Chapter 11
THE WEDDING PLANNER HELPER
Cricket
It’s been two weeks since I arrived, and nothing else truly bad has happened since that second day.
I mean, nothing else bad if you don’t count the repairs on the mother-in-law house taking much, much longer than we hoped they would.
And the part where I’m living in the basement of Heath’s house, where I can hear him and Lavender and sometimes the cat moving around upstairs every morning and every evening.
That goes hand in hand with the part where every time he’s nice to me, I get a bigger and bigger crush on him, which means I need to avoid him entirely so that I’m not the guest here who makes him uncomfortable if he realizes I have a crush on him.
And the part where my parents have called twice and my sisters once each to complain about how my viral moment is still causing them personal and professional angst.
And the part where I’m struggling to find a new job.
And the part where none of my friends back home are able to give me a place to land temporarily and the part where my roommate informed me that I’m definitely out and she’s packing my stuff into boxes she’ll send me the bill for a storage unit.
Talk about wanting to get rid of someone.
But on the parts about my old life, I kinda don’t care.
Being berated and made to feel like a failure by the people who are supposed to love me more than anyone else?
No, thank you.
Working on camera again?
Also no, thank you.
I should probably come up with a pen name and start applying as a copywriter.
And start looking harder for jobs in places away from my family, where I can start fresh.
Maybe even legally change my name so that no one knows it’s me.
Claim the Cheeky Beaver was my doppelg?nger.
But for now, my life is pretty fine.
Mabel and Ginny and Pip and Olivia and Samantha, the five permanent residents at what I’ve begun calling the Five Minutes of Shame Recovery Center, have been extraordinarily welcoming.
They feed me. Mabel’s done my laundry twice now in addition to showing me a storage room full of clothes, underwear, toiletries, and basically anything a woman could need to survive if she arrived with nothing but the clothes on her back.
When I get a new job, I’m donating to the storeroom every paycheck.
Being here has been lifesaving.
I want to do whatever I can to pay back the kindness that my new friends have shown me.
Ginny checks on me if I’m not over at the main house for breakfast by midmorning now that she’s off her crutches, and on the three days that I’ve missed breakfast, Olivia has insisted I join her for a nibble over at the event space on the property where she and Samantha bake breads and pastries ordered by local restaurants.
Mabel gave me free rein to dig around in the gardens, but also told me to just sit and soak in the scenery if that gives me more peace right now.
Lavender comes to see me sometimes in the apartment when she sneaks away from Heath, and we play dragon slayer practically every day that she’s in the main house.
Pip regularly makes me laugh, even if it was startling at first to see her in not much more than her birthday suit.
She puts on a nightgown every day at five p.m. sharp, and the neighbor, Walter, has called on her twice when I’ve been in the main house.
I can’t tell if she’s hard of hearing or if she’s faking it, and I actually love her for that.
I want to be her when I’m older.
Probably not the mostly naked part—I have scars over nudity right now, and it takes a lot to work up to showering still, which I’m realizing is probably also partially lingering childhood scars around my parents’ attitudes toward sex and skin—but I wouldn’t mind owning Pip’s don’t give a fuck, keep having fun in life attitude.
The two other newer residents, Elizabeth and Dori, and I have bonded over our recent misadventures on the internet, drinking wine and crying and raging and laughing.
Elizabeth went viral after someone posted a video of her drunk and crashing a drag show, which wasn’t the full story, of course.
She’d been at her daughter’s wedding when her husband got caught with one of the bridesmaids, and that’s what prompted her to get drunk and crash the drag show next door, where she called him every name under the sun.
And rightfully so, if you ask me.
Dori went viral for a vulnerable video she made crying about breaking up with her boyfriend, whom the internet has decided is as close to a real-life superhero as a mortal being can get, despite that not being the full story either.
All three of us agree that we’re never going on social media again. Or letting ourselves knowingly be recorded.
Elizabeth’s likely leaving as soon as she gets a report from the private investigator she hired to find out what other skeletons her husband has in the closet. Her divorce is imminent, and she’s in regular communication with friends back home.
She’s what the ladies here call a short-timer.
Someone who went viral, stayed for a few weeks, and then went back to her life, like Temperance.
Dori’s still lost.
