Unlike other clients who I get to know during engagement photos or pre-wedding Zoom meetings, my only knowledge of the groom has come from an hour of online sleuthing as I waited for my flight. According to his LinkedIn, the only social media account of his I could find, and the snippets Meredith has posted on her Instagram, he’s in asset protection at Harding International Finance, was treasurer of his fraternity during his time at UNC, and is a four-time champion of his fantasy football league. Not really a lot to go on.
“Loyal. Hilarious. Smart, way smarter than me,” Derrick remarks. “We’ve been friends for over a decade. He’s practically my brother at this point.”
“I bet you have quite a few stories you could share then.”
“Oh, plenty. But I’m hoping to tell the most embarrassing ones over champagne at the wedding.” He laughs with his whole body, and there’s a boyish demeanor under his suit of muscles.
“So, you’re giving a speech then?”
“Being Grant’s oldest friend and all, it’s expected,” he explains. “I’m sure the girls have theirs all written out, but I’m planning on winging it.”
“You totally should,” I reply a little too enthusiastically.
Drunken toasts are one of my guilty pleasures. Listening to judgmental fathers, weepy best friends, and plastered groomsmen tell inappropriate and explicit stories in front of family members makes eight hours of surviving on appetizers worth it. The experience is like being in a reality TV show where the characters change but the secondhand embarrassment always hits.
“Just don’t drop the mic. I’ve seen my fair share of them shatter. And the subsequent tears that come with the fifteen-hundred-dollar replacement fee is not worth the one second of cool you think it embodies.”
“Eh, probably won’t even use one.”
“Really?”
“My voice carries,” he says, projecting into the nothingness ahead of us.
“Theater kid?”
He lifts ayou’ve got to be kiddingeyebrow at me.
“Fire department,” he retorts. “In my line of work, speaking up is a necessity. You have to be able to warn your coworkers about structural issues or falling debris, and I’m proud to say I’ve never needed the megaphone once.”
I imagine Derrick putting on one of the red plastic hats they hand out in elementary school on fire safety day and committing to the bit. We fill the rest of the walk with mindless chatter, discussing his adult kickball league and my favorite wedding destinations.
Derrick sets my things down on a picnic table in front of the Big Barn, the red paint of the building a facade of rustic charm.
“Thanks for the help,” I say, eager to go inside and take a nap.
“Anytime,” he replies, running a hand through his hair. His movement is slow, an obvious attempt to show off his muscles, as if the half-shirt he’s wearing is leaving anything to the imagination. “And if you need anything else, an extra towel, a helping hand, I’m right upstairs, in room fifteen.”
He grins cheekily and I don’t know whether to be appalled or impressed by his audacity.
“I’ll make note of that.”
Derrick gives me a lingering glance before jogging up the side staircase and, finally, I’m alone.
7 Hudson
“Guess there’s a reason they call this the dust bowl,” my mother says, running her finger along the windowsill.
“It’s probably from the renovations,” I assure her. “Stuff like that settles.”
“If they call these renovations, I shudder to think of what they looked like before,” she says, plucking the bottle of wine from the welcome basket on the wooden countertop. She’s only been here for fifteen minutes. Her list of complaints is lengthy.
The drive was too long. The cabins are too homely. The linens are too threadbare. The western air is too dry. And considering George went straight upstairs to bed, I have a feeling her nagging started a lot earlier.
Thank God the bottle in her hand is a twist top, because finding a corkscrew might throw her over the edge.
My mother, or “Susan,” as she prefers to be called, has grown accustomed to a certain level of comfort, one that rivals the Kardashians’, thanks to my stepfather’s business acumen and position as one of the top financial advisors at his company. And even though they’ve been given the largest cabin on the property, it still isn’t up to her standards. Just another thing to add to the ever-growing list of resentments towards her future daughter-in-law.
“I just don’t understand why we had to fly across the country when we have a beautiful club back home?” she asks, pouring a generous helping of wine into her glass.
