Chapter 7 #2
I pinch the inside of my wrist to bring myself back to the present.
Bar. The bar is a good place to hang out.
I push through the crowd, going for the opposite end of it as Izumi and Clara.
After narrowly avoiding a few errant elbows, I plop myself on a vinyl stool, drumming my fingers on the bartop.
“Hey, Ruby.” The barstool to the left swivels.
It’s Calliope, plump lips wrapped around a vape, wearing an auburn tartan skirt, brown turtleneck, and big tortoiseshell glasses.
Half her hair is in two high buns, and the rest is cascading in thick, inky waves over her chest. I stare at it, briefly steeped in envy over its length.
“Hey.” I smile. “Are you going for Phoebe?” I ask.
“I dressed quasi-Y2K and that’s all Pen’s getting.”
“Fair enough.”
“You look hot,” she says through a nod and a puff of her vape.
I blush. “Thanks, um, you too.”
“You’re not like other writers I’ve known.” Calliope tilts her head, thoughtful. “I’ve dated a few and they’re just so emo. And my God, the ego on some of them. You’d think they were the second coming of Hemingway.”
Nothing humbles you like shoving your breast between two plates to be squashed into a pancake for a mammogram. Or wiping down your entire body—buttcrack included—with wet wipes before surgery.
“Cancer is really good at stripping you of your ego,” I say, in summary.
“I feel that.”
I raise an eyebrow at her.
“I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome as a kid. I’ve been poked and prodded by every needle and test in existence. It’s actually why I started tattooing. Kind of like a conquer-your-trauma thing.”
“I never would have known,” I say, then wonder if that was a dumb thing to say.
“It’s not a visible illness.” She purses her lips. “And Pen likes to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“So you two…aren’t close?”
“I think we would cut genetic ties if Penelope had her way. That’s partially why Aunt Lou mandated my involvement in her wedding.
Well, that and she likes to stir the pot, a trait that I admire deeply.
” Calliope narrows her eyes. “Speaking of which, I heard Penelope asked you to be an unofficial co-maid of honor?”
My stomach drops. “She just asked, I haven’t given her an answer yet. I wasn’t expecting it at all.”
“I was. It was only a matter of time before she found a workaround for Aunt Lou’s one condition.”
“It’s just because of the book—”
“Tour.” Calliope rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that’s what she told me too. You’d think in exchange for a quarter-million-dollar wedding, she’d be capable of doing this one thing. Especially with everything she has riding on it.”
My eyes bulge. It’s one thing guessing the wedding budget and another thing entirely to hear someone say it out loud. But something else catches in what she said. “What do you mean, everything she has riding on it?”
Calliope turns her head to exhale a stream of fruity vapor away from me.
“Aunt Lou is redoing her will now that Uncle Alfie has passed.” Her eyes go glassy, but she shakes it off.
“Pen was never all that interested in Aunt Lou, until she realized the will rewrite was the last chance to secure her trust fund.”
“That doesn’t sound like her,” I say, remembering the sweet girl from Lakeview Writers Group and Sangrias and Syntax.
“Mom and Harold have done well for themselves, but it’s nothing compared to Aunt Lou’s family money.” Calliope tips her beer toward me. “They never had their own kids, so us and my aunt’s family are Louise’s only remaining relatives.”
I’m not an idiot, I know Pen comes across as a bit disingenuous. She’s just got so much going on. Her social media is a full-time job, not to mention writing. We’ve been friends for seven years now. We’ve had our ups and downs, sure, but I know who Penelope is. She’s not that kind of person.
I shake my head, rejecting the idea that Penelope would do all this just for a trust fund.
Calliope shrugs. “Money does something to people.”
“There she is!” Penelope parts the crowd, standing out like an angel among (late-nineties-era) mortals.
She’s wearing a white tweed mini dress, chunky white heels, and a pearl headband.
“My knight in shining armor!” She pulls me off my barstool and into a fierce hug that I try to enjoy.
It’s difficult because of the intense smell of sickly-sweet perfume clinging to her.
“I was just talking about you,” Pen gushes before realizing I’m not alone. “Calliope,” she adds, distant but cordial.
“Penny,” Calliope says into her beer.
“We need to celebrate.” Pen goes on her tiptoes to flag down the bartender. “We have to do shots.”
I balk. “Oh, I don’t dr—”
“Let’s get the rest of the wedding party here.
” Pen winks at me. “Joshie!” She calls behind her.
“Baby, where are your groomsmen?” She calls the girls over too, and I learn who her bridesmaids are: Clara, Izumi, a college friend named Emma, someone I’ve never seen before who looks like an Instagram model, and…
the girl who was hooking up with Eitan when I met him.
Our eyes meet and it’s clear she recognizes me.
We both decide to pretend this is our first time meeting.
“I’m Deepti,” she says, flipping her raven hair over her shoulder. “I go by Deep.”
“Ruby.” We shake hands. It’s as awkward as it sounds. It gets even better when Eitan joins the circle forming. He and Deep smile at each other, though his is office-coworker-pleasant, and hers is let’s-rip-our-clothes-off-(again)-sultry.
A few other attractive guys join us. I keep my eyes down, concentrating on counting every individual knuckle crack as I fiddle with my hands.
“Rubes!” Clara pulls me into a hug. “So fun having you here.”
Penelope counts. “We need thirteen shots!” she announces to the bartender. “Tequila.”
“I’ll shoot soda water,” Izumi sighs.
“Ha! Right, you’re excused.” Pen looks pointedly at Izumi’s stomach.
“I’ll take water too.” Eitan holds up a hand.
Pen shakes her head. “No excuses for you.”
“I’m good,” Eitan says firmly.
“It’s just a baby shot,” Pen informs him.
“I said I’m good.”
“Here you go.” Pen hands him a (large) shot. I don’t think she’s purposefully shoving alcohol at someone who’s saying no, it seems like the entire wedding party is simply too tipsy to care.
She hands me the next one.
I haven’t drunk in a year and a half, since the day I got my diagnosis. The smell of tequila alone makes me want to vomit. I hold it down at my hip, planning to discreetly slide it onto the bar while everyone tips theirs back.
“Cheers!” Pen pushes her shot glass to the center and everyone clinks theirs.
The sound induces unpleasant flashbacks to being drunk in clubs in my mid-twenties.
Guilt washes over me, like it always does, when I think about drinking.
It’s a question with no answer, why one person can get cancer at twenty-eight and someone else can go their whole life without dealing with it.
Randomness is an abyss that can consume you if you let it.
So you latch onto the things you can control: every choice you’ve ever made.
Drinking, processed meat, deodorant, plastic.
You name it, I’ve thought about it, analyzed whether that could be the thing that was responsible.
The guilt that comes with that search for a reason is a sticky, tangled feeling.
The search becomes a game, engineered by my mind to suspend me in a state of vigilance.
If I work hard enough to eliminate my risk factors, I can keep cancer away.
But, like I said, randomness is an abyss.
Someone could die of breast cancer without ever drinking a day in their life.
I push the entire thunderstorm of thoughts away. Tonight is about looking forward.
Eitan’s lips flatten, and he dumps his shot on the ground when everyone else throws theirs back.
I place my own shot out of sight on the bar, but not discreetly enough that he misses it.
Our eyes catch, and the seaglass cracks.
I see someone who’s treading their own water, barely staying afloat.
For once, I’m not the only one standing on the outside of a moment.
For a split-second, Eitan looks just as lonely as I am.