Always a Bridesmaid (for Hire) Page 8

  It wasn’t that our friendship was pulled apart by a series of nasty comments or one final conversation that made one of us go AWOL. It was exactly the opposite. Ours was friendship at first sight when we dove into being instant best friends during my sophomore year of college. But after two years, we just drifted. The daily calls turned into weekly text messages that turned into occasional Instagram likes, and finally dissolved into questions from mutual friends, over a sticky bun at brunch, about how the heck Liz was doing.

  This happens a lot when we’re in our twenties. Our roster of friends suddenly goes from too long with an attached waiting list, to not quite having enough for a list at all. And as we get older, we understand that’s just how friendship works. You go from practically joined together at the hip to waiting, patiently, for the next time you’ll bump into her at the mall or get a butt-dialed voice mail from her at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning so you can laugh about it for a few days and then go back to forgetting to remember that a deep-rooted, secret-swapping, matching-outfit kind of friendship ever flowed between the two of you.

  Yet here we are, sitting across from each other, discussing the side effects of the NuvaRing when, out of the blue, she asks a question that would have made sense four years ago—not now, when our friendship is full of spider webs and dust.

  “Well,” I say, brushing away the crumbs from my low-fat, gluten-free blueberry muffin. “Why me?”

  “I know that we haven’t been close lately,” she says, shuffling around in her purse and handing me a small box and an envelope. “But do me a favor? Open this and read that, and then let me know your answer.”

  She covers her face with heart-shaped sunglasses and heads for the door, leaving me here to clean up the mess she created on aisle What Just Happened?

  Speaking of aisles, I had walked down four of them that year already. I was a living manual on how to be a bridesmaid without making a mess. I had gotten all my mistakes out of my system early on, and now I was a well-oiled machine. I knew not to bring lingerie to the bridal shower unless you want to give the bride’s eighty-seven-year-old grandma heart palpitations, and I knew that if I ever waited until the month before the wedding to order my bridesmaid dress again, I would have to go to a Jo-Ann Fabrics store and make the dress myself. I started giving the other rookie bridesmaids unsolicited advice the way Greenpeace workers, with clipboards, on the sidewalks of New York City start giving you facts about the environment.

  When girls in my sorority wanted to know how they could find a bridesmaid dress for under two hundred dollars, plan a bachelorette party that didn’t involve strippers dancing around to “The Thong Song,” or handle a bridezilla who asked them to grow their hair out four to six inches for her wedding day, the answer was always, “Call Jen.”

  But saying yes to being a bridesmaid for someone I hadn’t seen in almost a year, even though she lived twelve blocks away from me, was something I felt weird about. It made me wonder, for the very first time, if Liz was asking me because she really, genuinely wanted me by her side or if she was asking me because she knew that I was good at it.

  The pear-shaped box and envelope are staring up at me from where they are sitting patiently, next to the cream and sugar. I pick up the envelope first, tearing it open like a child eager to see what she’s been given for her birthday. I pull out photographs of us and a handwritten letter.

  Dear Jen, I read out loud to the fine folks at Starbucks, most of whom are too busy typing away on their MacBook Airs to care. You know, our friendship started over flimsy things like Wednesday afternoon ice cream and trips to the dollar section at Target. But before we even understood how two strangers could turn into soul mates, there you were, having my back.

  I run my fingers over the words, written in magenta Sharpie, and think back to the day Liz and I met and how she lost her cell phone. We spent four hours on a scavenger hunt looking for her iPhone 3, pretending we were on safari searching for an Addax nasomaculatus, until finally, underneath a bush by the pond in the middle of the campus, there it was.

  Jen, I can’t do this without you. So, will you be my bridesmaid?”

  I pick up my phone to call Liz. I have an answer ready, even though I haven’t opened the box patiently sitting right in front of me.

  “That was fast,” she says. “I’m only four blocks away.”