She’d been working two jobs—one at a restaurant, one at a dog-walking service—and looking for something better to use her biochemistry degree when her viral moment happened.
We’ve been comparing notes about job applications and rejections too.
It’s been so cathartic to let it all out with people who understand.
Sometimes I wander through the rows and rows of grapevines. Ginny added to Heath’s explanation of the neighbor managing the fields, and it’s so Pip that it actually would’ve been my first guess.
Her husband apparently hated Walter, whose daughter, Winona, is the neighbor who runs the operations out in the fields.
He also thought that women couldn’t run wineries, so the first thing Pip did after Dean kicked the bucket was to sign a contract with Winona, giving her all of the grapes for their winery in exchange for doing all of the work.
I haven’t yet gone into the production facilities on the back side of the property or the closed-up tasting room and gift shop near the main road, even if Mabel’s made it clear that I’m welcome to wander anywhere.
She wants this to feel like home.
And it does.
So much so that when I stroll into the house Saturday morning and discover Mabel, Ginny, Samantha, Olivia, and Heath all in the study with the door slightly cracked, I feel a little left out.
Dori and Elizabeth aren’t there either, but even reminding myself that I’m not a permanent resident here doesn’t help.
Not when one of them must have Lav.
I wasn’t asked to do that either.
“I hate this idea,” Olivia’s saying. “The whole point is that we don’t have outside people here.”
Mabel’s frowning. “I don’t like it either, but Aunt Pip’s basically broke.
Dean took out a second mortgage to build the event space and banquet hall, then he croaked before it saw a single booking.
We’re giving the grapes away for free. We don’t have wine that Aunt Pip will let us sell.
She’s been donating to every fundraising request on that site, HardshipHelper, for years, and what didn’t go there went to pet shelters across the state.
The only reason we can still afford new guests is because I convinced Pip to set up a separate fund for it.
But if we don’t bring in big money fast, we won’t have a home at all. Foreclosure’s knocking.”
“The wedding will be big, but also private,” Ginny says. “Mike has a distraction plan all worked out so that if anyone realizes he and Caro got engaged and are planning a fast wedding, they’ll think it’s happening elsewhere.”
And I suddenly don’t care that I’m left out.
I want the tea.
“Where will the guests stay?” Heath asks.
“Caro and Mike are the only two who need space here,” Ginny says.
“Everyone else will fly in in the morning. A lot of them have houses around here or over in Napa, so the only thing that would draw attention is the coincidence of so many Hollywood people being at their vacation houses at once, or if people realize my parents and brother are here the same time that Mike’s family’s here too.
And the rest of the guests aren’t high-profile enough to draw a lot of attention. ”
Celebrities?
I stiffen, then tell myself to get over myself.
Clearly, whoever this is, they don’t want cameras and attention any more than the rest of us do.
Mabel wouldn’t allow it if they did.
I know Caro is Ginny’s sister, but I didn’t know she was dating someone who sounds famous.
Who’s Mike?
“Catering staff?” Samantha asks.
“We’re it,” Mabel says. “No outsiders. Fewer questions that way.”
“How many guests?”
Ginny cringes. “A hundred? They’re not expecting a huge guest list, given the lack of advanced notice.”
Olivia blows out a heavy breath and shares a look with Samantha. “Wedding cake? You know those are my downfall.”
“We can order one and say that Aunt Pip wants to recreate her wedding while she finally throws Dean to the wind,” Mabel says. “That’ll solve questions about why we’re fixing up the event space too. People believe anything you tell them about Aunt Pip.”
“Inside or outside wedding?” Heath asks. “How many favors will I have to call in to get this set up?”
Mabel and Ginny share a look.
“Outside,” Mabel says at the same time Ginny says, “Caro’s flexible.”
“She’s always wanted an outside wedding,” Mabel says. “You’ve told me that a million times. Even before she was engaged.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Samantha says, suddenly swinging around to look at Ginny. “You haven’t been to a wedding since…you know. Have you?”
Ginny wrinkles her nose. “It’s my sister’s wedding, and we’ll have it however she wants to have it, especially since her fiancé’s willing to pay us, and it’ll be fine.”
I don’t need anyone to explain the subtext here, unless something else happened.