Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink (3 page)

“I’ve been inspired!” she tells me proudly. “Bridal bingo!”

Nic trots over to her refrigerator and pulls out two bottles of champagne while I read the squares on the bingo card at the top of the pile. “On this card the
eternal
and
bridesmaid
squares are right next to each other.”

Nic pushes the champagne bottles into a giant stainless steel bucket filled with crushed ice, then turns back to get more bubbly. “Fine. I’ll take that card.”

I flip to the next card. “On this one, the
mother-in-law
square is next to the
groom
square, with the
bride
square three spaces away diagonally.”

Nic shoves two more bottles into the big bucket, then pulls the cards away from me to put them back on the counter. “You’re overthinking this.”

“I’m just saying, have you even looked at where they put the word
sex
? Because if it’s near a space marked ‘free’…”

“I’m begging you not to finish that thought.”

I shrug, then go back to my toothpicking. Nic pops open a bottle of champagne. My face lights up. I happily grab a champagne flute, then wave the glass in front of her, a gleeful, oversize grin on my face.

Nic laughs and pours me a glass.

The doorbell rings. “I’ll get it,” I say, nabbing a large shrimp for myself to accompany my champagne. I walk through Nic’s marble foyer, with a glass of champagne in one hand and a now-empty toothpick in the other, and open the door to Seema.

“Why do women get married?” she asks me irritably.

I look up to the ceiling to think. “Um … so they can feel morally superior to the rest of us?”

Seema takes my glass of champagne, takes a very healthy sip, and marches in without giving me my glass back. “Scott and I just had the biggest fight.”

As she heads toward the kitchen, I close the door then quickly follow. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Seema says angrily, then sighs. “I just want to get drunk, get presents, and revel in the mockery that is the supposed bliss of the engagement.”

Okey-dokey.

“There’s our blushing bride!” Nic gushes happily.

“Shyeah, right,” Seema responds.

“Trouble in paradise?” Nic pats her hand on a barstool by the kitchen island, inviting Seema to sit. “What is it? Did he ask for a prenup? Has he not written his vows yet? Do you want a nice ginger martini for your signature cocktail at the reception, but he’s going all hoppy and IPA beer on you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Seema sighs, then downs the rest of the champagne from my flute. She grabs the open bottle of champagne from the stainless steel bucket and refills my glass.

Oh, dear. It’s a little too early to be one of those kinds of days. “We have mixers to go with that,” I hint to Seema. “And not just orange juice.” I point to several pitchers of mixers in a rainbow of colors. “I also made fresh peach purée, not to mention strawberries mixed with muddled basil, plus the purple one is a reduced Concord-grape juice mixed with orange zest, orange bitters, and rosemary—”

“Stop,” Seema interrupts, furrowing her brow. “You have
met
me, right?”

I take a deep breath, then say to her diplomatically, “I’m just suggesting that you might want to take it easy on the champagne. You don’t want your Auntie Hema seeing you loaded.”

Seema takes another gulp of champagne. “First off, don’t say
auntie
. You sound like you’re being condescending. Second, not to worry, in the last ten years she’s never seen me sober.”

Aunties are the older Indian women who help the bride with her wedding, both with the henna ceremony the day before, and then with putting on her sari the day of the wedding (a several-hours-long process). Seema only has a couple of aunts: Hema and Neya. Personally, I think they’re charming and lovely women. They drive Seema crazy. Which is fair, because she adores both my aunt Jacqui and my aunt Kris, and they are both nuts and a total embarrassment, so we break even.

Hema came into town a week before the wedding just to be at the shower today, so we’re conscientious about everything’ being perfect.

Nic promptly walks over to Seema, takes the glass out of her hand, and gives it back to me. “Hey! That’s mine!” Seema protests.

“Oh, no,” Nic says. “You are
so
cut off for now. And your guests will be here any minute expecting a happy bride. So vent before they get here.”

Seema only pouts for a moment before unloading. “Scott doesn’t want to give up his loft after we’re married. He is paying almost three
thousand
dollars a month on rent. That’s money that could be going toward our retirement fund, toward buying a bigger house.… Hell, at this point, I’d agree to use the money to go on a camping trip to Mount Rushmore.”

I furrow my brow. “Why Mount…?”

“I just
really
hate Mount Rushmore!” Seema whines. “That’s not the point. The point is, he already has an exit strategy. While I’m planning our wedding, he’s planning our divorce. So why am I bothering to marry him in the first place?”

