Chapter One #2
I press my ear to the gents’ door. “Gin?”
There’s a full ten seconds of metallic clicks and switches as she futzes with the lock before pulling the door open an inch, just enough to catch a flash of her red hair and a hint of panic in her mossy hazel eyes.
“You okay in there?”
“Sorta.” Gin’s eyes bounce left to right. “Do you have your purse on you?”
“Have I ever carried a purse?”
She sighs. “Right…just get in here. I need help.”
There’s no time for questions; Gin grabs my wrist and yanks me inside with a swift tug, and once I can see more than an inch of her, I have my explanation as to why she’s been MIA.
The big red stain dribbling down her white slip dress has her looking more like a wounded World War II soldier than a bride.
“You’re telling me we’ve been looking for you for almost an hour because you locked yourself in the bathroom over a stain?”
“It’s not just a stain,” Gin argues. “It’s a huge stain on a white dress on a day where people are going to be taking a trillion pictures of me. I can’t walk around my engagement party looking like I’ve been shot.”
A giggle slips past my lips, which I instantly regret. “Sorry, sorry,” I mumble. “You just…you do kind of look like you’ve been shot.”
Gin groans and rubs her temples. “I was hoping you’d have one of those stain-remover pens.”
It’s laughable that she thinks a Tide pen would help her case. She needs a bucket of bleach or, ideally, a whole new dress.
“So what do you want me to do?” I ask.
Gin’s gaze ping-pongs from the mirror to me, from my shoulder pads to my shoes and back. “Could you switch with me?”
“Are you kidding?” I squint at the stain, then down at my yellow pantsuit. “I’m not wearing white.”
“Neither am I.” She motions to the big red blob on her chest. “I can’t go out there like this, Alice. Please?”
A kick of guilt mixes with the obligation bubbling in my gut.
It’s that weird anything for the bride feeling that spreads like the flu leading up to a wedding.
If Gin could let me back into her life after what a shitty girlfriend I was to her, the least I can do is let her look better than me at her own engagement party.
I paste on a smile. “You know what? Anything for you.”
I turn around to undress, the sound of my zipper mixing with Gin’s “Thankyouthankyouthankyou.” I hand off my pants, blouse, and jacket behind my back, but despite plenty of sucking in and shimmying, I don’t have a prayer of zipping into her dress.
“Can I have my blazer back? To cover the fact that this thing doesn’t zip?”
Gin laughs, then drapes the jacket over my shoulders. “I look more bridal without it anyway.” She pauses, then adds, “You can turn around, you know. It’s really not a big deal.”
“I’m trying to be respectful.” It’s been years since Gin and I were a thing, but this is her engagement party, after all. The least I can do is try not to look at her naked.
“You’re funny,” Gin says. “But most of these people don’t even know we dated, and if Rishi or I cared, you and I wouldn’t be here right now. And also, I’m clothed, so, really—turn around.”
When I do, I’m face-to-face with a much more Zen Virginia Bennett, pulling off that shade of marigold even better than I did.
It almost looks like something she might’ve worn intentionally.
Meanwhile, I’m testing the limits of her rejected dress.
It stretches tight like a drumhead over my boobs, drawing even more emphasis to the big red stain.
“I look like a bull’s-eye,” I mutter.
Gin smirks. “Sorry.” But I know she’s not really, and that’s okay.
It’s her day. The first in a long chain of days that are hers, actually, but if anyone deserves that, it’s Gin.
She’s earned the right to invent as many prewedding celebrations as she wants and make me wear whatever bullshit outfit at all of them.
We barely make it three steps out of the bathroom before Rishi rushes over like a skinny linebacker, nearly tackling his fiancée to the ground.
I wince at the sweat marks he’s probably getting on my blouse, but Gin remains unbothered.
She smooths Rishi’s wet hair off his forehead and kisses his cheek.
That’s true love, I guess—when someone is that gross and you want to kiss them anyway.
I never quite got there with Gin…or with anyone, but the secondhand high I get watching them is unparalleled.
It swells in my chest and prickles my feet.
So I’m sure that it’s real: true love, the kind that warrants multiple parties to properly celebrate.
The tinkling of silverware against glass slices through the din of the crowd. Mr. Bhat stands with his water glass aloft, directing us all toward our seats. “Dinner is about to begin.”
