Scot on the Rocks (18 page)

“None taken,” Jack said.

“Actually, Muffin,” I explained, “Trip and I are still very good friends.”

“Trip asks you to move to California, you say no. He asks Ava, and look what happens,” she said, waving her arms to indicate that she was talking about the wedding. Then, grasping my hand again, she whispered, “It’s good that you’re not bitter about it, though.”

“Bitter?” Jack asked under his breath, “No. Insane enough to make her best friend dress up as a Scotsman and pretend to be her boyfriend? Yes.”

“What was that, dear?” Aunt Muffin asked him.

“He was just saying how very happy we are for them,” I explained.

“Well, that’s sweet,” Aunt Muffin said. “See, my generation, we didn’t really stay friends with former beaus. I wasn’t really happy for any of them.”

“Well, we’re still friends,” I said. “I even helped Trip get his first job out here as an entertainment lawyer. Working for one of my father’s friends.”

“Goddamn Jews control all of Hollywood,” Uncle John said, waving his arms to indicate that he was talking about the wedding. “But I don’t have to tell you that.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “I only
wish
that you wouldn’t.” And I was pretty sure that half of the guest list wouldn’t want him telling them that, either.

“Are you Scottish?” Uncle John asked Jack.

Jack looked down at his kilt. Uncle John didn’t say a word and simply continued looking at Jack for his answer.

“Yes,” Jack said.

“So, tell me about this tartan of yours,” Uncle John said.

“Well, it’s blue for starters.”

“I know that the Scots are particularly proud of their tartans,” Uncle John said. “Family thing, and all. I do business with tons of Scots.”

“What type of business is that?” Jack asked.

“So, tell me about yours,” Uncle John said.

“Me? Well, I’m a lawyer.”

“About your kilt, silly, not your business,” Uncle John said.

“Well, it’s also got some red in it,” Jack said.

“Used to have this one business colleague of mine who was a Scot,” Uncle John said. “Asked him about his kilt once and he talked about it for damn near a half an hour! So, don’t be shy. You can tell me all about yours.”

“Well, it all started centuries ago when my family —”

“Will you two please excuse us?” I said, cutting Jack off. “I see some old friends that we absolutely must say ‘hello’ to.” As we walked away, I heard Uncle John comment to Aunt Muffin: “Those Scots really love to talk.”

We navigated the rest of the cocktail hour with relative ease, stopping only time to time to engage in such delightful exchanges as this:

Wedding guest: So, are you Scottish?

Jack: What gave it away?

Wedding guest: Do you know Evan McCullough?

Jack: He’s from Perth, is he?

Wedding guest: No, Scotland.

Jack: It’s a big country, you know.

Wedding guest: Oh, okay. You should get to know him, though. He’s a nice guy.

Jack: Right.

Before we knew it, it was time to go into the main room for the reception. And we didn’t even get a chance to sample the potato bar.

“O
h, my,” I practically gasped as we walked into the room where the reception was being held. I looked in disbelief at the breathtaking space that was before me. It was another master-piece — another cavernous banquet room, completely transformed. Like the room we had just left, this room was decorated beautifully with fragrant flowers, lush fabric and candles everywhere you looked. It was all at once formal, yet entirely comfortable — done up to the hilt, yet understated.

A wraparound balcony hovered above the two-story walls, tea lights lining its banister. Each table had a very complex, very beautiful floral arrangement floating on its tabletop. Huge glass candelabras held up miles of ivory roses and lilies, surrounded by tall, majestic candles, standing at full attention like the guards at Buckingham Palace. Somehow, I knew that the candles would not dare to drip. Each chair was magnificently dressed in a very thick, luxurious ivory satin with a bow tied around the back.

The dance floor had been painted white with Trip and Ava’s monogram elegantly adorning its center. I had never seen anything like it before in my life — I could have sworn I even saw a dove or two flying around the room.

“Do you think that this is what heaven looks like?” Jack asked, looking up and around as he walked.

“I hope so,” Vanessa said, trailing off as she brushed her hand against one of the chairs.

“Speak like an Aussie just once during this reception and you will soon find out,” I told Jack.

“So,” a wedding guest asked Jack as we tried to find table eleven, “what do you think of the political situation in Scotland?” Jack and I shot each other blank stares. My goodness, a guy puts on a kilt and all of the sudden, everyone expects him to be an expert on all things Scottish….

“Well,” Jack said, “what do you think I think of it?” The man nodded back at Jack knowingly.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the bandleader bellowed. His voice was equal parts Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. “Would you please give a large round of applause to Mr. and Mrs. Trip Bennington!”

Ava and Trip came gliding into the room, smiling. The bandleader stepped aside and made room for a singer wearing a little silver cocktail dress, covered in sequins. The band played “At Last” and the singer, giving Billie Holiday a run for her money, sang along.

“At last,” the singer began to sing slowly, crooning about the end of her lonely days.

