Chapter 5
The following morning, I wake up on a mission. I need to find a replacement dress, and it needs to happen today. I leave the hotel with a freshly scrubbed face, wearing a linen shift dress that my mother will approve of when I see her later. I’m ready to go at the exact moment the stores open. I head down the uneven brick sidewalk at a brisk pace. Antique shops displaying silver platters and mahogany furniture sit squashed between high-end stores with mannequins wearing beautiful clothing and restaurants with dark awnings promising thoroughly air-conditioned interiors.
I scour Georgetown, rummaging through racks of clothes in expensive boutiques, searching for something that will fit and will dazzle everyone. It’s nearly eleven o’clock by the time I find it, after two hours of hunting. It’s a little bit on the short side and probably meant more for a nightclub than a wedding, but at least it’s not encrusted in rhinestones, and it doesn’t dwarf me. It’s dark green and has a fluttery skirt that will be great for dancing, a high halter neckline, and a low-cut back, which meant I had to go hunt for nipple pasties to go with it as a bra is not an option. By the time I’m finished, the sun is nearing its apex in the sky, and I’m sweaty from the heat.
I skipped breakfast, so I decide to stop at a greasy spoon sort of place and treat myself to a heavily fried lunch. I slurp a cold soda and scroll through my phone, dragging French fries through ketchup. This morning, Rob’s new girlfriend posted a picture on Instagram of herself and Rob, posed with suitcases by their feet. It’s the first time he’s featured in one of her posts, and the sudden, unexpected sight of him gives me a jolt. She looks happy and relaxed; Rob’s face isn’t fully visible because he’s looking right at her, as though he can’t bear to take his eyes off her. It’s captioned Couples that play together stay together—flying off for the weekend to celebrate love! with an airplane emoji and a heart.
It’s bizarre, seeing someone’s life from the outside, knowing that soon you’ll be in it. Like watching a play, and then suddenly being cast as a side character. And I most definitely will be nothing more than a side character in her life. She’s an influencer. She has nearly a million followers, and the likes are pouring in on this post, people commenting about her outfit and how beautiful they look together. Without question, she’s the star. In fact, this Instagram post is actually an ad. The hashtag denoting the fact that the luggage company has paid her to make this post makes my stomach churn. This weekend is the culmination of the thing that brought my life crashing down around me, and for her it’s an opportunity to make money.
Around me, people chat, read novels, type on laptops as they eat. The doors are propped open to let in a breeze. Despite the heat, it’s a lovely day, and I’ve solved my dress crisis. I should feel relaxed, but I feel anything but. Instead, I’m stress-eating and wondering how much time I’ll be forced to spend in the company of the happy couple today.
My mother will be arriving with Michael soon, and tonight will be a family dinner —perhaps a chance to smooth things over before the lovebirds tie the knot. Tomorrow, there’s a cocktail hour at the hotel bar and a rehearsal dinner at a rooftop restaurant downtown. The guests will be driven in a fleet of town cars, and I’m meant to give a toast, as though nothing is wrong and everything about this wedding is entirely typical. This isn’t so much a wedding weekend as it is an entire wedding week, because after the wedding itself there’s going to be a big brunch, and then a spa day for my mom’s closest friends (of which I am counted) so that she can depart on her honeymoon fresh-faced and freshly waxed.
Cara was not happy with me being here. She thinks I should have issued a silent protest by refusing to attend, but I just can’t do that to my mom. For all her flaws, this woman raised me on her own. She put me to bed each night, even if she had an event to attend. She would sit by my bedside, smelling like Chanel No°5, the diamonds in her ears glittering, her elegant tennis bracelet brushing my cheek as she ran her hand down the side of my face. My mom did date, but she never brought a man home to meet me. She kept everyone at arm’s length, except for her Buttercup. Her own flower—Daisy.
My parents were divorced while I was still an infant, and all I know of my father is that he gave my mother a sum of money so enormous that it generates its own income, and he set up a trust fund for me that I have never looked at. Getting my mom to talk about my dad is like trying to pry open a vault with a plastic fork. But I’ve come to terms with it. He doesn’t want us, so why should we spend any of our time thinking about him? As far as I’m concerned, the money belongs to my future children, if I ever have any. I don’t want it. It’s my father’s only legacy to me, and it’s not a gift. It’s a payoff. A bribe in exchange for a promise that my mother and I would never disturb his new life—whatever that may be.
