“Safety first,” Chrissy repeats, then frowns, thinks, and asks, “What’s second?”
Without missing a beat, Gin says, “Teamwork.”
“Teamwork!” I agree. “It’s a good thing you’ve got a good team, huh?!”
Gin can’t hear me. She leans all the way forward and captures her straw in her lips like a snapping turtle, and I don’t mean to laugh, but I do. This she somehow hears.
“Don’t laugh at me.” Gin frowns around her straw.
“No, no, I’m not laughing at you,” I lie. “I just…I saw another bride go into the bathroom, and she looked like she was gonna throw up.”
Gin’s gaze swings from Chrissy to Renee. “What did she say? I can’t hear her.”
The bartender returns, and everyone orders their first round of fruity cocktails, plus a heinously overpriced mocktail for me. Anyone charging more than seven dollars for grenadine andseltzer is running a scam, and the owner of Lagoon 42 must be a Nigerian prince with an overactive email. I toss a few appetizers onto our order. If I learned anything in college, it was not to let Virginia Bennett drink on an empty stomach. The bartender knows a drunk bride when he sees one; he makes Gin’s drink last, serving it just as our calamari and brie bites arrive.Safety first, I think.Then teamwork.
“Cheers!” Gin sings, splashing at least a quarter of her coconut martini onto the bar. Chrissy’s pink drink matches both her dress and her sunburn, and she drains it in one solid swig.
“Daa-ha-haaaam.” Gin laughs, then follows suit, tipping her head back and emptying her glass down her throat.
“Chug, chug, chug!” Chrissy pounds on the bar as she chants. “Renee, you too, girl!”
Renee twists her gold thumb ring, then mutters, “Ah, what the hell,” plucks the straw from her copper mug, and goes bottoms up on her cherry mule. She breaks to cough halfway through, but on the second go, I hear the crush of ice against her teeth, and Chrissy and Gin let out a victory cry. I contribute a “Woo!” for good measure, triggering a domino effect throughout the dining room. On the far end of the bar, a bride in a whiteWIFE LIFEcrop top climbs onto her stool and swings a costume-store veil overhead like a lasso while her friends echo my “Woo!” and shake their asses from the safety of the floor.
Chrissy’s jaw drops. “Are they trying to…out-fun us?”
The answer, of course, is yes. Knowingly or not, every bachelorette party in this restaurant has opted in to a competition to see who can have the best time. As thewoos die down from the far end of the bar, a cluster of women in matching black bodycondresses pound their fists on their table. Among them, a leader in all white emerges, taking a knee and thereby flashing the bar as she gulps down something shimmery and pink. Not to be outdone, a group of women in neon wigs kicks off a sing-along of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” which is, notably, not the song that’s currently playing. I have a hard time believing I would enjoy this even if I were drunk, but Gin is having the time of her life.
“Another coconut martini, puh-lease.” The bride nudges her glass toward our bartender, and her eyes droop down to his silver name tag. “Thankyous’much,Shawn.”
“You’re very welcome…” Shawn stretches his eyebrows and leans in toward Gin, waiting for her to fill in the blank with her own name, but she doesn’t catch his drift. Instead, she blinks back at him, her heavy eyelids never fully lifting.
“These are so good.” Gin taps one opalescent fingernail against the rim of the glass. “Actually,Shawn.” She pauses, clearly satisfied with herself. “Shawn thebartender. Can you make metwo?”
Shawn laughs before whisking her empty martini glass away, but he doesn’t bother with her question. Gin doesn’t mind; in fact, she forgets about Shawn and her coconut martinis altogether when she spies the big purple flower decorating the calamari plate. She tucks it behind her ear, a single splash of color against her all-white ensemble.
“Gorgina!” Chrissy laughs, snapping photos from all angles as Gin rotates through six or seven poses, pursing her lips then framing her face with her hands. Chrissy’s jaw drops again when she swipes through her options. “Um, hello? I’m sending these to Rishi immediately.”
“Tell him I looooove him,” Gin slurs. “Oh, and send him theone from the pool, too! The one where my boobs look soooo good.” She grabs her boobs through her dress and smooshes them together just as Shawn the bartender sets a single coconut martini in front of her. Instead of blushing and slouching away like sober Gin would do, our bride howls in laughter, still holding her own rack. Shawn slinks away without a word, and we all burst into laughter, even me.
“Oh my God.” Chrissy smacks Gin’s thigh. “I haven’t seen you this drunk since…” She pauses, then giggles to herself. “Well, not since your ho phase after you and Alice broke up.”
My eyes go wide. “What’s this about a ho phase?”
“Oh my God,” Gin squeals and kicks her legs. “We are noooot talking about this. Not on my bachelorette!” She pauses and feigns sobriety quite unconvincingly as she announces, “I was never a ho. I was always a perfect angelic bride.” She makes a little halo with her fingers and holds it over her head, smiling up at the ceiling.
“Great impression,” I deadpan. “Now tell me about the ho phase.”
“I was not a ho!” Gin insists.
“You were kind of a ho,” Renee mutters into her drink. “You were with a different girl every week.”
“Nuh-uh,” Gin whines, then bites her bottom lip and shyly adds, “Some of them were guys.”
“Virginia Angelie Bennett.” I click my tongue against the roof of my mouth, tutting and shaking my head. “I can’t believe you kept this from me. You said Rishi was the only guy you’d been with.”
“I meant, like,beenwith.” Gin makes a circle with one hand and jabs her pointer finger in and out of it, a fourth-grade representation of how hetero sex works.
“Ew, stop that.” Renee swats away Gin’s demonstration. “I don’t want to think about Rishi’s penis.”
