Page 8 of The Wedding Forecast

It’s not great. This leaves me next to Joel and Bianca tonight, and, worse, sharing a bathroom with them tomorrow, during the crucial getting-ready period.

‘I have one little caveat,’ I add.

‘What’s that?’

‘I need to use your room’s ensuite bathroom tomorrow for getting ready.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’ll need access from about six am.’

‘Six am!’ He sits up in slight outrage and whacks the front of his head on the bottom of the top bunk.

How many head injuries can this man take?

‘Fuck,’ he says, rubbing his forehead.

‘Sorry. Hayley wants me ready to go by seven.’

Maybe I need to get him the ice again.

‘Should we write this down? Draw up a contract?’ he says.

‘It is already written down. Hayley sent you the itinerary for the whole weekend.’

‘Right. I haven’t had a chance to look through that email in detail yet.’

Of course not. He probably thinks he’s too good for the bridal-party schedule. Meanwhile, I helped figure it out and proofread it and I am doing half the tasks on the list. Being a bridesmaid is basically being an unpaid intern. The better bedroom is mine by rights.

I look him in the eyes.

‘Please. This is important to me.’

He looks at me, and his face is unreadable, which is annoying because I know mine isn’t, but then he nods.

‘Okay. You can have the bathroom whenever you need it.’

‘Thank you. I might also need it before the rehearsal dinner tonight.’

‘Why is it so important?’ he says, carefully getting off the lower bunk.

‘Because the other groomsman, Joel, is my ex. And he’s bringing his new girlfriend, and they’re sleeping in that bedroom next to this one. And using the bathroom. And I just—I really need distance from him.’

As these words leave my mouth, someone clears their throat from behind me. I stop talking and turn around.

‘Hi, Anna,’ Joel says.

3

THERE IS A beat of silence as Mac and I look at Joel and Bianca. I haven’t met Bianca before but I know what she looks like. I have stalked her extensively online, obviously. That’s standard, normal ex behaviour. It would actually be a red flag if I didn’t do that. Joel and I were together for eight years.

I had imagined Joel being with a severe woman after me. Severe in personality—a very brilliant, judgmental person—and severe in looks, beautiful but stark, with a blunt-cut bob and a wardrobe of expensive natural fibres. Someone who could wear linen all day without it creasing. An intellectual who doesn’t watch TV at all and only reads books published at least twenty-five years ago that have been reviewed in the New Yorker.

This vision comes from my own insecurities of course. That Joel never considered me his intellectual equal—how does one insist their work as a marketing coordinator is as important as a neuroscientist researcher looking for the cure to Parkinson’s disease? That my job is just a cog in the capitalist machine, and my book is a laughable piece of commercial junk. And that I dress badly. Joel has style. He would surely move on to a woman more at his level.

But Bianca is nothing like I imagined.

She is a bubbly, shiny, happy, fun person—on social media, at least—who keeps her hair long and wears polyester and bright colours and reads self-improvement books written by podcasters and plays netball and loves life and looks incredibly cute while doing so. Joel doesn’t usually respond to cute. An extrovert with a zippy zest for life would disgust the Joel I know. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe I never knew him as well as I thought I did.