Chapter 5
Being maid of honor required the organizational skills of a professional scheduler, the enthusiasm of a cheerleader, and the patience of a kindergarten teacher. Natalie had never been particularly into pep, patience, or spreadsheets, but when you loved someone, you did what they needed you to do. So here she was at an Italian restaurant in New Jersey, attempting to explain to the rest of Gabby’s bridesmaids that they needed to keep their rehearsal dinner toasts to under five minutes, please.
“And how much time are you giving yourself tomorrow night?” Gabby’s sister, Melinda, asked. Her glare threatened to freeze Nat’s blood in her veins. A wild child who could also hold a grudge like no one’s business, Melinda had spent the wedding planning process alternating between semi-terrifying jokes (I’m like the maid of honor understudy. In case you break your neck before the wedding.), insistences that she didn’t even want the responsibility because she was VERY busy with her latest business idea (I make jewelry into which I’ll carve the names of your lovers or enemies.), and the current moment’s flat-out hostility.
“I am also limiting myself to five minutes,” Nat said, “as Gabby and Angus requested.”
Melinda huffed. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Their college friend Shay jumped in. “A wedding toast from a professional writer! I can’t wait. But also…” She indicated Becks, their other friend from school. “Since there are two of us, we assumed it meant five minutes per person.”
“No, it’s a joint toast. So the joint time should be five minutes.”
“Oh no,” Becks said. “Oh, oh no. That’s going to be tough.” Becks had a tendency to catastrophize.
“I guess we could take out the story about her hooking up with that bartender in New Orleans on spring break?” Shay said.
“Yes,” Natalie said. “What? Why would you tell that story in front of her parents?”
Shay blinked. “Because it’s funny.”
Gabby and Angus weren’t the first of their friends to get married—that honor belonged to a dormmate who had married her high school boyfriend when they were all twenty-two, when the idea of going to a wedding of your peers still seemed utterly unfathomable. But now, Gabby and Angus were leading the new guard, blazing the trail for all their marriage-curious friends. None of them knew what they were doing, where the limits were. Did they actually need to buy a gift off the registry if they’d already spent money on train fare AND a hotel? Wasn’t their presence a present?
At the rehearsal dinner, Natalie could sense half of her coupled-up friends taking notes in their heads. The other half wore a look of a dawning awareness—they could not imagine following Gabby and Angus’s path with the person currently on their arm. Natalie was calling it now: this weekend would set breakups and engagements in motion.
As a kid, Natalie had told herself that she’d be married by age twenty-seven, and though that birthday loomed a few months away, Natalie did not even have a boyfriend about whom to brag, having parted ways with Conor of the inscrutable short stories only a month after Gabby and Angus got engaged. She’d dared to offer some constructive criticism on his latest work (Perhaps it’s a bit too opaque?), he’d reacted poorly, the rest of the night had been awkward, and she’d broken up with him the next morning before he could do it first.
But she had something better than a boyfriend. She had a book. A slim paperback novel that had come from her very own brain and determination. All those nights that newly engaged Gabby had been off with Angus, Nat had poured herself into her manuscript in an almost manic state of inspiration, and the result had been published a little more than two weeks ago. Two hundred and eighty-eight pages of Nat’s quivering heart offered up for the world to see.
How exciting it had been at this dinner to be able to mention it when people asked what she did and watch them reevaluate her. Twenty-six and already a published novelist. She was not a fool for trying. All this time, while maybe some people thought she’d been delaying the start to her real life, she’d actually been brave, following a guiding light that only she could see.
Sure, publishing a book did not solve every problem in her life, at least not when it was a small printing with a $5,000 advance. It did not clear her skin or help her move to a nicer apartment without a roommate, or at least a nicer apartment with a roommate who did not hide cheese in his room. (In most ways, Daryl—who had taken over Gabby’s room after she left—was fine. But the bottle of Parmesan was always going missing from the fridge, and whenever Natalie made pasta and wanted to use it, Daryl would retreat to his room and pull it out from under his bed. Did he eat handfuls of it at two a.m.? Also, it was the cheap kind of cheese with a ton of preservatives, but still, you probably weren’t supposed to leave it out overnight, right? No matter how many times she asked him to please return it to the fridge, he never did. Natalie half expected to die of food poisoning any day now. But it wasn’t like she was going to stop eating cheese on her pasta.) Publishing did not allow her to quit all of her part-time jobs, only the one she hated most—goodbye to personal assisting for that psychiatrist who would watch porn in his office while she sat in his waiting room!
