18. Chapter 18
Chapter 18
I t was probably more like ten minutes. Jane kept peeking out the door, trying to monitor the situation. She had just barely stepped back to check her phone when Haley burst into the restroom, nearly taking Jane out with the door. “Hey,” Jane said, putting up her hands to steady the both of them. “Wow. Okay. So what’s going on?”
Haley let out a loud exhale. “Well, you saw the first part of what was going on,” she said. “That ring on her finger.”
Jane pressed her fingers to the middle of her forehead, as though she could ward off the headache that was about to ensue. “When did that happen?”
“Today.”
So many different ways she could go with the conversation, but Jane went with an obvious one: “ When ?”
“After we got our nails done. When we went back to the hotel to get ready.”
Jane played the afternoon back in her mind. “That’s why she was late to the rehearsal?”
“They went for some walk on the beach or something.”
“Wow,” Jane said. “I mean, that’s some timing.”
“Do you know what she told me? She goes, we got caught up in the moment”—here, Haley’s eyes widened for emphasis—“like you and Blake did when you scheduled the wedding.”
Jane’s jaw dropped. “She didn’t.”
“Oh, she did.”
Jane almost started laughing. Leave it to Ashley to be able to put a spin on almost absolutely anything . “He just had a ring with him?”
“Right?”
“I know, but really?”
“I guess maybe he was thinking of doing it later, after the wedding or something. They’re staying a few days longer. I really don’t know.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “Can you believe this? We barely knew this guy existed a week ago.”
Jane sucked some air in through her teeth. “I wasn’t going to mention that part, but …”
“I mean, literally, who proposes right before someone’s rehearsal dinner?”
“Um,” Jane said, “I guess Cody does.”
“You know what?” Haley said, ignoring that.
“What?”
“I’m unbothered,” she declared. “I’m just deciding. I decide how I want to react to things in life, and I am choosing to be unbothered.”
Jane was pretty sure she had gotten that advice from a social media post or something, but she nodded. “You seem unbothered,” she said, trying to sound encouraging instead of sarcastic.
Haley’s shoulders slumped, like the weight of the farce was too much to take. “Okay. You’re right. I am absolutely not unbothered. I am all new levels of bothered.” She covered her face with her hands with a dramatic groan, then dropped them to her sides. “Who does that?”
“Well,” Jane said, “you know Ashley.”
“I do know Ashley,” Haley said, and made a sound of frustration mingled with genuine familiarity that summed up all that sentence entailed.
Jane tilted her head. “I guess the bright side—”
“There is no bright side.”
“Is that Tommy and I are the least of anyone’s concerns now,” Jane finished.
Haley rolled her eyes. “Tommy is always the least of my concerns.”
Auntie Miss came into the bathroom then, a flurry of indignation and high-octane energy. “I can hear you two all the way down the hall.”
Jane leaned against the stall door. “So you heard she’s unbothered.”
“Something like that,” she said. “On the other hand, I am extremely bothered. Blake’s own sister? What is that girl thinking ?”
“Don’t get me started,” Haley sighed.
Auntie Miss dropped her voice to a stage whisper. “I couldn’t even look at Blake’s mother,” she said. “She must be mortified .”
Jane made a face like, wellllllll. “What’s going on now out there?”
“Blake and his parents are talking with Ashley and Cody,” she said. “I think Maddie went outside to get some air.”
“I’ll bet she did,” Jane said.
“Poor Maddie,” Haley said.
“It almost did poor Gumby in when they told her,” Auntie Miss went on. “And I’m not kidding.”
“ Mom !” Haley exclaimed, clapping a hand over her mouth.
Auntie Miss gave them a level look. “You know, Haley,” she said. “It’s not too late to reevaluate things.”
“ Reevaluate things?” Haley repeated. “Which things?”
Auntie Miss raised her shoulders and dropped them in the longest, most pronounced shrug in the history of humankind. “ Things ,” she said, the word weighted like a twelve-ton slab of concrete.
“Yikes,” Jane said, taking an involuntary step backward.
Auntie Jess, who had followed Haley’s mom into the bathroom, intervened then. “All righty,” she said, steering Auntie Miss by the shoulders. “Let’s go, you’re coming with me. Girls, let’s take like ten minutes, and then we’ll reconvene with everyone for dessert.”
They watched as Jane’s mom led Haley’s mom back outside, the door soft-closing behind them. Jane and Haley stood in silence for a moment, looking at the closed door. “For dessert,” Haley said, echoing her. “Your mom has ice water in her veins.”
Jane nodded slowly a couple times. “They always did say that about her.”
Haley turned to her. “Did you hear my mom, though? Things? What kind of things? The wedding ?”
“Nooooo …” Jane said. “I think she was just trying to … you know.”
“No,” Haley said. "I don’t know.”
Jane waved it away with her hand. “I wouldn’t spend too much time thinking about it.”
“What should I think about instead?” Haley said. “The fact that Ashley tried to hijack my rehearsal dinner with her engagement announcement?”
“Well,” Jane said, “I guess you can think about that.”