Chapter 6
chapter
six
My shoulders curl in, trying to hide. Mystery Man doesn’t see me at first.
“Hi, Aunt Lou.” Josh gives Louise a big hug, then steps aside to introduce his backwards-capped companion. “This is my best friend since middle school, Eitan Moreno.”
“Hi, ma’am.” Mystery Man’s voice cuts through the room. “Grabbed these on the way over but I see now I should have gotten something bigger.” He pulls a bouquet of lilies from behind his back and lets out a self-deprecating laugh that tickles like wind chimes.
“Oh my, how did you know that lilies are my favorite?” Louise stands up (she didn’t stand up when I got here!) and makes for the bouquet.
“Lucky guess,” Eitan says warmly.
“I worry for the men of this generation, but at least there’s one out there with proper manners.” Louise makes suspicious and stern eye contact with me. I regret telling her about my dating woes. “Have you met Penny’s wedding planner?” Louise points to me.
The entire group focuses on me. I am heirloom tomato purple. “I’m not—”
“Bathroom Girl.” Mystery Man’s gaze slides from my pink bow to my Mary Janes. Josh snorts at the nickname but tries to turn it into a cough. I may just reconstitute into a puddle.
“That’s me.” I grimace. “And I’m not the planner, I’m just a friend of Pen.”
He raises his eyebrows. I can’t tell if I’m missing something, or if he’s looking for something.
“Her name is Gem,” Louise proclaims.
“Ruby! My name is Ruby.”
“Ruby,” Eitan murmurs, like he’s tasting my name. I remember his girlfriend at the wedding, no doubt on their way to somewhere private to do unspeakable things to one another. I blush.
“Eitan,” I respond, trying out his name, my voice threatening to spook like a horse.
“Nice to see you again, Ruby,” Josh says as he pulls me into a whirlwind hug.
“We decided on a photographer, band, and florist!” Pen tells Josh excitedly. “We were so productive, I’m not even sure why we have Miri. Ruby did incredible.”
I scramble to dispel this rumor, feeling Miri’s ire from her sick bed. “I was using Miri’s notes. She’s very thorough. Great wedding planner.”
Pen exhales pointedly. “Can’t show up to her own meeting,” she mutters.
Josh senses the tension in his bride’s pursed lips. “Eitan has lived all over the world, Aunt Lou,” he redirects. “He’s been in Chicago for the last eight months, but before that he was living in Colombia, Japan, and—” Josh looks to Eitan, widening his eyes.
Eitan cuts in. “Argentina, Seoul for a bit, New Zealand.” He taps his chin. “Oh! And Canada.”
How nice for him.
Since cancer, I haven’t traveled. I can at this point—logically, I know that—but there’s still the nagging voice telling me I’ll find a lump while I’m halfway across the country from my oncologist, or my flight home will get cancelled and I’ll miss an appointment for my ovary-suppressing shot.
And that’s not even mentioning the radiation.
Have you seen the rates of cancer among people who spend their lives above the clouds?
I’ll keep my feet firmly planted on the ground, thanks.
“I traveled a lot before I met Uncle Alfie.” Louise glances at Calliope. “Did you know that a Czech prince wanted to marry me in the seventies? We met in Paris.”
Calliope playfully swats Louise. “How have you never told me that?”
“I traveled back to Chicago to talk my parents into it.” Louise smiles, wry.
“Let’s just say they were skeptical. I’m back home after traveling for four years, and my parents sent me to Jewel for potatoes for dinner one night.
” Louise sniffs. “Mind you, we had a full house staff. There was no reason they needed anything from the store, let alone they needed me to get it.” Louise pauses to look around the group, everyone leaning toward her.
“It was a set up. They organized it so that a son of one of my father’s business partners would be there at the same time. ”
“Uncle Alfie?” Calliope asks. I’m blindsided by the reminder that Penelope—my friend of seven years—has had one of my favorite authors as a great uncle her entire life.