But her novel was real. She’d found it in a bookstore on her publication day and burst into noisy tears, startling the elderly woman browsing next to her. It had a Goodreads page with fifty-three ratings and/or reviews, and all of them were either four or five stars except for a few pesky three stars from people she didn’t know, all of which were just the rating except for one, which said, “Reads sort of like the author’s diary. Fitfully amusing.” But she’d gone to that person’s profile, and they had also given three stars to Le Petit Prince, for God’s sake, so she was in good company. And okay, yes, a lot of the gushing reviews on there were from friends and family to whom she’d sent a big mass email, asking them to please remember to write kind things if they enjoyed the novel and to please forget to rate it if they did not. But still, the reviews were specific and kind and thoughtful. She was “capturing the millennial perspective on life and love in an honest, biting way I’ve never read before,” her writing style “nuanced yet page-turning.”
Not that she spent a lot of time reading compliments about her work. Yes, she went on the Goodreads page sometimes when she was feeling bored or low or even happy. Or hungry. But it wasn’t like she was OBSESSED.
(Were the reviews slowing down, though? Did it matter? No, surely she’d reach a tipping point soon, and the word of mouth would spread, and the book would sell as well as she’d hoped.)
“Angus told me you just published a novel,” one of Angus’s cousins said to her now as Natalie grabbed a glass of champagne from the bar.
“That’s kind of Angus to let people know,” Nat replied. He and Gabby had come to her book launch and sat in the front row, whooping. As far as Nat could tell, though, neither one of them had gotten a chance to read the book yet. Gabby had started it—she’d texted Nat after the first page that she was madly in love with it already. But then she’d fallen off. Well, she’d had a wedding to plan. Maybe she was saving the book for her honeymoon. Natalie was learning that you couldn’t force anyone to read your novel. The people you thought would be the first to read might drag their feet, while your mother’s friend’s aunt who you’d met once would email you a week after it came out with a detailed recap of her thoughts.
“What’s it about?” the cousin continued.
Nat could recite the pitch in her sleep at this point. “Apartment 2F follows a young woman living in New York during the aftereffects of the recession, wondering if the future dangled in front of her generation—the promise that we could somehow find true love, a fulfilling career, and financial stability—was a lie.”
The cousin held up a glass to clink with Nat’s. “Sounds thrilling.”
“Are you talking about Natalie’s book? It’s so good,” Shay said, walking by and inserting herself. “You have to buy it!”
Angus’s cousin smiled. “I will. Good for you!”
“Thanks so much,” Nat said, beaming.
The book might not have moved the needle much on her finances, but it had moved the needle on respect, something Nat felt like she’d been struggling for ever since she learned to be self-conscious. For much of her teenage years, she didn’t respect herself. She thought her mind had nothing to offer, at least not in comparison to the boys around her who moved through the world with such ease. Those boys seemed to have better taste in everything and were always so confident in it.
And when she finally did start to take her own ideas more seriously, no one else seemed to. Was it that she was too small or too quick with her uncontrollable smile? Too apt to wear sundresses, too frazzled from running around to all her jobs? When she said that she was trying to be an author, people actually said, “Really? You?” That, or they’d ask, “What genre? Young adult? Chick lit?” And there was nothing wrong with young adult fiction or chick lit—though Nat preferred the term “women’s fiction,” and actually just preferred the word “fiction” since there was no genre called “men’s fiction”—but it drove Nat nuts that people were so quick to put her in a box. Now, though, she could literally point them to a bookstore, to her novel with its arty, moody cover, a painting of a young woman’s face in shadow. That serious enough for you, assholes?
There had been one person she’d met who gave her respect in their very first interaction. Who neither blew smoke up her ass so that he could get in her pants, nor wrote her off as frivolous. And now, she scanned the room for him.
The restaurant was classic old-school Italian: checked tablecloths with red candles flickering and melting all over their holders. The kind of place used to holding parties for big Italian Jersey families, clearly picked out by Angus’s mother, who had spoken maybe six sentences to Natalie so far, yet had used two of them to proudly declare that she was Sicilian.
There he was in an opposite corner, wrangling Angus’s groomsmen, who didn’t seem to be giving him nearly as much trouble as the bridesmaids. Rob Kapinsky.
Since their meeting two years ago, he’d flitted across her mind every once in a while. She’d wondered, sometimes, what might have happened between them that night if she’d been free or, once she was free, what might’ve happened if they lived in the same city instead of on opposite coasts. And every once in a while, a text would pop up:
ROB:Angus told me that he might like to try backpacking for his bachelor party, despite never having spent a night in the woods. How angry would Gabby be if I lost him in a forest?
