Page 37 of Sister of the Bride

“What about the rehearsal dinner?” I ask, looking up from my app, where a delightful number of boxes have been checked. I’ve never done hard drugs, but I imagine looking at all those baby-blue check marks is what heroin might feel like. “I was thinking we could do it at Marino’s. We could cook ahead, so we wouldn’t have to worry about staffing the kitchen or anything.”

“Should we really be planning on that? I mean, it could be sold by then,” Polly points out. She says it like it’s a simple logistical note, but the comment stops me dead in my tracks. The wedding seems sosoon, and the notion that the restaurant could be gone before then makes my stomach sink into my feet.

“Your mother mentioned that the restaurant company can’t get out here for another month, and a sixty-day closing could easily be put into the contract. You could even get ninety if you’re willing to negotiate a little,” Mackenzie says. Her lips press together in the firm line that I now know to be her smile. “I think we should do the rehearsal dinner there.”

Sure, it was based in dry facts and logic, but I think my future sister-in-law just tried to cheer me up?

Polly smiles, then reaches across the table and grabs my hand, giving it a squeeze. “Mackenzie’s right. I don’t think it’s all going to happen that fast, and even if it does, I doubt Mom will set a closing date anywhere near the wedding,” she says. “I know this is going to be hard as shit, Pip. But I’ll be right here with you, and I know that in the end, you’re going to find some incredible opportunity you didn’t even know existed. You’re going to be all right.”

Easy for her to say. She knows where her suitcases are going—right into Mackenzie’s Fort Point condo. But me? I have nowhere to go. I feel tears well up in my eyes and quickly suck down a big gulp of Coke to distract myself. It would be a hell of a lot easier if I could believe that there’s something special out there for me.

Chapter16

Toby

When two vegans get into an argument, is it still called a beef?

Pippin

Is that rhetorical?

Toby

It was a joke

Pippin

no, it wasn’t

That night, I’m already exhausted by the time I roll into my bedroom to get ready to meet Toby for the rabies gala. (I still have no idea what it’s actually for, and I’m not sure Toby does either.) I wasn’t supposed to work tonight, but I made the mistake of popping in after lunch with Polly and Mackenzie just to see how prep was going.

Not well, as it turned out.

Justin, the new guy Fernando was training, quit this morning because his band got a standing gig at a club in Worcester. Which meant I had to jump in to help peel garlic and get the pots of sauce going for the evening. Then the linen delivery was late, which meant Evie would never finish rolling silverware in time if I didn’t jump in to help there too. And Melinda misspelledorecchietteon the specials board, which meant it needed to be cleaned and re-lettered. Which I did.

By the time I finished all that, I had forty-five minutes before I was supposed to meet Toby. I’m sweaty and cranky and I smell like a meatball.

I jump in a quick shower, opting to leave my hair out of the spray and instead douse it with dry shampoo to mask the smell of garlic. I stumble out, pink and slick and wrapped tight in a towel, only to realize as I stare into my closet that I have absolutely nothing to wear to a fancy gala that’s being held in a five-star hotel. I’ve never been very interested in fashion, preferring comfort in the heat of summer or the frozen tundra that is a Boston winter. And over the last few years, as I’ve spent more and more of my time at the restaurant, my closet has truly fallen by the wayside. Yeah, I date, but my dates tend to lean more toward burgers than consommé. If I can’t wear jeans there, I’m not going, is what I’m saying.

But jeans will not cut it at a black-tie event.

I’m just about to reach for my senior prom dress when Polly finds me, blinking at the meager supply of clothes not meant to be worn on shift at Marino’s—a few sundresses, a pair of black pants, and a blazer that I only pull out when I have to meet with the accountant or the health inspector.

“Help,” I say, and the word is barely out of my mouth before Polly is pulling a dress from her own closet.

“Thankgod, I was worried you were going to wear the dress you wore to Alma’s wedding,” Polly says, referring to our cousin, who got married in a traditional Catholic mass where we all had to cover our shoulders. That wedding took place when I was a senior in high school. The dress has long sleeves and a peplum. Very mid-2010s fashion.Verynot hot now. I honestly forgot it was in there, and I’m glad Polly found me before I realized, because between that and the prom dress, the peplum definitely would have won out.

Unfortunately, the dress Polly is coming at me with isverynot me. But I can’t even get the words out before I’m being shoved back into the bathroom, the hanger in my hand.

“Just try it!” Polly calls through the bathroom door. “No complaints until it’s on you, please.”

I shimmy into the dress and climb up onto the toilet lid to try to get a glimpse of myself in the tiny mirror over the pedestal sink, but all I can see is boobs. Seriously, the dress performs a very impressive lift-and-separate that makes my chest look like it’s on display, some artful boning holding it aloft. Maybe I should have waited untilafterthe gala to make up with Polly, because now I’m going to have to go out like this, and while the prom dress is unfashionable, at least it fully covers the girls.

“Polly, I cannot wear this,” I say, walking out to stand in front of the full-length mirror next to her bed. “I look—”

“Hot,” she says. She stands back and gives me a full up-and-down, then walks over and spins me around, adjusting seams so they fall in the right place on my full hips and fastening the hook over the zipper that I couldn’t reach because I am not a member of Cirque du Soleil.

“Like a hooker, is what I was going to say.” I eye the knee-length dress, fitted around my round hips with a fitted waist and a sweetheart neckline, tiny spaghetti straps serving as mere ornamentation because the built-in corset is really what’s doing all the work of holding it up. Polly reaches back and pulls on the zipper, sucking me into the thing like it’s been painted on my body. “Polly, it’s red.”

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