Thirty, Flirty, and Forever Alone

Prologue

I was supposed to bring a date.

Maybe if I’d been able to wrangle one, this wouldn’t be happening.

A date would have kept me calm and distracted.

Maybe I wouldn’t have been attempting to break some sort of speed-stripping record as I ripped the zipper down the side of this satin dress.

I’m wearing shapewear that goes up to my boobs, so using the restroom was no easy feat. It required unzipping, followed by a series of careful, painstaking, strategic spandex maneuvers.

I’ve now peed. I’ve reassembled the spandex. But dear god, I can’t get the dress back on. Sweat beads along my brow as I tug at the silver sliver of metal dangling at my hip.

Sweet mother of Christ, move.

It doesn’t budge. I don’t have time for this. I didn’t have time to pee. I absolutely do not have time for a wardrobe malfunction.

I squeeze my eyes shut and count to five before glancing down at my delicate silver watch. My aunt started her four-minute speech—four minutes ago.

I heave the zipper upward again with everything I’ve got. My sweaty fingers slip off the metal, and my knuckles slam right into my forehead. I stagger back a few steps. “Fucking fuck!”

I trudge up to the sink, livid. My champagne-colored dress hangs like an unwrapped flour tortilla draped around my torso as I bend to wash my hands, boobs swinging in the wind. I’m not even wearing a bra—it’s built into the outfit.

I glare at myself in the mirror.

This is karma for checking the guest box on the invitation.

I knew it was risky, but I did it anyway because we sent out those invites six months ago.

One of my staple goals has always been to be with my person by my thirtieth birthday, and I’ve been hurtling toward that landmark.

Checking that guest box was manifesting!

If you visualize your goal and project what you’re looking for hard enough out at the universe, it will come to be.

I quite literally made this goal a part-time job. We’re at the end of July. I’ve been on thirteen first dates and entangled in six approximately one-month-long relationships since January.

I’m losing faith in humanity.

I just want a healthy, loving, supportive relationship based on a foundation of shared passions, understanding, humor, open-mindedness, mutual respect, support, and trust! Apparently that’s too much to ask!

I might as well have spent the last six months in a circle of candles with my eyes closed, holding a piece of paper with an in-depth description of my perfect person clamped between my teeth, hoping really hard he’d come to life.

My cousin paid for me to bring a plus-one to her wedding, and I failed to conjure even the semblance of a romantic relationship.

Hence, karma.

People who were happily coupled off early in life might not be aware of this, but there comes an age where, all of a sudden, it’s socially unacceptable to come to a wedding alone. That age is me. It is now. It’s twenty-nine.

The shift happens without warning, like waking up from a coma to find yourself in an abandoned hospital amid a zombie apocalypse.

One wedding you’re singing and dancing with a million single friends—the next wedding they’ve all evaporated.

A love ballad is playing, and you’re standing alone, on the edge of the dance floor, catatonically drifting backward, internally reliving each and every time a teacher instructed the class to find a partner and you were left the undesirable loner that had to either do the project alone or be assigned as a pity third-wheel member to a partnership of two people who clearly don’t want anything to do with you.

I catch my exhausted gray eyes in the mirror, bright with panic amongst my smoky eye makeup.

My hair’s been curled and swept into a high pony on the crown of my head à la Whitney’s orders.

I look like a high school cheerleader from 2009 if she tripped and fell into a dark makeup palette.

With a groan I chuck my hand towel in the trash, press the dress into place against my chest, and throw myself from the restroom.

A polite spattering of applause rises from the guests as I creep my way back to the rustic reception hall.

Whitney picked this aesthetic, open, barnlike venue in Palm Springs, with a stunning view of the desert hills.

I found it for her online back in December.

They have a 40 percent–off discount during their offseason, hence this date in the dregs of summer.

The ceremony kicked off after sunset so we wouldn’t all die of heatstroke.

“And now”—the wedding singer booms into the mic—“we have some special words from our maid of honor, Rikki Romona!”

And that’s my cue.

There’s no actual spotlight that falls over my position at the back of the room, but the figurative one feels just as harrowing.

One by one, family members twist in their seats to track my progress toward the microphone.