My phone dings.
On our way! So excited to see you, Buttercup!
A sense of dread crawls over my skin, cold and boney-fingered. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can face any of it, but I have to. I’m in it now. Too late to take anything back.
I type out a message to Cara as I sip my Coke.
Hope your Nana is doing better. I miss you! Wish me luck today!
She replies right away. She’s improving! How are you holding up?
I consider mentioning the man from the airplane, but Cara will just get excited, and it wasn’t anything. I was just a dinner companion on a business trip, and whatever I thought it might be, I was wrong. But the feeling of disappointment from last night lingers. I haven’t actually sparked with anyone since Rob and I broke up, and I could have sworn there was a spark with Charlie. There was definitely a spark, right?
I’m currently eating fries and wondering if all the flights back to Denver are booked up.
Just as I send the message, I bring a French fry to my mouth and watch as a slow-motion glob of ketchup falls through space and lands in my lap, where I have failed to place a napkin. It’s like in a movie, when you see the horror unfold on the protagonist's face in half time as disaster strikes.
I’m instantly flustered. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I’m supposed to meet my mom in the lobby of the hotel. I glare at the napkin lying helplessly next to my plate, as though it ought to have done something to prevent this. There’s no way my mom won’t notice the stain. I’m going to have to make a run for it back to my room to change before she gets here.
I grab my stuff and then dash down the sidewalk. The hotel isn’t far. I just make it through the glass doors, and halfway to the elevator bank when I hear it. My mom’s voice, coming from the check-in desk. I freeze, and then turn. The red ketchup smear glows from the white linen like a bullseye. It’s right over my crotch, of all places.
“Buttercup!” She dances towards me, her arms thrown out, ready for an embrace. She’s wearing all white, and the sound of her high heels echoes on the lobby floor. I move my little cross-body bag in an attempt to cover the stain.
“Hi, Mom,” I say as she wraps her arms around me. I close my eyes and inhale her scent. My body relaxes, as though it remembers what I don’t. Even though I don’t have a hometown, my mom has been my home for my entire life.
When she releases me, she holds me by the shoulders to take a look at my face. “Oh, sweetheart, I’ve missed you!”
Then she scans my body, inspecting me, in the way that mothers do with their offspring. I see the moment her eyes land on the offending stain, which my purse is failing to conceal. Her lips make a little downward twitch, and my stomach twists like it’s being wrung out. My lunch suddenly feels too heavy in my stomach. She releases me without saying anything, but I know exactly what she’s thinking.
Michael is standing next to her, looking vaguely uncomfortable. He’s tall enough for me to have to look up at him, and his blond hair has tinges of gray mixed in. But he’s handsome, and his blue eyes are kind. There’s really nothing to dislike about Michael. As a person, he’s difficult to object to.
“Hi, Daisy,” he says and gives me a side hug. “You look good.”
“Thanks,” I say, then remember to add, “Congratulations.”
My mom moves to wrap her arms around one of his, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Isn’t this exciting? A city wedding, in Georgetown!”
“ Super exciting.” I nod. “It’s going to be great.” I’m not sure if I’m agreeing with her, or just trying to convince myself of that fact.
I shuffle my feet awkwardly, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.
“Maybe you should go change,” my mom says lightly.
“Yeah, I was just going to do that,” I answer, and she nods. The pearls in her ears glow in the soft lighting. When the silence stretches for too long, Michael suggests that they head upstairs to unpack, and my mom promises to give me a call before dinner this evening, and they vanish up the elevators.
I turn, about to do the same when, just as I’m standing in the lobby by myself, Rob walks in, holding hands with her . Gabrielle. She’s as lithe and beautiful as she is on the internet. They each wheel black suitcases behind them, and she’s wearing effortlessly cool jeans and a white relaxed T-shirt that says I woke up like this . Her hair is long and falls in tousled waves over her shoulders.
I should have known I would run into them just after spilling food on myself, while Gabby is arriving from the airport looking freshly ironed and made up. This isn’t how I was supposed to meet her. I was supposed to meet her at dinner this evening, wearing a cool outfit and very high heels. But the jolt of discomfort that I experience as I take in my replacement is nothing compared to the sadness that falls over me when I look at Rob.
