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Itisan honor for Nadia to ask me to do this. It’s a big deal. I know because I’ve been asked to be in seven other weddings in the past five years. This is a lot, I realize, and it doesn’t include the other weddings I’ve attended as a guest, which was considerably more. Way too many weddings, if you ask me.
The hardest part, and the reason I’m giving Nadia so much push back, is that during each and every one of those seven weddings, something disastrous happened. I’m not talkingthe bride lost the groom’s wedding bandbad (although that did occur once); I’m talkingthe bride fell into the pool we were standing in front of during the ceremonybad. That happened during wedding number five, and it wasmyfoot that caused it.
It was after wedding number five that I began to suspect something: I was the common denominator at all these events. When wedding number six took place and turned out to be an even bigger disaster than the previous five (also my doing), my suspicions started to morph into something more like certainty. And then there was the ultimate wedding catastrophe: number seven.
We don’t speak about number seven.
It was after that final one that I realized whatever bad juju I had going on didn’t need to be spread to any other nuptials, especially for my loved ones. Because I’m clearly a jinx. It’s been just over two years since the last wedding, and I haven’t been to one since. Not even just to attend the celebration as a guest, even though that hadn’t seemed to cause any disasters in the past. I apparently need to beinthe wedding party for things to go awry.
I’m happy to report that in the last two years, during my wedding hiatus, any weddings I’ve been invited to andhaven’tattended (thanks to the various excuses I’ve come up with to get out of them) seemed to go off without a hitch. Well, people got hitched, but you know what I mean.
Now I just need a decent excuse to get out of Nadia’s wedding because, clearly, unfriending her is not going to happen. She’s not going to allow it, and truthfully, I don’t really want to. I love my Nadia. She’s my fiercely loyal and unfiltered confidante—someone who’ll willingly get in the trenches with me and will also tell me when I have food in my teeth. Friends like that come around once in a lifetime. I just can’t be in her wedding. Bringing my bad mojo to her happy day is not a good idea.
She doesn’t know the whole of it—I’ve only told her some of my wedding woes. I’ve even said the wordjinx, and each time she’s laughed it off, chalking it all up to coincidence—which, believe me, I’ve tried to do too—and then tells me I’m being ridiculous (a word she commonly uses to describe me, which isn’t unfounded; to be honest, Icanbe ridiculous sometimes). But at the end of the day, it’swaytoo much coincidence. Maybe if I told her everything, she’d believe me. But I haven’t. Because to do so, I’d have to admit some things I’d rather not.
Nope, not going there right now. Because right now, I need to figure out a way to get out of Nadia’s wedding. Which is proving to be hard as she sits across from me, her dark eyes staring me down. I need a good excuse. Maybe I say yes and then, I don’t know, try rock climbing and hope I break my leg? Jump out of a moving car? Throw myself down some stairs? Or maybe I could go along with it and then fake a nasty virus right before? Maybe a very contagious strain of pink eye? Does she really want everyone in her pictures with red, itchy eyes? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve brought a virus to a wedding.
Oh gosh, I need to get out of this.
“Can’t I just be a guest?” I ask.
“No.”
“An usher?” This feels like a compromise. I could be in the wedding, but on the outskirts. Maybe I’d be less of a jinx that way.
“Do I need ushers?” she asks, her eyebrows pulled together.
“Of course,” I say. I actually don’t know. But it seems legit.
“Well, crap.” Picking up her phone, she taps the front, bringing it to life, her manicured nails making clicking sounds as she navigates around her screen. She quickly types something, most likely adding it to a list. Nadia is known for her list making.
“It’s settled, then?” I ask, hope swimming in my belly.
“No,” she says, her eyes back on me as she sets her phone down. Then she sighs, her shoulders falling. “Mila, I know weddings aren’t your thing and you’ve had some bad experiences.”
I almost scoff at this, but then stop myself. She doesn’t know the half of it.
“But I promise it won’t be that way at mine. It’s going to be the best day, and I want you standing right next to me when it happens.”
“I just don’t think—”
“Meeeeela,” she says, drawing out my name. Her patience has worn thin.
I sit back in my seat, my eyes going to the picture on my desk, the one I photoshopped myself into with a man I refer to as Fake Dave. Well, I only refer to him that way around Nadia. To everyone else in this office, he’s just Dave. Fake Dave came to be after that awkward encounter with my boss the same night Nadia met her betrothed. He probably should be a reminder of my idiocy, but we’ve become sort of friends, Fake Dave and me. He’s a bodyguard of sorts, mostly to save me from myself.
I stare into his lovely, ocean-blue, stock-model eyes.Get me out of this, Fake Dave.
A throat clears from the open door of my office. Nadia and I both turn our heads toward the sound to find Quentin, one of the developers who works with us.
He pushes his large, rimmed glasses up his nose.
“Grayson is wondering if you two are coming,” he says in his normal whiny-sounding tone.
“Crap,” Nadia says as I pick up my phone to see the time, since my desktop screen has timed out. We’re ten minutes late for our weekly meeting.What the hell, Fake Dave. That’s not how I wanted you to get me out of this.
“We’re coming,” I say to Quentin as both Nadia and I scramble to our feet, grabbing our phones as we hurriedly head out of my office.
I really thought I could survive without my assistant, Britain, who’s taken yesterday and today off, but it’s become very clear that I can’t function without her. She would have never let me be late for this meeting.