I keep my head down as I power walk in the general direction of my seat, right palm pressed tight against my chest, and left forearm flush against my shoulder blades to hold up the broken dress.

I need to grab the notes I carefully curated onto ten different color-coded index cards for optimal reading efficiency before I jet over to the mic.

My best friend, Jordyn, considerate goddess among mortals, is perched at the edge of her chair, palm outstretched, holding said cards out for me to snatch. Ten more steps. Five.

“Do you need help?” she squawks as I close in. Her amber eyes bug out of her olive skin as I drop the back flap of my dress to take the cards.

“Are you Rikki?” a man’s voice lurches through the speakers. My head snaps up and the wedding singer snags eye contact. Great, he’s speaking to me over the microphone, for the entire room to hear.

I drop him a curt nod as Jordyn begins to grapple at my side with the zipper, yanking me back and forth as she tries to force it closed.

“Can you come up?” the singer continues. “We’re on a schedule here.”

I almost snort. We’re on a schedule—I made the schedule. “Yes, I’m Rikki! Give me two seconds!”

I glance at Jordyn. She’s hunched over in her navy-blue dress, grumbling as she troubleshoots, jerking up and down, left and right.

People are watching.

Everyone’s watching. I can hear myself breathing.

Sixteen excruciatingly silent seconds pass before Jordyn’s husband, Micah, hops up from the table to join us.

I cringe, tilting my face to the ceiling.

Hey, Universe, apparently we got off on the wrong foot with the whole manifesting a life-partner thing, but if you could let us get this zipper up so I can do my speech without flashing my family, I’d super-duper appreciate it.

“Rick, take a deep breath. You’re sweating bullets,” Jordyn whispers.

“The maid of honor’s zipper appears to be stuck!” the singer belts into the mic.

Gasps erupt around the room.

Does this really warrant gasps?

“There have been two people working on her for the past three minutes, and they still haven’t cracked it!” he continues.

“Did you try pulling it down and then pulling it up?” says a random two tables over.

“You gotta hold the top fabric closed with two hands!”

“Why is she naked underneath?”

“Is this real life, or am I having a very vivid nightmare?” I sing-talk through a pained smile.

“This thing is welded down,” Micah laments.

“Okay,” the singer announces. “We’re gonna improv here and bring up the best man! Matt Highsmith. And we’ll circle back to you, Rikki!”

“Cool!” I throw two encouraging thumbs up. Across the dance floor, Glenn’s best man makes his way to the mic.

Purple movement grabs my attention a few tables up. My mother. She stands and hustles toward me in her whimsical lavender gown, hunched forward like that’ll make her invisible to the naked eye. She’s quickly followed by my Aunt Teresa. And they’re both followed by my mother’s partner, Layla.

“Honey! What happened!” my mother yelps as she joins our sad, sweaty huddle.

“I don’t know, it zipped earlier.”

“What happened to your face?” My posse steps aside as she reaches for my zipper.

“Nothing’s wrong with my face,” I whisper as she begins to fight with my dress. “We need to be quiet—the best man is talking.”

“There’s a big red mark right in the middle of your forehead.” She laughs, bunny hopping in place to coerce the zipper into movement.

“Rikki, Whitney told me you were bringing a date?” My aunt has replaced my mother.

I emit a sad, noncommittal noise of agreement as she tugs me to the right.

“You’ve been out with so many guys this year.

It’s hard to believe now that you refused to even speak to the male species till the age of sixteen. ”

Or, Universe, if it’s easier for you to just teleport me the hell out of here, that would be grand.

My aunt yields the zipper to my mom’s girlfriend, Layla.

And Layla proceeds to cede the duty to Cousin Fran.

Fran steps aside for our Uncle Bob to try.

And Uncle Bob relinquishes the task to Fran’s boyfriend, Buck, who “works out.” Buck, in a flustered state of failure, cedes control to Fran’s seven-year-old, who comes over whining that she, quote, “wants to play.”

A crowd—no, a line—has literally formed.

Throughout the entirety of the best man’s eight-minute speech, a rotating group of my relatives—and then strangers—arrive at my (naked) side to test their strength. Like my zipper is the goddamn sword stuck in the fucking stone.