“Well, as our most honored guest, you get unlimited drink tickets. Or I could offer you some of this.”
Skye takes a silver flask out of their blazer and tilts it J’s way.
J decides to go for the flask over the tickets. He uncaps it, and takes a long swig.
“Honey whiskey,” Skye says. “I save it for weddings.”
J takes another gulp, then hands the flask back.
“If you need it later, you know where to find it,” Skye tells him. Then they head to the stage for set up.
“Do you want to rehearse?” Skye asks. “If you don’t want me to hear the songs, I could wait outside.”
“No,” J says. “I rehearsed earlier.”
With that, the door from the bar opens, and Detroit strides in. He’s not wearing a wedding dress so much as a demolition of a wedding dress—the white and the lace are there, but they’re at all the wrong angles. It’s cleverly made (by Skye, J assumes), but Detroit doesn’t quite pull it off.
“Our beloved songbird!” Detroit cries. J is relieved to be on the stage so there’s a small remove between them. Otherwise, he suspects he’d be subjected to a bombastic embrace to match Detroit’s bombastic tone. “Are we ready to start the festivities? Sarah’s out there taking Skittles shots. We should probably start before she goes into vodka-drenched sugar shock.”
“Sounds good,” J says.
Detroit strides back out. Skye removes the flask from their blazer and takes a fortifying dose.
“Here, pass that over,” J says.
“Gladly.”
Like most alcohol, honey whiskey gets better the more you drink it.
As Skye takes back the flask, they say, “Since this is probably the last time we’ll be alone together, I just want to say...I’m really glad this happened.”
The doors reopen and people begin to shuffle in. Skye jumps from the stage to greet everyone. (Detroit, J notices, remains by the bar.) There are no wings to wait in, and J feels a little too obvious standing by his guitar, so he stations himself in the darkest corner. One last time, he checks his phone. No messages. He turns it off.
The crowd grows thicker—J isn’t sure if it’s because more people have shown up than expected, or if the room is just smaller than he imagined. Detroit is the last to come in, guiding a woman by the back of her neck over to J. The woman’s physique is not unlike that of a turkey—her head is small and thin, her middle is round and wide, and her legs look like twigs. When she opens her mouth to speak, though, she sounds more like a duck—a duck that has smoked two packs a day since infancy.
“So you’re the singer, eh?” she says, offering her hand and then squeezing J’s with all she’s got, which isn’t a whole lot. “I always wondered what it would take to get this rascal to tie the knot. Didn’t know it’d be some random Swedish guy. Life is just so fucked up, am I right?”
J assumes Sarah knows the wedding isn’t real.
“Okay, okay,” she continues, looking at everyone milling around. “No one likes to wait for weddings to start. It’s always such bullshit—tell you to be there at seven and then you have to sit there like a dumbass for an hour before things actually begin. It would be one thing if they gave you something to read, but those programs, man—they’re the worst. It’s like, let’s tell you what’s going to happen just so you can see how fucking long it’s going to take, right? People have no idea. They really don’t.”
With that, she walks up to the stage, turns on the mic, and bellows, “Alright, folks! Let’s do this, okay? My name is Sarah Burnheart and you better fucking treat me like a priestess before this night is through. You understand? We’re here for an extremely special occasion. How often do you get to see two good people make a huge mistake? All the time, right? Well, tonight we’re going to see Detroit and Skye make acolossalmistake. It is my honor to help them do this. Now shut up so we can get started.”
Skye has quietly stepped beside J.
“I wasn’t nervous before,” they whisper. “Now I am.”
J pats Skye on the back, then lets his hand stay there, to give Skye some support.
“It’s a performance,” he says. “Just keep telling yourself: It’s only a performance.”
“Just like every other wedding,” Skye replies. Then it’s clear they don’t like that reply, because they add, “No. That’s not fair. I just didn’t realize how much it would hurt, to have it be fake.”
J wishes he could say,We can stop it. But he suspects that there’s no way Sarah would let them. The audience is here for a show.
“Can the wedded couple please take the stage?” she intones.
J puts down his hand. Skye squeezes his shoulder as they pass.
