“To the most sophisticated of ladies,” I say, holding out my mug, and Asher clinks hers with mine.
I settle back onto the couch in her living room and snag a cookie, trying not to think about how Tarek used to make the best salted chocolate-chip. The seven years between Asher and me sometimes feel like fifteen and sometimes like nothing at all. I was eleven when she went to college, and even though she didn’t go far, I cried myself to sleep in her room the night she left. When she came home on weekends with buckets of laundry because the machines in the dorm were never available, it didn’t feel the same. I’d finally been able to stop worrying on a daily basis that my parents were going to split up, but any minor disagreement—how to properly load the dishwasher, which of them would call back an especially hostile MOB—took me back to the place where our home without my mom in it felt so, so quiet. And now Asher was gone too.
For the longest time, I wanted to do everything she did: wear my hair like hers, listen to the same music, hang out with her friends while they gossiped about things that made no sense to me, yet still made me feel extremely cool. Gradually, I realized there was this tremendous piece of her identity—her whole career—that I didn’t want, and sometimes it feels like an invisible barrier between us.
Sitting here on her living room couch feels almost like those old times.
“I can’t believe I’m getting married,” Asher says, using an elastic on her wrist to tie her hair up in what I’ve come to view as her wedding topknot. “I mean, yes, I’ve been thinking about it forever, but I can’t believe it’s almost here. You remember that vision board I had.”
“The one that was ninety percent Chris Evans? How could I forget?”
“Hey, he’s responsible for at least half of my sexual awakening.”
“Who was the other half?”
She levels me with a serious look. “John Oliver.”
“Oh my god.”
“I feel really comforted by the way he delivers the news!”
“This explains so much about you,” I say, and she tosses a cookie chunk at me. I open my mouth and try to catch it, but it hits my chin instead. “Can I ask you something without coming across like a total dick? I know you’ve wanted the fancy wedding for so long, and I’m just wondering… why?”
As much as I want to linger in the sisterly nostalgia, it’s hard not to think about how Asher’s life is going to change when she’s married. I’m not sure where I’ll fall on her list of priorities. Most time we spend together these days is at work. We don’t have nights like this very often—not that we don’t want to, but when she has a free night from work, she’s with Gabe or with her friends. She’s been doing this slow drift since the separation, since I realized my family wasn’t the solid unit we’d always been.
And if I left B+B, I’d be leaving Asher, too.
Asher, to her credit, takes my question seriously, placing an entire cookie in her mouth and chewing thoughtfully before washing it down with a sip of wine. “It’s changed over the years. At first it was because I wanted the attention. I mean, I was a kid, and we grew up waiting hand and foot on brides and grooms. I wanted a massive party that would be all about me. And then I started getting emotionally invested in each couple we worked with. Being part of their day felt like the biggest honor, and I’ve always been so grateful for that. I’d see all the people who showed up because they cared about this couple so much, and that was what I wanted. Obviously, I wasn’t going to marry the first random who showed interest. And I didn’t start dating Gabe with the intention of getting married—at first it was just that I liked him, and then I loved him, and then I started picturing a future with him.”
I wish her optimism didn’t sound so foreign to me. “Is it weird that I never had a vision board?”
“Vision board or not, you don’t have to know right now if you want to get married,” she says. “Even with it being such a huge part of our lives. And you can change your mind at any time.”
“I know that.” Apparently, I can have an eternity to figure out the kind of love I want, if any, but my career? That’s already been decided.
“Stop thinking,” Asher says, shoving my shoulder, probably knowing I’m too deep in my head but, fortunately, not knowing why. Her phone lights up on the coffee table, and she snatches it, eyes going wide when she sees who’s calling. “I have to take this.”
Because of course B+B is always there, ruining my rare sister time like it’s ruined everything else.
“Go,” I say, shooing her as she answers the phone on her way to the kitchen. I hear a couple gasps, a few wows, and then a reassurance that we have everything under control. I’m not entirely sure whether whatever’s happened is good or bad.
Asher’s grinning when she gets back to the living room, a few strands escaping her topknot. “That was Victoria,” she says—one of our clients, who needs only one name because she’s semifamous. “Hold on. I need to process this.” And then she downs the rest of her mug of wine.
My family has planned some high-profile weddings—a TV meteorologist, a governor’s daughter, a local musician whose band played the reception. But Victoria and Lincoln, her fiancé, with their swanky art museum wedding happening in late August, are their most famous clients to date.
They met on a Streamr reality show called Perfect Match I hate-watched with Julia last year before realizing, halfway into reading my twentieth think piece about it, that maybe I wasn’t hate-watching it after all. The premise: after filling out a