  “Liz, listen,” I begin, touching the gloss of the CVS-printed photos, wishing I could bring those days back into my life now. “My answer is . . .”

  But before I can finish my sentence, my phone begins to shake violently in my hand. It’s my friend Maria calling on the other line. She hasn’t called me since we graduated from high school, back when we were using our parents’ hand-me-down flip phones. When someone calls you like this, out of the blue, you answer, assuming the reason she’s reaching out is either really awful or really good. Either the person won a million dollars and decided to make good on the offer pinky-promised while you were braiding lanyard on the top bunk of your summer camp cabin when you were in middle school or someone died. There is rarely an in-between.

  “Liz, can I put you on hold for a sec? I’m getting another call.” I click over. “Tell me you struck gold.”

  “Jen,” she whispers.

  “Oh my god, Maria. Who died?”

  “Jen,” she begins again, this time sounding excited. “I’m calling because I have something to ask you.”

  Oh no, not again, I think. Not again. I saw on Facebook a few months ago that Maria had gotten engaged, the same day twenty-five other people on Facebook did, and so I decided to block her on my newsfeed. She’s either calling me to ask if she can borrow my password for Pinterest to stalk the wedding boards I’ve curated over the years, or for something far worse.

  “Will you be my bridesmaid?” she blurts out before taking a deep breath right into the receiver of the phone.

  “Oh god,” I say, my reaction completely unfiltered. There really should be some sort of drinking game where, whenever I get asked to be a bridesmaid, everyone in a one-mile vicinity has to drink a bottle of Patrón—including me.

  In the last year, I began keeping tabs on which question I get asked more often: “Why are you still single?” or “Will you be my bridesmaid?” Both questions seemed to enter conversations when I least expected them to and left me foaming at the mouth.

  My phone begins to buzz again. At this point, I’m standing on the corner of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue with an unopened box in my hand and heart palpitations in my chest.

  I click over, leaving Maria and her question to simmer, like a stir-fry I don’t want to eat.

  “Is that a yes?” Liz asks.

  I switch back to the other line.

  “So, is that a yes?” Maria asks.

  I hang up on both and turn my phone on airplane mode and shove it into the bottom of my purse, below the tissues, the empty gum wrappers, and the expired Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, before seamlessly entering a crowd of New Yorkers who are all trying to avoid something. I’m bobbing and weaving and dodging elbows, walking the fifteen city blocks home too emotionally dehydrated to handle the situation at hand.

  When you’re in that state of mind, you can’t think clearly. You walk a block too far because you’re not paying attention to the street signs. Or you decide it’s a better idea to climb twenty-six flights of stairs to your apartment instead of taking the elevator. I do both, which is why I collapse onto the laminate floor of my apartment, exhausted and out of breath, as if I’ve just been kidnapped and escaped all in one day.

  My roommate walks toward me, thermometer in mouth, tissues stuck all over her T-shirt, as if she’s trying to make an avant-garde fashion statement. She’s got a weekend bag in her hand, hoping to recover in a more stable and calm environment: her parents’ house on Long Island.

  “You are not okay,” the girl with the flu says to me.

  I tuck my body into the fetal position, hugging my knees and falling apart.

  “
I was asked to be a bridesmaid today,” I say, huffing to try and catch my breath. “Twice. By two people I haven’t spoken to in a combined average of four years.”

  Kerri makes an attempt at a laugh but coughs uncontrollably instead. She’s as miserable as I am but with a fever. She tosses me a Gatorade from the fridge, insisting I need the electrolytes to snap me back to life and become a functioning member of society once again.

  I’ve lived with Kerri for four years now, so she knows that when I’m going through a prima-donna episode of hot flashes, the only thing she can do is make me laugh and get me back on my feet, usually with food or a drink.

  I grab my phone from my purse and download every single dating app the iPhone store offers—my ritual after being asked to be a bridesmaid. I post an old About Me section that I have saved in my Notes app into all of my new profile pages.

