17 - Joanna

17

Joanna

I remembered when my life was simple. I went into the office once or twice a week. I laughed at the junior partners' progressively more inappropriate jokes. I scrolled Bumble and went on bad dates. I spent my Saturdays by the pool, enjoying the several months when Chicago wasn't a freezing wasteland.

Now I was at a stranger's wedding, in the wedding party itself, pretending to be one man's girlfriend. Meanwhile, another man was pushing me to sabotage said wedding. And the icing on the cake? I was doing it all in front of a third man who I was kind of, sort of, hoping to date when all the dust settled from this dumpster fire of a situation.

"Just get through today," I told myself. "A few more drinks, a few more lies, and a few more fake kisses, and this will all be over."

The parlor was a spacious room with dark wood, a stocked bar, and a billiards table. It was the kind of room where only white men had been welcome for most of the country club's history. Now it was filled with half a dozen women in various states of makeup and hair style, wearing soft cotton robes and sipping mimosas.

"There's my hero!" Marisa came running over to hug me. "Thank you thank you thank you. You're a lifesaver."

"Indeed she is," Danicka added. The mother of the groom must have gone first, because her hair and makeup was flawless. She looked like a classic Hollywood actress. "If there was any doubt before, there is none now. You're part of the family." She handed me a mimosa. "The rest of us are on our third drinks already, so you had better catch up."

I immediately gulped down half the drink. "Don't need to tell me twice!"

The girls all let out a celebratory woo .

"I'm sorry to hear about Liz," I said. "Hopefully everyone else is feeling okay?"

"Everyone else feels fine," Danicka said dismissively. "Come here, we need to get started on your hair."

The hair stylist took me by the shoulders and placed me in a chair, then immediately got to work on my hair without asking my opinion or saying a word. At this point, I was happy to let someone else make decisions, so I didn't complain.

Also, I needed to figure out how to give Marisa's impending marriage a stress test , to use Austin's phrase.

"What jewelry are you wearing?" Danicka asked me.

I pulled out a little jewelry bag from my pocket. "I was going to do something simple. There are a few pendant necklaces in there that are nice without being too flashy…"

Danicka rifled through the bag and then tossed it onto a nearby table. "No no no. Those won't do. You simply must wear one of these." Two necklaces appeared in her hand, both covered with diamonds and sapphires. She held one up to my neck, then the other.

"Are you sure those aren't too gaudy?"

She ignored my question. "Which of these two do you like best?"

I looked at myself in the mirror while she held them up. "I think the second one."

"I like the first one," she said, tucking the second one away.

Fine. Totally ignore my opinion and do whatever you want. I was beginning to see why Landon needed a fake girlfriend to keep his mother off his back.

"It's so nice having girls to lend my jewelry!" she said happily. "It makes up for all the football practices I had to chauffeur over the years."

The girls all chatted about the wedding day. Carol, the new Maid of Honor, told everyone about her wedding day and how she felt.

"The marriage only lasted two years," she said with a derisive sniff. "But the wedding? It was everything I ever wanted."

Sensing an opening, I asked, "Did you have any doubts going into it?"

"Of course," she replied. "We were already fighting about the big stuff, like money and where we were going to live. But we were fighting about all the little things, too. I should have known it was doomed."

Marisa was sitting next to the hair stylist's chair, so I reached over and patted her leg. "You and Bradyn don't fight about anything, though. You're perfect."

"Yeah," she replied, but there was a fraction of a second where she hesitated.

"Hold on. Do you fight?" I gently pushed.

Marisa was a conventionally pretty woman, with big, innocent eyes. They were as wide and round as they could be now as she stared off at nothing. "Well…"

"What do you fight about?" Chloe, one of the other bridesmaids, asked.

Marisa hesitated, and Danicka interjected: "Don't hold back on my account. Bradyn may be my son, but I know more than anyone that he's not perfect!"

"Well…" Marisa began.

"Maybe it will be good to let it out," I said. "If there's ever a time to vent a little, it's before making a lifetime commitment to another person!"