“My advice?” Nic says calmly. “Let it go.”

“Let it
go
?” Seema shrieks in disbelief.

“Let it go,” Nic repeats. “Men need time to adjust to the idea of ‘forever.’ You need to see your future together sort of like a great-white-shark attack. Just keep him in the water, swimming happily, and eventually it’ll sneak up on him and strike.”

“She says that in such a soothing voice,” I say to Seema, a little disturbed.

Seema grabs my flute out of my hand for the second time. I let her.

“I thought I said you were cut off,” Nic tells her sternly.

“And I thought you saw marriage in a more favorable light than the opening scene from
Jaws
,” Seema retorts, then drains half a glass in one gulp. “Anyway, I had Scott drop me off specifically so I could imbibe. Mel’s driving me home.”

“
I
am?” I ask, surprised.

“You’re not?” Seema asks me.

Rats. “No, I guess I am,” I say, letting my shoulders slump. Damn, no champs for me.

Seema grabs a large shrimp from the platter I’m assembling, takes a bite, then says to Nic through a full mouth, “I cannot believe you’re taking his side.”

“There are no sides. It’s marriage. You’re a team now.”

Seema glares at Nic disbelievingly. I probably just look confused. Nic rolls her eyes. “Okay, fine. There are always two sides. Sometimes three or four. My point is, just take a few days to meditate over this before you go off. Scott having his own apartment doesn’t mean he’s planning to do anything stupid. He’s not the type to divorce, nor is he the type to have an affair. Frankly, he’s too lazy.”

Seema’s eyes nearly burst out of their sockets. “Who said anything about an affair?!”

“Oh,” Nic says. “Ignore me. I’m the wife of an NBA coach. That’s where my head naturally goes. My bad.”

Seema nervously starts to lift my glass to her lips again, but I lower her hand. “Ignore her,” I tell Seema. “Isn’t this the guy who doesn’t want to go to his own bachelor party tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.”

I hear Seema’s phone beep in her purse. Seema opens her purse and reads a text.

A smile creeps onto her face, and she quickly texts something back.

“Is everything better?” I ask as I move on to prepping cheese and crackers, and Nic begins putting out bottles of soda.

“I don’t know, maybe.” Seema is still smiling. “He is being pretty cute though.” She puts her phone down next to her purse, walks over to grab another shrimp, and, before popping it into her mouth, asks, “So, what do you guys have planned for me today?”

Nic’s eyes light up with pride. “What do you think about bridal bingo?”

“I think it’s a bad idea to squeal ‘Oh–sixty-nine!’ in front of my aunt,” Seema retorts.

“Then again, it would be nice to be able to say ‘I–twenty-seven’ without lying,” I point out.

“No, no,” Nic says, handing Seema the pile of bingo cards. “It’s bridal bingo. See? The squares say things like
romance
and
intimacy
.”

Seema sighs deeply. “Why on earth would I want my aunts and friends ruminating over my intimacy?”

Nic, trying to stay upbeat, takes back the cards and makes a show of throwing them away over her shoulder. “Not a problem. They’re history. What about the game we played at my shower? Fantasy date/date from hell?”

Seema squints her eyes at Nic. “Walk me through this. I finally get the man of my dreams, and I’m already supposed to be fantasizing about another guy?”

“If we play, do we know a celebrity who does dishes?” I wonder aloud as I pick up the bridal cards from the floor to throw them away.

“Fortune-cookie game?” Nic suggests weakly.

Seema’s face drops, and she looks over at me for clarification.

“Be afraid,” I say to her, shaking my head slowly. “Be very afraid.”

Nic continues, “Each guest pulls a fortune cookie out of a bag, then breaks the fortune cookie open and reads it. Only they have to end their fortune with ‘in bed with Scott.’”

Seema puts out the palm of her hand. “In front of my seventy-two-year-old aunt?”

Nic gives up and crosses her arms. “Fine. But, other than toilet-paper bride, all we have is the cake pull.”

“When did you agree to a cake pull?” I ask Seema.

She shrugs. “I figured the last time it brought me good luck. Not that I believe in it. But, you know…”

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea to test our luck again,” I whine to Nicole. “What if something goes wrong?”

“What could possibly go wrong?” Nic asks me huffily.