Louise snorts. “Gosh, no. It was some pencil-pushing, training-wheels CFO in a pinstripe suit who followed me around half the store.” She rolls her eyes.
“I make it to the register, and there’s a cute Irish boy with red hair down to his shoulders bagging groceries.
He did something the CFO never did in the thirty minutes he accosted me in that store. ” Louise waits for someone to guess.
“Supported your right to vote?” Calliope asks dryly.
“Close, but not quite, dear. He asked me a question.” Louise throws her hands up. “Sounds easy, right? You’d be surprised how many people are too absorbed in themselves that they don’t even think to ask someone else a question. So can you guess who left the store with a date planned?”
“I didn’t know Uncle Alfie had long hair.” Calliope laughs.
“He was a real hippie back then,” Louise says, a fond sparkle in her voice. “And the only thing worse for my parents than marrying European nobility,” she sighs, “was marrying a Catholic. Which, naturally, made the whole thing ten times more appealing.”
The group laughs. Pen’s laugh goes on a little past organic. “You’re so funny, Aunt Lou.” Her opalescent nails rest hesitantly on Louise’s shoulder before slipping off. Pen stands and hooks her Saks bag on the crook of her arm. “The next time we see each other is the suit fitting, right?”
She looks at Eitan.
“Uh.” He clears his throat. “The suit fitting?”
“Yes, Miri had marked it on the calendar to be this weekend so there would be enough time.” She turns to Louise. “Bespoke suits take time, right?”
“They do, hun.” Louise nods.
Penelope hums, pleased, and turns back to Eitan, who is looking paler by the minute. “You did schedule it, right?” she asks, her voice sharpening.
Eitan’s blank stare says otherwise.
“You were cc’ed on Miri’s email, and in the table you were clearly tagged as the task’s owner.” Pen begins breathing heavily.
“Ah—I–I missed that, but I can schedule it now—”
“It takes a month just to get an appointment!” Pen’s brows push together, weighed down with frustration. “Joshie,” she keens. “You assured me—”
“It’s fine, baby. They’ll give us an appointment earlier than a month.” Josh sets his hands on Pen’s shoulders and rubs them. “It’s going to be fine. Eitan’s got this.” He nudges his chin at Eitan.
“I’m on it.” Eitan nods. “Don’t worry.”
Pen still looks angry but her breaths even out. “I will be marrying you in bespoke silk.”
Calliope’s eyes roll.
“You sure will, baby.” Josh kisses her. They’re so sweet I’m getting a toothache just watching them.
“Time’s up!” Louise declares. “I have my Pink Ribbon Ladies happy hour to get to. And I look forward to hearing how this” —Louise wags a finger between Eitan and Pen— “resolves.”
Eitan protests, “There won’t be anything to resol—”
“Alma will show you out. ALMA!” Louise shouts loud enough to wake the ghost of Christmas past.
“What?” Alma asks, panicked, as they hurry into the room.
“Time for them to leave.” Louise turns away from us to lean back on her chaise. Elderly, kaftanified Dionysus alright. This woman could be a mafia don. I’m scared of her, and I also want to be her when I grow up.
“I thought something was wrong!” Alma complains, catching their breath. “Are you—”
“I’m fine,” Louise cuts her off sharply.
“Right.” Alma throws her hands up and turns on her heel. “Follow me!” she shouts back at us. Eitan holds a hand out for Pen to go first. She eyes him like he’s getting a good look at her back to determine the best spots for storing a knife.
Alma practically pats us on the behind, shoving us out the door like stray cats who overstayed their welcome. I barely get one last look at that Rothko.
“Aunt Lou loved you.” Pen arranges my hair, perfecting the way it frames my face. Josh waits for her in her car. Eitan took off as soon as we stepped outside, phone already pressed to his ear. “And she normally hates people. She’s gone through three housekeepers already this year.”
“I’m happy to help,” I say, my skin no doubt glowing with the praise. “I want to be there for you.”
