1
A Minor Hiccup
Look, normally after a hookup, I am all about the graceful exit. Poll my friends, and four out of four will tell you that when it comes to guys,gracefulis practically my defining characteristic—and if not that, definitelyexit. What happened this morning I lay at the feet of the patriarchy. The moment I shut the hotel room door and tried to creep away, lest I wake the sleeping groomsman inside—thoughtful of me, yes, and nothing to do with the fact that I’d promised him my phone number when he woke—the frilly,traitoroussash on my yellow ball gown caught in the doorjamb and yanked me backward like a rubber band.
As I sailed butt-first toward the door I’d only just escaped from, I pictured my obituary:Lee Stone died as she lived, embodying the height of glamour and respectability—not wicked hungover, thoroughly dicked and dressed head to toe as the fifth-best Disney princess, how dare you besmirch her memory. Obviously, it would have to be written by a fellow PR professional, an expert in the art of spin.
The obituary image was quickly followed by the same thought that had haunted me over the course of the past eight months: Why, ohwhy, had I agreed to be a bridesmaid in a Disney-themed, Disney-located wedding? And for a college friend I was barely close to, no less. Did my shameless pursuit of open bars and men in tuxedos know no bounds?
Luckily, the layers of crinoline puffing up my ball gown finally proved valuable, muffling the sound of my body colliding with the door. I bent over, rubbed my stinging elbows and wrestled the sash away, cursing it for ruining my James Bond–worthy escape.
For the millionth time, I wondered what self-respecting woman actually got married at Disney World—and worse, forced her bridesmaids to dress up as Disney characters, knowing full well the odds were high we’d end up knocking boots with the groomsmen, themselves tragically outfitted as Cinderella’s footmen. What special brand of saccharine-flavored sadism convinced a personthatwalk of shame was worth risking?
I mean, I knew the answers to those questions, obviously. Because here I was, staggering away from said footman’s hotel room the morning after Daisy Taylor’s wedding—excuse me, DaisyDavid’s wedding, since there was no way in hell that girl wasn’t taking her husband’s last name. Dangerously late for the airport, and seeing double thanks to the buckets of wedding champagne I’d consumed. Despite my fervent hope last night, it turned out there was no such thing as magical, hangover-free alcohol—even if you were drinking it overlooking a life-size Cinderella’s castle. Duly and sadly noted.
I crept down the lush, brocade-curtained hallway of the royal-themed Disney resort—nothing but the best for the groomsmen—and scratched as quietly as I could on the next door down. Instantly, the door cracked open and a woman dressed as a giant white teapot squeezed through, wheezing. I yanked Mac clear a little too hard, suffering PTSD from my own escape, and we caught ourselves just before tipping backward, stiletto heels wobbling. Whoever said high heels were invented to make it harder for women to run away was clearly right on the money, and I was adding Disney costumes to the list.
“You okay?” I grunted.
Mac waved me off and shut the door whisper-quiet. “Don’t want to wake...um, what’s his face...” She gave me a guilty look for not remembering her groomsman’s name. Mac, unlike me, cared about such things.
“Come on,” I whispered back. “Our flight leaves in ninety minutes and we still have to sprint the entire length of the castle to our rooms, pack our shit and Uber to the airport.”
“Crap,” Mac said, scooping her giant teapot costume into her arms for better aerodynamics. “And we have to say goodbye to Daisy, too.”
She took off, and I scurried after her, hiding my eye roll so Mac couldn’t see. Screw Daisy. When she’d asked me to be a bridesmaid, I’d been shocked and instantly filled with guilt over the fact that I’d clearly meant more to her than she’d meant to me. I’d written her such a gushing email:Wow, Daisy, of course I accept! A thousand times, yes.Now, teetering across the hotel lobby while people turned to stare, I began to suspect I’d actually done something grievously wrong to Daisy in college, and she’d waited seven long years to exact her revenge.
A long con. I could almost admire it.
We burst out of the hotel’s ornate double doors into the appallingly bright Florida sunshine and froze, cowed by the sight before us. There were people everywhere. Worse than people—families. Of course there were. Because we were smack-dab in the middle of the Magic Kingdom on a perfectly clear Sunday morning in September, and it had been so long since I’d been thoroughly and publicly humiliated. So where else would they be?
As Mac and I stood there, dozens of small heads swung in our direction. A high voice yelled, “Mommy! It’s Beauty and the Beast!”
“Oh, Christ,” I muttered, shielding my face. As if it was that, and not the yellow ball gown, giving me away.
“This way!” Mac pointed in the direction of Cinderella Castle, a vast expanse of white stone and blue spires. Once again, I cursed Daisy, whose dedication to fairy-tale romance meant she’d insisted on getting married right in front of the damn thing.
I didn’t have time to list the reasons her obsession with fairy tales and true love was ridiculous, foolhardy and 100 percent going to lead to her eventual heartbreak. At the moment, the only thing I cared about was that Daisy’s absurd old-fashionedness meant the groomsmen and bridesmaids had been booked in separate hotels, divided by the longest gauntlet of child-filled castle grounds I’d ever witnessed in my admittedly castle-and child-lite life.
“Mommy, I want to hug Mrs. Potts,” came another child’s voice, disconcertingly close.
“Of course, honey,” someone answered pleasantly. “Let’s go ask her very nicely.”
Mac and I turned to find a mom tugging her tiny son toward us. The mom looked up, catching our eyes. I can only imagine the full picture of what she saw, since I’d been unable to examine myself in a mirror before sneaking out of the footman’s room.
But Mac—oh, God, Mac’s mascara had shifted downward to make little raccoon-rings around her eyes, her pink lipstick smeared from what I hoped was hours of high-quality making out. Her teapot costume, now that I really looked, was on ass-backward, Mrs. Potts’s face grinning creepily from her back.
I searched my own body with mounting dread. No, no, my dress was on the right way, at least. But I could feel my hair hanging in messy strands out of my elaborate Belle-bun, and I was sure, from what I remembered doing with the footman last night, that my face looked at least as bad as Mac’s.
“Oh, honey, actually, that’s not—that’s not therealMrs. Potts,” said the mother quickly. She shook her head at us and covered her son’s eyes.
“We’re so sorry. We were forced to wear these costumes. I begged not to.” Mac wrung her hands with regret. Unfortunately, her confession reeked of some sort of Disney-themed S&M plot, and only made the mom twist her son around and hurry him away.
Mac deflated inside her bulky teapot. Now that innocent children were involved, she’d clearly reached her limit for personal debasement. Which, as someone who’d witnessed her dating life since college, was saying a lot.
Using precious seconds, I surveyed the scene. Even though the mom and her son had run away from us, their reaction didn’t seem to be stopping the rest of the families from believing Mac and I were Disney World employees, here to entertain them as Mrs. Potts and Belle. They were crowding in on us from every direction, drawing closer like a tightening noose.
I may live according to my own moral code—what traditionalists might refer to asmorally grayor perhapsno code at all—but even I had to draw the line at scarring this many children in one fell swoop. I made a decision: since there was no way around, we’d have to go through.
