Chapter 17 June
The moment my eyes pop open, I think wedding day.
I should be happy for Stacy—and I am—but I’m also bummed because I can’t help but wonder if Ryan will go home right after the wedding or wait until tomorrow. My stomach sinks at the thought of repeating one of my least favorite days: graduation day.
I know for a fact that Ryan flew out on a red-eye that very night. How? Because I went to Logan’s house in search of him later that night. I think my professed plan was to stab him with a butter knife for humiliating me. But really, I was secretly hoping that he would change his mind and finish the kiss he’d started. When I got to the house, though, Logan’s mom gave me a sad look and said that Ryan had already left for school.
My first thought was WHO LEAVES FOR SCHOOL AFTER JUST GRADUATING FROM SCHOOL?
My second thought was that Ryan had told her to say that so he didn’t have to see me again. His version of Sorry, can’t, I’m washing my hair. It made me hate him more.
For years, I seethed, thinking that Ryan had flicked me off his shoulder like a piece of lint he never wanted to see again.
Now I know he was going off to start his culinary training in France. I wonder if I had known that back then, would it have changed anything? If I hadn’t forbidden Stacy and Logan from talking about Ryan the day after the almost-kiss of doom, would I have been in love with him all this time instead of wishing on every shooting star for his shampoo to magically get replaced with Nair?
It doesn’t matter now.
It’s Stacy’s special day, and that’s all I need to focus on.
I roll over and grab my phone and shoot her a text.
JUNE: Do you hear that sound????
STACY: What sound?
JUNE: WEDDING BELLS!!
STACY: *GIF of old lady dancing in the kitchen*
JUNE: *GIF of a couple French kissing*
STACY: Hey, do you have my green jumper? I need it for the honeymoon.
JUNE: Why? You don’t need clothes on your honeymoon.
STACY: June . . . bring the jumper. You’ve had it for like six months.
JUNE: CRACKLE CRACKLE CRACKLE. Bad service. Can’t hear you. Sorry!!
Stacy’s out of her mind if she thinks she’s ever getting that jumper back. My phone buzzes again, but it’s not Stacy this time.
RYAN: Want to get an early lunch later before we have to go to the church?
I throw my phone on my bed and avoid it for the next ten minutes. I brush my teeth. I throw on my running clothes and tennis shoes. I tie my hair in a ponytail and fill up my water bottle, all while avoiding the phone on my bed at all cost. I’m Frodo Baggins, though, because I swear I can hear that thing calling for me from the other room even though the volume is not on.
By now, I’ve formulated a very eloquent piece of literature in my brain, explaining all the reasons why I can’t go with him to lunch. It centers around my heart and my hurts and my fears. I lay it all out in a way that will help Ryan see and understand me better.
And then when that thought scares me too much, I shoot him this little gem.
JUNE: Can’t. Sorry.
He doesn’t respond. And I jog for twice as long as I normally would, forcing myself to go until my lungs squeeze as painfully as my heart at the thought of losing Ryan again.
It’s go time.
I expect “Eye of the Tiger” to start playing when I step into the bridal suite at the church, loaded down with all the essentials for a best friend’s wedding day. There’s a box of Darlin’ Donuts in my hand, a bottle of white wine under my arm, a portable steamer draped over my shoulder, and a pair of new fluffy white house slippers in my other hand for Stacy to wear through the day. Right now, I am the epitome of what every bride wants in a maid of honor.
I am prepared to risk my life to keep away anyone Stacy does not want to see on her special day.
I will bodycheck Great-aunt Mildred if she comes within twenty feet of Stacy with her overpowering hibiscus perfume and cheek-pinching fingers. And I plan on telling Logan’s bratty younger sister that the bridal suite is on the opposite end of the church from where it really is.
Most importantly, I will not let Ryan enter my thoughts even once during the hours leading up to the ceremony. Not once. None at all. Nada. SHOOT, I’m picturing him shirtless with his James Dean smile and lifeguard hair.
But not again.
“IT’S YOUR WEDDING DAY!” I yell as soon as I kick the door open and step into the bridal suite, finding my best friend lounging on the couch in her adorable white silk robe.