She squeezes my arm. “I’m so glad you feel that way.” We smile at each other, the incandescence of our bond bouncing back and forth between us like two mirrors reflecting each other. “Because I have a proposal.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re clearly a natural at this wedding planning thing.”
Does reading the detailed notes of a professional wedding planner make someone a natural? “Well, I—”
“You’ve seen what a pill my Aunt and Calliope are. They’ve always been two peas in a pod, and this wedding is a great chance for me to get back in Aunt Lou’s good graces.” Pen looks at the sky for a minute. “Which is just so difficult to do when I have to work with Calliope.”
“She didn’t seem too—”
“But you are so good with them! And the whole planning thing.” She rolls her eyes. “And now I have to add a useless best man to my list of problems.” Her lips spread in a conspiratorial, dazzling smile. “So I was wondering…”
My stomach is doing somersaults in preparation for whatever is about to come out of Pen’s mouth.
This is exactly what I rescheduled a meeting and took a bus and a train for.
There’s probably a brunch this weekend, maybe even a girl’s night out.
I haven’t been in a club since before the diagnosis, but I can manage. I’ll just have a coffee right before—
“Would you be my maid of honor?” Pen bites her lip.
My jaw goes slack. Maid of honor? I remember the satellite singles table at Izumi’s wedding.
Maids of honor stand right next to the bride.
They sit next to them, tending to their best friend on the most important night of their life.
I see visions of Pen and I side by side, at her bachelorette party, at the reception, at the altar.
You can’t get more inside the snowglobe than that.
Something snags. “Wait, what about Calliope?”
Pen waves a hand. “Yes, of course, Calliope has to be my official maid of honor. But you would be an honorary co-maid of honor. A bridesmaid. Basically.”
Bridesmaid, my brain hears. This is still good. Bridesmaids are almost the same as a maid of honor. The group of friends who are so close you want them to stand with you while you marry the love of your life. I can work with this.
“My schedule is about to get so busy with the book tour, so it would be huge to have someone like you in my corner to help.” Penelope hunches so we’re closer to the same height. “It would obviously be a time commitment, but you offered to help, right?”
“I—” I did offer. But this feels like…more than I was offering off-hand in Mike’s. I promised myself that this is the year I would get serious about finding an agent and launching my writing career.
Pen waves away my hesitation with a self-assured smile. “You don’t have to answer right now! Think about it. I’ll be the luckiest girl in the world if you say yes.”
“Okay—of course. I–I’ll think about it.” I nod. “Thank you so much for thinking of me.”
She leans in, holds my shoulders, and looks me dead in the eye as she says, “There’s literally no one else I would rather have standing up there with me at my wedding.”
Warmth trickles into my arms and legs as I nod and we share one last hug. She gives one final wave before stepping into her Audi and pulling away with Josh.
Clouds cushion my steps the entire walk back to the train station.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this could have gone better.
Even if I have to say no to Pen’s idea, the fact that she asked me speaks volumes.
I’d normally jump on the chance to be in the wedding; the only thing holding me back is the time commitment.
I need to focus my free time on finishing my manuscript and finding an agent.
Speaking of my nascent writing career, I check the post. It’s got twelve likes and a comment from my mother asking to please call her.
Nothing like social media to humble you when you’re feeling a little too invincible.
There’s one more notification that my eyes glazed over because it’s from an unknown, six digit number.
I open it, and as I read, my smile returns with a vengeance.
Hey Ruby, the automated text says, Penelope Ainswright invited you to THE ONE WHERE THEY GET ENGAGED (F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
edition) this Saturday at 8 p.m. I click the RSVP link and see an event page with 30+ RSVPs already, for five days from now.
There’s a vague tugging when I realize she had to have sent this out weeks ago.
But don’t they say ‘better late than never’?
I’ve obviously fallen off the party radar.
People think I can’t go out because, to them, I’m still that girl who was sick.
But this is exactly what I need: a chance to show them just how fun I can still be.
If I play my cards right, this could be the first day of the rest of my life.