Wedding Dress

It was 3:05 in the morning, and I was sitting alone in my living room. The television was on, playing a rerun of Friends: the episode where Phoebe, Rachel and Monica sat around the living room in wedding dresses. I let out a snort of laughter, drained the last of my wine, and set the glass on the table beside the empty bottle. After drinking the entire thing (and a few beers before that) my bladder was ready to burst. As best as I could manage, I got off the couch in a rustle of fabric.

Wedding dresses were definitely not made to pee. I tried pulling the skirt up while I sat down, but the fabric was too heavy, so I let it drop around the toilet. The phone started ringing, and though an unanswered phone usually puts my nerves on end, I decided that I wouldn’t let it interrupt the one moment of relief I’d experienced all day. Just as I was flushing, the machine clicked on.

“Hey! This is Stephanie’s and Frida’s place. We’re not in, so leave a message,” Frida’s voice thunders through the apartment. The volume on that thing is ridiculously loud.

“Frida, contesta,” it’s a man’s voice. Probably her brother. “Ya tengo las tapas wey, hay que regresarlas antes de meternos en un pedo.”

I reach the pone right before he hangs up. “Frida’s not home, she had to go to Detroit City for work.”

“Work my ass. Is this Steph? It’s Frida’s brother, Gon.” Though he had lived almost his entire life in the States, his Mexican accent was still rather thick.

“Hi Gonzalo, how are you?” My voice must have sounded as apathetic as I felt. There was silence at the other end of the line.

“You okay Steph?” he asked after a while.

“As okay as I can be after I get left at the altar.”

“You what? I didn’t even know you were getting married! Frida said nothing!”

“Well, she didn’t know. Actually no one knew. Karl and I were to meet at the courthouse today, except he never showed up. Now I’m sitting here, watching Friends and spilling wine all over my new white dress!” I started crying. I tried to stop, after all this was Frida’s brother, a man I had seen twice, maybe three times, in the four years I had been living with Frida.

“Hey, look, why don’t I pick you up? You shouldn’t be alone. We’ll go for drinks, and you can cry all you want there.”

“Okay…”

It took him ten minutes to arrive. The doorbell rang for another ten. I was still in my dress, decidedly not moving. As soon as I had hung up, I had regretted saying I’d go out, but I didn’t have his number to call him back. Soon the doorbell had stopped ringing and there was a knock on my door.

“Hey, I got a key, I’m just bein’ polite here. You can open or I can open, but you’re coming drinkin’ with me.” Defeated, I stood up and opened the door. How could I not remember this man? He was tall, slim, and dark. He had a pair of large brown eyes that seemed to go on forever. I looked down at myself in my crumpled wedding dress and blushed. He took my hand and dragged me out to his car.

“Nice dress.”

“It was a bargain. Probably a knock-off.”

“Well you look really good in it. Karl’s a pendejo,” I managed a small smile at one of the few Spanish words I understood. He smiled too and my heart unexpectedly jumped. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it gently, causing my entire body to break out in a sweat. “You’ll be alright. Pretty girls’re back on their feet in no time. When something’s meant to be you can tell right away. And the fact that he wanted to marry you in a courthouse, on a Tuesday, with no guests, tells me it probably wasn’t.”

He started the car and the radio switched on. “Owner of a Lonely Heart” was playing. He stretched his hand to turn it off, but I placed my hand on his to stop him. “That’s my favorite song,” I said.

“Yeah, mine too,” he smiled, making my heart jump again, and we drove off still hand in hand.