Chapter 3 Clothing Is Merely an Extension of a Plate #2
Our conversation from yesterday bursts into the front of my brain.
Did my sister ask? Did Petey accept? Are they already fighting about wedding hashtags and the liability of animal ring bearers?
I’m both anxious to know and eager to avoid any acknowledgment that this proposal idea isn’t an elaborate alcohol-induced hallucination.
I sit back down on the bed and type out a quick message.
Charley: sorry. missed your call.
I’m choosing avoidance. Like a coward.
“I didn’t know phallic drinkware was still the bachelorette party favor of choice,” he comments.
“In a campy, ironic sense. The last bachelorette party I went to also had travel-sized hibiscus-lube party favors I have zero use for. If you want to rummage around the bathroom for that, be my guest.”
He shifts in the bed, his eyes brighter, like despite the hiccup between us, he’s mostly back to his normal Ethan-y self. “I’m good. I actually make my own.”
I wriggle on the bed, wincing both at him and at a hangover so bad that even my hair hurts. “Oh god, Powell. Could never be me.”
He grins at the reference to one of our favorite games.
In college, whenever I witnessed him wearing five-toe shoes or he caught me setting an egg timer before returning a guy’s text (for very legitimate and scientific reasons), we’d look at each other and say, “Could never be me.” Our gentle reminder to each other that we were both eternally undatable disasters and that you couldn’t pay either of us to trade places with the poor souls forced to date us.
It’s funny in that melancholy way depressingly true things are funny.
His lips curl up higher until his smile pinches the corners of his eyes. “Really? Just for that?”
“I’ve said it before for less.” I feel it happen. The nearly undetectable curtain of discomfort lifts, and we’re us again. We’re Charley and Ethan and it’s just as it’s always been. No more slightly stilted conversation. No more awkwardness. We’re friends.
I think he feels the palpable shift too, because he throws the penis straw back at me and heads into the bathroom again. The tension in my shoulders releases.
“I just have one question.” I hear his voice echoing from inside the linen closet over the sounds of backstock shampoo bottles colliding into each other.
“Would you still be my friend if I told you I was Iron Man?” He jumps out of the bathroom in the gold-plated LED light therapy mask I bought during the same retail fugue state when I got the handbag I can’t bring myself to return.
My lips twitch without my permission. “Seriously, my life is being held together by my Notes app and a punishingly thorough twelve-step skin-care routine, so if you break my LED light mask, I will kill you and no one will ever find the body.”
“Ooh. Who told you ruthless Mob Boss Chuck is my very favorite Chuck?” He flops back on my bed, bouncing me and my laptop like a pool noodle in a tidal wave.
“I’m serious, Powell! I’ve thought about it a lot this past year, and I think I could be capable of violence if properly provoked.”
He bobs and weaves his head away from me, my hungover brain sloshing around my skull. It takes a few seconds for either of us to register that my laptop is ringing.
I groan at the sound. Ethan and I are finally starting to feel like us.
The last thing I need is Hurricane Laurel and her Petey drama.
Ethan tends to regard their chaotic push-pull with an unearned gravity.
Any discussion will undoubtedly unravel our day, devolving into lengthy dissections of breakup timelines, and I was starting to look forward to an afternoon basket of cheesy fries.
Ethan peers at me through my light mask. “Did I summon an uncle?” he asks, gesturing at the ringing computer. “Or the ex-father-in-law your work nemesis is setting you up with?”
“Stacy’s not—It’s Laurel. She’s been on a FaceTiming kick since the whole…” I do a little yada yada gesture with my hand.
My marriage fell apart, my life exploded, yada yada.
He nods. “You going to get it?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Answer it. I don’t mind.”
I hesitate but then suck it up and accept the call. Her face and lavender space buns fill the screen, framed by lush green leaves and imposing pine tree trunks.
“Lolo!” Ethan yells. His enthusiasm takes me by surprise. I look around out of instinct to make sure we’re not bothering anyone and then remember we’re alone in my room.
“Jason Voorhees?” she squeals back, which gets Ethan to finally remove the mask. Her face relaxes. “Ethel!” Laurel rarely calls him Ethan to his face, preferring to riff on the first letter. “This is perfect. You’re both here.”
“E’s there too?” a familiar voice asks out of frame. The sound of it clenches my gut.
Maybe she hasn’t asked yet. Maybe she changed her mind.
Laurel’s head swivels toward the man off-screen. “See? I knew she was going to draw him out of whatever sad rest stop he was parked in. Did you listen to my voice memo last night about the spot we’re camped by? Wet Ted’s Canoe Outfitters?”
I glance at the words Sharpied on my hand. Well, that solves that mystery.
Ethan leans closer to the phone. “Is that Pete’s arm?”
Petey pops into view. Laurel brightens as he presses his head to hers affectionately. At least they look happy. That’s something.
“Hey!” He wraps his arms around Laurel and squeezes.
“Hi. What’s going on, E? What are you doing at Charley’s?
” Petey always says “hi” at least three ways and has never been anything less than genuinely ecstatic to see any person.
Ever. The sweet doofus is so upbeat and good-natured, it borders on ridiculous.
He busts into every conversation like a ripped Kool-Aid Man, shifting the equilibrium until everyone in his presence is grinning like an idiot. Petey simply has that effect on people.
“I have some free time before a festival next weekend. Then I might head east through Canada or maybe west to Montana.”
He looks to me, as though seeking confirmation on his itinerary for Peter Pan–ing about the United States, but I ignore it. “Is there a reason for this call?” I hasten to ask. Anticipatory nausea sits in the pit of my stomach. I need her to put me out of my misery.