Stacy’s pretty blue eyes light up, and she jumps onto a chair, raises her glass of champagne into the air, and repeats my battle cry. “IT’S MY WEDDING DAY!” We will paint our faces in the traditional wedding war paint of soft-pink lips, smoky eyes, and softly penciled-in brows.
The rest of the bridal party hoots and hollers, and it’s then that I realize the bottle of wine under my arm was not at all necessary. I should have brought coffee instead. Empty shot glasses are lying haphazardly around the room, and these wild bridesmaids are hammered already. How? I thought I was early!
Stacy notices my concerned look and crinkles her nose, hops down from the chair, and comes to help me unload my wedding day ammunition. “Yeah, they apparently got here at, like, eight o’clock this morning and have been partying this whole time.”
“You’re kidding.”
She shakes her head. “Drunk as skunks.”
I immediately start making my way around the room and extracting the various alcoholic beverages from everyone’s hands. They are wearing pink silk robes, and because of the way they are all gaping open, I wonder why they even bothered putting them on in the first place.
Stacy’s expression says she regrets having these girls in her wedding party. She’s barely seen them since graduating from college but thought it would be a nice idea to have her old sorority sisters stand up with her on her wedding day. Now, it looks like they’ll be doing well to be able to stand on their feet at all.
They all groan and call me eighteen different versions of Fun Sucker when I confiscate their beverages, but I don’t care. My goal is to protect Stacy today, and if that means babysitting seven drunk party girls all day, then so be it.
We’re going to need reinforcements, though. As much as I don’t want to, I know what I have to do. Or rather, who I have to text.
JUNE: Hi. Sooooo any chance you don’t hate me too much and would be willing to bring copious amounts of coffee up to the church? I have seven sorority sisters to sober up in five hours.
I wait for a response, not entirely expecting one, but then my phone buzzes.
RYAN: You damn well know I don’t hate you. I’ll be there in a few minutes.
My heart flutters, and I tell it to chill out.
“Coffee is on the way,” I say to Stacy, hoping to ease the worry lines from around her eyes a little.
She wraps me up in one of her famous hugs that I will miss more than the green jumper I brought to stuff in her luggage. “Thanks, Junie.”
I squeeze her back and tell my tear ducts they better get themselves under control because there is no time for meltdowns.
“Oh! I have something for you.” She lets go of me to reach into an oversize tote bag, pulling out a manila envelope. I secretly hope it’s a scrapbook filled with all our best memories, but I don’t tell her because I’m cool and supposed to think scrapbooks are corny. Disappointment floods me when I open it and find a stack of businessy-looking papers.
She taps the envelope, and all the sounds of the rowdy room fade away. “These are all the offers for the bakery. They all seem like good candidates, but I’m leaving it completely up to you to choose since you’re the one who will be stuck with them.”
“And because you’ll be in Mexico for the next two weeks before moving to California.”
“And that.”
“So basically, you’re just making me do your dirty work,” I say, because joking is the only thing I can do right now to keep myself from dissolving into a salty puddle of tears.
Stacy knows. She smiles softly and puts a hand on either side of my face before smooshing my cheeks together. “You’ll make the right choice. I know it.” She lets go of my face to smack my butt as she passes. All I can think about is my conversation with Ryan last night and the mix of hope and fear it spiked in me. It’s all I could think about as I went to bed.
Slowly, the sounds of squealing bridesmaids and Justin Timberlake reenter my consciousness, and I turn around to find Stacy tossing me a pretty silk robe. The bridesmaids catcall and taunt me to strip my clothes off. Somewhere, Ms. Dorothy is proud of them.
“Uh, I think I’d rather change in the bathroom.” If it were just Stacy, I’d be fine. But I have enough self-awareness to know my body image is fragile and healing lately, and I don’t totally trust whatever drunken words will come out of these women’s mouths.
“Need me to come with you?” Stacy asks.
I point to the slippers I brought her. “No, you need to slip your feet into those little slices of paradise and relax. I’ll be right back.”
I head down the long church hallway to the women’s bathroom and, once inside, choose the first stall of the row. No more middles for me. Although the sanctuary of the church is newly remodeled and looks beautiful, this bathroom appears as though it’s been neglected since the days of prehistoric life. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been cleaned since then either.