Shit, I think. Dinnertime already? I feel around for my phone to check the time but come up empty-handed. I must have left it in the pocket of the pants currently being worn by the bride, who is blissfully unaware of my attempts at telepathic communication.
“Before we eat,” Rishi’s father goes on, “I’d like to say a few words about Rishi and Virginia.”
A lump forms in my throat. I was hoping to be out of here before any of the dad stuff started, but I’m not going to pickpocket the bride during her future father-in-law’s speech, so I steel myself instead.
“As many of you know,” Mr. Bhat begins, “Rishi and I are quite close. So close, in fact, that he chose to come work at my firm. I’m not only his father but also his boss—and Rishi has not yet requested any PTO for the wedding, so, Virginia, make sure he gets on that, or I may not approve it!”
A low rumble of laughter moves through the crowd.
I stare at the floor and try to pick out other sounds, the clatter of dishes in the kitchen and the gentle ambient music, anything besides this speech.
Even so, when Rishi’s dad speaks to how proud he is of his son, his voice splinters, and it chips at my composure.
But I refuse to cry. I close my eyes and ride the sensation, imagining that I’m steering a boat over choppy waters when my insides rock up and down in waves.
And this is only the engagement party. How the hell am I going to survive the wedding?
At last, Rishi’s dad ends his speech with a toast, and a murmur of cheers trickles through the crowd.
I turn to tap my invisible glass against Gin’s, but she and Rishi have since wandered off, leaving nothing beside me but an empty space.
The lump in my throat doubles in size. It’s well past time to go.
When I relocate the bride, she’s already wiggling my phone in front of her. “Looking for this?” She drops it in my palm, and the time lights up the screen. I’m very late, but when I start my goodbyes, Gin breaks out the puppy dog eyes.
“You’re leaving already?”
“I have dinner plans with my mom,” I remind her, and she backs off the guilt trip.
“Right. How is she doing?”
“She’s all right,” I say. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her, so it’s mostly an assumption. “It’ll be good to check in on her and the house.”
“And what about the Galena house?” Gin asks. “Any word yet?”
I shake my head. “Still trapped in legal purgatory.”
Of all the unique miseries of losing a parent, the paperwork has been the most surprising punishment. The house jointly owned by Dad and his band is just one frustrating piece of the puzzle of settling his affairs.
“I miss it,” I sigh, something I haven’t even admitted to myself. “Not just the Outpost, but all of Galena.”
“Ohmygod, GALENA!?”
I swear my skeleton jumps inside my skin. It’s Chrissy, naturally. In college, Gin and I joked that Chrissy was our live-in noise complaint. It’s nice to know some things don’t change.
“Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Chrissy says. “I just heard Galena, and I was like, hello? Spring break throwback.”
“God, I miss those days.” Gin looks momentarily wistful before fully frowning. “In retrospect, the band never should have trusted three college girls in the same house as their recording studio.”
“Especially after we spilled all that boxed wine on the carpet freshman year,” Chrissy admits. “The band should have banished us for that.”
I laugh, my first honest laugh of the day. “You think The Handful never spilled booze in their recording studio? How do you think those records got made?”
“Wait. Hang on.” Chrissy dives into her purse and pulls out her phone, then swipes until her eyes flicker.
“There it is.” She shows us a photo I both forgot existed and don’t remember taking.
There are a lot of those, unfortunately, but this one isn’t so bad.
In it, Gin, Chrissy, and I can’t be more than twenty years old or less than ten drinks deep.
We’re three across on the porch swing at the Outpost, smiling like we’ll be that young forever.
It’s a sweet picture, but my stomach begs to turn itself inside out, and I’m not sure if it’s grief or the memory of vomiting coconut rum.
What I’d give to be young, drunk, and stupid again, not yet wise to how bad things could get.
“This is gold.” Gin laughs, and Chrissy swipes to another photo.
This time, my stomach sours entirely. We’re in the studio in the basement of the Outpost. A baby-faced Gin has two drumsticks stuck in her mouth, pretending to be a walrus, which could be adorable if not for my sad, lightless eyes beside her.
It could pass as normal back then, just typical college stuff, the way I was drunk almost every night.
Blacking out was an every-weekend type of thing, something to laugh about over hungover dining hall breakfasts.
Chrissy swipes one more time, and my stomach flops. This picture is the worst by far. She zooms in on a shot of me passed out with my head in a guitar case. “Pfft.” She smirks. “Classic Alice.”