  “You’re like a professional bridesmaid or something,” Kerri says, smiling in a way that lets me know that, even though, at this very moment, we both aren’t doing so well, we will ultimately, eventually, be okay again.

  “Yeah, or something,” I mutter, lifting myself up and slamming myself right back down on the microfiber couch and into a pile of used tissues and cough drop wrappers.

  I didn’t know I closed my eyes until I open them again at 9:00 p.m. My phone has eighteen missed calls from Liz and Maria, and I discover that I’m sitting on top of an open, empty pizza box, with nibbled pieces of crust left inside, a half-drunk bottle of Three Buck Chuck on the coffee table. It’s dark and Kerri is gone.

  I grab the box that Liz gave me and pull it toward my chest, ripping it open to find a ring pop inside with a tag attached to it that reads, Say I Do to Being My Bridesmaid.

  “Yeah, always a bridesmaid,” I say, picking up the wine bottle with my index finger and thumb and doing an imaginary cheers with the stuffed animal moose tucked into the crook of my arm. “Always a professional bridesmaid?”

  Maybe Kerri was onto something. People always tell you when you do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result, you’re insane. Well, maybe I could do the same thing over and over again and expect . . . a paycheck?

  “Hold on, Moose,” I say, turning to him for moral guidance. “Do you think I could make this into a business?”

  Maybe there were people out there who needed someone reliable, someone who could be there for them when their friends lived a thousand miles away, or had a minivan full of kids and two full-time jobs, or hadn’t been in their lives for a while, kind of like what was happening with me and Liz.

  I sit up straight and look around my apartment. There are bridesmaid dresses stuffed underneath the couch, Save the Dates taking up prime real estate on the fridge, and thank-you notes functioning as coasters on my coffee table from brides responsible for big-ticket line items on my credit card bill.

  Kerri was right. I was a professional. An amateur one, but still. Maybe it was worth a try, worth seeing if anyone would hire me to be their bridesmaid so I could pay my credit card bills and my rent on time for once.

  I shove a slice of half-eaten crust into my mouth and grab my computer. I flip it open, double-click on the bouncing Google Chrome icon, and enter a website I’ve never visited before.

  “www.Craigslist.com,” I say to Moose, who’s watching me with rapt attention.

  I suddenly remember what my mom used to repeat to me on a daily basis when I was in high school: nothing good can come from staying out past 11:00 p.m. or going on Craigslist. But where else could I test this idea with real results? I could post a Facebook status about it, but all people would do is comment with an LOL or smiley face emojis. I could call up my closest friends, but I’d probably be interrupting them in the middle of clinking glasses of some fancy vintage of Merlot with their SigNif to celebrate the end of a long workweek.

  But Kerri thought it sounded good, and she’s my voice of reason, even if she does have a 102-degree fever.

  “What section, Moose?” I say. Moose sits there, stuffed and still, not trying to stop me, so I proceed.

  Women looking for women. That seemed like a good home for this sort of thing. I open up a new post and I begin typing.

  Title: Professional Bridesmaid for Hire—w4w—26 (NYC)

  Post: When all of my friends started getting engaged, I decided to make new friends. So I did—but then they got engaged also, and for what felt like the hundredth time, I was asked to be a bridesmaid.

  This year alone, I’ve been a bridesmaid 4 times. That’s 4 different chiffon dresses, 4 different bachelorette parties filled with tequila shots and guys in thong underwear twerking way too close to my face, 4 different prewedding pep talks to the bride about how this is the happiest day of her life, and how marriage, probably, is just like riding a bike: a little shaky at first, but then she’ll get the hang of it.

  Right, she’ll ask as she wipes the mascara-stained tears from her perfectly airbrushed face. Right, I’ll say, though I don’t really know. I only know what I’ve seen and that’s a beautiful-looking bride walking down, down, down the aisle, one two, three, four times so far this year.

  So let me be there for you this time if:

  — You don’t have any other girlfriends except your third cousin, twice removed, who is often found sticking her tongue down an empty bottle of red wine.

