Instead, our table filled up, and every time someone tried to sit next to me, I’d hover my hand over Finn’s seat, likeSorry, taken.
I must have turned away ten people.
Ashley’s place cards idea was a bit of a fudge. There weren’t really assigned seats in the dining room. And once Grandma Dodie had joined us, that gave license to other grown-ups to join. Before long, our neighbors the Vargases and the Dunns had also ignored the place cards and taken up spots once reserved for love connections.
Ashley saw what was happening and sent Brody over, trying to stem the tide. He added a bridesmaid to the table, a friend of Ashley’s from grad school whose name I could never remember—a person I just thought of as Bridesmaid Two.
Ugh. Bridesmaid Two. The worst of all the bridesmaids—and the one Ashley had just suggested setting up with Cooper.
“You can’t set up Cooper,” I’d protested. “He’s got his handsfullyfull with Operation Conquest.”
“After that’sover,” Ashley explained. “Once you’re happily together with Finn, and all that is mission accomplished.ThenI’ll set them up.”
“Don’t you have somebody better?”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t like her,” I said with a shrug. “Women that pretty never had to develop a personality.”
“Her personality is fine,” Ashley insisted.
But I disagreed. “She’s an interrupter. And whatever she interrupts you with is never as good as what you were saying.”
“You won’t care, anyway,” Ashley said. “You’ll be off on the Smooching Deck with Finn.”
God willing.
But the situation wasn’t good.
Bridesmaid Two settled in at our table like she belonged there, acting like the cruise director–hostess of the breakfast table—warmly chatting with the neighbors and even prodding Grandma Dodie about the gentleman friend she’d been canoodling with.
“What’s his name, Grandma Dodie?” Bridesmaid Two teased.
Hey! That wasmygrandmother.Iwas supposed to be doing the teasing!
Grandma Dodie made an innocent face. “Edward?” she asked.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“Not yet,” Grandma Dodie said, looking mischievous.
“You’ve got this, Grandma Dodie,” Bridesmaid Two said, making a hand heart. “I’m shipping you.”
Grandma Dodie frowned. “Shipping me?”
“Both of you,” Bridesmaid Two explained, like that should clear things up.
Grandma Dodie looked around the table like that didn’t compute.
“She’s rooting for your relationship,” Cooper explained. “Shipcomes fromrelationship.”
Cooper glanced over at Bridesmaid Two. What were they now—a team?
“Are you sure that’s a real word?” Grandma Dodie asked, pulling a tiny pencil and pad of paper from her purse to write down this newfangled term.
“Don’t worry about it, Grandma Dodie,” I said.
But Grandma Dodie kept writing, forming the wordshipin her careful, slanted cursive, and then writingverbin parentheses before writing the definition. As she wrote, she said, “If people are doing it to me, I want to know what it is.”
