“No idea. All my dating took place in a car or on a couch without anyone’s parents home.”
Julia snorts. “So classy. That’s my favorite thing about you. How classy you are.”
“Classy like this?” I say, lifting a strand of her hair that’s fallen out of its braid and making it into a mustache on my face.
“Yes, exactly like that. How am I going to survive without this level of sophistication next year?”
Her question wipes the smile off my face. I drop her hair, feeling like I’ve shrunk a good five inches.
“I can’t even think about that right now,” I say quietly.
Julia’s expression turns serious too. “Whatever happens or doesn’t happen with her… I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know if I could do any of this on my own.”
“Funny,” I say. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
8
The zipper is stuck.
My zipper this time. I twist around to see it in the mirror, but I can’t tug it loose. Regrets: I have them.
Last night, my parents got a call from one of the grooms after the rehearsal dinner. We were all watching Perfect Match in the living room and playing a game I made up during Bachelor marathons with Julia: I assigned each of us a popular phrase from the show, and we kept track of every time someone said it. So far Mom was winning with “this is an amazing journey,” but I was close behind with “I could really see myself falling for him.”
When Dad disappeared into the kitchen, I joked to Mom that it was because his phrase, “I know my husband is in this room,” was losing, and she laughed and told me how much she was starting to love this game.
“That may or may not be because I’m winning,” she said, tapping her nose like we were in on a secret.
This was my favorite version of my parents, open and natural and fun, something it seemed like they were often too stressed to have. I wanted to linger in it as long as I could.
Dad returned with a grim look on his face. A bridesmaid and groomsman had had too much to drink at dinner, and the grooms were worried about potentially having an odd number of couples in the bridal party.
“I did my best to assure Josh that there are plenty of ways the photographer can stage everyone, but he was adamant,” Dad said.
Mom paused the TV. “Do they have anyone who can fill in?”
“I don’t think we need to jump to that quite yet.” Dad sank back down onto the couch. “I told him no one’s going to be paying attention to how many bridesmaids and groomsmen are up there during the ceremony. And I was going to send them some photos of uneven wedding parties, but—”
“Is that really what they need to look at the night before their wedding?” Mom said. “If Josh wants an even number, we should be doing whatever we can to make that happen.”
And just like that, the natural-fun feeling vanished. Edith jumped onto the couch next to me, as though sensing my anxiety spike.
“I’ll do it!” I yelled, a little too loudly. Edith was so startled, she leaped right off the couch. “I mean, if they’re still sick tomorrow and they can’t find anyone else. I could fill in.”
“Then I guess it’s settled,” Mom said, and I tried not to think about how quiet they were for the rest of the episode.
The bridesmaid and groomsman were only worse this morning. I believe “hungover AF” is the proper medical terminology. Josh and Graham were relieved when Mom presented me as the backup plan.
“We’ve taught you well. This is just what wedding planners have to do sometimes,” Mom said as she handed me the dress, a taffeta A-line in a shade of lime that could not possibly be flattering on anyone. “We improvise.”
And then she improvised herself into the kitchen, where she discovered Tarek was precisely the size of the missing groomsman.
Whoever I was in a past life really fucked things up for me.
It was perhaps not my most well-thought-out idea. Anything to stop them from arguing, I thought in the moment. I twist a little more, not enough to tear the dress, trying to grasp the teeth of the zipper, but it’s no use. The grooms are outside, taking photos on the grounds of this weekend’s winery, and the rest of the bridal party is waiting nearby. Tarek and I are supposed to join them as soon as we’re done getting ready in our respective suites.
Meaning I have only one option for help.
I gather the skirt of the dress, clutching it to my chest to make sure I’m not in danger of losing a boob. I head out of my changing room, pausing in front of his. “Tarek?” I call out, knocking twice on the door.
“It’s open,” he calls back, so I turn the handle and step inside.
“Hey, could you help me zip—”
A shirtless Tarek is standing in the middle of the room, facing a mirror, his back to me.
He’s wearing pants, thank god, but his back is all bronze skin and muscles that flex as he reaches to pull a crisp white shirt off a hanger. All I can focus on is the way his hair curls against the back of his neck, a patch of rough reddish skin beneath it. The curve of his spine. The dip of his lower back.
Then he turns around, and I have the briefest glimpse of his chest before I snap my gaze to the ceiling.
He did not look like this when we were in middle school.
“Shit shit shit I’m sorry!” I say, stumbling backward. My legs tangle in the skirt of the dress, and for a moment my life flashes before my eyes. I’ve had a good run, I suppose. There are worse ways to go than death by embarrassment at age eighteen. But by some miracle, I manage to neither drop the dress