It’s been a year since I’ve seen him in person, and he’s just as handsome as he was when I met him. When he bought me a drink that came in a fake coconut at a cheesy tiki bar and asked me to dance, and impressed me by the fact that he actually could dance. Cara had been with me that night with a group of girls from work, and she’d winked at me when she left but made me promise up and down that I would text her the second I was home safely. Only, I didn’t end up home. I texted her from Rob’s apartment after we had passionate drunk sex and I was hiding in his bathroom, unsure of whether I should leave or not. One-night-stand protocol is not my forte.
Rob had finally knocked on the door to ask if I was okay, and because the possibility that he thought I might be pooping was worse than the prospect of the awkwardness of the walk of shame, I opened the door so fast he almost fell through it right onto me. It turned out that my worries had been entirely unfounded, because he dragged me back into his bed and slept with his arms wrapped around me. His mattress was too hard and his pillows were lumpy, but I loved the smell of him and the feel of his body against mine, and I slept nestled up against his chest, my knees curled up into my stomach.
“You’re like a koala,” he’d joked in the morning. “Or like… a rabbit, or something. What sleeps curled up like that?”
“A dog?” I suggested.
“A puppy,” he’d countered, and we’d agreed that puppy was a much better comparison than dog.
We’d been together for six months before he proposed, my mom and his parents became close friends, and a year after that everything fell apart. Fell spectacularly to pieces.
I’m not hung up on him anymore. I’m really not. And I’m not under any delusion that he might be perfect or that our relationship was. He was uptight about things. Picky about restaurants and fine wine, a meticulous planner. He was obsessed with hiking and golf, neither of which I enjoy. We argued needlessly about mundane things—if we had to do the dishes directly after dinner, or if we could leave it until morning. My tendency to leave my laundry unfolded made him climb the walls.
But deep down, he was good, and a future with him was something I could easily imagine. I could see our happy family, holidays, kids toddling around and driving us crazy, and us loving them so much. Taking them to school in the morning and sitting down to dinner every evening as a family. All the things I didn’t have growing up.
But none of that happened, and now I’m standing in the lobby of a lovely hotel watching my former fiancé approach me while holding hands with a woman who is unarguably more beautiful than I am.
When he sees me, he stops walking. He doesn’t approach me, he just stops, at least ten feet from where I’m standing.
“Oh,” he says.
His girlfriend picks up where he fails, striding forward, with her hand out. “Hi, I’m Gabby. You must be Daisy. It’s so nice to finally meet you.” She gives me a bright smile. “I recognized you from your picture.”
From my picture? I wonder if Gabby has been doing her own internet research, or if Rob has talked about me and shown her pictures of our former life.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” I say and conjure a smile from some unknown place.
Rob has collected himself and come over. He wraps an arm around Gabby’s waist, which he can do without a problem because she’s a tall golden goddess who matches his height. I was always tucked under his armpit like an orphan seeking shelter. However, he seems to have become a mute, and so Gabby and I are going to have to carry this whole thing off ourselves.
Seeing the two of them sets my fight-or-flight system leaping into action. I can either run through them, slide between their legs towards the elevators and hide in my room, or I can stand my ground and be gracious and carefree, like I haven’t been dreading this moment. Given the choice, I go with the latter.
“It’s going to be a great weekend,” I say brightly.
“I think so too,” Gabby says, laying her hand flat against Rob’s abdomen, rubbing in slow, absentminded circles. This is their thing. This is how they stand when they are in a group of friends, or when they go for a walk and stop to admire something.
I swallow hard, my heart beginning to race. Everything about this is wrong. The wrongness is so strong I start to feel dizzy and sweat beads across my forehead. I’m going to have a panic attack. I have to get out of here. I thought I could do it, but I can’t. I absolutely cannot deal with this. This small talk and pretending that everything is fine and we are all a big happy family.
“Okay, well, I’m going to go to the ladies’ room,” I say abruptly, and a look of relief falls over Rob’s face as I turn to leave.
I don’t go back to my room. Instead, I walk out of the hotel and go down the street where I see a bar with darkened windows and a neon beer sign that signals to the world that you don’t have to check the prices before you order a drink. I no longer care about my stained dress—the damage is done. I just need to get away from that hotel.