“But you can’t drink that at a wedding,” Isabel a explained.
“You have a lot of rules,” Ben said. “I’m going out for a cigarette.”
Isabel a ordered a white wine and stood by herself on the side of the room. She watched the bride and groom arrive and hoped that they wouldn’t come anywhere near her. They had no idea who she was.
When Ben final y came back, about ten minutes later, he was carrying a brown paper bag and smiling a proud smile. “What?” Isabel a asked.
“Red Bul ,” he said. “I got it at a convenience store down the street. Now I can just order vodka on the rocks. Pretty smart, huh?”
Somewhere after the dinner was served and before the cake was cut, Isabel a lost Ben. Everyone at their table was up dancing and mingling.
Isabel a sat there and drank wine. She felt like a fool.
JonBenet smiled at her from across the room and then walked over to the table. “Hey, Isabel a.”
“Hey,” Isabel a said. She was happy not to be sitting alone.
“Where did your date go?” JonBenet asked, smiling.
“Oh, I don’t … I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“He’s probably off somewhere with Mike getting into trouble. Boys can be such shits sometimes, right?”
Isabel a laughed. JonBenet was being very kind, but Isabel a found it hard to look at her straight on for too long. It made the hair on her arms stand up. She thought about the JonBenet footage that showed her in the swimsuit competition of the beauty pageant. She wished she had never seen that part of the documentary. It haunted her.
“So, how did you and Ben meet?” JonBenet asked.
“In a bar,” Isabel a said. Sometimes she tried to make the story a little better, to embel ish it with details. But she didn’t feel like it right then.
“Mike and I met at a wedding,” she said.
“Real y?”
“Yeah, his cousin married one of my friends from col ege. It’s funny, isn’t it? The way things happen?”
Isabel a nodded. “Yeah, it is.”
How she met Ben could have been a cute story, Isabel a realized. If they ended up together, she could tel people, “That Ben! So impatient, so impish!” But for that to happen, Ben would have to be a different person. And he wasn’t. He was just a cocky boy who didn’t want to wait his turn.
That was al . He had to go to the bathroom. That was their story. The next time someone asked, “How did you meet?” Isabel a could say, “Ben had to pee.”
JonBenet chattered on about the different people at the wedding. She talked about her friend’s wedding that she was in next month. “The bridesmaid dresses are beautiful,” JonBenet assured her. Isabel a had never met someone so in love with weddings. She tried to picture JonBenet as a bride, but she kept seeing the real JonBenet, overly made up in a poofy dress.
Ben came back about twenty minutes later, and JonBenet stood up. “I should go find my prince.”
“Where have you been?” Isabel a asked. “I’ve been sitting here by myself for almost an hour.”
“Whadya mean, by yourself? There’s people al around.”
“These aren’t my friends, Ben. You just left me alone. Everyone’s been staring at me. I was sitting al by myself before she came over here.”
“So what? Are you mad because you had to hang out with crazy JonBenet?”
“She’s not that bad, Ben.”
“She’s crazy,” Ben said, like it was a fact. Like it was something everyone knew.
Isabel a felt bad for JonBenet, the way that everyone at the wedding was talking about her, like she was some kind of freak show. No one knew what went on in her relationship with Mike. No one even real y knew her. Maybe she loved Mike more than he liked her. And wasn’t that horrible?
Wasn’t that sad? But people forgot about that. They didn’t see a tragedy, just a good story. To them, it was just some girl they could point to and say, “Wel , at least my life isn’t as fucked up as that.”
“So what if she wants to get married?” Isabel a asked. “Why is that the worst thing in the world? It’s not such a crazy thought. She and Mike have been dating for a while. Isn’t it weirder that Mike is avoiding it?”
Ben shrugged. He took the straw out of his drink and downed the rest of it. “Why do you care?” he asked.
“I just think it’s mean the way that you and your friends treat her. I mean, what about Mike? If he doesn’t want to marry her, then why doesn’t he just break up with her?”
“Not everyone is dying to get married, Isabel a.”
“I’m not saying that everyone is. But she clearly wants to. And if he doesn’t want the same thing, then shouldn’t they just break up?”