I slip into the stall and carefully drape the fine silk robe over the door while I change out of my clothes. Once I’ve stripped down and hung my clothes over the door beside the robe, I reach for the pink silk fabric, and like a magic trick, it slips off the other side and disappears before my very eyes. There’s nothing I hate more than having magic forced on me.
For a split second, I worry that my robe has landed on the gross floor and I’ll catch something truly disgusting when I put it on. Then I hear giggles followed by another disappearing act: my clothes.
Someone—the ringleader, Carly, I’m assuming—very maturely shouts, “Time to loosen up, Fun Sucker!”
They hightail it out of the bathroom as if they expect me to chase them like we’re back in a college dormitory and I have water balloons stuffed in my bra, ready for a prank war at all times.
Fact: People stuck in their college days are more annoying than ingrown hairs.
I sigh and can’t help but wonder what events in my life have led me back to this place of being half-naked in a stall twice in one week. Oh, AND I’m phoneless because it was in my jeans pocket. So, great. Just great.
I have no other choice but to leave this stall in my bra and panties and walk as quickly as I can back to the bridal suite, where, instead of holding each woman down to Sharpie something mean on their faces like my gut insists, I will say Ha ha, very funny! and then funnel coffee down their throats for the rest of the afternoon. I know. #maidofhonorgoals.
The gross cream tile is cold and sticky against my bare feet as I inch my way toward the door. The air feels extra chilly now, and I’m almost certain it’s like this because the church officials didn’t anticipate needing to make the temperature more accommodating for a woman walking around nearly naked.
On my way to the door, I stop by the paper towel dispenser and crank out a long strand of stiff brown paper and begin wrapping it around my body, mummy style. It’s not doing much in the coverage department, and I have to walk like I’m wearing a mermaid fin, but at least it’s better than nothing.
I crack open the bathroom door and peer down the hallway in both directions, verifying that the coast is clear. When I step out, the hallway seems to grow in length, but I can see the bridal suite at the far end of the hall and am already relaxing knowing that no one will see me like this.
Except, when I’m halfway to my end goal and clutching the brown paper tightly against my bare skin, I hear a door open behind me. I whip around to see blinding light spilling around a tall form. If I were wearing a beautiful dress, there would be a choir of angels singing behind the imposing male figure. But I’m wearing brown paper towels, so instead, the only music my mind plays is the classic dum dum dum.
The door shuts, the light disappears, and I’m able to see that RYAN IS STANDING THERE HOLDING COFFEE AND I’M NAKED! Well, not naked. I’m wearing a slip made of archaic bathroom paper.
Instinctively, I let out a little scream and press the paper tighter to me, hoping none of it gives way suddenly. Ryan does not look away. He’s fully clothed (which is the normal look for most people in a church) and staring at me. But he’s not just normally clothed; he’s doubly clothed. A ridiculously handsome navy suit jacket wraps around his shoulders, and a black button-down shirt is tucked into a pair of slacks that matches the jacket. A slim black tie is knotted around his neck, and his hair is already tousled to perfection in a swoopy look you’d see on a model in a magazine.
“Turn around! Stop looking at me!” I whisper-yell because I don’t want to alert the whole building to what’s happening out here. I’m backing away from him and still trying to cover all the parts of skin that the brown paper is not hiding.
He starts walking toward me, and I can see that wolfish smile of his. “I don’t want to.”
“You don’t have a choice!”
“It feels like I do.”
I can’t decide if I want to cry from embarrassment right now or laugh uncontrollably because I’m standing in front of Ryan in a church wearing bathroom tissue. Still, I plead one more time. “Ryan! Please. Turn around.”
“Okay, okay.” He raises his hands in surrender and turns his back to me. “I can’t believe my luck that I get to ask you this again in one week, but . . . why are you naked, June?”
“Again, I’m not naked. I’m in my—”
“Underclothes. Yes, I’m aware. Your paper towel dress has lost the upper half by the way.” He’s walking backward in my direction.
I gasp and look down, grabbing the end of the paper that fell loose and is flapping in the breeze and retuck it under my arm. “This isn’t my fault. Those little jerks stole my clothes!”
Ryan stops right in front of me and sets the coffee down on the ground. I watch as he shrugs out of his jacket and then turns back around to face me—eyes closed. He steps close enough to drape the jacket around my shoulders, and I let out a relieved breath when I’m covered again. The unhelpful brown paper falls to the ground, puddling around my ankles. I pull Ryan’s jacket tightly around me and will myself not to drag in a deep breath of his delicious cologne.