One more song to knock off my list of songs that I want played for the first dance at my own wedding. It seems that every wedding I go to, I lose one more. (Except for that one wedding I went to where the couple danced their first song to Guns N’ Roses’s “November Rain.” I think that the happy couple missed the fact that it was actually a sad song.) At the rate I’m going, if I don’t get married soon, my betrothed and I will be dancing our first dance to “The Piña Colada Song.”

After Trip and Ava had danced through about half of the song, the bandleader returned to the mike to invite guests to join the bride and groom out on the dance floor. I didn’t make a move. It’s an unspoken single-girl pact: you do not, under any circumstances, let your single girlfriend sit alone for the first dance. Even if you have a date, you sit with her. Now, Vanessa is married, I know, but I thought that the rule should still apply.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Vanessa asked Jack. “Ask her to dance!” she said. Jack and I looked at Vanessa. “Yes, I’m all right. Go!” she said, with a smile on her face. I guess when you’re married it makes no difference to you if you sit alone for a dance or two. You know that you’ve got a dance partner for life, even if he’s not there to dance with you right at that very moment.

“M’lady?” Jack asked in his Scottish accent, taking my hand in his. He kissed it gently.

“How come you do the accent perfectly with me, but with everyone else you lapse into the Australian?” I asked him, spoiling the mood.

“Shut up and dance,” he said as he led me onto the dance floor. He spun me around and I fell right into him. There was something very definite about the way he held me in his arms as we danced.

“This room is really beautiful,” he said, looking around.

“Do you think that Vanessa is okay?” I asked, subtly spinning Jack around so that I could look over his shoulder to check on Vanessa at our table.

“She’s fine,” he said, leaning into my ear.

“I feel bad leaving her alone like that. I don’t want her to feel lonely, you know?” I said. “It’s such bad luck that Marcus had to work this weekend, don’t you think?”

“Well, at least
she
was able to make it,” Jack said, sounding like a man who often has to cancel his own weekend plans.

“That’s true,” I said, remembering a few canceled weekends of my own.

The singer continued on and Jack pulled me closer.

“What do you think your wedding will look like?” Jack asked me.

“Oh, you mean if I ever get married?” I said laughing.

“If you ever get married,” he said, spinning me around, completely ignoring the self-pity. The dance floor was beginning to fill up with wedding guests.

“I don’t really know. I never really thought about it.”

“What do you mean you never thought about it?” he asked. “I thought that you wanted to marry Douglas?”

“I did,” I said. “I mean, I do. I just never thought about what our wedding would be like.”

“I thought that little girls always dreamt about what their weddings would be like?” he asked, dipping me down. We were face-to-face, Jack’s arm behind my back being the only thing holding me up.

“Not me,” I said as he brought me back up. “I never did. Now, don’t get me wrong, I always dreamt about what the guy would be like, but not the wedding so much.”

“So, what would the guy be like?” he asked, pulling me closer for a spin.

“Oh, I don’t know — smart, funny, kind — wears pants, you know, the usual stuff,” I said as I spun around.

“And Douglas was all of those things?” Jack asked, pulling me back to him.

“Well, as you know, the man was not a big fan of pants.”

“No, seriously, the other stuff. Was he kind? Funny?”

“No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t any of those things at all,” I said, suddenly realizing it for the first time.

“Oh,” Jack said, looking down at me as if he wanted to say more. Our eyes were locked, but neither one of us said a word.

The singer murmured something about being in heaven and I couldn’t help but agree.

I was sure that he was going to lean down to kiss me, but in an instant, the song was over and we found ourselves standing apart, applauding the band.

“Well, okay then,” Jack said, “I’m going to go and get a drink. Would you like anything?”

“No, thank you,” I said. I was beginning to think that I’d had enough champagne — I was tipsy and confused over what had just happened. Or what had just
not
happened. “I’m fine. I guess I’ll go check up on Vanessa now.” I stumbled back to our table.

“I didn’t want to leave you here all by yourself,” I said to Vanessa as I sat down next to her.

“I wanted you to go. You looked like you were having fun out there. Were you?” Vanessa asked me.

“Was I what?” I asked, tearing apart a dinner roll and taking a sip of my water.

“Having fun with Jack out there?”

“I don’t know,” I quickly answered. “I probably would have had more fun sitting at the table by myself, like you were, but knowing that I had someone in my life, rather than just having someone to dance with at that moment.”

“Oh,” Vanessa said.

“You’re so lucky to be married. If I had married Douglas, none of this would have happened. Everything would be perfect. My life would be so much easier.”

“Just because you get married, it doesn’t mean that your life gets any easier, Brooke.”

“Easy for you to say,” I cried out, “you’ve been married for forever! You have no idea how hard it is to be single.”

“You have no idea how hard it is to be married,” she said quietly.

“Every wedding invitation is a torture test,” I persisted. “You’re either invited without a date and thus banished to the pathetic singles table, or you’re invited with a date and it’s a nightmare to find someone who will go with you. I should have just married Douglas.”

