Page 108 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
38
NOW
JUST BEFORE THE CEREMONY, THEbridal party assembled inside Sunny Sunday. I had finally pried myself out of bed and slipped on my bridesmaid dress, a delicate thing, light lavender, all lace and satin. It probably would have made me feel beautiful if I didn’t hate myself so much.
This was it, I decided. My last event with my family. I would get Taz married, get through the reception, go right to bed, take the first boat to town in the morning, drive back to Brooklyn, and never return. It wasn’t fair to my family. It wasn’t right, that they should have to associate with someone as disgusting as me.
When I walked into Sunny Sunday, the guests were already out on the deck. Clarence was yelling at his phone, which had chosen now to disconnect from the Bluetooth speaker system. The bride and her father had yet to arrive. Everyone else—including Taz—was ripping shots of champagne in the kitchen. I drifted around them and made my way toward the back of the cabin. Bedsheets dangled over the all-glass doors, hiding us from the guests. A makeshift curtain. I nudged the sheets aside and poked my head out to see how the decorations ended up.
Outside, the deck as I knew it was gone. Unrecognizable. No more tacky green lounge chairs or spindly plastic tables. In their place—a North Woods wonderland. Long chains of flowers, an aisle laden with blue-green satin, a massive arch made from oak branches that had been painstakingly braided and bent into an upside-down smile. I picked out the back of Mom’s head in the front row, with Dad’s chair parked to her left. The other guests—friends, cousins, ballerinas, acquaintances—milled about the remaining rows. The newcomers had only just arrived; their voices had floated into my cabin as I’d finished getting ready.
I gazed around. It was truly amazing; in just four hours, my family transformed a drab sundeck into a veritable paradise. All I did in that time was lie in bed and achieve a full-scale meltdown.
Manuel was seated in the second row. As if alerted to my gaze, he turned around in his seat. We locked eyes. I dropped the curtain and hastily backed away.
I bumped into Taz.
“Whoa, there,” he said, catching my shoulders. “You running from someone?”
I laughed idiotically.
He smiled and turned to walk outside. But before pushing open the curtain, he looked back. “Hey. Everything okay with you? I heard you weren’t feeling well earlier.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He seemed to be waiting for more. When I didn’t offer it up, he hesitated, then said, “Well, okay then,” and turned to leave again. I watched his shoulders slide through the flap in the curtain. Then, just before they disappeared, just before I could stop myself, I blurted, “No, actually.”
Taz turned back. He tilted his head and looked at me. “No? Everything isn’t okay?”
“No.”
“Is it…Manuel?”
“How’d you guess?”
He shrugged, smiled. “I might not say much, but I do pay attention.”
“Yeah, well.” I looked down. My eyes fell immediately on a wrinkle at the hem of my skirt that I hadn’t noticed before. Great. Now I could look forward to everyone staring at it during the ceremony.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I looked back up. Taz’s eyes—green, same as mine—squinted. Studied me. I was being watched by my own eyes.
“No. Well, maybe. Well…I don’t know.”
His cheeks were flushed a happy pink that didn’t match the concern in his eyes. Rose pink.The color of love, I thought.Love and alcohol.Immediately I felt selfish for saying anything to him at all. “Listen. Ignore me. This is your wedding day. I don’t even know what I’m talking about. Go out there and get married.”
I turned to leave, but Taz grabbed my wrist.
“Eliot, stop.”
I glanced back up at him. I could see he wasn’t going to let me leave. When did my brother get so strong? “I just…” I swallowed. Speech had taken on that slippery quality, the one that accompanies lack of food. Words slid from me without my consent. “How did you do it?”
He cocked his head. “Do what?”
“The soulmate thing. You and Helene. No fighting. No drama. Perfect relationship. How did you do it?”
To my surprise, Taz started to laugh. His grip slackened. “Jesus, Gup.” His eyes sparkled. “And here I always thought you were the smart one in the family.”
