Bachelorette Party

Miriam claims she’s annoyed, but when the server asks if we’d care for anything else, round two gets ordered before I have the chance to say we’re fine.

Our server, Jade, smiles and says she’ll be right back.

I smile too, although I’m worried the red wine will wake me up in the middle of the night, as it sometimes does. Tonight, I want to get a good night’s sleep.

“Are you doing a cake at least?” she asks. Her eyebrows are up. She looks a little mad at me, and perhaps she should be. I’ve sprung this on her, I know. But I also think she must have seen it coming.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Our reservation is for twelve afterward at Bella Vita’s. I’m sure they have a dessert menu.”

“You’re hanging the success of your second marriage on a hope that there’s a dessert menu?”

I laugh, take a sip of the Merlot. In truth, I’d rather have ordered a beer, but I don’t want to risk feeling bloated tomorrow in the dress I grabbed at Nordstrom Rack a week ago—a lovely ivory lace dress with short sleeves and a hemline that falls right above the knee. Miriam told me it needed alterations—to be taken in at the waist—but there is not time for that. Besides, I’d told Miriam, Stan isn’t marrying me for my waistline.

“You are coming to the dinner, right—you and Paul?”

Miriam nods. “Of course. Wouldn’t miss it. You only get married twice one.”

“Har har,” I say. Jade has come back with two glasses of wine, and I whisper to her that we’re ready for the check whenever she gets a chance.

Miriam scoffs.

“Come on,” she says. “This is your bachelorette party!”

I shake my head. I can’t drink the way I used to—we can’t drink the way we used to. But something about being around Miriam makes me want to try.

When I look at her sometimes, I want to tell her she’s like my diary come alive—the one person who knows all my secrets, everything I’ve been through. It’s a privilege and a catastrophe to have someone walking around on the surface of Earth who knows my worst mistakes, my darkest features. But we call it friendship and keep doing it decade after decade.

To everyone else drinking and eating on the patio of the downtown bar Miriam picked for this Thursday in August, we look like two moms enjoying of wine together.

“You remember your first bachelorette party?” she asks, grinning. “Remember that guy?”

“The guy who hit on you?” I tease. “Tall guy?”

“Yeah. What was his name?”

“I have no idea,” I say.

“I remember he gave me his email address!” Miriam giggles. “God. That was smooth.”

“I think his name was Kurt. Or Burt.”

“Maybe it was Dirt,” I joke.

Miriam snort-laughs as she sets down her wine.

“Your bachelorette party was way better,” I say.

“Oh God,” Miriam says. “Mine—I barely remember anything about mine.”

“I know,” I say. I smile conspiratorially at her.

I am her walking diary, too.

Miriam sits up a little. “Don’t change the subject. So, it’s me and Paul. Who else?”

“Ethan and Eliza are coming,” I say first. “Joey and Shawn, too.”

“Are they bringing dates?” Miriam jokes.

“No,” I grin. “I don’t think so. Too young to get a plus-one.”

“But Ethan and Eliza—they’re getting serious, huh?”

“Maybe,” I muse. “They have been dating a few months. Six? You never know.”

I say this to Miriam knowing she is the queen of you never know. Her own husband, Paul—they were off and on for two years until they eloped one Spring. It was for that reason I thought Miriam would understand a short engagement from me and Stan.