The mimosas must have weakened Marisa's defenses, because her big eyes began shimmering with tears. "It's just… it's just that…"

Chloe crouched down in front of her. "Maybe we shouldn't focus on—"

"You can tell us," I interrupted. "What's wrong, Marisa?"

The floodgates opened, and I immediately felt guilty for pushing her. Wanda ran over with a box of tissues, and the other girls gathered around to comfort the poor bride.

"Bradyn wants to move back to Chicago," she got out between sobs. "But I'm happy in Portland. I have friends there, and a career. Bradyn insisted that we need to be closer to family since we're going to have kids. I told him I wanted to wait a few years, and he got really upset . He wants to have kids right away. He said the sooner we have them, the sooner they'll be out of the house so we can enjoy our golden years ."

She let out another wail. It took a few moments to collect herself.

"That's when it hit me! Marriage is for life . That's a long time. I'm only twenty-six and he's already making plans for what we'll do in our fifties! I can't even meal plan, but he's planning decades in the future! Is there something wrong with me?"

"Of course not," Danicka said. "You two complement each other. That's why you're a good couple."

Marisa barely heard her. "I thought we would be able to enjoy being newlyweds for a while. Just the two of us. Now Bradyn is angry because he thought we both wanted kids immediately, and he's accusing me of changing my mind. But my mind was never made up! He just assumed that was what I wanted! He never even asked me!"

As she wept, I groaned internally. Marisa was an innocent little fawn like Bambi, and I felt like the hunter who had shot her mom. I wasn't the only one who thought so: Danicka gave me an accusatory glare.

Fuck. I needed to fix this.

"It's okay to disagree on stuff!" I said reassuringly. "These are major life decisions. It's totally normal to butt heads about it."

That didn't seem to help. She was still bawling.

Think, Joanna .

"On our first date, Landon and I realized we had different opinions about kids," I said. It was Theo I was thinking about in this example, but they didn't need to know that. "He's confident that he wants to start a family someday, and I'm still on the fence about it. We were afraid this would be a long-term problem. But we agreed to compromise. We'll wait a year, see how we both feel, and then reevaluate our desires again."

I took Marisa's hand and squeezed it. "Marriage is all about compromise. Maybe you can live in Portland for a little while, just the two of you. Then you can have kids in a few years, and move back to Chicago then."

Marisa blew her nose. "How am I supposed to convince him to compromise?"

"Sex!" Caroline exclaimed. Every head turned toward the new Maid of Honor. "Remind him that sex is off the table while you have a newborn. But if you wait to have kids, then you can have lots of sex."

Seeing an opportunity to lighten the mood, I got out of my chair and covered Danicka's ears with my hands. "You can remind him of that fact by wearing your best lingerie and doing all the stuff in bed you normally save for a special occasion."

Danicka pulled my hands away and said, "I wiped that boy's ass, I can handle a little bedroom talk!" But she said it with a laugh, and her mood seemed much improved.

"See? We just solved your first marriage problem!" I said.

"Marriage sounds easy," Wanda agreed.

Marisa was laughing now, and we all gave her a group hug. Once she wiped her eyes, she said, "Thanks for helping talk it out. Sorry I'm such a mess."

"And I'm sorry for opening up those wounds," I replied.

"I'm glad you did!" she insisted. "I needed to get that out of my system before saying I do tonight. I'm so glad you're here, Joanna. You already feel like part of the family."

"Who knows?" Danicka said. "Maybe one day, she'll make it official."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," I said with a nervous laugh. "I like Landon, but we've only been dating two months."

"Clark and I had only been dating a month when I knew he was the one," Danicka said with a smug smile. "Sometimes you just know. And right now I'm getting that same feeling about you."

"I think we all need another round of mimosas," Carol announced, and began refilling everyone's glasses from a pitcher.

Chloe launched into a story about how her boyfriend doesn't know how to fold laundry. The mood was definitely improved now.

I glanced over at Wanda. She'd been watching me, but quickly looked away while Carol refilled her drink.

I hoped that was enough to make Austin happy.