been seated at one of those random tables, as happens at weddings, so we weren’t with anyone we really knew or any of our friends. I was super bummed. As soon as we sat down, Marc got up and went outside with some of his friends, leaving me alone. The older woman sitting next to me turned to me and smiled. “Bride or groom?”
“Oh well, my boyfriend is Abby’s writing partner.”
Her eyes went wide and she looked me up and down. “Oh! Oh! OHHHHHHHHH! You’re Marc’s new girlfriend!”
It was the third oh that really pushed me over the top. I flagged the waitress over. “I’ll have more wine please!”
It was one of those places where the staff is incredibly well trained and there are like ten million waiters so your wineglass never gets below half full and you have no idea how much you’ve been served. I think if I had to guess, I was served at least two bottles myself. But I wasn’t uncomfortable anymore! I felt great! Marc is one of those guys who say they don’t dance, so I hit the dance floor with a similarly overserved friend of his. We were dancing UP A FUCKING STORM. I mean, this guy Paul was dipping me and twirling me and I started having the best time ever—also I started just, like, pulling moves on my own, spinning and whooping it up. I saw Abby kind of half dancing toward me and I danced back at her like, “YES, girlfriend! You’re married now! I won’t be threatened by your weird work-but-also-talk-all-the-time relationship with my new boyfriend slash your ex-fiancé!!!!!!”
She danced right up to me and then SHE GENTLY TUCKED MY ENTIRE LEFT BOOB BACK INTO MY DRESS. Apparently, the renegade boob had been out for quite some time. So long, in fact, the wedding photographer had to find her to tell her to come put my boob back in because he was having a hard time shooting around it. I was mortified. I tried to play it cool and stumbled off the dance floor to go find Marc, who was of course nowhere to be found. As soon as I found him, I got so mad at him that he hadn’t been there to stop me from getting so drunk and embarrassing myself and then I just got really sad. I desperately didn’t want to do the thing—I mean, I couldn’t be the ex-fiancé’s new girlfriend who first had her boob out and then started crying at the wedding!!! I couldn’t DO THAT! But that’s what I wanted to do. So I made Marc leave the party with me early and I sobbed the entire way back to the hotel, thinking how much Abby was sure to hate me now. How I had ruined all those amazing dance-floor photos with my stupid left boob. How I shouldn’t have even gone in the first place. I didn’t belong with a bunch of grown-ups at a million-dollar wedding in Napa Valley. I COULDN’T EVEN KEEP MY FUCKING BOOB IN MY DRESS! He reassured me that everything was going to be fine. That it was actually pretty funny that my boob flew out and that maybe someday I would feel that way too. And that of course I had to come to her wedding because he loved me, and he needed me there.
Which was all true, of course.
Meanwhile, Love, Inc. was far from a success, but it was a job and we did an entire season of it. Aside from one scathing horrible review of my performance in particular, I was sure no one knew or cared that I was on it. The exception being Quentin Tarantino. Brokeback Mountain had come out in the fall, shortly after the birth of Matilda, my beautiful and perfect goddaughter. Michelle and Heath were invited to every party and both were nominated for every award (well deserved, by the way). Since they were both nominated, they each were able to bring a guest and Michelle asked me to join at every event, which was obviously incredibly thrilling for both of us. That’s basically the origin of me joining Michelle at all the ceremonies for all the awards she’s been nominated for. It’s hard to even describe the insanity and magic of how much fun that time was, with the two of them so in love, in love with each other and life and their work and this new perfect creature that we all were trying to figure out how to take care of.