“You’re losing your touch, old man,” Ari says, perching on Radhya’s lap in lieu of a chair. “Eye contact. Compliments. Flirting. Then, ‘Hey, I actually think this hoodie would look hot on you—’ ”
“—but it would look better on my bedroom floor,” Radhya adds.
Ari grabs two plastic champagne flutes. “It’s so cruel that Radhya is probably the love of my life and pretty much my only friend who isn’t attracted to women.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Radhya replies, downing one serving of cheap prosecco. “But one round of living with you was enough.”
“Funny, that’s what my ex-wife said.”
Radhya pretends to drum abadum-tsson the piles of sweatshirts and shorts. “Hey, I love you so much, I’m spending the number-one hookup holiday at a gay bar where I’m pretty much guaranteed to end the evening alone.”
“First,” Gabe says, downing his prosecco, “I’m available for all your midnight-kiss needs. And second, you’re spending the number-one hookup holiday enjoying two different but equally terrible renditions of ‘Piano Man.’ ”
In her head, Ari hears the punch line in Josh’s voice:There aregoodrenditions of “Piano Man”?
“Last year, I was working New Year’s Eve,” Radhya says, slurring her words a bit. “I got off at twoa.m.” She pauses, grinning. “Then I also got off at two thirty-fivea.m.”
Gabe clears his throat. “Exactly one year ago, I served hors d’oeuvres at a rooftop in Koreatown, came here to host the fundraiser”—he glances pointedly at Ari—“alone. And woke up in Alphabet City without my pants. I have no memory of how I got home, except that Ari was passed out on my futon in her evening gown, snoring and drooling.” He glances at her. “I assume this year will be the same, except for the clothes. That’s not an outfit that gets you laid.”
Ari looks down at the LaughRiot-branded T-shirt, shorts, and sparkly rainbow tights that Gabe ordered her to wear tonight, recalling, in perfect detail, the circumstances of how she ended up on the futon last year. She’s been trying not to let her mind wander to those places.
There’s this mindfulness exercise she’s been listening to on an app. You close your eyes and imagine yourself lying on your back, looking up at the sky, watching clouds gently float overhead. You name each cloud with an emotion you’re feeling and just let it float past, and that’s apparently supposed to help you sit with the discomfort instead of avoiding it.
Now, the flaw in this visualization is that you’restillfeeling the shitty emotion. That’s the problem with the Josh memories. They’re not puffy clouds—more like unpredictable lightning bolts that crash through her brain at inopportune times.
Maybe she hasn’t quite bridged that final gap to acceptance, but this shit takes time. At some point, without Ari consciouslyrealizing it, her hurt over Cass had morphed into something less potent. A dusting of ash rather than a burning ember.
It’ll happen with Josh, too.
She has to believe that.
Radhya stares at her with what’s probably intended as a look of concern, but in her squinty prosecco haze, she’s giving the impression that she’s confused by Ari’s nose.
Suddenly the karaoke mic goes silent over the chorus of “Return of the Mack.” Ari looks up. There’s still over a minute until the song ends. But Cameron is pointing at someone in the crowd.
“Kyle, I just realized that it’s eleven forty-five,” he shouts into the microphone. “This year, I don’t want to kiss my soulmate at midnight.” He drops down onto one knee. Ari feels her mouth hanging open. The crowd falls silent. “I want to kiss my fiancé.”
The off-brand backup vocals repeat “Youliiiedto me” as a man in a shiny suit slowly rises to his feet, nodding. The entire bar explodes in cheers as they embrace and the microphone clatters to the floor.
How many of these scenes does she have to witness? Is it some weird karmic penance for failing at marriage? Ari could probably name ten reasons for this couple’s eventual demise, the first of which is proposing with a karaoke backing track to “Return of the Mack” nearly drowning out the declaration of love.
So why the stubborn ache in her chest? Why is she thinking about how she’ll never get to tell Josh the story of this couple’s engagement? Is it really just a matter of waiting for the hurt to subside, like a slowly atrophying muscle?
“Get up there and say something!” Gabe pushes Ari off Radhya’s lap, snapping her out of the thought spiral.
“Why?”
“Sentimental crap makes people more willing to spend money. Get up there and say something fucking moving!”
Radhya holds out a plastic champagne flute in Ari’s direction. “You have like two dozen wedding-related speeches on your phone, dude.” When Ari doesn’t take the drink, she gives a tiny shrug, pulls her hand back, and downs the prosecco herself. “Just please God, not that paragraph fromCaptain Corelli’s Mandolinor the Apache Prayer.”
Nodding absently, Ari makes her way around the merch table, nearly tripping on her way to the stage as the DJ fades the song out. An unsettling hush falls over the bar. She picks the microphone up off the floor, triggering a surge of feedback.
“How about that, everyone? Beautiful, right?” She takes a breath. “Gabe’s been running this fundraiser for ten years and I think this is our first engagement. Congratulations to Kyle and Cameron!” There’s a smattering of applause and whistles.
She swallows and scrolls her Notes app, pausing on a speech labeled “Toast from a Cynical Father of the Bride Who Doesn’t Want to Mess Around with the Creep Factor of ‘Giving His Little Girl Away.’ ” That’s literally the title. It’ll have to do.
“Here’s the thing, Rach—er, Cameron.” She clears her throat and reads off the screen. “When you fall in love with someone, you’re all optimism. You have no sense of the hardships you’ll face in a few years. You’re thinking ‘This is it!’ because, uh, Kyle makes you happy. But the truth is…”