He opens his eyes, and there’s something playful lurking in them. “You know, I still remember the first bikini you ever wore.”
His words pull a nervous chuckle from me. One that sounds wobbly and slightly hysterical because all my insecurities left over from Ben are bubbling up to the surface of my skin after having a man look at me for the first time without my clothes on since Ben cheated. “You do?”
He nods, his smirk not so devilish now and much softer. “It was light blue with white polka dots, and that’s the day I decided we would play shark and minnow every time we all went swimming together.”
I always thought it was because he wanted to prove he was faster and stronger than me. “You caught me every single time.”
His smile grows, and I feel like he’s looking straight through my soul. “Made sure of it. I hated when I had to let go of you.”
“In the pool?”
His gaze holds mine, and he’s quiet for a moment. “Then too.”
The next thing I know, Ryan’s arms are wrapping around me and holding on like he’s afraid I might disappear. He kisses my head, and the tenderness of it all tears me apart. “Do you want me to carry the coffee back there for you?”
“No,” I say into his shirt. “I can take it.”
“Do you want to keep my jacket for a bit?”
“Yes, please.” And I plan on trying to wring it out, extracting drops of his sexy scent into a vial that I will only let myself open and sniff once a year after he’s gone back to Chicago and I’m a lonely, creepy old maid.
“June?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re so beautiful.”
And that’s the moment my heart cracks wide open. I’ve never felt more vulnerable and safe at the same time.
I want to say something, but I’m afraid that if I do, tears will come out instead of words. So I let go of Ryan and bend down to pick up the box of coffee from the floor and then pad my way down the hallway to the bridal suite. I don’t need to look back to know Ryan is still watching me.
I slip through the door, shut it, and then lean back against it with a dummy smile like they do in those classic ’80s movies.
“Uh, that’s not the robe I bought you,” Stacy says, reminding me that I’m not alone.
Each of the bridesmaids’ eyes shoot to me, and when they see that I’m wearing a man’s suit jacket, they erupt in squeals and whistles. “I told you loosening up was more fun! Now get over here and pick a name.”
“A name?” I ask, hesitant to know what their next form of torture—I mean, amusement—is.
“Yeah,” says Carly (ringleader). “We wrote down the name of each single groomsman on a slip of paper and put them in here.” She shakes a little bag in my face. “We each draw a name, and whoever you get is your man for the night. No tradesies.”
I look at Stacy, and she just rolls her eyes, regret of ever asking these women to share her special day written unapologetically across her forehead.
“No thanks,” I say, turning away and going to busy myself with pouring Stacy the first cup of coffee and adding two sugars just like she likes it. There’s no way I’m going home with some guy just because I draw his name from a bag. Not to mention how disgusting it is to do this behind the guys’ back—not even giving them a say. It’s giving off objectifying vibes and I don’t care for it.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” I hear Carly sing.
“Who do you hope you get?” asks another bridesmaid.
“I think you know.”
“Ryan?”
Hearing his name makes my heart stop. Wait. Somehow, I forgot Ryan’s name would be in there. He’s single. He’s a groomsman.
“Duh. He’s so hot.” Carly dips her hand in and pulls out a sliver of paper, and I don’t even remember turning around, but I have, because I’m holding my breath, watching and waiting for her to read off the name.
She smiles deviously. “I got Ryan!”
My eyes shut tight, and now I feel sick to my stomach. I’m filled with a distinct desire to yell STOP and demand that someone push the pause button on life and just give me a moment to think. I just need a second to process. To decide. To weigh all my choices and figure out what I want.
But I don’t get to do that because now the bridal suite door is opening again, and a whole parade of wedding day entourage is entering. Hairstylist, makeup artist, mother of the bride, and Logan’s bratty sister, who managed to wiggle her way in while my guard was down.
I have no choice but to push thoughts of Ryan aside, let whatever happens happen, and focus on Stacy. It’s her day. I will not rain on her parade. And Ryan . . . well, maybe he’ll go home with Carly tonight and save me the trouble of having to figure out if he’s worth my feelings or not.