“Okay, I can think of, like, five bad romantic comedies off the top of my head whose trailers all started with that statement.”

“Not to worry.” Nic pulls a two-layer cake from a pink cardboard box on the counter. “This time, I figured out how to rig the cake correctly.”

Seema and I exchange cautious looks. “I’m pretty sure I can name at least one bad romantic comedy that started with that statement,” Seema whispers to me.

I put up the peace sign with my index and middle fingers and silently mouth, “Two.”

I’ll admit, the cake does look amazing. A two-layered confection covered in white buttercream frosting. White satin ribbons spoke out of the middle of the cake, and on top sits a giant porcelain topper in the shape of a heart. Nic takes a small bowl of white frosting out of her refrigerator and adds a little frosting here and there to make the cake look perfect.

I begin to question her. “Are you sure you can—”

Nic quickly drops her frosting knife.
“Ow! Owwwwww!”
she howls, then quickly grabs a chair with one hand and clutches her stomach with the other. “Ow, ow, ow, sweet mother of holy fuck!”

Seema and I both rush to her. I quickly ask, “Is it time?”

Seema asks if she should call the doctor.

Nic makes a show of waving us off with her hands, but she’s doubled over in pain and can’t speak.

“What can we do? What do you need?” I ask Nic.

“I’m fine.” Nic takes a deep breath and consciously releases the tension in her body.

“I knew this was too close to your due date. You should not be throwing a party in your condition,” I say to Nic, who goes back to frosting the cake with more buttercream as if nothing ever happened.

Nic waves me off. “Women have been in my condition since … well, since there were women. I’m fine. I’m just in false labor.”

Seema and I exchange pained looks. Seema asks first, “What the hell is false labor? Is that a thing?”

“Yes. Although I’m pretty sure the term was coined by a man. Nowadays they call it Braxton Hicks contractions. I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it. More fun things to think about, such as … ta da!” Nic does her best impression of a knocked-up
Price Is Right
model as she presents the cake to us.

It does look good, and I’ll bet she’s got dark-chocolate layers in there. But I’ve been burned by cake before.

“You’ve got it straight this time, right?” Seema asks Nic dubiously as she takes a sip of champagne from my flute.

“I have it straight,” Nic tells her irritably. “Mel, you wanted the antique phone, it’s right here. Pull.”

“No, I didn’t want the antique phone,” I insist to Nic as I tug on a white satin ribbon and pull out a sterling-silver phone charm. “I wanted the passport.”

“But the phone means good news is coming your way,” Nic tells me.

“Not specific enough. I want the passport.”

Nic makes a show of rolling her eyes. “Fine.” She points to a different ribbon. “Passport’s right there.”

I yank out the ribbon and grin from ear to ear as I admire the silver passport.

“Pull gently!” Nic lectures me. “You’re going to get the cake all messy.”

“Better the cake look messy than I get the wrong fortune again!” I tell her.

“Was it really such a bad fortune?” Seema asks me.

I turn away from her ever so slightly. I kind of don’t know how to respond to her question. Was the charm I pulled a year ago really such a bad fortune? Maybe not, but I want a better one this time.

Last time Nic tried to rig a cake, it was for her bridal shower, and she attempted to give me the engagement-ring charm. I had been with my boyfriend, Fred (now known officially as Fuckhead), for six years, and I desperately wanted to marry him. But instead of the ring, I pulled the chili-pepper charm, which was supposed to symbolize a red-hot sex life in my immediate future. At the time, sex with Fred had dwindled to nearly nonexistent, and I hated that damn cake. But the nine-inch disks of baked chocolate batter turned out to be right. I soon learned Fred was cheating on me, and I kicked him to the curb.

The next few weeks after the breakup were hideous. We got back together, he proposed, I said yes, but I soon realized he was still cheating. I did what any smart woman would—I got the hell out.

Then I made the mistake of trying to date again. How the hell do people do it in this day and age?! I tried to tackle dating the way I do everything else in my life: find out the requirements to attain your goal and work like crazy to fulfill the requirements. Buy cute new underwear: check. Run every day for a cute body: check. Let all of your friends know you’re looking: check-minus. Horribly bad idea in retrospect. I did the blind dating thing, the online thing, I tried speed dating, I perused “target-rich environments” (the target being a nice single man) such as sports bars, hardware stores, and one spectacularly craptastic deep-sea fishing trip.