Scot on the Rocks

to say. Seeing her cry like that, pretending that she wasn’t, was making me want to cry myself.

“Honey, what is it?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Vanessa,” I said, handing her a tissue.

“I just get very emotional at weddings is all,” she said, taking out her engraved Tiffany & Co. compact and powdering her nose.

“Emotional is using a handkerchief to dab your tears of joy. You’re about halfway into a box of Kleenex.”

“Is it that bad?” Vanessa asked, checking her reflection in the mirror.

“Kind of, but you could never really look bad. So what is it?” I asked.

“No, this is your thing, Brooke. Your night. I’m totally fine,” she said.

“Actually, it’s Ava’s night, not mine. And you’re my best friend, so even it was my very own wedding, I’d still want you to tell me what was wrong,” I said.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really. You’re my best friend in the world. You know that. You can tell me anything,” I said, handing her another tissue.

“Marcus isn’t really working this weekend,” she said.

“He’s not?”

“He’s not. I’ve asked Marcus for a trial separation,” she said softly, looking down intently at her tissue. It was covered in her perfectly applied mascara.

“What?” I said. I couldn’t believe my ears. Vanessa and Marcus were supposed to be the perfect couple. The beautiful lawyer and the handsome doctor living happily ever after. I grabbed a monogrammed guest towel off the counter and started tearing it in halves.

“It’s been a long time coming,” she said. “About a year ago, he had an affair and we just haven’t recovered from it.”

“I had no idea,” I said, and was stunned that I hadn’t. I can barely keep a particularly bad order of chicken parmesan to myself much less something that would affect my whole life like the breakup of my marriage. “I’m so sorry.”

“I haven’t recovered from it, I should say.” Leave it to Vanessa to think of a detailed analysis on why she was still upset that her husband had cheated on her.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again, handing her another tissue. It felt as if that were the only thing I could say. “I can’t believe you were holding all of this inside.”

“It’s not exactly the type of thing that I want to talk about. I thought that everything was fine,” she said and started to cry again. She had her head down and her shoulders were shaking. I leaned over and gave her a hug. Not one of those hugs that women give each other when they sort of grip each other’s shoulders and delicately pat each other on the back. I gave her a real hug. One of those big bear hugs where you hold on so tight that you can barely breathe. I grabbed her and pressed her to me and didn’t let her go. I could feel her entire body heaving and I could practically hear her heart beating. I didn’t want to let her go until I could figure out how to make it all better for her.

“It’s okay,” I whispered into the back of her head. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here for you. Anything you need. If you want to talk, we’ll talk. Or, if you just want to cry, we’ll cry. You know how good I am at crying.”

Vanessa broke away and started to laugh. “How about this — we focus on me now and we cry about how your life is falling apart over dessert.”

“Deal,” I said.

“Actually, that’s why I thought it would be a good idea to come here. Just put a little space between us and see what happens.”

“And?” I asked. I noticed that she had barely called Marcus, but at the time I thought it was just because he was on call.

“I’m more confused than ever,” she said.

I nodded.

“Do you think that you’d be able to forgive someone?” she asked me, and I honestly didn’t know. I told her so. “Well, if given the chance, would you have forgiven Douglas?” she asked.

“Probably,” I said. “But then I bet he would have done it to me again. In hindsight, I think that that’s just the sort of guy that he is, you know?”

Vanessa nodded back to me, but I could tell that she didn’t know. Of course Vanessa didn’t know. She would never be stupid enough to be with someone for that long who wasn’t a stand-up guy. To be with someone who you knew would do you wrong, but to be insecure enough to wait until it happened. To think that that’s what you deserve, that you can’t do any better, and then to not even have the luxury of being shocked when it does happen to you.

“Let’s just put it this way,” I explained to her, “when Douglas told me about it, I was angry, upset, and everything else you could imagine. But I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t surprised that he’d done it. And there’s something wrong with that.”

And there was. Only I was just realizing it now. “With Marcus,” I continued, “I’m pretty shocked. It just seems so out of character for him. Like a response to something, as opposed to a regular behavior. Like a little kid acting out almost. Not like I’m making excuses, though.”

“I know, I know you’re not. And I kind of agree,” she said. “That’s what makes it so hard. I feel like I can’t turn my back on him, but I’m just so hurt. It’s just so hard to get past. And the fact of the matter is that I can’t decide whether I want to get past it or not. So, that’s where I’m at. Don’t tell Jack, okay?”

“Not a problem. Where is Jack?”

“Jack? I thought that your boyfriend’s name was Douglas?” Ava said, looking decidedly unbridal, emerging from one of the bathroom stalls. She was pulling her dress back down with one hand, while balancing a martini glass and a cigarette in the other. She stumbled a bit on the way out in a way that made me think that this was not her first drink of the night. Nothing says class like a bride with a drink and a cigarette. Classy with a capital K. The only thing that would have looked better would have been if she were holding a beer bottle instead of the martini.

“It is! It is,” I assured her. “I just sometimes like to call him Jack.”

“Oh,” she said, apparently unfazed. Or too drunk to actually be fazed. “Well, Vanessa, I’m so sorry that your husband wasn’t able to make it.”

Vanessa didn’t say a word, apparently trying to decide whether or not Ava had heard our conversation. I couldn’t tell, either, but I could smell the alcohol on Ava’s breath from where I was standing.

“There you are!” a tiny little blond girl in a nondescript black strapless cocktail dress cried out, rushing into the powder room. She began alternately puffing up and then patting down Ava’s dress, and then did the same with Ava’s hair. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” she said, laughing nervously in our direction. “These brides, I tell you,” she said, still with the nervous laughter, “you take your eye off of them for one little teensy tiny minute and look at what happens!” She was trying so hard to act as if all this was normal that it reminded me of the summer that my parents almost got divorced. The more my mother manically assured me that everything was okay, the more I got the feeling that I’d be spending weekends with Dad and weekdays with Mom.

Ava broke from the blonde’s grasp and took a long drag from her cigarette, like a heroin addict getting her fix. The ashes were coming dangerously close to her gown. The tiny blonde held her hands out to catch them.

“Oh, my God,” the blonde said in a panic, “Bev is going to kill me!” Beverly Lawrence — the name explained it all. I actually began to feel sorry for this little lackey of hers. Beverly Lawrence was the ultimate Hollywood public relations power player. She was as famous as her A-list clients in her own right. She even taught a class on it at UCLA. Beverly’s reputation for being tough on her minions was the stuff of urban legends. Rumor has it that the last assistant who let her down couldn’t even get a job selling (gasp!) retail once Beverly was done spreading the word about her in New York.

“Ava’s really shy and gets panic attacks from too many people,” the blonde said. “Please don’t tell anyone that you saw this. It would really hurt her image with the kids,” she said, with her eyes pleading and her arms