Twenty-one
I’ve kept my fingers busy since Renee walked out. For the past thirty-six hours, I’ve been sequestered in the dark of my home studio, my favorite bass in my lap. All the time I’ve spent on the wedding—on Renee—has resulted in an accidental summer-long sabbatical from practicing. My calluses aren’t gone by any means, but the thick armor of skin on my fingertips has gotten soft.
The skin is healing, technically, but that’s not what I want. I need those calluses. Without them, the metal strings bite at my fingertips as I play, leaving behind a sharp, hot ache. Like most things at the moment, I try not to feel it. My emotions, like my phone, are tucked away and set on silent, so when I hear the buzz of an incoming call from the depths of my desk drawer, I lunge for it. Because there’s only one person it could be. Only one contact I’ve programmed to bypass Do Not Disturb: the bride herself, Miss Virginia Bennett.
Except it’s notjustGin. She’s calling the whole group chat, and just the sight of Renee’s contact photo has my heart tucking its tail. But this isn’t about me or Renee or us. It’s about Gin and the agonized siren of a cry that floods through the line the moment I pick up.
There’s a screech of feedback that only I react to, so it could be the sound of my own brain short-circuiting. Gin alternates between sobbing and sucking in snot, wedging in a word or two in between. “I.”Sniff.“Can’t.”Gasp.“Handle.”Sniff. Gasp. Sob.
Renee jumps right in, no hesitation, like an emotional lifeguard who’s been training for this. “Okay. It’s okay. Can we breathe together?” Renee’s voice is sweet and level, striking a chord on every one of my heartstrings. I breathe along to her cues, following the ins and outs of Gin’s stuttering inhales and wobbly, miserable out breaths. When we’ve evened out enough, Renee asks, “What’s going on?”
“Is it Rishi?” Chrissy guesses.
“No…”
“Your parents? Rishi’s parents?” Chrissy tries again.
“It was…therain.” Gin shudders another sob, but relief runs like coolant through my veins.Okay. We’re okay. Everyone is alive.
I hang my bass back on its wall mount, then swivel my desk chair to face the singular window in my home studio. “The rain?” It’s stopped and started like a finicky faucet all summer, but today isn’t so bad. Mostly sunny, a comfortable seventy something. Not that I’ve left this room since yesterday.
“Yeah,” Gin whimpers. “Thursday’s storm, plus all the rain this summer…and all our hard yard work…” Her voice breaks like a dam, flooding the line just as Gin flips on her camera to show us arealflood. We’re looking at the Bhats’ backyard, once Gin and Rishi’s ceremony site, now entirely underwater. The marsh has spilled over, stretching to the bottom of the frame, claiming the lower third of the butterfly bushes and every limestone paver.
All I can say is “Fuck.”
“We. Can’t. Get. Married. There!” Gin sobs.
“Not unless you want to get married in hip waders.”
My joke doesn’t land. Of course it doesn’t. The wedding is inseven days.
“It’s okay, Gin,” Renee says. She’s breathy but confident. “We can fix this.”
“Wecan’tfix this!” Gin fires back. “We have aweek!”
For a minute, we just let her cry. Sometimes, that’s all anyone can do. And then Rishi steps in. He helps his fiancée shut off her camera, and I can’t quite hear what he’s saying, but I hearhowhe says it, and every gentle, soothing murmur spaces out Gin’s sobs a little more. Rishi, as always, makes everything better. When we start to brainstorm solutions and his parents weigh in with some unhelpful commentary about how this wouldn’t have happened if they’d rented a hall for the wedding like they’d wanted, he handles it with grace and patience. I begin to wonder if he was specially engineered for Gin in some sort of lab. This man says all the right things.
And then, for once, so do I.
“Galena,” I say with the same breath I’ve heard others say “Amen.” It’s so obvious. The perfect solution. “The backyard in Galena. You could get married there.” It comes out quickly and with such authority that even I momentarily forget that the house is still not really mine to offer. But I can’t stop myself. Not when Gin’s sniffles subside.
I can hear the smile in Chrissy’s voice when she says. “That’s…low-key brilliant, Ali Pal.”
“Do you think…could we?” Gin squeaks out.
“Absolutely,” I say.
Given the circumstances, I can’t imagine the band would say no.
And then it hits. A sharp ache like a split board in my chest. The band includes Kurt, and where there’s Kurt, there’s Mom.
“Okay.” Gin sighs. “Okay, okay, okay. Wow.” It’s the steadiest her voice has been this entire call, and I refuse to say anything that could change that. I’ll figure something out with the Outpost. I have to, because the crying has stopped and Gin has already begun to strategize.
“I guess it…it is on a hill, right? So there’s probably no flooding? Could we still have a dance floor?”
We try for a while to have Gin share her screen so we can all look at the wedding spreadsheet together, but Chrissy’s audio keeps cutting in and out, and the lag has us all talking over each other. There are too many details and moving pieces to reconfigure for any of us to keep it all straight over the phone, so it shouldn’t surprise me when Chrissy says, “That’s it. I’m clearing off the whiteboard. Who needs me to call them an Uber?”
“Me,” Renee chirps, and dread drops into my chest, my gut, my shaky fingers that nearly drop my phone. I knew I’d have to see Renee again before too long, but I thought I had more time.
