Oh God.Ari cringed as everyone turned to look at the flower girl, Lily trying to shush her while the rabbi searched for the source of the commotion and Bella’s baby sister Goldie practically yelled, “Whoseshoeis that?” Even Bella had a look of puzzlement on her face, which made Ari want to sink into the floor.
Instead, she made the mistake of catching the eye of none other than Judah Klein and learned she’d been wrong about one thing.
Hewascapable of smiling.
“This is such a beautiful wedding,” Liana said, sighing for what must have been the millionth time, and Ari forced herself to keep her eyeballs in locked position. The wedding had quickly shifted out of train wreck territory without Ari having to out herself as the bridesmaid who’d smashed the wedding singer’s footandtaken her shoes off during the ceremony, but she was still firmly in Misery Mode, and Liana’s matrimonial obsessing wasn’t helping.
She felt for her best friend; Liana and Gideon unquestionably loved each other, but they seemed to be moving toward the chuppah at very different speeds. She was impatient to move in together, get boning, and start having babies, while he had already done the cohabitation thing with an ex before reconnecting withJudaism and becoming observant, and was intent on taking his sweet time. But it was like a switch had flipped in Liana once she and Gideon had hit the six-month mark, and now she had marriage on the brain. All. The damn. Time.
Why are you in such arush?Ari constantly wanted to snap.Don’t you have more you want todo?Sure, getting married had its perks; like Liana, Bella, and most of their friends, Ari was technically saving herself for marriage, and she certainly didn’t plan on doing that forever. (Though “technically” was doing some seriously heavy lifting for all three of them.) But she couldn’t imagine things like never having her own bedroom again or giving up her lazy Lego Sundays, and there was still so much of the world she wanted to see…
“Hey, you okay?”
Ari blinked and looked up to see Akiva Klein nudging her with his elbow, a sweating drink in hand that looked like an extremely good idea right then. Liana had disappeared, probably to call Gideon. “Yeah,” she murmured, her gaze drifting back to the bridal table, where Bella and Zach sat receiving well-wishes and piles of white envelopes. “Just thinking about how much changes when people get married.”
Akiva took a noisy sip of his whiskey sour. “Bella’s not gonna be like Jenny and the other girls who disappear the second they get a ring, you know. She’s not even leaving the Upper West Side.”
It was true; Bella might have been moving out, but she’d only be five blocks away. And she’d been just as burned by past friends as Ari and Liana had, so Ari wasn’t particularly worried that she’d turn around and do the same thing. But it didn’t mean things wouldn’t change. Thingsalwayschanged. And while being able to take down the fake wall that’d turned their living room into Bella’s bedroom was inarguably a positive, she would’ve gladly given the space back for more movie nights in their pajamas. They might still eat Shabbos meals together, but it wasn’t going to be the same. Nothing would.
And Arielle happened to like things just how they were.
“Easy enough to say when you know you’ll have Danny around for life,” she said dryly, plucking the glass from Akiva’s hand and helping herself to a drink.
He snorted. “Brutal.”
Ari smirked. She and Danny Weinstein, one of Akiva’s two roommates, had done the friends-with-benefits thing for a decent stretch of time the year before, only for him to end it with the declaration that he needed to get serious and “wifed up.” Then he dated a girl who was fresh out of Barnard, panicked when she wanted to get more serious after a few months, and hadn’t gone on more than three dates with a single girl since.
She was still a teensy bit smug about it, even though it’d meant losing the most convenient hookup buddy she’d ever had.
She sighed and turned to scan the room for potential prospects but quickly found herself landing on the same old faces: Danny, who was clearly trying to make an uninterested bartender laugh; Noah Jacobs, Akiva’s other roommate, who was basically engaged to his med student girlfriend, Emily; a friend of Zach’s she’d already made out with at the engagement party and was not interested in revisiting (though given the way he was leering at her, the disinterest was not mutual); a couple of guys she’d hooked up with in the past, who were all now there with wives; and a host of acquaintances who were either deeply not her type, too religious to feel her up in a coat closet, or extremely married.
The pool was shrinking to a fishpond.
Her gaze flickered over to the stage, where the band was getting ready to welcome the newly married couple and kick off a round of dancing.Wedding ring, wedding ring, wedding ring…Predictable. Of the whole group, only Judah was lacking one, but that wasn’t a surprise; he had the vibe of a guy who didn’t believe in men wearing jewelry.
“I truly do not understand how you and your brother are related,” she said to Akiva, looking Judah up and down. “He looks so damn serious all the time.”
“Is that why you smashed his foot?” Akiva asked with a grin.
“Oh, hush. We’re all pretending that never happened.”
“How about Bella’s niece wearing your shoe? Did that happen?”
“Can you please shut up?” Ari dropped her face into her hands and groaned. “I hate this wedding. I hate all weddings. Promise me that you and I will stay single forever and, when we turn old and gray, we can marry each other for the health insurance.”
“I think once we’re old and gray, the government finally provides the health insurance.” Akiva took another quick drink and pushed it over her way. “But I’ll marry you to save money on internet and cable.”
“You steal your cable.”
“Whatever.”
Ari pushed the glass back and stood. “I think I need a full drink, and also, yours tastes like ass. Let’s go—”
To the barwas immediately buried in the hubbub of Kellerman sisters rushing over to her with the decorative homemade arches they’d be waving over the dance floor to welcome the newlyweds, and Ari swallowed a groan as she realized she’d missed her chance to pregame it. She and Akiva shared brief, rueful smiles before splitting up, and she found Liana rushing back into the room to grab the other end of her arch.
“Cutting it close,” Ari teased her, bouncing on the toes of the platform sneakers that felt a million times better on her feet than those torture chambers had. As far as she was concerned, Bella’s niece could keep them. “Maybeyoushould be the one on the receiving end of Judah Klein’s eye daggers.”
Liana laughed. “No way. I will do nothing to get in the way of Judah Klein singing at my wedding, and you know it.”
