This is an excellent question.
“Come on,” he says again, and bends down to hoist me to my feet.
We’re both unbalanced, but Nate less so than me. He hooks an arm around my waist to take me to the bedroom.
Here’s the thing: when I drink, I get . . . more. I’m more loud, more talkative, more excitable, more hilarious, more everything. And I’m already a pretty outgoing person. And when I hit my wall, I get sleepy. Often, I take catnaps on a night out—either at predrinks, or on a crappy sofa by a bathroom in a club, or on a bench—and then I’m ready to go again. I have hit that wall right now.
But even so, I’m capable of walking the few feet from the living room to the bedroom by myself.
Not that I tell Nate that, of course. He smells nice, and I like the feel of his arm around me and his body next to mine. And it’s nice to feel taken care of. Like when someone brushes your hair for you.
He’s already turned the bedcovers down (although, I notice with deep despair, he has not left a little chocolate on the pillow for me) and he sits me down on the mattress. I flop backward, crawling clumsily under the covers, and Nate helps draw them up over me.
I snuggle down, and I was wrong: screw the floor by the sofa, nowhere has ever been so comfortable as this. I peer through the dark at Nate.
“Goodnight.”
And he must be drunker than either of us realized, because he bends down to kiss my cheek. “Goodnight.”
I’m asleep before he even leaves the room.
apartment #22 – olivia
Chapter Twenty-three
Captain’s—er—Maid of Honor’s log, day . . . What day is it? Day seven. (God, is it only day seven? I swear it’s been, like, four months already.) Anyway. The centerpieces are finally finished. I even bunked off work a little early to help out with them. Lucy cooked dinner tonight—veggie burgers she found in the back of my freezer, from the time I was dating the vegan, and spicy sweet potato wedges. Also, I am going to lose my mind if this goes on much longer.
We’re all starting to succumb to the cabin fever a little, by now.
I’m finding it borderline impossible to work; I have to start out on the balcony, until lazybones Addison and night-owl Kim both wake up and I can evict them from my bedroom and work from there instead—although I’m continually interrupted throughout the day.
And as for them—well, there’s only so many days in a row you can watch rom-coms on Netflix, according to Kim. They even got bored of Come Dine With Me after enough episodes.
I’d give anything to be sat around watching my thirtieth episode of Come Dine With Me instead of working, I think. But even Addison seems antsy; I’ve caught her checking work emails on her phone when she thought nobody was looking.
The grass is always greener, I guess.
With the last of the dishes from dinner washed and put away, I gather the few remaining bottles of prosecco from the stash I bought for last weekend, finding spaces for them in the fridge to chill them for later tonight. I keep one bottle back and pop it open to drink now.
Hell, we deserve this.
Two days hanging out together doing wedding stuff was fine, but seven? Seven is a lot.
I think even Kim may be starting to get sick of it by now.
Luckily, tonight’s Bridal Bucket List item is the wedding playlist, which Kim needed to sort out anyway for the reception party in the evening. Mostly, I think, it’ll involve a bunch of cheesy noughties pop songs—and what goes better with a #ThrowbackThursday playlist on Spotify, than a few glasses of prosecco?
Nothing, that’s what.
It’s a great idea.
For the first glass or two, at least. It’s the greatest idea ever, for those first rounds of drinks. It’s more party than pandemic. It’s bright and brilliant and the kind of night you feel could and should go on forever.
Everything goes downhill so fast, none of us could ever have seen it coming.
We’re on to the third and final bottle. Addison suggests that the Arctic Monkeys song I’ve just played should make the wedding playlist, which gets Kim talking about the dorky dance Jeremy and his three groomsmen are planning to a similar song.
She complains about it vehemently, but she still bounces up from the floor and drags Lucy to her feet, getting her to join in recreating the dance since they’ve both seen the guys practicing, giggling over the whole thing.
It is dorky. I can just imagine how seriously Jeremy is treating the whole thing, too, which somehow makes it even more hilarious to picture. Addison is hooting with laughter, joking that they’d better take classes if they don’t want their first dance to be a total joke.
Everyone is laughing. Everything is great.
None of us notice Kim’s attitude flip, it happens so fast.
At first I assume she’s just in hysterics. Almost as one, we all suddenly realize she isn’t laughing anymore, but crying. She stops dancing abruptly and col apses in a flood of tears, lamenting the wedding playlist and the DJ and then saying, “But what if the band cancels on us? Because of all this?”
“You can get another band,” Lucy says, crouching next to her and rubbing her back.
“What about the DJ?”
“We’re all the DJs you need,” Addison declares. This is followed by what I can only describe as her throwing shapes. It’s awful. It’s also hilarious.
Lucy cuts her a look—and me a look, when I snort with laughter at Addison’s moves—but she tells Kim, “Exactly! But I’m sure the DJ won’t cancel.”
The DJ is the least of their worries, I think. The DJ, the caterers, the venue . . . The dress shop could close, if all this carries on, and then how will Kim get to her fittings? And that assumes she even needs a dress—if this gets so bad they start to cancel public gatherings . . .
And I blurt, “That’s even if it all still goes ahead at all.”
Kim wails. Loudly, heart wrenchingly.
I know I shouldn’t have said it as soon as the words are out of my mouth, but it’s too late by then; the prosecco has loosened my tongue. Lucy stares at me with her eyes wide, and Addison clutches both hands to her hair, which is damp and tied back in two French braids, her face flushed from the drink, and utterly mortified.
Uh-oh.
Time to be Maid of Honor Extraordinaire, not just Kim’s friend.
“Well, I’m just saying,” I add hastily, trying to backpedal, my tongue heavy and tripping over the words. “With everything going on, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing got postponed. Nothing to do with Jeremy, obviously. You guys have seen the news, everything they’re saying about how this might go. It could be next year before you get to walk down the aisle.”
Kim stares at me, stricken, the tears drying on her pale face. “Next year?” she rasps, hands clasped to her throat.
Behind her, Addison makes slashing gestures across her throat, her eyes bugging at me. It’s a very clear message and I can just imagine her saying, Quit while you’re ahead, Livvy. Just. Stop. Talking.
But Kim looks so distraught that I have to fix it, and explain that I didn’t mean anything bad by it, and it’s nothing personal, obviously, it’s just that if this week is anything to go by, it’s all totally out of our control and might even get worse for a while before it gets better, and even though Lucy and Addison look like they want to rugby-tackle me to the ground and stuff a pillow over my face, I can’t seem to stop talking.