I grabbed her hand. “You know, Camilla did have one interesting thing to say.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“She mentioned that there was a free room down the hall.”
Ivy looked confused. “Okay, for what?”
I grinned at her.
“You can’t seriously be thinking about sleeping with her!” she hissed. “If you are, then you’re seriously dumber than you look.”
“You said I looked attractive!” I protested.
“Yes, exactly, which is highly correlated to unintelligence.”
“Then you must be suffering from the same affliction.”
“I’m not attractive,” she scoffed.
“Youarevery attractive, as evidenced by the fact that you completely missed the meaning of my invite to the free room.”
Her face went beet red. “You’re disgusting. I can’t believe I felt sorry for you.”
“You came on to me! And you were offering to ‘help me.’” I made air quotes.
“With an ice pack, not…” she sputtered and flailed her arms.
“The hottest, dirtiest sex you’ve ever had in a public place?” I offered.
“Yes. No!” She jabbed her finger at me. “You need to start making better decisions. You can’t go around having sex in public places. I bet you did that with Camilla, and that’s how you ended up in this mess. You need to realize that your billions don’t make you immune to shitty life choices.”
“You mean like inviting a strange man to your condo to spend the night?” I countered.
“Yes,” she said, glaring at me, “exactly like that.”
13
Ivy
Itried to put Evan out of my mind over the weekend. Like on every weekend during wedding season, I had a bride to attend to. Unlike Imogen and Camilla, this bride was wonderful and wholesome. She even gave all of us at Weddings in the City little personalized music boxes as thanks.
“You are literally the best bride ever!” I told her when she hugged me before taking off with her new husband to start on their grand adventure. It was the wee hours of the next morning, but she still looked as radiant as she had the day before.
After dropping Amy off at her apartment—which was even tinier than mine, though it did have a courtyard she could use as outdoor living space—I went home. Finally alone in my condo, I slumped on my bed and started to cry as Fergus howled irritably from under the bed.
Sometimes I didn’t know whether the bridezillas were worse than the happy, perfect brides. The nice brides were certainly easier and more fun to work with, but it was hard to convince myself that I was totally and completely happy with my life when I saw someone who had everything I wanted, and they were so nice and sweet that I couldn’t even hate them for it and instead was just so dang happy for them.
I scraped the leftover fish Elsie had given me onto a plate for Fergus then sat on the bed to drink, eat leftover wedding cake, and rewatchQueer Eyeon Netflix until the sun rose. I spent the rest of the day sleeping off the rich food and too much alcohol, dozing with the background noise of the Fab Five giving wholesome life advice, until furious knocking on the door jarred me out of my stupor.
“I’m not here,” I mumbled. The knocking continued.
It’s probably Mrs. Russo, I thought, yawning as I pulled on a hoodie. She got lonely sometimes and liked to pop in to chat and ask me if I wanted cookies, which of course I always did. She wasn’t going to mind if I wasn’t wearing a bra.
As soon as I opened the door and saw Evan there, I immediately shut it.
“Ivy,” he said through the door, “you can’t just leave a guy out here. If you’re embarrassed because you’re not wearing a bra, don’t be. Your breasts are like two perfect grapefruits, ripe on the tree.”
I swung the door back open. “What is wrong with you?” I hissed. “People will hear you!”