  — Your fiancé has an extra groomsman and you’re looking to even things out so your pictures don’t look funny and there’s not one single guy walking down the aisle by himself.

  — You need someone to take control and make sure bridesmaid #4 buys her dress on time and doesn’t show up 3 hours late the day of the wedding or paint her nails lime green.

  Bridesmaid skills I’m exceptionally good at:

  — Holding up the 18 layers of your dress so that you can pee with ease on your wedding day.

  — Catching the bouquet and then following that moment up with my best Miss America–like “OMG, I can’t believe this” speech.

  — Doing the electric and the cha-cha slide.

  — Responding in a timely manner to prewedding email chains created by other bridesmaids and the maid of honor.

  “What are you looking at?” I say to Moose, who hasn’t moved since I started writing the ad and hasn’t alerted the authorities to grab my MacBook Pro out of my hands. That’s the benefit of having a stuffed animal moose as a best friend. They let you be reckless, they let you do what you want, and they sit there with an upward stitched mouth, cheering you on with pure unadulterated mute bliss.

  I find a carton of strawberry coconut milk ice cream in the freezer and start eating it with the only clean kitchen utensil we have: a whisk. I read the ad over once more.

  Nobody is ever going to find this, I think to myself. So why not post it?

  I press Send, slam my computer lid shut, and place it on the coffee table beside the memorabilia of a single girl’s Friday night bender.

  I grab my phone and see another sixteen messages from Liz and Maria.

  Earth to Jen

  Are you alive?

  I slide my finger over each text message and press Delete, deciding to read other messages—the kind from potential lovers—on my newly downloaded Tinder profile instead.

  One from Matt, 27, NYC, pops up.

  Your name must be Beyoncé, because when I clicked your profile, the power went out.

  “Gross!” I shout out, to the infinite abyss of my Murray Hill apartment and toss my phone across the room, where it lands, screen up, on a dirty pile of clothes.

  chapter nine

  Bridesmaid for Hire—Crazy or Genius?

  “Tell us what happened.”

  “Us” isn’t just the guy sitting across from me wearing a starched button-down shirt and a black blazer, or the one, two, three, four people operating the camera, audio, and light equipment. “Us,” in this live TV situation, is—I’m going to take a ballpark guess—a couple million people.

  Do deep breaths show up on camera
? What about armpit sweat? Oh no, I’m wearing a 70 percent polyester red dress. It doesn’t breathe! Are people in America going to think that this professional bridesmaid girl has extreme sweating issues when they see the puddles forming near all of my sweat glands? Celebrities get endorsement deals all of the time. If this whole bridesmaid thing takes off for me, maybe I’ll score one for a hyperhidrosis medication.

  Is it my turn to speak? I can’t tell. One reporter asked me a question, but then he started talking to other reporters about how this is the weirdest thing they’ve reported all week. Weird? I wouldn’t say that. Weird is a story about a Florida man dressing up as Darth Vader to rob a grocery store. This is more adorable, unusual even, perhaps the greatest accident to ever happen to a perpetually single girl.

  They’re laughing like untamed hyenas. How does this whole live TV thing work? Am I supposed to just jump in and speak when I’m ready? I’m ready now. My heart thinks we’re at Disney on the Tower of Terror ride. Any longer and it might hit me. I might realize I’m someplace scarier. I’m on live TV.

  The camera is slowly coming closer to my face, as if it’s the head of a turtle. Is there something in my teeth? Of course there’s something in my teeth.

  Where’s my friend Katie? I think I can see her from over here. She’s tapping her toes. Why is she nervous? All she’s been doing is taking selfies with the studio equipment.

  I’ll start slowly. Let me try and pull myself together and hide this internal discharge of chaos behind my Crest White Strip–induced pearly white smile.

  “Well, I posted an ad on Craigslist last Friday to offer my professional bridesmaid services to strangers.”