It was Skype time. Their faces all popped onto the screen, and our reactions were all the same.
“Good God, Stormy! What the hell have you done to your hair?” Jane asked.
“I’m going blind,” Annie said, covering her eyes playfully.
“It’s green,” she said proudly, fluffing her long hair between her fingers. As if we couldn’t see that. As if that incandescent, lime glow emanating from the small block on the screen wasn’t a dead giveaway already.
“Um . . . we can see that!” Jane said sarcastically. “But why? That’s the question.”
“I’m just really into green these days,” she said. “It’s a very soothing color, you know.”
I wasn’t going to point it out to her, but that color was anything but soothing.
“But enough of my hair, back to Val,” Stormy said.
“Yes, but we need to hurry. I have to yank out a tooth in ten minutes,” Jane said.
“Gee, such a delicate dentist you are,” Annie quipped.
“I’m going to do it under anesthetic, you know. I’m not that bad, guys! But Val!” She snapped her fingers at us all now. “What the hell happened? I saw the video.”
“What video?” I asked.
There was a collective silence on the call. “What video, guys?” I repeated.
“Your speech at the engagement party,” Jane said.
“Oh, God, no!” I hung my head.
“Did you really think something like that could happen and no one would film it?” Jane said so matter-of-factly.
My heart started pounding. Of course someone had filmed it. I might have done the same had I been on the receiving end. “What part did they film, exactly?”
Everyone looked at me blankly, as if they didn’t want to answer.
“Oh. I see. The whole thing. The whole, ‘I’m in love with you’ thing. From start to finish.” My mouth suddenly felt very dry.
“Don’t worry. It will blow over soon enough,” Lilly said, speaking from experience after a very questionable photo of her went viral and generated thousands of memes around the world.
“The tweets don’t even have that many likes,” Annie added. My stomach tightened.
“What tweets?” I asked. “I thought you said someone filmed it.”
“Um . . .” Annie hesitated, “Byron kind of live-tweeted it too.”
“He what!” I half shouted. Byron moved on the periphery of our friendship circle like an asteroid in the outer asteroid belt.
“Don’t go read them though,” Lilly urged, “it will make it all worse.”
“I’m not sure I could feel any worse if I tried,” I muttered.
“So how the hell did you land up on an island? What’s it called, anyway?” Annie asked.
“Réunion.” I picked a brochure up from the bed and waved it all at them. “It was an accident. Well, I was trying to hide from Matt at the airport and next thing I knew, I was on a plane.”
Lilly burst out laughing. “That’s a new one. Even for us.”
“Nothing happens by accident,” Stormy piped up. “You are exactly where you’re meant to be, right now, in the multiverse.” She nodded her head and her green hair bobbed about.
