Rani was right, the dress does fit Jessica perfectly. When she and Eamon walked into the ballroom after the ceremony, she wore Rani’s prized gown as if it had been made just for her. Both bride and groom looked filled to the brim with happiness. Even Cynthia Raven was smiling, although one side of her smile was quite swollen. A few minutes ago Jessica and Eamon took to the floor to dance to the same band that performed for us the other night, playing “Can’t Help Falling in Love” again, and I found myself thinking of Hal, and then Forrest, and then wondering if this was our song now, and if it was, which one of us it belongedto and in what order? When the next song began to play, Alex came to ask Rani to dance, and the rest of my table got up to dance too, leaving me alone with the champagne, score. Pouring myself another glass, I sneezed when the bubbles got up my nose.
Then I heard something unexpected.
“Pssst.” Looking around, I couldn’t see where the hiss came from. “Pssst! Ava!”
Lifting up the tablecloth, I discovered Artie crouched under the table. She seemed to be dressed as a Viking, complete with two streaks of mud smeared under her eyes and a helmet with cow horns.
“Real Viking helmets didn’t have horns,” I tell her because, you know, history matters to me, today anyway.
“I’m not a Viking anyway,” she says. “I’m a... cow warrior.”
“Oh, that’s okay then,” I say, lowering the tablecloth. Then I think for a moment and raise it again. “I’m not sure you should be here, Artie. This is a kid-free wedding.”
“That’s stupid,” Artie says. “Everyone knows that kids are the best and funnest things about weddings. Anyway, I won’t stay. I just wanted to look at the dress.” She looks at it from under the other side of the table. “It’s okay, I guess. Bit plain.”
“That dress is the pinnacle of chic and elegance,” I tell her. Artie screws up her nose, inspecting it a second time.
“It could do with a pair of fairy wings,” she says. “And some tinsel.”
“Won’t your dad be looking for you?” I ask. “It’s almost nine o’clock. I’m pretty sure you’re too young to be crashing a wedding.”
“Probably,” Artie confesses, scooting a bit nearer to my side of the table. “But I haven’t finished invading Paris, and I’m not readyto go to bed yet. Why do kids have to go to bed. I want to go on a nighttime adventure. I’m never going to get to see the fairies in the daytime. They only come out at night. Do you have cake up there?”
“No, they haven’t cut the cake yet. I think the tradition is to hold back the cake to make us stay longer for all the dancing and talking.”
“That’s crazy. Everyone knows cake is the best part of a wedding,” Artie says, her tone as heartfelt as I feel about the situation. Still, one of us had better be the grown-up here, and I suppose it should be me.
“Artie, where is your dad? If he can’t find you, he will be worried.” Pushing my chair back, I stand up and then sit down again rather abruptly. Turns out I’m a little bit tipsy after all. “Just give me a minute, and then I’m going to take you back to your father.”
“You’re drunken,” Artie says, with a slow smile. “I did one hundred spins once and fell over right after and Daddy said that’s what it feels like to be drunken, and I said I never want to be drunken after that, thank you.” A grimy hand emerges from under the table and pats my knee. “I’ll walk you to your room.”
“I am not drunken,” I tell her. “I just need a moment or two. It’s probably the heat and the... pollen.”
“And would you like to share a few words?” Suddenly I look up to find a microphone in my face, held by one of the ushers. Another one is filming me on his phone. This is bad. This is very bad. “Share your hopes and wishes for Jessica and Eamon, and give them your advice for a happy marriage.”
“Uh-oh,” a small girl’s voice comes from under the table.
Of course, what I should say is “No thank you. I hardly know the bride and groom, and I have zero experience of what it takesto have a happy marriage.” You’ve probably already realised that is not what is going to happen.
“I would like that very much,” I say, taking the mic and standing up. Artie’s head peers out from under the table, wearing the tablecloth like a saint. She looks even more worried about this than Rani does, who is weaving her way through tables and guests in a desperate bid to get to me before I can talk. She’s going to lose this race against time, I can just tell.
“What is love?” I ask the wedding party.
“I’m getting Dad,” Artie says as she scoots out from under the table. “He can’t miss this.”
“Love is... what brings us together. It’s a dream... kind of like one anyway. A dream within another dream.” Wait, I think that’s fromThe Princess Bride. “But love, true love, will always... Oh, who are we kidding? Let’s be honest. True love is not a real thing, is it? The whole idea was made up to trick us—to make us feel that if we didn’t find the perfect match for ourselves, then we had failed. It’s a trap. To make us settle for Mr. Close Enough.” Rani presses her hand over her mouth and stares at me, trapped between two large hats and a fascinator. “I mean, it’s not like in the books, is it?” I go on for some reason. “When you meet someone and suddenly that’s it, you know you are meant to be with them forever, no questions asked. Because nothing’s really for forever... we all die in the end.” Oh dear God. I know I should stop talking, but somehow, no matter how much I try, I can’t stop my mouth from opening and letting out the random stream of consciousness that is intent on saying the worst possible thing it can think of at a wedding. “People change,” I say. “They grow apart, and if that’s thecase, what can you really count on? Should you choose someone reliable, dependable, slightly less human-y, or should you go for a man who’s got the sexiest body and a very lickable...”
“Hi, Ava.” Forrest appears at my side. “Would you like me to put that mic down for you?”
I nod vigorously. Forrest takes the mic.
“To the bride and groom!” he says, lifting my empty glass in toast.
“To the bride and groom,” the room repeats back.
Handing the mic back to the very amused ushers, Forrest hooks his arm through mine and guides me out of the ballroom and into the grand hallway, where Artie is sitting on the bottom step, pulling roses from the garlands and tucking them into her hair.
“Oh my God,” I tell him. “What the hell did I do? Why am I like this?”