“Do you want to tell them?” They look at each other with a manic, electric energy that seems to crackle around them.
My stomach somersaults. “Tell us what?” I know what’s happening. I can’t believe it’s happening, but I know it is.
Laurel breathes in deep, and any lingering hope I had plummets through the floor beneath me.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
“I asked Peter to marry me, and he said yes!”
So it happened.
Okay. It’s okay. I expected this part.
“And we’re eloping this weekend,” Petey adds on.
Adrenaline surges through my veins, and I want to grab something, anything, but my fingers have turned into bricks.
Eloping?
“Finally!” Ethan cheers while my features arrange themselves into an Are you serious right now? face before I can stop it. My chest burns from the inside out until a red, splotchy stress rash blooms on my neck. And I know exactly how bad it looks, because I can see it in the stupid FaceTime window.
They can’t do this now. It’s too soon. The only thing that was stopping me from truly losing it was the knowledge they’d never stay together long enough to plan a wedding. I might be new to this whole “marriage is bullshit” thing, but Laurel was a founding member of the forever-single club.
She was mad at me—actually stopped speaking to me for three days—when I wouldn’t self-fund a “Shes and Theys Only” compound for us to retire on.
Her favorite celebrity coupling has always been Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, because they had “the good sense to keep the state of California out of their relationship.” When I told her Rich proposed, she first responded, “We’re too young to get married.
” Then, once the shock wore off, she opted for the more pragmatic “You know that you’re much more likely to be murdered by your husband than anyone else. Statistically speaking.”
But as commitment averse as Laurel is, she’s just as passionate and impulsive.
“Elopement. Wow,” is all I can bring myself to say. It’s an abysmal recovery. I remind myself to breathe—in, out, in, out—until my thoughts slow enough to put a sentence together. “You don’t think this is a little sudden?”
Laurel’s face twitches with tiny glimpses of sadness and hurt that disappear with Petey’s kiss to her cheek.
“It took fifteen years to get us here,” he tells us.
“I don’t want to wait anymore. And with Lo and I camping this week before the next Timber Creek session, it feels like we’re supposed to get married right now.
Here.” He gestures around them at their secluded spot surrounded by forest where no one would hear them scream.
Ethan nudges me with his shoulder. “We’re so happy for you guys.”
I feel each second tick by as time slips away from me.
She’ll be married by the end of the day , I think.
I debate how effectively I’ll be able to talk her out of this via FaceTime against other possible options: A well-timed heart attack?
Interdimensional time travel? A light kidnapping?
I’m still ruling out the gross misdemeanors when I stall by asking, “Have you told Mom and Dad?”
“Uh, no,” she answers slowly, as though the very notion of calling our parents is insane, which makes sense because I’m not sure she’s so much as texted our parents since I reminded her to last Christmas. “I don’t think Derek or Mia needs to be part of this.”
But I could be , I think. The idea tunnels into my brain, burrowing deeper with each passing second.
“Where are we meeting you for the ceremony?” The question pours out of my mouth in a verbal deluge.
Ethan eyes me because we both heard how they didn’t invite us. It was very clear that my sister was simply delivering information and not inviting me to her elopement, but if I want to slam the brakes on this wedding, this might be my only way.
By the look in her eyes, she knows I’m up to something stupid. Reckless impulsivity might be a Beekman family trait.
Lucky for me, Petey is one of those people who foolishly believes humans to be innately honest and well-intentioned creatures. “That’d be perfect, Char!” Petey responds, a smile erupting across his face.
Laurel’s eyes dart between her fiancé and the screen. “Are you sure? It’s like five hours of driving, one hour of canoeing—”
“One hour of canoeing?” I can’t help but object to that part.
“—and you’ve literally never taken a vacation. Ever.”
“And what better reason is there to play hooky from work than you? My beloved sister,” I ad-lib, anxiety jiggling my leg. “Come on, Laur. You need a…witness…”
She purses her lips. This is so unlike me. She knows it. I know it. But Petey—that sweet, sweet, hot dummy—doesn’t. “Couldn’t agree more!” he cheers.
Ethan peers at me in the FaceTime window, no doubt detecting the odd, manic vibrations bouncing off my skin. “But if you’re looking for an intimate thing, we totally get it…” He trails off, providing them a much-deserved out.
“It’ll still be intimate,” I slide in, desperate to make this happen as the sweat pools in the palms of my hands.
“You really don’t—” she starts to hedge, but I cut her off.
“Laurel, you walked me down the aisle. You can’t get married without me.”
The sentence sounds simple enough, but I watch my words smack her between the eyes.
Try as I might to remain wry and self-deprecating, there’s no denying that I drag my marital disappointments around like a three-piece luggage set, and now I’ve dropped them between us.
I’ve made my divorce an obstacle, an anxious flyer staking out the boarding gate.
My sister’s expression melts from guarded to guilty and lands somewhere near pitying. Which is fine. She can pity me all she wants. So long as she doesn’t get married before I get there.
Because this isn’t her. And if I can talk to her, face-to-face, I know she’ll rethink things. She’ll see sense. She’ll have to.
I squeeze my eyes shut, begging shamelessly now. “Please. Promise you won’t get married without me.”
“Okay,” she agrees, and relief crests over my body.
When things inevitably fall apart, she won’t carry the pain and humiliation of a failed marriage when a breakup would suffice. Us Beekman women don’t all need to make the same mistakes over and over.
“We can be there in six hours,” I promise. “Seven tops.”