Page 19 of A Storybook Wedding

My younger sister, Jamie (bride number thirteen), was going for her master’s degree at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, studying to become a certified athletic trainer, when she got a job working for the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, a double-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays.

In professional baseball, guys move up and down the minor league ladder, all hoping for a shot to play in the majors. It’s a real grind too. Players have to work out every day, and they have to report to games six days a week with an off day on Monday. They live in obscure towns across the country—or even in Canada, if you happen to play for the Blue Jays—and as they move up and down the ladder, they can be plucked up out of one of those areas and sent to another team within the franchise in a totally different time zone overnight. I happen to know this information courtesy of Bryce Archer, my first and only long-term boyfriend ever. We met in homeroom at Cardozo High School in Queens, New York. Like people used to—none of this online business you see happening these days. Things were good until they weren’t, and then we broke up. There were no new verbs aligned with our time together, no gaslighting or catfishing. He was not sus, and neither of us were woke. In fact, our relationship read a lot more like a traditional teen romance movie than the current online dumpster fire of my social life. Bryce was cute and popular. I was shy and awkward. It was very Twilight minus the vampires, The Fault in Our Stars minus the terminal illness. Cool guy plus nerdy girl equals happy ending, which sounds a lot like common core math to me in that it makes no logical sense whatsoever. Still, we stayed together for six years, which is a long time for any relationship, I know now. We even stuck it out through college, both of us moving to the wilds of Rhode Island. He played baseball for Bryant University, and I went to Brown University to study literature, so we were twenty minutes away from each other in the Dunkin’ drinking Ocean State. Until he got drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays his junior year of college and poof! Within days, he was gone, suddenly living in Vancouver, Canada, on a work visa playing minor league baseball for a Blue Jays farm team. Bryce left me behind to handle the ring by spring expectation of my mother, who would not stop begging me to make it work long distance while I succumbed to the quiet understanding that he was out there chasing his dreams, just like all of my overachieving friends at Brown.

I was chasing mine too—or, at the very least, I was figuring out exactly what mine were while immersing myself in the written word: classics, contemporaries, and everything in between. I could lose myself in a book just as easily as I could find myself in one, and I knew that I yearned for a future where I could be surrounded by stories. I loved words like Bryce loved baseball.

So when he left, it hurt, but it wasn’t a shock, and I certainly wasn’t about to force a round peg into a square hole just to appease my mother. Besides, our relationship had devolved into a ticking clock. Waiting for the draft. Waiting for the call. Scoping out teams, locations. I would have been really stupid if I thought he’d quit all that so he could stay in Rhode Island with me, especially when the whole reason he’d gone there in the first place was so that he could get noticed by scouts, chase opportunities, and find a way into a world he’d wanted to be part of since he was a little kid. We’d stay friends, we decided. You know, the kind of friends who barely ever speak to each other because of time zones, practices, games, and all that.

It was fine. There were other fish in the sea.

Besides, I had my books. My books would never leave. They’d see me through the pain of a breakup. Books could see me through anything. Plus, the leading men in books were a whole lot more interesting and desirable than the ones I knew in real life. Mr. Darcy never talked about anal during Mexican night at the dining hall the way Todd did. Marc Antony didn’t ask Cleopatra if she wanted to have a threesome with her roommate. (Vinny sure did though.)

In the years following graduation, I dated Les, who was conveniently “between jobs” and made me pay for our dinner; Devin, who had a legit toe fetish; and Jared, who was kind enough to inform me that the thing on his lip was not a pimple but a herpes sore (as I’d suspected). Anyway, all of that was a far cry from my most recent relationship, which took place last year and lasted exactly one evening, ending with me climbing out of the bathroom window of a restaurant after being informed that my date, Adrian, “occasionally dabbled” in methamphetamines.

And no, that was not a fact that he listed on his Tinder profile.

But (and my apologies for the digression, but we’re back to minor league baseball here) I now know that the minors are kind of like the military, minus the weapons training and risking-your-life-for-freedom thing. The guys often get lonely, and many look for the companionship of a wife at a relatively early age. How did I learn this tidbit of intel, you wonder? Well, courtesy of Bryce, of course.

And my sister.

Lucky wedding number thirteen, a.k.a. the day my ex-boyfriend became my brother-in-law, was fraught with pitiful looks from my huge extended family. Exuberance for my baby sister was marred by mumbled sidebar concerns for my mental health as my chronological age was nearing twenty-nine and my ovaries had zero prospects in sight.

Please allow me to remind you that this is a work of nonfiction, so yes, your knee-jerk response of “You’re kidding, right?” is fully warranted.

