I add my black heels, the ones with the mysterious scuff mark from that disastrous wedding in Aspen where the groom's ex-girlfriend decided to recreate a soap opera during the ceremony. At least that particular catastrophe wasn't my fault, which makes it practically a victory in my current circumstances. Then again, it wasn't my fault at my tenth wedding either, but here I am, going back to the place I said I would never go.
My phone buzzes like an angry wasp.
Emma: It’s just that Xavier is the best man.
Me: What?
Emma: And Griff and Logan are the groomsmen.
Me: What?
Emma: Sorry, I knew if I told you that you wouldn’t come.
Me: What?
Emma: Your ex-boyfriends are coming to the wedding and part of the planning committee.
My blood turns to actual ice water in my veins. I sit down hard on my bed, making the suitcase bounce and my carefully folded clothes scatter like refugees fleeing a natural disaster.
Me: What?
The typing bubble appears and disappears so many times I want to reach through the phone and shake the words out of herwith the desperation of someone whose entire future depends on this conversation.
I abandon my packing and pace to the kitchen, where my broken coffee maker sits on the counter like a monument to everything currently going wrong in my life. Yesterday it made concerning gurgling noises that sounded like mechanical death rattles. Today it won't even pretend to function. I'm pretty sure it's given up on life, which makes two of us.
Weddings are my calling. Making other people's fairy tale dreams come true fills something in my chest that nothing else touches, even when my own dreams are falling apart faster than a house of cards in a tornado during an earthquake.
My phone rings. Emma's contact photo fills the screen, showing her laughing face from last year's girls' trip to Colorado, back when I could still afford to split dinner checks without calculating tips down to the penny.
"Don't be mad," Emma says immediately, which is like telling someone not to think about elephants while showing them elephant pictures.
"Too late. I'm already mad. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
I know the answer to my question, but I wasn’t expecting this especially from my best friend.
"It's complicated,” she mutters.
I start throwing underwear into my suitcase with enough force to probably damage something. “How? Aren’t they all married with perfect families? Are they all successful and happy while I'm over here falling apart like a rejected contestant on a reality show? Give me something to work with, Emma."
"They're not married."
"Okay. Fine. I mean, not good for them obviously, but helpful for my mental preparation process. What else aren't you telling me?"
Emma's silence stretches so long I check my phone to make sure the call hasn't dropped, which would be perfectly on brand for this disaster of a morning.
"Em?"
"They're Dax’s best friends. He couldn't not ask them."
"He could absolutely not ask them. People make those kinds of decisions all the time. It's called tact, Emma. It's called considering other people's feelings. Look it up in the dictionary under 'things good friends do.'"
I grab my pajamas from the drawer and stuff them into the suitcase with enough violence to wrinkle everything I've carefully folded, which seems appropriate for this conversation.
"Sav..."
"No. This is not happening. I cannot plan your wedding with Logan glaring at me like I personally ruined his life when he is the one who ruined mine. Griff’s charming everyone while pretending I don't exist, and Xavier analyzing my every decision like I'm a medical condition he needs to cure." I'm pacing again, wearing an actual track in my already pathetic carpet. "Do you remember how everything ended between us? All of us? It was like a romantic disaster movie except instead of getting the guy at the end, I got trust issues and a one-way bus ticket to Denver.”
“It was years ago,” she whispers.