NATALIE:Angry enough that you should also disappear into the trees forever.
ROB:Never mind, he has retracted the backpacking idea after taking a long walk.
ROB:Thank God.
NATALIE:Luckily Gabby just wants to rent a house on the beach. But she has requested games that I have to coordinate.
ROB:Settlers of Catan
NATALIE:Ew, no.
ROB:Excuse me. That’s a great game.
NATALIE:I think she means more like “everyone takes a quiz on how well they know me, and the prize is a penis hat”
ROB:I assume you’ll win the hat, and I assume you’ll wear it to the wedding.
NATALIE:But of course.
He’d proven remarkably difficult to stalk online. No social media, no old embarrassing YouTube videos. A few articles in academic journals that she’d have to subscribe to read, which felt like a bridge too far.
She’d spotted him ten minutes earlier, loping in, shoulders slightly hunched, in a button-down shirt and dark pants, face furrowed in concentration, a man with a task. (He would be a man who completed his tasks. She could not imagine him missing a deadline or being willing to disappoint. She admired that kind of follow-through in a person, she thought with a little shiver.) Her efforts to catch his eye had proven futile so far. But they had the whole weekend.
Earlier in the week, as she and Gabby were getting their nails done, Natalie had very casually asked, “So, Rob. What’s his deal? Is he single?”
“As far as I know. You trying to get sloppy with him on the dance floor?”
“I only met him once, but I have a hard time picturing him getting sloppy in public.”
Gabby raised an eyebrow.
“But, yes, I wouldn’t be opposed to getting sloppy with him,” Natalie went on.
“Okay. Not my type, but I could see it.”
“A brooding academic might make a nice change from brooding artists.”
“I don’t know if ‘brooding’ is right,” Gabby said. “We’ve only hung out a couple times, so I’ve yet to break through the ice with him. But he struck me as less moody, more serious. Maybe a little shy.”
“I can work with shy and serious. At least for a weekend.”
“Okay, just fair warning from what I’ve heard from Angus: Rob isn’t really a for-a-weekend kind of guy. He is on a track. I’m surprised he doesn’t yet have some impressive academic wife-to-be.”
“Sure, but what guy doesn’t like the occasional no-strings fling?”
Gabby shook her head. “Well, good luck to you. I’m just saying, don’t be surprised if he makes you discuss your futures as a prereq to falling into bed.”
Now, as Rob finished giving the groomsmen their marching orders and sent them on their way, Natalie crossed the room to his side. Her heart pulsed in a strange sped-up rhythm. Was she nervous? Natalie knew she wasn’t for all markets, but she’d generally done okay with men. The trick was in identifying the types that would be interested in her, avoiding frat boys and football stars who wanted blond bombshells. She could not imagine Rob going after blond bombshells.
He was staring out at the room, over to where Angus and Gabby were greeting an endless stream of aunts and uncles, seemingly oblivious to her approach, so she threw her shoulders back and leaned over to him. “What wild surprise do we think Angus has in store for us tonight?”
He did not startle or turn to her, which made her think that maybe he had seen her approach after all. Only a slight downward curl of his lip indicated that he’d even heard her. After an excruciating beat of silence, he finally spoke. “What do you mean?”
“Just…the last time we were together, he pulled a proposal out of his back pocket. I wouldn’t be shocked if, tonight, he announces that we’ll all be hopping on a plane to Vegas so that he and Gabby can get married by an Elvis impersonator.”
“Angus hates Vegas,” Rob said, continuing to stare straight ahead.
Well, this was destabilizing. Was he distracted? She scrambled to regain her footing. “Really? He seems like the up-for-anything type.”
“He thinks casinos take advantage of people. But if he must partake, he would obviously go to Atlantic City, because he is loyal to his home state.” Rob’s voice was growing strained. God, he still wouldn’t look at her. She felt like someone had promised her dessert, then hit her in the face with a pie.
What had changed? Had Rob also thought more about their previous meeting over the years and decided that she’d been a tease or had talked too much without managing to be interesting? Maybe Gabby had been wrong, and he was dating someone after all, and he found Nat SO attractive that he couldn’t even look at her, or he’d do something he’d regret. (No, she couldn’t flatter herself that much.) He could be overwhelmed by his best man duties. She understood that—thinking about her to-do list for the next day sent a chill down her spine. Still, this was no way to deal with stress. This strange unpleasantness, whatever the cause, made the idea of getting sloppy together on the dance floor seem extremely unlikely.
He cleared his throat and said stiffly, “Excuse me, I think I am needed at the meatball bar.” And then that asshole walked away.