Jamie called me when Bryce showed up on her team, fresh off a stint with the Buffalo Bisons. He was bummed to be climbing down the ladder after a not-so-hot season, demoted from triple-A to double-A, and was grateful for the surprise of Jamie’s familiar face. She asked me if it was okay to go out with him for a drink a week or two later, and what was I going to say? No?

I couldn’t say no. She’s my sister, and I love her! Bryce was just a guy from my past. And so what if he took my virginity?

Okay, fine. In retrospect, maybe I should have said no.

Jamie’s wedding day should have been a sad day for me, walking down the aisle toward my Bryce plus seven years of muscle decked out in a tuxedo. To be fair, I’ll admit that it was hard not to be reminded of our prom night, seeing him standing there dressed like that. Yet as I arrived just steps shy of his position at the altar, I veered to the left to line up alongside my relatives, a lopsided smile plastered to my face, making space for his bride, my sister, whose fidget spinner collection he used to make fun of back when we were dating. And I was…fine. Not angry, not sad. Bryce was a minor-league baseball player who dropped out of college, and Jamie was content to toss aside her expensive private school education and interest in science and biology to accompany him up and down the MLB flowchart, living in crappy rental apartments paid for by the team and going to six baseball games a week with no end in sight.

If that was the journey she wanted to have, more power to her.

One thing bears mentioning though. I had an epiphany during that wedding. So this is the “character arc” part of the story, if you will. As I shifted from left foot to right foot in my painful sparkly shoes, there was a moment when I realized I wasn’t like the rest of my female family members. For them, the idea of being married and procreating was some sort of apex to aspire to. But I never really saw marriage that way. My dad was always busy working; my mom was busy feeding everyone and running us all over the city to our various activities and playdates. My parents never got all fancy and went out together unless they had to. There were no Broadway shows or date nights. Dad only dressed up for work, for weddings, or for Nana’s funeral. Life was just always super busy.

Well, I mean, for the rest of us. (Rest in peace, Nana.)

Meanwhile, I grew up hiding from the ever-present noise in my childhood home by burying my nose in a book, wearing oversize, unsightly red headphones to mute the constant drama that comes with a house full of girls. I immersed myself in stories about strong women, books like The Poisonwood Bible and The Handmaid’s Tale—narratives that reinforced the notion that there was more to life than just the search for a man. Then I’d pen short stories or fanfic, mostly coming-of-age YA stuff, in an attempt to fill a void that I felt existed for young girls like me in bookstores and libraries. The classics portray male protagonists going on great adventures; think Huckleberry Finn or Odysseus. Even Holden Caulfield was going on his own kind of journey. But female protagonists of the past—much like my sisters and cousins—journeyed only toward marriage and childbirth, leaving careers and other meaningful life goals on the wayside in pursuit of that sperm.

So as I stood there at Jamie’s wedding, hiding behind my robin’s-egg-blue glasses, I received those pathetic looks from my family members and found myself awash with resolve. No more of this always a bridesmaid bullshit. No more being defined by my lack of a plus-one at family functions.

No more of me just being a reader, a sideline participant, a children’s librarian swimming in an endless sea of other people’s stories.

Why waste my time on dating apps when I could spend it pursuing my dreams? And maybe, I figured, if my family could see how fulfilling my life was as a solo act, they’d leave me alone about having babies and actually be proud of my professional accomplishments.

Yes, as my baby sister took her vows to love, honor, and cherish Bryce Archer, so too did I take a vow, to love, honor, and cherish myself! This was the moment I decided I would pursue my childhood dream of becoming a published author. I would write books and people would buy them, and I would be Cecily Jane Allerton, the self-fulfilled author whose family was proud of her, not Cecily Jane Allerton, the poor soul whose prom date married her sister.

That counts as a character arc, right?

I scribble away, recounting the story that has shaped my adult life most to date, until Nate informs us that it’s time to be done. “That’ll do it, folks. Anyone want to share what they wrote?”

Overzealous students raise their hands, eager to hop on board the Nate Ellis express train to success, but all I keep thinking about is what he told me last night at the medical center. He thinks he’s just a fluke. Maleficent attempts to share her pearls of wisdom with the group, only she doesn’t really answer the question and instead talks about Hemingway’s alcoholism, which seems irrelevant but is in much the same vein as Professor Douchebag Devereaux’s previous comment. I turn around to see if the douchebag herself has reentered the room, and not a moment too soon, as it appears she is not only back but has something new to say.

“I agree with Andrea,” she pontificates. “Real character arcs develop due to more than just circumstances. For example,” she goes on, “if we were to take your success as an author, we would see that you went from a no-name copywriter to a big-name somebody in the time it took for a pop-up animal market to go batty in Wuhan.”

Oh, damn.

“Which is not exactly the same as a character arc, now is it?” she goes on.

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