Sam:Tacos: yes. Stuff you're avoiding: only if you're ready and want to.
"Oh, let me see, let me see," Lauren squealed from across the pedicure spa. She'd caught Andy examining my ring when she arrived—I'd never before been so aware of my chipped nail polish and violin string-calloused fingers—and immediately made her way toward us while also trying to unbuckle her heels.
"It's lovely," Andy said, glancing up at me with one of those half smiles that I was now interpreting as her version of glee. "I'm thrilled for you, and Sam."
She was a tough nut to crack, but the more time I spent with her, the more I admired her. She was calm and intelligent, and though she didn't say much, she was always genuine and kind to me. When Sam and I reunited after his time in Maine, I knew I had to salvage my relationships with his siblings and their significant others, and I figured they were going to make me work for it.
I was wrong.
The day after Sam and I started over, we went to a barbeque at Patrick and Andy's apartment. I was actually shaking in my sandals and terror-sweating like a beast, but Andy welcomed me into her home, hugged me, and then put me on fruit salad prep in the kitchen. I ended up pulling her aside after many glasses of sangria and apologizing for all of my prior offenses and extreme displays of awkwardness.
She shrugged it off, confided that she had plenty of her own awkward, and told me to get my ass to pedicure night or weekend brunch on the regular. That single, sloppy interaction shed light on the real Andy, the one I'd missed the first time around. The same went for Lauren, but I hadn't gained much traction with Shannon yet.
"Thank you, and—oh!" Lauren's arms closed around my shoulders, and for a small woman, she was alarmingly strong.
"It's so good to see you!" she cried, squeezing me tighter. "And you're getting married!"
I gulped back the flare of panic that shot up every time I heard those words. The panic had roared to life after that call with my parents. They didn't come out and say that I'd failed before, or that I was missing something essential to growing a healthy marriage, but their silence said everything.
And it wasn't a matter of cold feet for me. I wanted this, I wanted to make it work, and I wanted to quiet the doubt in my mind, but I couldn't erase the thorny fear that I'd never be enough for Sam.
It was like those signs at amusement parks that read "You Must Be This Tall To Ride," and I didn't measure up.
"I'm so excited. It's amazing," I said, emotion ringing in my voice. "And overwhelming."
Lauren offered a knowing nod, and gestured toward the bank of massaging pedicure chairs. "Let's sit down and get you a drink. You're engaged, which means everyone is up in your business and you deserve a steady stream of hard liquor."
"Shannon couldn't make it?" I asked.
Andy and Lauren exchanged a long, loaded glance before Andy said, "She was still at the office when I left."
Thanks to a certain fiancé, she was probably avoiding me.
"All right," Lauren said, holding up her hands. "This is what we're going to do. If she tries dodging us again, I'm going to that little ginger's office and dragging her out by her Burberry scarf."
"She's avoiding you, too?" I said.
At the same time, Andy said, "You're a lot braver than you look, Miss Honey."
"We arenotdevoting an entire drunk pedicure night to talking about how I'm going to take on the Black Widow and win," Lauren said, reaching over to grab my wrist. "Let's talk about pretty things. Show me that ring again."
Before we could delve any further into Shannon's apparent refusal to see any of us, Lauren launched straight into a detailed accounting of Matt's proposal two years ago, their holiday trip to Mexico where they surprised her parents with the news, and their wedding planning activities. It was good to hear about their struggles and stresses, and it was a sharp reminder that Lauren wasn't the annoyingly perfect Barbie doll that I pegged her for when we first met.
"I probably looked at five thousand dresses before I picked one," Lauren said. "I went to every shop in the state, and almost went to New York. I had dozens of bridal magazines and designers' catalogs, and hundreds of pins on my Pinterest board, but I couldn't work up more than a 'meh' for any of them. I couldn't decide on anything, and I remember calling my mother one afternoon and having an enormous meltdown. I thought my wedding was doomed. I thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn't finding The One."
Andy laughed into her margarita glass. "You tell that story with more angst than when Frodo Baggins tells the story of the One Ring, and he lost a fucking finger in that ordeal."
Lauren turned toward me with a smirk. "She gets to be sassy because she found my dress on her first try."
Shaking her head, Andy said, "You were looking at traditional princess-y dresses and super crazy trendy dresses—as if any of that was you—and forgetting that you're fun, cute, and sexy." Andy glanced at the shimmery aqua paint going down on my toes. Best I could tell, she was sticking with black polish. I'd never seen her in anything lighter. "You're fun, too. No poufy tulle ball gowns or cathedral trains for you, Tiel."
"I am just trying to digest the idea of gettingmarriedagain. I can't start thinking about the wedding-industrial complex yet," I cried. "There's a million things I'm trying to figure out right now, the least of which is what I'll wear, and…fuck, this is overwhelming."
Lauren dumped the contents of her glass into mine. I stared at it, certain I couldn't manage that much tequila.
"You've been engaged for what? Five days? You're doing the best you can, and that's all you have to do."
"When youareready, give me a call," Andy said, completely ignoring my momentary freak-out. "I'd love to look at dresses with you."
