Page 8 of Best Woman
In high school, Kim Cameron wasthat girl. Everyone knew who she was but no one was reallyfriendswith her. She was simply too cool to be something as banal as an active participant in the high school social structure. She skipped class to smoke cigarettes in the abandoned Chase Bank down the road but was always near the top of her class. She starred in the school play but never came to Denny’s with the rest of the cast on opening night. She came out halfway through freshman year, dated a sophomore at the local community college,andhooked up with the homecoming queen. Until I moved to New York City, Kim Cameron was the coolest person I’d ever met.
She was also, of course, the biggest crush of my adolescence.
Then I remember Aiden’s call. Kim Cameron is my future sister-in-law’s maid of honor. We’re walking down the aisle together at their wedding.
Rachel is a year older than me, making her three years older than Aiden. She met Kim in college, where they roomed together freshman year. Aiden was friends with Rachel’s brother and the two hit it off at a party. The only memorable conversation Rachel and I ever had was at my twin brothers’ b’nai mitzvah, when we got drunk and gushed for an hour about how cool Kim Cameron was. It was the first time I saw what Aiden saw in her—she had good taste.
And now Kim Cameron and I are standing in a shitty bridal store in a shitty mall as I have one of the shittiest interactions I’ve had in months.
Recognition is blossoming in her eyes, with the customary momentary adjustment I’m used to from everyone who knew mebefore. “Julia? Julia Rosenberg?”
“Hey, Kim. It’s been a while. You look…I guess that’s for the wedding.”
“Yeah, Ireallyshouldn’t have left it until the last minute. Can we…I’m about to burst out of this dress. Give me a minute.” To Lorraine: “I need the next size up.”
Lorraine checks her computer for a moment as Kim and I wait in that awkward silence that you want to fill but have no idea how. “Unfortunately I don’t have the next size up. I can order it for you, but it’ll take three weeks.”
The wedding is in three weeks.
“And I don’t have a sample for you to try. We only carry up to a ten in store.”
Was this woman grown in a lab for the specific purpose of mortifying future bridesmaids?
“That’s pretty fucking stupid considering the national averagedress size in the U.S. is a sixteen,” Kim says. It’s the same tone she used to take with football players in high school who called her “Black Ellen,” a cruel but deeply unimaginative insult.
Despite having spent the last few minutes trying to disappear, I unfold myself into the conversation, which is now bordering on confrontation.
“Kim, my dress is the same style, just in a different color, and it’s a fourteen. Maybe you could try it on and make sure the size is right and they can rush order you something?”
Lorraine scoffs. “We can only make orders based on one of our sample dresses, this has already been altered.”
Kim turns to her.
“Ma’am”—which is just about the cruelest thing you can call a middle-aged bridal sales associate and not be thrown out of the store—“perhaps you can make an exceptionjust this onceso that I can try the dress on. I’m the maid of honor and I wouldn’t want to have to call another store, or corporate customer service, and let them know how…challenging it was to order my dress.”
Kim glances down at the woman’s ugly pink name tag, clearly taking note. “Lorraine.”
Oh wow, I did not expect Kim to channel her own inner Karen, but needs must.
Lorraine huffs, shoots me a look dripping with acidic disdain, and heads to the back, ostensibly to grab my dress.
“Julia, if you don’t mind sticking around for a minute, maybe we can find somewhere to grab a drink?” Kim’s smiling. I’m trying hard not to look at the places where her dress is straining to cover her skin.
“Well, Ididsee a Cheesecake Factory on my way in…”
“Perfect.”
Kim Cameron and Iare sitting in a booth at the Cheesecake Factory, sharing a bread basket. If my high school self could see me now, she’d scream.
Well, if we’re being technical about it,he’dscream. And then ask why I have boobs, and if he could touch them.
The waiter drops off our drinks—Pineapple Moscow Mule for me and my insatiable sweet tooth, whiskey ginger for Kim—and encourages us to take our time with the menu. We’ll need it, considering it’s roughly as thick as aTwilightbook. We’re talkingBreaking Dawn.
“So—” we say in unison. I sip my drink to make it clear she can go first. I don’t know what I was going to say anyway, having used up all my small talk on the trek through the mall from Born to Bride.
Kim’s teeth are very white and sharp when she smiles, dark-pink lips fuller than filler could ever make mine—and I’ve done the research. Kim was pretty and aloof in high school, the kindof emo waif I always imagined myself with. Now she is devastatingly hot, her face more angular, her body immaculately curved butsolid. She was a bit more delicate in high school, but now she’s hardened into steel. She looks like she could tear me apart. I’d let her.
“How’ve you been? It’s been a long time. I’ve heard things here and there from Rachel and, you know, the internet.”
