Page 122 of You, with a View

I pluck my phone off my desk and type out an exploratorywhat’s the damage?

A bubble immediately pops up, disappears, reappears, then stops again.

“Greatsign.”

I wait while Adam molds his panic into thought, eyes on my phone instead of my computer. It’s nearly four p.m. on Wednesday, the day before my PTO for the wedding starts, and I still have half a page of unchecked boxes on my to-do list, plus a detailed While I’m Away email to draft for my boss. I can’t leave Adam hanging in his moment of need, though. What kind of best woman would I be?

No better than the largely absent best man?comes the uncharitable punchline. I slam the door on that thought. It’s not like I’ve minded executing most of the best-people activities; actually, it’s been a godsend for multiple reasons. It’s just that it’s so typical of him to—

I catch my own eyes in my computer’s reflection, delivering a silent message with the downward slash of my eyebrows:Shut. Up.I’d rather think about curses than anything even tangentially related to the subject of Eli.

Not that I believe in curses at all, but deep down, I do worry that Adam’s been followed by bad vibes since he proposed to his fiancée, Grace Tan, on New Year’s Eve. Their plans have involveda comedy of errors that have escalated frombummertooh shit: the wrong wedding dress ordered by the bridal salon; names misspelled on their wedding invitations, requiring an eleventh-hour reprint; and the one that nearly got me to believe—their wedding planner quit three months ago because his golden retriever had amassed such a following on social media that he was making triple his salary as her manager.

For Adam, whose natural temperament hovers somewhere near live wire, it’s been a constant test of his sanity. Even Grace, who’s brutally chill, the perfect emotional foil for Adam, and an actual angel, has been fraying lately.

Then again, she wanted to elope. Every new disaster probably only further solidifies the urge to book it to Vegas.

Adam’s texts shoot rapid-fire onto the screen:

Georgia

Our fucking DJ

BROKE THEIR HIP

LINE DANCING AT A BACHELORETTE PARTY

IN NASHVILLE

I seriously need to know what I’ve done in my 28 years on this dying earth that is causing this to happen

The possibilities are endless. I start to type, but he beats me to it.

That was rhetorical, Woodward, DON’T

I can see that Adam’s shifting out of his panic fugue, and I physically feel myself shifting into fix-it mode.

Deep breath, nothing’s burned to the ground, right?I text back.This is problematic but not fatal. We’ll come up with a new list.

The bubbles of doom pop up again and I wait. Again.

Out of everyone, there’s a reason Adam’s come to me: I’m the one people run to when they need a shoulder to cry on, a brainstormpartner, a hype woman. The one who knows what to do when shit hits the fan or when a bottle of champagne needs to be popped. When their wedding planner peaced out, Adam calledmebegging for help.

I would’ve stepped up anyway, but my motives aren’t completely altruistic. Dedicating myself to problem-solving Adam’s wedding woes has been the only way to reliably stay in his orbit.

I’m a list girl. I learned the magic of them long ago—the way they can streamline tasks, dos and don’ts, expectations. Emotions. How they can take a messy, chaotic thing and make it manageable. They’ve been my coping strategy since I was a kid, the best way I can take care of myself. They quiet my mind and untangle my emotions so that I stay cool, calm, and compartmentalized. SoI’mnot a messy, chaotic thing, because that way loneliness lies.

Needless to say, it aggrieves me that there’s no way to list my way out of what’s been happening in my life: the friends I’ve built my social life around, who have been my family, are shifting into phases I’m not in—falling in love, cohabitating, building social circles with other nauseatingly happy couples—putting me on the outside looking in.

Really, though, it’s fine. I mean, sure, I’m constantly kicking at loneliness, a feeling I’ve worked hard to avoid since I was old enough to know what that feeling was. Yeah, I can feel it peeking around corners anyway, curling up next to me at night in that empty extra space in my bed. Absolutely, watching my best friend find the kind of love I once thought I had, too, is a little soul-destroying, as is being knee-deep in my best friend’s wedding festivities, knowing that in ten days I have to stand beside—

Anyway. I’m good. One hundred and ten percent okay.

My phone buzzes. I jump, shaking off the last thought. It camewithin inches of breaking a rule on a list I created when I crawled back from New York five years ago, dragging my obliterated heart with me: never think aboutthatera with Eli—

“Hey!” I whisper-yell, flicking myself on the forehead. “Get it together.”

I turn my attention to Adam’s text:Can you help with a DJ list that isn’t shitty?

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