Really Good, Actually(67)
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s going to work,” Amy said, after I confided my best idea: telling his landlord I was his sibling so I could break into his apartment and fill it with balloons. I said that kind of thing worked all the time in the movies.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “I mean, not to be rude, but those are fictional situations. The only people who want a big public gesture are the women who watch those films.”
I finished my tequila and soda and switched to white wine. The sugar would perk me up, which I needed; although my Eating Window had opened, the main course was a breaded chicken Kiev, and I was trying to avoid brown food. I looked over to my table and saw Jesse pick up Darragh’s napkin from where it had fallen at her feet. Amy cleared her throat.
“Hey, um, I just peeped Twitter,” she said. “And I feel like . . . I don’t know, I saw some of the stuff you said about Patrick’s tie and the theme and everything, and I just think, like, those are public, right, and if they saw that stuff they’d be pretty hurt.”
“They’re jokes,” I said. “I think that’s pretty obvious.”
“Oh, totally,” said Amy. “Yeah, totally. I just mean, maybe you don’t have to live tweet the wedding?”
I grabbed my glass and headed back to my table as Emily took the mic and began an acrostic poem using the word “COMMITMENT.”
9pm THE DANCE FLOOR IS OPEN!—After the first dance, guests are invited to join the couple on the dance floor. Prizes will be given out for wildest moves (look out, cousin Eddie!).
“My girlfriend thinks you’re beautiful,” Jesse whispered as I participated, against all odds, in a table-wide conga. Interesting. This phrase was internationally recognized couple code for you seem bi and we have always considered ourselves evolved enough to have a threesome.
Despite our rocky start, Sandy & Danny had been irreversibly bonded by how long it took our main courses to arrive, so by the time the dance competition was announced most of us were game, which was to say very drunk. Even Merris was a little tipsy—Patrick’s bachelor uncle was giving her sips from his flask—and Jesse and Darragh had proved themselves more fun than expected. Jesse had stolen us some leftover canapés from an abandoned tray, and they had both participated enthusiastically in a few rounds of What Did This Cost, which I played about every element of the wedding. We guessed the entire event had a final price tag of $40,000, or approximately two and a half independently funded master’s degrees.
At some point in our slurred calculations, we realized that nobody at our table was married. Darragh, who was from Oregon, said her initial position on marriage was that she would never do it herself until it was legal for everyone: “Then they legalized it for gay couples, and I was like, oh, maybe I think marriage sucks.” Jesse said being divorced was sexy, and Darragh shot him a look, widening her eyes like, be cool, man. She took a sip of her drink and winked at me. Well, I thought. Well, well, well.
10:30pm CAKE CUTTING—Time to tuck into a four-tiered lavender and lemon cake with mascarpone buttercream and blueberry compote . . . gluten-free, like the groom!
Shots appeared at the table and we all did some. Everyone pretended to love it as Emily traced mascarpone down her husband’s nose and he pretended to be shocked. I accidentally let out my fake laugh a beat or two late, preoccupied by the prospect of a threesome.
Jon and I had one once, kind of, but we’d botched it, and the girl, a friend of mine from an early bartending job, mostly ended up reassuring me that I was attractive while Jon did the dishes. There was so much that could go wrong: different levels of interest, experience, or self-confidence. I wasn’t particularly into Jesse, but he was so sweet with Darragh. The idea of being part of a couple again, even someone else’s, was very appealing. I wanted to zip into their intimacy like a sleeping bag and take a nap.
“You’re an addict,” Merris said, leaning toward me.
I jumped. How did she know?
She smiled. “What could possibly have happened to your phone in the last three minutes?”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. Yeah, it’s bad.”
I told Merris it wasn’t just me; everyone’s brain was broken in exactly the same way. I did not tell her that I had recently opened my laptop and googled mom when what I had meant to do was call my mother. I covered my phone with my napkin and tried to seem tranquil and centered. I licked some extra buttercream off my knife, hoping it made me look like Angelina Jolie. Instead, I cut my tongue a bit. To sterilize the wound, I did another shot.
Merris looked like she was fading. “I won’t leave without you,” she said. “But let’s start thinking about our exit, yes?”
I offered her a shot, which she declined, and thanked her again for coming with me. “It means a lot,” I said, patting her arm. “I don’t know what I would have done without you this year.”
Merris gave me a dubious look and pointedly reached for her purse.
“Oh, let me stay out, Mom, please!” I whined. “I never break curfew.”
Merris’s face softened, and I saw I had bought myself an hour or two, which was all I needed; I wasn’t a good sport about wearing high heels, and my Eating Window closed again at one. The older uncle leaned over and started asking Merris about an outlandish vintage brooch she was wearing, so I left her to it, finishing the rest of the cheese puffs we’d hoarded earlier, when the passed hors d’oeuvres were still in transit but we had not yet been served. Under the napkin, my phone lit up. It was a text from Jesse, who had acquired my phone number somewhere after the conga and before the chicken dance: come fuck us in the bathroom.