“Well, yeah, you know,” I say. “I guess it wouldn’t be the end of the world. They’re already talking on the news about canceling flights, sports . . . Hey, at least Jeremy will probably get all the money back for the bachelor party in Budapest! That’s something, right? Although we probably will need to redo all the gift bags.” I look around the carefully packed boxes from the weekend, containing all the immaculate little chiffon bags of dried rose petals and chocolates, the little packets of Love Hearts sweets, each one tied together with a lavender-colored silk ribbon. We’d gotten the sweets and chocolate on sale from a manufacturer Lucy knows, and the best before dates on them will be up by Christmas. If the wedding gets pushed to next year, we’ll have to replace them.
I don’t mind the idea of eating all the sweets by myself so much, to be fair. That wouldn’t be the worst part of this whole thing.
Kim is still looking at me, completely aghast, so I explain all of that to her too. (Minus the part where I plan to eat all the sweets.) Addison groans, burying her face in her hands and pacing to the other end of the room before turning, her arms crossed, chewing on her lip as she watches me dig myself into a deeper and deeper hole.
By contrast, Lucy is still and silent, almost like if she doesn’t draw attention to herself, she won’t get caught up in any of it.
But I don’t see what the problem is, not really.
I’m just being honest. I’m just being practical.
It’s my duty, as maid of honor. Isn’t it? To make sure Kim keeps her head screwed on right. To plan for all eventualities. Although, honestly, I was sort of assuming those potential catastrophes would be, like, the wedding car blowing a tire, not a highly contagious virus driving everyone to stay at home.
That definitely hadn’t made it onto any of the Pinterest planning boards, shockingly enough.
“Oh, sure!” Kim cries suddenly, shooting to her feet and almost knocking Lucy over. She storms toward the nearest box of wedding favors, snatching a handful out and tearing at them. The chiffon packets were dirt cheap, and they tear easily. Love Heart sweets and petals and tiny purple foil-wrapped chocolates spill onto the floor at her feet. She throws the scraps in her hand down after them, grabbing more out of the box.
Lucy lets out a quiet squeak of protest; the noise I make is distinctly more pissed off, but I don’t try to stop her.
If she wants to destroy all the wedding favors, bloody well let her.
If she wants to throw a tantrum and throw away all our hard work, fine. See if I care. I’ve put up with her bridezilla shit for months, and this, it appears, is my limit.
Because honestly, how dare she? What goddamn right does she have to get so upset over something none of us can control, and ruin what’s been such a fun night? Like her and her wedding is the only thing that’s suffering? What about me, and my lovely tidy apartment, and my calm, organized life, completely upheaved by having to host my best friend and two relative strangers for over a week? You don’t see me ripping things up and crying and making a scene.
But sure. Sure. Let’s all indulge Kim. Let’s all coddle Kim. Let’s all let Kim have her fucking moment.
If she notices my silent seething, she decides to ignore it.
(Who am I kidding? Of course she doesn’t notice. She’s so wholly self-absorbed right now, there’s not a chance in hell of her noticing how I’m feeling.)
“Sure!” Kim barrels on. The tears are flowing again now. “Let’s just eat all the wedding favors! Hmm? Why not? The wedding’s obviously ruined now anyway! If it even ever goes ahead! All that planning, all the work, all the waiting, and now—now we were—it was so close, it was . . .” She hiccoughs, gasping for breath. “His grandparents won’t be able to fly over from Spain! The honeymoon! The Amalfi Coast! Everything is going to be ruined! Who cares about stupid fucking little wedding favors?”
More chocolates hit the ground, clattering noisily. Kim abandons the wedding favors, marching toward the pile of carefully cut and arranged fake flowers and twigs we’ve all just been working on for the centerpieces, the ones we trimmed to precise sizes and paired up so carefully, tying with lavender ribbons, per Kim’s Pinterest DIY wedding board. She kicks the pile and Lucy gasps, hands flying to cover her mouth, looking unsure whether she should let Kim get this out of her system or stop her.
“Kim, sweetie,” Addison tries gently, sternly, stepping forward.
“Who needs centerpieces!” she screams. “When at this rate, there won’t even be a wedding to need them!”
She deliberately stomps over the pile, snatching up the prosecco bottle and draining the last little bit we’d left in there, tipping it right into her mouth. Kim is so livid that her face is blotchy and red in spite of her fake tan. She looks like Addison, after the face mask disaster on Monday night.
Instead of defusing the situation like I have a thousand times before, I find myself yelling right back at her.
I am so, so done with her shit.
“Do you mind not trashing my apartment?”
“Do you mind not ruining my wedding?” she shoots back.
“Why do you always have to be such a bitch? Not everything’s about you!”
“Just because you can’t hang on to a relationship for more than a month, doesn’t mean you have to try to spoil things for me! You’ve always been jealous of me and Jere, just admit it! I don’t know why I ever thought I could—”
“Oh, what, so now I’m sabotaging your wedding? Excuse me, but some of us are pretty happy being single and not letting our entire lives revolve around somebody else.”
“He’s my soul mate. You’re just bitter because you know even if you did find someone who could put up with you for longer than a couple of weeks, it wouldn’t matter, because you still haven’t come out to your parents!”
“Knew iiiiiiit,” Addison sings quietly from the back of the room.
“Oh my God,” Lucy gasps, grimacing as she looks between us.
It knocks the wind straight out of my lungs. My glare disappears and I stop grinding my teeth to gawp at her, my jaw somewhere on the floor.
She did not.
Except . . . she did.
It’s not like I care if Addison finds out I’m gay; I’m pretty sure Lucy already knows. It’s not like it’s a huge secret; just when it comes to my family.
I don’t care that she said it in front of the girls.
I care that she said it at all.
It’s a low fucking blow, and—and who does she think she’s kidding, anyway, talking about soul mates? She only dated one guy before Jeremy, and that was when we were fifteen! This whole stupid argument is nothing to do with me or my failed relationships or me not coming out yet to my family—and the fact that she even went there has my blood boiling.
She’s acting like such a brat, but that . . . Oh, that was downright malicious.
I can hear a ringing in my ears, and my hands ball into fists. I can taste bile in the back of my throat and choke it back down, along with a million and one things I’d like to scream at her right now.
She thinks I’m the one being spiteful?
She hasn’t even seen spiteful.
“You know what?” I snap at her. “I don’t know why I’ve put up with any of this. We’re supposed to be best friends, but my best friend turned into some narcissistic bitch the second she got engaged. The rest of the world stopped existing, if it wasn’t to do with your fucking wedding. So you know what? I hope the wedding does get canceled.”