“He didn’t ask,” Vanessa said, looking to me.

“Then I should have married Trip. Or at the very least, tried coming out to L.A. with him.”

“Things with Trip weren’t perfect, though.”

“Then I should have married Danny, my high-school boyfriend. You don’t know him, so you can’t say anything nasty about him, can you?” I took a swig of champagne.

“You think that you would be happy if you had married Danny?” she asked, eyes still on me.

“Well, not even necessarily married to Danny, but just married in general. I should have just gotten married, period. If only I had gotten married already, my life would be so much easier.”

“I’m sorry, Brooke,” Vanessa said as she started to cry. “Would you excuse me for just one moment? I need to use the ladies’ room,” she said and bolted from her seat.

Dumbfounded, I followed her into the ladies’ room, struck by the irony that we were at
my
ex-boyfriend’s wedding, yet somehow, Vanessa was the one who was crying. I burst inside and she was nowhere to be found. Remembering how I used to hide out in the bathroom to avoid the mean girls one very long summer at sleep-away camp, I began checking the stalls. When I came upon the one that had six-hundred-fifty-dollar gold Manolo Blahnik strappy stilettos peeking out of the bottom, I knocked on the door.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

“No,” I replied.

“Please, Brooke,” she said, “I want to be alone.”

“I think that being alone might just be your problem,” I said and gave the door a gentle push. “What happened just now?”

“What are you doing?” she said from inside.

“I figure if you’re not coming out, I’m coming in.”

“Back away from the door, Brooke,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll be waiting right here.”

A minute or two later, she walked out of the stall, feet dragging as if they carried the weight of the world on them. I had never seen Vanessa break down like that before in the entire eight years that I’d known her. She was always the strong one, the tough one, but here she was, all dressed up in her dressiest black-tie dress, with big fat tears falling down her perfectly made-up cheeks.

“Vanessa,” I said, gathering her to me for a hug. She pulled away and I watched her as she went to sit in front of the dressing-room mirror.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said, carefully dabbing away a tear from the side of her eye. I sat down on one of the other chairs in front of the mirror. She continued to cry as she fixed her makeup even though her face remained strangely composed. She dabbed at each one before it fell down her cheeks. I didn’t know what to say. Seeing her cry like that, pretending that she wasn’t, was making me want to cry myself.

“Honey, what is it?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Vanessa,” I said, handing her a tissue.

“I just get very emotional at weddings is all,” she said, taking out her engraved Tiffany & Co. compact and powdering her nose.

“Emotional is using a handkerchief to dab your tears of joy. You’re about halfway into a box of Kleenex.”

“Is it that bad?” Vanessa asked, checking her reflection in the mirror.

“Kind of, but you could never
really
look bad. So what is it?” I asked.

“No, this is your thing, Brooke. Your night. I’m totally fine,” she said.

“Actually, it’s Ava’s night, not mine. And you’re my best friend, so even it was my very own wedding, I’d still want you to tell me what was wrong,” I said.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really. You’re my best friend in the world. You know that. You can tell me anything,” I said, handing her another tissue.

“Marcus isn’t really working this weekend,” she said.

“He’s not?”

“He’s not. I’ve asked Marcus for a trial separation,” she said softly, looking down intently at her tissue. It was covered in her perfectly applied mascara.

“What?” I said. I couldn’t believe my ears. Vanessa and Marcus were supposed to be the perfect couple. The beautiful lawyer and the handsome doctor living happily ever after. I grabbed a monogrammed guest towel off the counter and started tearing it in halves.

“It’s been a long time coming,” she said. “About a year ago, he had an affair and we just haven’t recovered from it.”

“I had no idea,” I said, and was stunned that I hadn’t. I can barely keep a particularly bad order of chicken parmesan to myself much less something that would affect my whole life like the breakup of my marriage. “I’m so sorry.”

“
I
haven’t recovered from it, I should say.” Leave it to Vanessa to think of a detailed analysis on why she was still upset that her husband had cheated on her.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again, handing her another tissue. It felt as if that were the only thing I could say. “I can’t believe you were holding all of this inside.”

“It’s not exactly the type of thing that I want to talk about. I thought that everything was fine,” she said and started to cry again. She had her head down and her shoulders were shaking. I leaned over and gave her a hug. Not one of those hugs that women give each other when they sort of grip each other’s shoulders and delicately pat each other on the back. I gave her a real hug. One of those big bear hugs where you hold on so tight that you can barely breathe. I grabbed her and pressed her to me and didn’t let her go. I could feel her entire body heaving and I could practically hear her heart beating. I didn’t want to let her go until I could figure out how to make it all better for her.

“It’s okay,” I whispered into the back of her head. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here for you. Anything you need. If you want to talk, we’ll talk. Or, if you just want to cry, we’ll cry. You know how good I am at crying.”

Vanessa broke away and started to laugh. “How about this — we focus on me now and we cry about how your life is falling apart over dessert.”