Page 60 of To Love or to Lose
The paradox of classy-casual doesn’t make sense to me. All I know is there won’t be a beer pong table in the middle of the living room.
“How do you plan on all of this transpiring without Winnifred seeing from her bedroom window?” I ask, realizing that having decorators and caterers filtering in and out of the house all day may tip her off.
“Winnie’s not self-centered enough to believe that we would throw her a party.” I can tell Logan is annoyed by the fact but uses it to his advantage anyway.
“Okay.” At least he’s thought this through. “I will go get the gold balloons.”
“I’ll see if one of the girls can drive you.”Oh, how great that will be.
An hour later, I’m standing in the middle of the town party store with Genevieve, wondering how in the world I got here.
As it turns out, Genevieve was the only person available to drive me into town since Eloise is with Winnie, and obviously Winnie can’t know about this shopping trip.
Shockingly enough, we’ve been civil with each other since I got in her car, and I’m wondering if it’s only because we’re working for a common cause, one that doesn’t revolve around us. We’re helping my best friend throw his best friend a birthday party. There’s not much to fight about on that front.
“Did Logan seriously say to get five hundred?” She asks, looking at all the different gold balloons.
“You don’t understand the extent of everything he’s doing for this party.” I tell her. “Before I left the house, I heard him on the phone asking how quickly he could get apink bouncy house.”
“Logan throws us parties every year, but he’s never done one for Winnie because he never thought she’d want one,” She responds.
“Why wouldn’t she?” I ask.
“She’s not big on attention, I mean, none of us are, but Eloise and I didn’t really care about the attention. We were just there to have a good time with our friends.” She picks up a pack of gold balloons, examining their sizes. “But back then, Winnie would have never been able to get over the anxiety of that many people celebrating her long enough to have fun.”
“Are those the ones you want?” I motion toward the balloons she’s picked.
“Yeah.” She looks at the count of the package. “There’s only twelve balloons per package, so how many packages do we need?”
“For five hundred?” I calculate it quickly in my head.
“Forty-two.” We both say at the same time.
When I look at her in shock, she’s smiling at me. “What?” She asks. “You’re not the only one who's good at math.”
“Great, let’s buy them and get back to the house.” I say, grabbing every pack of gold balloons off the shelf.
“I don’t know who Logan thinks is going to be blowing these up, but it damn well won’t be me.”
I laugh, because I’m feeling the same way now that I’m looking at how many balloons we are holding between the two of us.
“Do you even think Winnifred will notice the balloons?” I ask, genuinely curious to how Genevieve thinks her friend will react.
“I think she’s bound to when they are covering the entire house,” she jokes. “Regardless of the amount, Winnie is going to pay attention to every bit of energy that Logan puts into her party.”
Logan and Winnifred’s friendship is very inconclusive when it comes to how I think it will progress. Seeing them together makes me question whether either of them would ever cross a line between friends or something more. Their friendship is so amicable that it’s hard to tell if it’s just that good, or if it’s teetering on the verge of becoming a full-blown relationship.
“Has anything ever happened between Logan and Winnifred?” I ask as we walk out of the party store.
Genevieve almost stops in her tracks, looking over at me with wide eyes. “What?” She sounds as if she’s going to burst out laughing.
“They just seem…” I trail off.
Genevieve actually does laugh “Like they’ve fucked?”
We start walking again. “No, just that there’s something more than friendship happening between them.” Part of me wonders if I’m just reading too much into things, but I also wonder if she feels the same way.
I wonder often if Genevieve thinks the same way I do.
