Page 42 of Best Woman
“Fuck no.” I catch her eyes in the mirror and raise an eyebrow, hopefully in a sexy way and not a deranged one. “Let’s go make this rehearsal dinner our bitch.”
“Oh my god,Iloveyour dress!” Rachel 3 grips my shoulders, which she hasn’t let go of since the hug she yanked me into when Kim and I entered the bar. “Amazon?” she asks.
“Vivienne Westwood.”
Her eyes widen. “Wow. Did you get it at the mall?”
“No.” I don’t have the bandwidth for the Rachels right now. I have to escape. Quickly. “Oh, there’s my Aunt Harriet.” Aunt Harriet died during the Bush administration. The second one. “Good to see you!”
I hurtle myself away from her and straight into Uncle Aaron and his wife Brooke, whose house I used to stay at for a few weeks every summer before sleepaway camp. Aaron gives me the kind of back-slapping half hug he’s been doing since I went through puberty (the first time) but Brooke wraps me up in a proper embrace, pulling back to give me a thorough scan. “Sweetie, you look incredible!” Their kids, a pair of boys a few years older than Brody and Brian, give me awkward hellos. Iwent to their house on Long Island for Rosh Hashanah two years ago, and while our catch-up chitchat is a bit stilted, it’s mostly because we don’t see each other that often and run out of pleasantries quickly.
Kim’s at the bar getting us drinks, and I attempt to weave through the crowd to her but am stopped by Randy’s mother Alice. “Oh my lord,” she says. “Look at you.” Her red hair is teased and blown out larger than hair has any right to be, her eye shadow a shocking blue, lipstick bleeding into the wrinkles around her mouth. I haven’t seen her in five years and could have gone for another five. Here we go.
“Hi, Alice,” I say, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “It’s lovely to see you.”
“My word,” she says, clutching a martini to her chest. She has the kind of Southern twang that could deep-fry a chicken in seconds. “I’d heard all aboutyou,of course, but my Lord!” Randy is only Jewish on his father’s side, and Alice has clung stubbornly to her good Christian gentility. “You know,” she says, assessing, “you’re actually very pretty like this.”
“Um. Thank you.”
“And of course you were always…different.” It sounds like a dirty word in her mouth. She sips her drink. I wonder how many she’s had already. “I suppose we know why now, don’t we?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, looking back toward the bar but not spotting Kim. “I’m sure I’ll have some new shocking revelation to share with everyone before long.”
She clucks her tongue. “Bless your heart.” Another gulp. I’m pretty sure she just swallowed an olive whole. “That’s quite anoutfit.” She rakes her eyes down my body. “I hope tomorrow you’ll be wearing something a bit more tasteful.”
Fuck it, I probably won’t have to see this woman again until Brody and Brian graduate, and they could be in prison or attempting world domination by then. “I’m picking my gimp suit up from the dry cleaners in the morning. Have a great night!”
Across the room I see my mom standing beside Rachel and Aiden as they welcome guests, Rachel’s parents flanking their other side. Mom is, of course, wearing beige. When she waved me off earlier, on my way to the hotel, her eyes went straight to my feet, noticing the absence of the heels she’d paid for this morning. Her gaze was all the reproach I needed, but I reminded myself that these shoes have walked a red carpet and the ones she bought me at Bloomingdale’s were thirty percent off. She can return them for all I care.
“There you are,” Kim says, easing effortlessly through the crowd to hand me a glass of champagne. We clink our glasses and she moves beside me, wrapping one of those strong arms around my waist. If the bodice of my dress wasn’t so tight my nipples would probably get hard.
“Hello, ladies.” Ben looks dashing in a navy blue suit, dark hair slicked back. His gaze flicks to where Kim is wrapped around me and he smiles. “You both look fantastic.”
“Uh.” How exactly does one handle casual conversation with a person they’ve fucked in the past forty-eight hours and one they’dliketo fuck in the next…three, tops? It’s not the first time I’ve encountered the circumstances—Fire Island, again—but the context is wildly different. “Thanks.”
“You look pretty good yourself, Otsuka.” Kim, where she’spressed against me, is as relaxed as ever. “I think you might have your pick of the bridesmaids.”
He shrugs, a small smile on his lips. “One or two of the groomsmen too. But I’ve set my sights a little higher. Toward the heavens, one might say.” He nods his head over toward the door, where Aiden and Rachel are greeting Rabbi Hoffman, the object of my preteen lust.
“Ben, if you fuck Rabbi Hoffman at my little brother’s wedding I’m going to besojealous.” Adolescent fantasies centered around the private lessons for my haftarah portion come rushing back. “He was an extremely integral part of my bisexual awakening!”
“Imagine what we could use the tallit for.”
Laughing, we wish him luck and watch him stalk toward his prey. I’m relieved, even though I’d known neither Kim nor Ben would make the situation uncomfortable. Thank god that I can share my body with people who don’t feel some implicit ownership of it justbecauseI’ve shared it with them. Even if this thing with Kim and me becomes something more—a possibility that’s hot to the touch, too bright to look at closely—who’s to say Ben and I won’t fall back into each other the next time I visit? Kim doesn’t seem possessive, and I have little desire to be possessed—outside of sex, at least. Although who knows, Rabbi Hoffman might be the jealous type.
And of course that’s when my grandparents arrive.
“Hiya, doll,” says Grandpa, pulling me into a hug. Grandma accepts a kiss to the cheek with the dignity of a monarch, eyes me up and down with pursed lips. “That’s some dress,” she says. I’m not sure what “some” is supposed to mean, but I doubt it’s good.
“And who might you be, my dear?”
“Kim,” she says. “Julia’s friend. And Rachel’s maid of honor.”
Wow, I rank before maid of honor. That shouldn’t feel as good as it does. It does anyway.
Eyeing her suit, Grandpa reaches forward to shake her hand and gives an overexaggerated wince.
“What a grip!” He shakes his hand out as if he’s playing to the cheap seats. “Careful, I’m a very frail old man. At least, that’s what my wife keeps telling me.”
