My Best Friend’s Honeymoon

Chapter 1

1

God, this man is truly not very bright.

Ginny has spent the past three years trying to give him the benefit of the doubt—Derrick is Elsie’s partner, not theirs, and they want Elsie to be happy, so they’ve always tried not to think about his flaws—but this proves it. Incontrovertibly.

“What do you think?” Derrick asks with a grin.

Ginny thinks a lot of things. They think the old train depot is a lovely venue, all creamy painted brick and tall ceilings and an old train schedule board that currently reads CONGRATULATIONS, ARMIN AND SASSY! There’s plenty of room for tables, and Ginny can imagine the space would be magical all done up with flowers and twinkle lights. They think Elsie might even like it, in another situation. They just also think that planning the entire wedding without consulting her is not the way to go.

“I think Elsie will probably want some say in the wedding planning,” Ginny says slowly.

Derrick grins even wider. “I used her Pinterest board!”

Elsie created that Pinterest board six months into the engagement, when her mom complained about how she didn’t seem to want to plan anything. It placated Mrs. Hoffman at the time, but Ginny is pretty sure Elsie hasn’t added to it since. In fact, Ginny’s pretty sure Elsie hasn’t thought about the wedding unprompted very often, if at all, the entire engagement. They’ve had lunch together almost every single workday during that time, and Elsie has never said a single thing about the wedding. Her ring sits unremarkably on her third finger, not like she’s accustomed to it so much as like she’s forgotten about it.

“Plus,” Derrick continues, “she always says she’s too busy with the store to plan. She gets overwhelmed. So I took care of it for her.”

It’s so close to romantic, except for the part where maybe one member of a couple being “too busy” to make a single decision about wedding planning for an entire year and a half is indicative of more than their workload.

“I just don’t want you to go to all this trouble for her to be upset at you,” Ginny says, like their lack of enthusiasm is due to worry about Derrick.

“It was no trouble,” he says. “Any annoyance she has about not having a say is gonna be offset by how glad she’ll be that I took it off her plate.” He’s been standing in the middle of the giant room, but now he walks to the opposite wall and looks out the paned-glass windows. “They’ve even got space heaters so we can be outside if we want, though obviously Minnesota in January isn’t exactly outdoor weather.”

Wait, what?

“What do you mean, January ?”

“Oh yeah, I haven’t even told you the best part,” Derrick says. “This is all going down a week from tomorrow.”

Ginny rubs their temples. He didn’t just plan the entire wedding without talking to Elsie; he planned the entire wedding for next week without talking to her.

Derrick isn’t mean-spirited. He’s just not particularly smart. And it’s not that Ginny wants him to be in Mensa; they simply want him to think through the consequences of his actions. Especially when those consequences will land on their best friend.

“I’m gonna bring her here after her shift at the store tomorrow, and they’re gonna have changed the sign so it’s for us, and I’ll tell her the whole plan. But I wanted to check with you first. You know her better than anyone, so you’ll know if there’s anything else I need to do to make this the perfect day for her.”

“Derrick.” Ginny swallows. Lets out a slow breath. “I really think it’s important you ask her what would make the day perfect for her.”

“Oh, I’m going to,” Derrick says, all blonde hair and big grin. “Of course I’m going to. I just want as much taken care of as possible. And you know she’s not always good at asking for what she wants.”

Understatement of the year. Elsie has no problem standing up for her siblings, or Ginny, or someone she barely knows, just never for herself. The first time Derrick learned Ginny’s pronouns, it was Els who put him in his place.

“If you’re okay with they and she, why not just use she?” he asked. “That’d be so much easier.”

Ginny didn’t get into the complexities of her identity with him, and she didn’t have to. Elsie told him not to be an idiot, and that was that.

But as for what Elsie herself wants? Never.

The fourth of five children, all of whom still live in the Twin Cities and work at the hardware store their parents own, Elsie tends to go along with whatever her family does. Ginny goes with the flow, too, but there’s a difference between being chill and being used to being overlooked. Since they first met, Ginny has been trying to teach Elsie that what she wants matters. Ginny has never known anyone else who had to be peer-pressured into doing what makes them happy.

And Derrick is so close to getting the point here. Elsie isn’t great at asking for what she wants—that’s why he shouldn’t be planning the entire wedding without talking to her.

Truthfully, Ginny can’t help him create the perfect wedding for Elsie because Ginny doesn’t even know if Elsie wants to marry him. She said yes when he proposed, sure, but Derrick is the one thing she and Ginny don’t talk about.

Ginny’s never asked her why she hasn’t even so much as picked a season to get married in. For most of their friendship, they’ve never asked Elsie much about any of her relationships. Ginny knows what they want: as much of Elsie as they can have, for as long as they can have her.

It’s hard to give relationship advice to someone you’re in love with.

“I won’t have time to make a chuppah,” Ginny says.

It seems like a non sequitur, but it isn’t.

“A what?”

“A canopy thing for y’all to stand under.”

Derrick stares at her blankly.

“It’s Jewish,” Ginny says.

That makes Derrick laugh, and he waves a hand. “Come on, you know she’s not even really that Jewish.”

So what if Elsie’s family doesn’t go to temple except on the High Holidays? Ginny promised they’d make her a chuppah when they took their first woodworking class, back in high school.

Engaged for a year and a half and Derrick doesn’t even know what a chuppah is.

“Hey!” Derrick’s eyes light up like he has an idea. Ginny doesn’t want to know what it is. “Do you think it’d be better if you brought her here tomorrow? She’d never be expecting it then.”

Ginny is quite sure Elsie isn’t going to be expecting it, regardless.

“I can’t,” they say. “I’ll be at the farmers’ market.”

The farmers’ market ends at one, and even after packing up their stuff—mostly cutting boards and other small handcrafted wooden ware, though they always bring a couple of furniture pieces, too—they’ll be done before Elsie’s shift finishes. But Derrick doesn’t need to know that.

“That’s cool. I still think she’ll be surprised,” he says.

“Yeah,” Ginny says. “Me too.”

“Is there anything you can think of that she wants that I missed?”

Maybe she wants to break up.

Or maybe that’s Ginny’s lovesick heart. Maybe Elsie really does want to marry Derrick. Maybe her refusal to plan actually is because she’s too busy—though she has time to plan an entire weekend for Ginny’s birthday every year. Maybe Elsie will think this is romantic.

Just because Ginny thinks Derrick’s actions are myopic and even selfish doesn’t mean Elsie will. They have to let Elsie decide what she thinks about this absurd plan herself.

But they cannot be a party to it.