Mickey:That pink is a crime against humanity. Also, how is your water pressure? It looks like the shower was installed during the Cold War.
Benji:The water pressure is a joke. I have to stand directly under the head and rotate like a rotisserie chicken to get fully wet. It’s humiliating.
Mickey:Rotisserie chicken? I’m going to think about that image all day.
I smile at my phone and finish getting dressed. I send the same bathroom photo to Dante with the caption “This is the bathroom. Get used to it. You arrive soon and this pink nightmare is your home too.” Then I don’t think about the photo again until three hours later when I’m at the house measuring the cocktail hour flow path and my phone buzzes.
Dante:Did you send this same bathroom photo to Mickey?
I stop walking. My tape measure retracts with a snap that echoes off the white walls.
Benji:Yeah. Why?
Dante:Look at the photo. Look at the mirror. You’re shirtless. The mirror caught your back. Your whole back. And you’re in THE gray sweatpants. Please tell me you noticed this before you sent it to a paralyzed man in a hospital bed.
I pull up the photo and zoom in. And there it is. The cracked mirror caught my reflection at an angle I didn’t notice, my bare back, tan from Miami, the line of my shoulders, the dip of my spine, the gray sweatpants sitting low enough to show the crack of my ass above the waistband. I look like a thirst trap that accidentally photobombed a real estate listing.
Benji:Oh fuck.
Dante:Oh fuck is right. You sent an injured man a shirtless mirror selfie disguised as a bathroom complaint. How is he supposed to respond to that? What is he supposed to do with that information, Benji?
Benji:I didn’t notice!! I was sending the BATHROOM. The PINK. I was documenting the PINK.
Dante:If those pants were any lower you would’ve documented your pink ass. Your lats are in that photo.
Benji:I can’t be trusted with a phone.
Dante:Don’t freak out. Just be more careful before you send photos to the man you’re clearly falling for. Just a thought.
I put my phone face down on the marble counter and breathe. I sent Mickey a shirtless photo. Not on purpose. But the result is the same. He has a photo of my bare back on his phone. I can’t unsend it and the best course of action is to pretend it didn’t happen and hope that Mickey was looking at the pink tile and not at my back.
Mickey is a cop whose eyes scan every room and every person and every detail, and there is a zero percent chance that he opened that photo and didn’t notice me in the mirror.
I pick up my tape measure and go back to work because my personal humiliation is not on the wedding timeline.
The day gets worse from there. The caterer can’t fill the organic greens order because of a “supply chain issue,” which in Panhandle vendor language means someone forgot to place the order.
The reclaimed driftwood for the arch was supposed to be delivered yesterday from a place in Seaside and wasn’t. I drive to Seaside to track it down, spend twenty-five minutes circling for parking, pay fifteen dollars for a spot in front of the shop, and find the shop closed for “inventory.” I leave a note on the door that is professional in tone and murderous in subtext and drive back with my jaw clenched so hard my teeth ache.
Then Callie’s mother calls to discuss adding a unity candle ceremony. On an outdoor terrace. On the beach. In June. Where the wind comes off the water at approximately hurricane force every afternoon.
“I love that idea,” I say. “Let me look into windproof options and I’ll get back to you by end of day.”
My phone buzzes.
Mickey:How’s the day?
Benji:The caterer forgot the greens. The driftwood has vanished. The supplier’s shop in the hellscape known as Seaside was CLOSED. Callie’s mother wants a unity candle on an outdoor terrace in June where the wind would extinguish the sun if it could reach it. I’m running out of time.
Mickey:Okay. One thing at a time. The greens. Can you source from a grocery store and plate them yourself? Nobodyat a wedding is going to know the difference between farm-to-table arugula and grocery store arugula.
I stare at the text. He’s lying in a hospital bed and he’s problem-solving my wedding like it’s a dispatch call.
Benji:That’s actually not a terrible idea.
Mickey:The driftwood. Do you have a backup material? Something you can get locally in two days if the original doesn’t show?
Benji:I could do bamboo poles wrapped in white fabric. It’s not driftwood but it reads the same in photos. There’s a garden supply place that carries bamboo.
