Your Dallas Alice
Twenty-nine
I have decided to believe in miracles. It’s the only way to make sense of a day like today. After a frantic, panicked week spent shifting an entire wedding 150 miles west, Saturday arrives with a blue sky, a gentle breeze, and not a single percent chance of rain. Last week, we thought we’d be washed away in the flood; today, all we’re missing is the rainbow.
In all the commotion of getting ready, I don’t see the backyard in its final form until I’m floating down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon. Sunlight refracts through the pale-green tulle softening the corners of the mandap. Lush green garlands frame the top like a halo hovering over the lawn. Beneath it, Rishi looks cool and collected until the moment Gin steps into view. She’s a flame lighting the aisle—her auburn hair almost glows in the sun beneath her sheer red veil, perfectly matched to the same cherry-colored bridal lehenga Asha wore on her wedding day. Thirty years haven’t dulled its shine in the slightest. The gold details on the full skirt match the copper swirls of henna vining up Gin’s hands and forearms, although her mehndi barely shows beneath the bouquet of ferns and dahlias in her grip. She walks alone. No parents or stand-ins to usher her down the aisle. Just Gin, steppingboldly into the life and the family she is creating for herself. It feels a little like crossing a finish line when they’re pronounced man and wife, but it’s only their beginning.
After the ceremony, we take endless pictures—one round in our traditional North Indian attire before we change into our Western looks and go again. I’m the first out of my sari and ready in my bridesmaid dress, and given the frustrated grumbles coming from Gin’s room, I suspect she needs a hand.
“Knock knock?” I nudge the door open an inch. “Need some help?”
Gin tugs the door open the rest of the way. Sweat beads on the tip of her nose, and her eyeliner has smudged a teeny bit at the corners, but she still looks like she’s wearing a filter in real life.
It takes some finessing to free the vintage zippers on the lehenga, but her wedding dress zips up like a dream. Gin is a vision. The long, sparkly straps hold up the weight of a full, flowy skirt, and the detailing on the bodice looks remarkably similar to the gold patterns on the lehenga, a cohesion that feels meant to be.
Gin twirls like a ballerina in a music box, her dress billowing around her ankles like the edges of a wave. In my mind’s eye, every version of her twirls right beside her. She’s eighteen, with all her summer freckles, in the freshman dorms. There she is, twenty-one and pale as a Midwest March, shutting down the karaoke bars with “You Oughta Know.” She’s dressed in black in the back of Dad’s funeral or all in white beneath the neon lights of a Palm Springs bar. What a privilege to have known and loved so many iterations of Virginia Bennett, exactly the same but entirely different.
“All right, bitches!” Chrissy kicks open the door. She hoists highher makeup bag in one hand and a fifth of tequila in the other. “Who needs a touch-up, and who needs a shot?”
Just behind her, Renee steps into view, and the head rush is a higher proof than I’ve ever known. She is all contrast. A thin gold chain rests over her collarbone, with silver hoops climbing the cartilage of her ears. Bright fuchsia fabric flows over one of her shoulders beneath hair so blond it’s almost white. Her expression is sharp and serious, then full of wide-eyed wonder when her eyes find mine. Renee bites down on an impossibly adorable smile, and the breath leaves my lungs.
“You’re stunning,” I tell her.
“Not as stunning as you.”
Chrissy rolls not just her eyes but her entire head. “Finally. I was so over you guys pretendingthatwasn’t happening.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Gin says, then takes a swig of tequila straight from the bottle, but perhaps not as large of a pull as she might have taken at the start of the summer. “I’m cutting back.” She twists the cap back on. “You know. Since I’ve beenburnedbefore.”
When Gin laughs, it’s permission for us all to laugh along.
“All right!” The bride claps her hands once. “Are we ready? Just one more round of pictures, then it’s dinner, drinks, andspeeches!” She flashes me a smile, and I smile back like there isn’t an avalanche happening inside me, everything crumbling down to pure, jagged panic.
The speech. How the hell did I forget about the speech?
I’m in my head for the rest of photos and cocktail hour, cutting and splicing scraps of speeches I drafted this summer, but none of them feel right. I’m still scrambling when we’re directed to ourtables, and Rishi’s brother kicks things off with a best man speech cataloging their most memorable trips to Taco Bell. Brilliant. Hilarious. Absolutely impossible to follow, and considering how things went the last time I took the mic around Gin and her friends, running away sounds like a viable option. Still, when I’m announced as up next, I step up and take the mic, holding on with both hands for dear life.
“Hi, I’m Alice.”So far so good.“If you don’t know me, maybe you know my house!”
I fling an arm toward the Outpost, and soft laughter hums through the crowd.
“Thank you so much for making the trip out to Galena. We decided it was a better option than putting the bride and groom in scuba gear.”
This time, a rumble of laughter. I straighten, relaxing my white-knuckle grip.
“This house has been important to my family for a long time, and it’s been important to my friends, too. Gin and I met in college, and we came here every year for spring break. We lived in the same building our freshman year and went on to share an apartment, and…I guess this is where people might sayWe’ve been inseparable ever since, but that’s not true. Gin and I didn’t speak for a number of years, and it was my fault.” I look right at Gin; she’s smiling at me, steady. “But we found each other again.
“Anyway. I wrote so many versions of this speech this summer, but none of them felt good enough. Because…it’s Gin. She deserves the best of everything, and I’m notoriously pretty bad with words. And I…I really shouldn’t say this, but with the chaos of essentially replanning this wedding in seven days, Inever did finish a final draft of this speech. I was doingthis.” I gesture left, right, all around. “And I forgot. I’m sorry.”
Despite my confession, Gin’s smile hasn’t budged an inch.
“I’m not proud of that,” I admit. “I can be forgetful, and I say the wrong thing sometimes. Gin knows that. She knows me better than…almost anyone. Recently, Gin said something that really stuck with me. She said there’s usually no one right thing to say, and sometimes, the best thing to do is just be honest. So let me be honest and say that this past week has been…really hard. Moving the wedding out here was a lot of work—plus I lost my dad last year, and the anniversary was just two days ago. So I…oh God, I’m making this about me, sorry.”
“You’re fine!” Gin shouts through cupped hands. “Keep going!”
“What I mean to say is that Gin has never been afraid of doing hard things. She shows up for people when they need it and loves them exactly how they are. I bet a lot of us have benefitted from Gin going the extra mile once or twice.”
The crowd nods like a life-size bobblehead collection.
