“I would be honored,” I tell her sincerely, attempting to temper the outright excitement in my voice. “To apply, I mean.”
“Good,” she says curtly, but there’s a pleasantness about her that makes me wonder how she and Patricia are friends. “Take my card. Feel free to give me a ring when you get settled.”
“I will. Thank you.”
I take the card from her and try to slip it into my pocket before remembering I don’t have one. Instead, I wait until they turn around and stick it into my bra. But it doesn’t go unseen. As Patricia steers Samantha back towards her table, she turns around at me and raises her eyebrows.
Is this whole family having some kind of collective stroke? Or did Matthew’s admission inspire them to drop their weapons, at least for tonight?
I head straight for the dessert table, hoping to find Marianne to quell my confusion. Or cake. Whichever comes first.
“I think someone spiked Patricia’s drink,” I tell her when I reach her. “She’s actually beingniceto me.”
“Maybe she’s just doped up on love,” Marianne sweeps her arm towards the busy dance floor. “Weddings have a strange way of making peopleinto their best selves.”
Marianne has a point. There’s not a Warren here who doesn’t look genuinely thrilled. Arthur is actually lucid past seven p.m. Harry has moved on from his comically off-tempo swing routine to some bizarre rendition of the sprinkler. Even Matthew and Steven are dancing, although I notice they’re careful to leave room for the Holy Spirit between their cummerbunds.
I watch as Jules departs from the dance floor, giving Harry a big kiss before trotting towards our table. The trotting is more aspirational than legitimate: in that massive dress, she’s got the agility of a giant tortoise.
She plops down in the seat next to us, fanning her face with a gold-leafed menu card.
“Break time for the dancing queen?” I ask, giving her shoulder a squeeze.
“Harry is unstoppable. He never runs out of energy! I had to recruit his Great Aunt Martha to give myself a break!”
“It makes me so happy to see you happy, Jules,” I say as Will passes me a plate of cake that looks like it was cut from the walls of Versailles. What would happen if I stopped worrying, for once, and actually enjoyed myself too? This patched-together gang isn’t perfect, but it’s progress. Matthew isn’t hiding anymore. Patricia is treating me more like an actual human and less like gum on her Leboutin. And I’ve finally let go of finishing my PhD: the dream I never really wanted.
We may not be a real family, but maybe we’re making each other just a little bit better. Maybe that’s enough.
“Does this mean you’renotstill furious with me for making you get on that plane?” Marianne asks me.
I think back to the day Marianne and Will dragged me to the airport, practically blindfolding me to get me on the plane. It all seems so different to me now. How could I be furious when I got to experience the adventure of a lifetime? I faced fears that have haunted me since childhood. I finallylet myself deviate from the plan I’ve been constructing my entire adult life. Yes, I got my heart broken. But for a few years there, I wasn’t sure I had any heart to break.
“As long as you’re not still furious with me for booking the hurricane motel,” I laugh.
“Besides Will bleaching my favorite suitcase to ward off potential bed-bugs, I’d say we got by relatively unscathed,” she says.
“I’m probably the one she’s mad at.” Jules interrupts. “Watching the makeup artist put foundation on her this morning was like taking a dog to the dentist.”
“Jules, it’s your wedding day. I couldn’t be mad at you if you put me in a sumo suit.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“Is that a promise?”
Marianne takes a large bite of the opulently decorated cake and promptly spits it out all over her plate. I knew anything that pretty couldn’t be edible.
“That good, huh?” I ask.
Marianne’s eyes go wide as saucers as she chokes out the last bit of chocolate.
“Oh my god. Is she having an aneurysm?” Will asks me, grabbing his wife’s shoulders as she chokes.
“Stella,” she wheezes out between crumbs. “Stella. Oh my God.”
I follow Marianne’s pointing fingers down to the path at the end of the large lawn. I’m half expecting to find a bear before I see what’s really causing her to asphyxiate.
It’s lucky I don’t have any cake in my mouth, because I’d probably spit it out, too.
