bright-pink bus sporting curly silver letters that read BACHELORETTES ON BOARD was parked at the curb.
“I refuse.” I crossed my arms.
“You can’t get cold feet the night before your wedding day!” my grandmother hollered out of one of the bus windows. “We’re having a condom balloon animal contest and going to a strip club!”
“It’s a Tuesday,” I said, horrified.
Gran, moving much more nimbly down the bus stairs than any seventy-five-year-old had any right to, grabbed me by the arm, and hauled me onto the bus.
A large white cockatoo shrieked when he saw me.
“Zeus!” Gran yelled back at the bird. “Shut up! I’m trying to get the deets on the marriage from Grace!”
“Shut up, bitch!” the bird screamed then preened himself. He was wearing a hot-pink festive vest with silver embroidery.
“What a nice outfit you have!” Brea cooed at the bird when she hopped onto the bus.
“Birds before hoes!” the cockatoo squawked.
“We have matching vests for everyone, courtesy of Brea’s amazing handiwork,” Gran said, passing them out, then jumped in the driver’s seat.
“It’s literally three in the afternoon.”
“Yeah, I have to be up early tomorrow to do catering for the TV show,” Elsie said. “So we’re having an early bachelorette party.” She handed out the bachelorette gift bags while Gran started up the bus.
“I took a page out of Gwyneth Paltrow’s book,” Gran said happily, “and gave each of you one of my new candles. They smell like my vag.”
Ivy opened the bag and made a gagging sound.
“Of course this is my life.”
The bus lurched, and I grabbed onto a nearby seat back as Gran swung into traffic, narrowly missing running over a tiny Miata.
“Gran,” I said slowly, looking around. “Where did you get this bus?” Party buses were usually retrofitted school buses with a plush interior. This just looked like a regular school bus with its typical rows of seats.
“Borrowed it from a hookup!” Gran bragged. “I’m thinking about buying one myself. I figured we could tear it out and put in a kitchen and a composting toilet and live in it like those tiny house people. I can take my candle-making business on the road. I have a feeling our landlord’s getting ready to kick all us old-timers out. I don’t trust him. It’s always good to have a backup plan.”
“Now I really need a drink,” I muttered when Gran pulled the bus up in front of a strip club advertising the hottest guys in Lower Manhattan.
She knocked on the door. A perturbed bartender opened it.
“We’re not open until eight.”
“We’re on a schedule!” Gran insisted. “This gal is getting married! We want to see the finest strippers New York City has to offer!”
“Gran, they’re closed.”
“Dog turds!” the parrot squawked, the crown of feathers on his head rising.
“I don’t know what this city’s come to,” Gran insisted. The bartender rolled his eyes.
“Back in my day…”
He slammed the door in our faces.
We looked around.
“There’s a pizza place across the street,” Ivy said, pointing.
We got strange looks, trooping in with our ribbons and my bridal crown.
“What’ll ya have?” the bored waitress asked when we slid into the booths.
“Wine,” Ivy begged.
“And pepperoni pizza,” I added.
“You getting married?” the waitress asked around the wad of gum in her mouth as she took our order.
“Prettiest bride in the world right here!” Gran said, patting me on the shoulder.
“Who’s the lucky man?”
“I, uh, I actually don’t know.”
6
Chris
“Get the groom another shot!” Eric called out. It was four a.m. I was getting married in six hours.
“Fake married,” I reminded myself and adjusted the gold crown on my head that read GROOM in diamonds that sparkled from the pulsing lights of the club’s dance floor.
“To a real woman though,” Eric reminded me.
“Maybe she’ll be hot,” Josh said cheerfully as a server in a skintight white minidress brought over a tray of chilled shot glasses of vodka. She was pretty, with long blond hair and a tiny waist.
I toasted her. “If I wasn’t getting married tomorrow, I would totally ask you out.”
The server made a face at me.
“It’s not like that,” I said quickly, “I don’t even know this chick!”
“You’re marrying someone you don’t know?” she asked in a thick Staten Island accent.
“Fake marrying,” I corrected
Her frown got even deeper. “Like an arranged marriage?”
“More like a mail-order-bride type deal.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, I mean not in a creepy way! I lost a poker game.”
“He has a gambling problem,” Eric said to the waitress.
“Not like that! I have cash. I tip very well,” I assured her, standing up quickly and pulling out a