nineteen, and I hooked up one and a half times in college. The half time was because the guy had been fumbling around down there, couldn’t get it up, then had burst into tears. I had spent the evening making him cookies and tea and listening to his life story, which revolved around his parents’ messy divorce.
I was not marriage material; I was not even relationship material! I still wasn’t even sure what had possessed me to go on that date with Chris.
“What a disaster! That will teach me. I’m never dating again for the rest of the year,” I promised myself as my alarm went off and I jumped out of bed.
“There’s the happy bride!” Gran said loudly when I walked into the tiny kitchen, trying to get in the wedding zone, except this time, I was going to be a bride. Gulp.
“Now sit down,” she said seriously. “We need to talk.”
I felt nauseous. Though Gran could be annoying and overbearing, she was all I had left. Was she sick? Was she moving to Florida?
I slid into the rickety kitchen chair as Gran bustled at the peeling kitchen counter.
“We need to talk,” she said ominously, “about your wedding night.”
She spun around and set a tray in front of me. A fourteen-inch-long white dildo wobbled in front of my nose, flanked by piles of pink-and-gold condoms.
“Gran, I’m not sleeping with him,” I said in horror.
“But he’s your husband!” she insisted, picking up the dildo. Except she couldn’t, because it was somehow suctioned to the tray.
“Get that off of there for me, will ya?” she said after tugging the thick piece of rubber. “My wrists aren’t what they used to be.”
“I am not touching that.”
Zeus hopped up onto the table and started attacking the dildo. The rubber bounced and smacked him in the face, and the bird let loose a shriek of obscenities.
“Now, that attitude’s not going to win you any points with your future husband,” Gran said, hands on her hips. “I know you aren’t the most experienced…”
“I have enough,” I mumbled, face red.
Gran sniffed. “I slept with three different men this week. One of them was super young too—in his fifties, can you believe it? Your gran’s still got it!”
“You’re going to be such a beautiful bride!” Brea squealed happily.
My friends were gathered in the bridal suite while the camera guys zoomed around us. I tried to act natural. We were supposed to be pretending to be drinking, laughing, and having a good time while I prepared to be married to a complete stranger. All the while, Ivy was surreptitiously checking her text messages from the venue and Elsie was giving directions into a Bluetooth headset to the catering staff that was prepping the reception.
“I can’t wait to see you in your wedding gown,” Gran said happily. She was already dressed, and her hair had been sprayed, permed, and shellacked into a foot-tall beehive on her head. The bright-purple mother-of-the-bride dress was blinding, and the parrot was wearing a matching vest.
“You should have seen me on my wedding day,” she reminisced as Brea helped me step into the flowing gown.
“All the guys wanted me,” Gran bragged. “I caused a traffic accident when I walked down the street to the church. And I know you’re going to—ooooh.”
She made a face as Brea zipped up the back of the dress.
Elsie paused mid-sentence, and Ivy’s face was perfectly professionally neutral.
“What?” I demanded, looking down.
“It’s very creative…” Sophie began.
“This dress is avant-garde,” Brea insisted. “It’s part of my fall wedding dress collection.”
“You don’t think you want to go back to the drawing board on that?” Gran said.
“Karlie Kloss wore this dress down the runway, Mrs. Fulton,” my friend said stubbornly.
Gran snorted.
I turned to look in the mirror and sucked in a breath, trying not to make a face because I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings. The top of the dress was like a long-sleeved suit jacket but had a cinched waist then choppy layers of tulle. There were two skirts—one long one and then one that stopped at my knees, then there was a train out of the same material that trailed in a mat behind me.
“Kylie has like a foot and a half on me, and she is a former ballerina,” I said slowly. “I look like…”
“She looks like a demented cupcake,” Gran said. “Can’t you put her in something else?”
“This is the only dress I have in her size.” Brea chewed on her lip.