“I love rosé,” Renee interrupts, slicing me a quick prickly look. “But I believe I was in charge of wine.” She pulls a bottle from her bag and presents it to Chrissy the way a waiter would tableside.
“No freaking way. This is my absolute favorite wine.” Chrissygrips the bottle by the throat and holds it up like a trophy, smiling wide. “It’s an omen,” she announces. “This is going to be the best bridal party ever.”
“Cheers to that.” Renee claims a glass of rosé, and there’s one in my hand before I can turn it down, but I set it right back on the counter.
“Should I give you the tour, Ali Pal?” Chrissy suggests, confirming that I havenotbeen here before. Good to know.
I smile and sweep a hand through the air. “Lead the way.”
We start in the kitchen, which Chrissy insists is “just, like, a boring kitchen,” although there’s nothing boring about the neonCHRISSY’S KITCHENsign glowing purple on the back wall. Without asking, she grabs my wineglass for me, walking backward like she did in her days as a Dunlap College tour guide. She leads us to her office, where two things become immediately clear. The first is that the Chrissy I knew in college, the original-recipe Chrissy who glued rhinestones to wine bottles and bought everything in bright pink, hasn’t entirely grown up. She’s still here, just confined within the walls of her office.
Which brings us to the second realization: Chrissy has no idea what an office is. It certainly isn’t this. There isn’t even a desk, just two cushy pink velvet chairs and a matching sofa with lip-shaped throw pillows. There’s a whiteboard, which feels office-adjacent, and the microphone-and-camera setup suggests some kind of content recording happens here, but the stack of Hula-Hoops and the bookshelf stocked with tarot-card decks don’t call any specific type of content to mind. I make a mental note to google Chrissy later. For now, all I can think to say is “This is so you.”
“I know, right?” Chrissy sets both wineglasses on the coffee table before plopping down on a pink beanbag chair.
“Lemme know if you need a refill,” she says, nodding to my completely full glass, and I’m determined not to be interrupted this time, but once again, Renee is a littlemoredetermined to interrupt me.
“Go easy, gals. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover tonight.” She turns over her shoulder, marker in hand and poised at the whiteboard, and pins me with a watchful look, like I’m a toddler wandering suspiciously close to the candy bowl, not a grown woman who isn’t even touching her wine. Who wouldn’t have touched it at all if I had been given a say, which I haven’t. I can’t get a word in. A white-hot spark of anger hits my rib cage like a battering ram. I’m speechless, and Renee whirls back to the whiteboard before I can change that.
“First things first.” She refers to her phone, then writes out a set of dates in perfect print. “The last weekend in June is open for all of us, Gin included, so let’s lock that in.”
I pull up my calendar. It’s the weekend right before Cold Sweat is in the studio. “That’s awfully soon,” I think aloud.
“So is the wedding,” Renee parries. “And on that note, given the abbreviated timeline, I recommend that we pick a destination where I’ve already planned a bachelorette party. That way, we can tweak an existing itinerary. I suggest Scottsdale. I planned an amazing bachelorette trip there last summer, and my aunt owns a house that we could use for free.”
“Scottsdale would be fun,” Chrissy says.
“What are our other options?” I ask.
Renee frowns but obliges. She reads a list off her phone, writing each potential destination on the whiteboard. “Austin, Vegas, Nashville, Palm Springs, and…” Her frown deepens. “Galena?”
Chrissy lights up. “Oh my God! Your dad’s house, right? Or…”Her eyes shift from me to Renee as she scrunches back into her beanbag chair. “Sorry. I mean…is that okay to say?”
I feel instantly itchy from the inside out. Of all the ways Dad gets brought up, this is perhaps the worst: when people make him out to be Beetlejuice and if they say his name three times, they’ll wake the dead or break the living.
“Yes, Chrissy,” I sigh. “The house belongs…belonged…to Dad and the rest of his band. It’s fine.”
Chrissy brightens a little. “What did they call it? The Outhouse?”
I snort a much-needed laugh. “The Outpost,” I correct her.
“I don’t think we need to host Gin’s bachelorette party at anyplace worthy of being misremembered as the Outhouse,” Renee says, not at all amused. She lifts her hand to cross Galena off the list, and a spring-loaded protest flies out of me.
“It’s not like that!”
Renee pauses, then turns with an icy glare and one barely arched brow. My insides twist. I wish I had practiced this pitch.
“Galena is like a mini Napa,” I start, gaining confidence and momentum as I go. “There’s a ton of wineries and a really cute downtown with lots of fun shops. There’s plenty to do. Even if we just want to wander around like we did in college when we went for spring break and—”
“I know all about Galena,” Renee cuts me off, knocking me off course, and my mind spins off in a thousand directions.Which stories has Gin told you? I was never that bad in Galena, was I?I can feel myself losing, so I play my best card.
“We can use the Outpost for free,” I say. “And there’d be no plane tickets to pay for, which makes it even better and more affordable than Scottsdale.”
Admittedly, I’m speaking a little bit out of my ass here. I haven’t talked to anyone about using the house, but I don’t see a world where The Handful would tell the daughter of their recently deceased lead singer that she can’t have one last weekend with the place.
The beanbag chair rustles in the silence as Chrissy shifts. I don’t love the look on her face—it’s pinched but cautious, like she’s worried a frown might offend. “So is the house like…” Her eyes flit around the room, refusing to stop anywhere for more than a beat. She delivers the rest of the thought just to Renee. “I’m worried that might be kind of a weird vibe.”
Anger pulses behind my forehead. “Why would it be weird?” I ask a little too quickly. I want her to say it. I want her to prove she really has no shame.
