Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Emma
I kept the note.
I’m still turning that little nugget around in my head a week later, as I sit at my desk trying to focus on the incorporation documents for a spin-off charitable nonprofit I’m creating for a client. As a nonprofit lawyer, this is the kind of work I can usually do in my sleep. Today, though, it might as well be in an entirely different language for all the sense it’s making to me.
I don’t know if it’s the way he came when I called him, or the fact that it’s the most time Jeremy and I have spent alone together outside of work stuff practically ever, or his casual acceptance of my decades-long fear of driving in storms, or the way he went back downtown in the middle of the night so I would have my car in the morning, or how we talked like it was easy to be around each other when for years it’s been anything but, or the way the warm, spicy scent of his cologne seems to still be clinging to the couch cushions where he sat while we were talking. Whatever it is, I can’t get that night out of my head.
I felt every inch the twenty-two-year-old girl with a crush on Jeremy Wright I once was as I read the note he left me over and over again, before folding it carefully and putting it in a carved wooden keepsake box my grandmother gave me a couple of years ago when I bought my house. For your most important treasures , she told me. It’s been empty ever since, and it’s still empty now, except for the note from Jeremy, lying not so casually at the bottom.
I probably should have thrown it away, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
Annoyed with myself, I grab a bag of M we have a bride waiting.” Molly’s voice snaps me out of my head, and I see that she and Julie are dressed and ready to go downstairs. Meanwhile, I’m still standing here in my underwear, angsting. Ugh.
“You okay, Em?” asks Julie gently. “First the peanut M&M’s, and now it seems like you’re a million miles away.”
I sigh, unzipping my own garment bag. “It’s nothing.”
Another picture of Jeremy sitting on my couch. The note on my coffee table. My car at the curb this morning. Him bolting out of my bed eight years ago like the sheets were on fire. Stammering sentences. Red faces. A million and one renditions of Jeremy likes Emma .
It’s definitely not nothing .
Shit.I look at Julie and Molly’s worried faces. It’s new for me, to be the object of their concern. I’m usually the helper, not the one who needs the help, and the role reversal lowers my defenses enough for the words to slip out before my brain can catch up and stop them.
“Okay, so it’s not nothing. It’s something. But we have dresses to try on, and a bride waiting for us downstairs. I promise to tell you, but afterwards, okay?”
Molly takes the garment bag from me and tosses it over a chair before wrapping me in a hug. “You can tell us anything, you know that right?”
I sigh again. I guess I sigh now. Angst is stupid. “I know. I will. Let’s do this first.”
When Molly and I break apart, Julie studies me and nods. “We’re taking the rest of the day off. All of us.”
Molly drops her head back and laughs. “Jesus, Jules, when you go all marry the quarterback and Zen your life, you really commit.”
Julie shrugs, a satisfied smile on her face. “Work will always be important, but if we’re not all happy, what’s the point? We’re trying on dresses for Hallie’s wedding, and Emma needs us. This is what we’re doing today. Work can wait until tomorrow.”
This time I throw my arms around Julie and hold on, filled with love for all my friends, but especially her. “I love you, Jules. And I’m so damn proud of you.”
“Hell,” Julie says, sniffling against my shoulder. “I love you too. It’s so us that we’re having this moment while two of us are in fancy dresses, Hallie is waiting for us to come down and have our Project Runway moment, and you’re hugging me in your underwear.”
Before I can respond, the door to Molly’s office bursts open, and Hallie comes storming in, startling all three of us.
“What’s going on up here? Why is Jules crying? Why are you in your underwear?” She points to me, an accusatory look on her face. “I’m the bride. Emotional moments are supposed to happen with ME. Not while you’re all up here together and I’m waiting downstairs by myself for a hundred years.”
“Fuck, Hal. Bridezilla much?” Molly snarks.
Hallie just looks at all of us with her I need explanations face.
“Dresses first. Details second,” Julie says, handing me back the garment bag with my dress in it. “Since Hallie is impatient and ruined our big entrance, we’re doing this now. Emma, put it on.”
“With the right underwear.” Molly tosses me my new bra, which I slip on. Obviously, it’s a perfect fit. Molly never misses. I step into my dress and slide it up, turning so Molly can zip me up in the back.
“Oh my god, you guys,” Hallie breathes, her eyes filling with tears that immediately spill down her face.
“Wait! No crying until the outfits are complete.” Molly rushes back to her closet and comes out with four shoe boxes, handing one to each of us and keeping one for herself. “We’re short on time, so I bought everyone’s wedding shoes. Including yours, Hal. And if anyone hates them, you’re wearing them anyway because you’ll be wrong.”
Hallie opens hers first to the most perfect wedding shoes I have ever seen, and when we’re done gushing over them, we all open our boxes and slip on the shoes Molly found for each of us.
“Mol, I hate to say it but when you’re right, you’re right. These dresses rock.”
“Someone please mark down the time and date Jules told me I was right. I want to remember it for posterity.”
We all laugh as we take each other in. Molly was definitely right. Julie’s deep purple, Molly’s burnt orange, and my gold flow together like the most perfect fall bouquet, and none of them look like bridesmaid dresses. They look like us, which is exactly what Hallie wanted. It’s a surreal moment, standing here in the dresses we’ll wear when Hallie walks down the aisle. Julie might have been the first to get married, but Hallie’s is the first formal wedding, and it feels like we are all standing on the precipice of something huge. Like all our lives are about to change, not just Hallie’s.
“Okay, now can I cry?” Hallie asks, staring at the three of us, eyes bright.
“Now is the perfect time,” Molly says. “But no tearstains on the dresses.” She points to Julie and me. “So, if either of you are crying, take them off first.”
“Well, I’m not crying now,” mutters Julie under her breath.
And instead of crying, everyone just laughs.
“Oh, and also, Hal, I found you your wedding day lingerie.” Molly grabs the fourth pink bag and tosses it to Hallie. “Saved you the trip since I was there anyway.”
“Bless you,” Hallie says. “I don’t even care if it’s a little weird that you picked out my wedding day underwear. I hate bra shopping.”
“It’s not weird,” I say. “Or maybe it is for some people, but not for us. This wedding was never going to be anything but a family affair.”
My voice breaks a little on the last word. I’m not a crier, so three pairs of eyes immediately snap to me. As the last week—or maybe the last eight years, who knows—catch up to me, I can’t stop my eyes from filling.
“Uh, I think it’s time for those details now, Em,” Hallie says, voice laced with concern.
I just nod at her, afraid if I open my mouth words will come pouring out. If I’m about to give my best friends my biggest secret—one I’ve kept from them for almost a decade—I have to do it right.
One look at my face has Julie snapping into action.
“Office is closed for the rest of the day. Dresses and new underwear off first. Hallie, go get the margaritas started. I think we need drinks for this conversation.”
“Do we ever,” I mutter.
Looks like probably never is now.