10:30pm CAKE CUTTING—Time to tuck into a four-tiered lavender and lemon cake with mascarpone buttercream and blueberry compote . . . gluten-free, like the groom!
Shots appeared at the table and we all did some. Everyone pretended to love it as Emily traced mascarpone down her husband’s nose and he pretended to be shocked. I accidentally let out my fake laugh a beat or two late, preoccupied by the prospect of a threesome.
Jon and I had one once, kind of, but we’d botched it, and the girl, a friend of mine from an early bartending job, mostly ended up reassuring me that I was attractive while Jon did the dishes. There was so much that could go wrong: different levels of interest, experience, or self-confidence. I wasn’t particularly into Jesse, but he was so sweet with Darragh. The idea of being part of a couple again, even someone else’s, was very appealing. I wanted to zip into their intimacy like a sleeping bag and take a nap.
“You’re an addict,” Merris said, leaning toward me.
I jumped. How did she know?
She smiled. “What could possibly have happened to your phone in the last three minutes?”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. Yeah, it’s bad.”
I told Merris it wasn’t just me; everyone’s brain was broken in exactly the same way. I did not tell her that I had recently opened my laptop and googled mom when what I had meant to do was call my mother. I covered my phone with my napkin and tried to seem tranquil and centered. I licked some extra buttercream off my knife, hoping it made me look like Angelina Jolie. Instead, I cut my tongue a bit. To sterilize the wound, I did another shot.
Merris looked like she was fading. “I won’t leave without you,” she said. “But let’s start thinking about our exit, yes?”
I offered her a shot, which she declined, and thanked her again for coming with me. “It means a lot,” I said, patting her arm. “I don’t know what I would have done without you this year.”
Merris gave me a dubious look and pointedly reached for her purse.
“Oh, let me stay out, Mom, please!” I whined. “I never break curfew.”
Merris’s face softened, and I saw I had bought myself an hour or two, which was all I needed; I wasn’t a good sport about wearing high heels, and my Eating Window closed again at one. The older uncle leaned over and started asking Merris about an outlandish vintage brooch she was wearing, so I left her to it, finishing the rest of the cheese puffs we’d hoarded earlier, when the passed hors d’oeuvres were still in transit but we had not yet been served. Under the napkin, my phone lit up. It was a text from Jesse, who had acquired my phone number somewhere after the conga and before the chicken dance: come fuck us in the bathroom.
I looked up from my phone. He was barely a foot away, making an absurd face he must have thought looked cheeky and seductive. I grinned, though it felt a bit stupid. People didn’t really have sex in bathrooms, I knew. That was just something TV writers made up. Still, it was nice to be desired by his beautiful girlfriend, to know their relationship had a hole in it too, that tonight they wanted to fill that hole with me.
11:30pm LATE-NIGHT EATS—Hungry after all that dancing? The courtyard will be visited by a pizza fairy just before midnight!
The bathrooms at the venue were fancy but not spacious. The couple （or, more accurately, the couple’s parents） had sprung for secondary toilets outside on the sprawling grounds, and it was one of these we snuck off to, with a bottle of amaretto filched from the bar.
I took a swig as Darragh closed and locked the door and Jesse cut up neat little lines. I did not ask what they were or bring up fentanyl and its prevalence in Ontario’s powdered drugs. Instead I leaned over the counter, inhaled deeply, and tried to seem like I did this all the time.
“So,” said Jesse, “do you think you’d ever get married again?”
Darragh hit his arm. “Babe. She doesn’t want to talk about that at a wedding.”
“Ding ding ding,” I said. I took a risk and put a hand on Darragh’s thigh, to emphasize how right she was. I told her being divorced at weddings made me feel like a shriveled old crone.
“You’re not shriveled,” said Darragh, fully taking my boob out of my dress.
Jesse, who was kneeling in a corner doing more credit card stuff, stood and came over.
“Look at that, baby,” she crooned. Darragh was suddenly using a totally different voice. Her face looked like someone had approached a caricaturist and said, “do horny.”
The two of them were staring at each other intensely. Jesse didn’t even look at my breast, just swiped it with his paw and lunged at Darragh’s face, muttering the word “smooth” under his breath. I hoped I didn’t look or sound as drunk as Jesse, though we’d all been drinking the same amount. I reached toward them in an unfocused effort to become more involved, lost my nerve, and withdrew my fingers before they made contact.
Jesse pushed Darragh up on the counter, and they started licking each other’s faces, each reaching out occasionally to grope at whatever part of my body was to hand. They were moaning a lot, though neither was stimulating any part of the other that would normally produce that type of reaction. I started playing with Darragh’s hair and realized I was dividing it into sections like I was about to start french braids.
I took my hands off Darragh; she didn’t seem to notice. I felt that thing where the porn you’re watching turns abruptly horrible, and you know that even after you close your laptop, you’re going to feel unsettled about it for the next hour at least. Maybe I was just dizzy. I looked over and realized that Darragh had moved to the floor. Unsure what else to do, I crouched down next to her and tried to muster a sexy expression.
Six minutes later, Jesse came in Darragh’s mouth while I sat on the floor nearby. He pushed my head toward his girlfriend’s, and the idea that he expected me to interact with his secondhand ejaculate when I still had most of my clothes on and had otherwise barely been involved in our alleged “threesome” was . . . not it, for me. I started to make my way to my feet and realized I was swaying in my heels.
“I should probably get back,” I said, steadying myself on the back of the toilet.
“Eugcht!” said Darragh, putting her arm around me. She held up a finger and swallowed. “Sorry. Want some weed?”
Jesse fished out his vape pen and passed it to me. He seemed completely unhurried and content. He hadn’t even buttoned his pants; I could see his flaccid dick through the break in his boxers. I felt . . . not stressed, exactly, just very aware of my teeth in my mouth, the bones in my jaw, my temples. At least they were using their normal voices again. I puffed out smoke that smelled like cotton candy and tried to think how I would spin this experience to make it sound fun. I felt certain that whatever I decided, I would do a great job.
It had been fun, I thought. In a way. Even if it had not been a threesome proper, surely the fact that it had happened at all meant that I was very modern and wild. I leaned back against the bathroom door, savoring the vape aroma like one of my candles and experimenting with holding my eyes open very wide. Jesse started telling me how polyamory was historically a more natural way for animals to live, and Darragh explained that was why they had gotten their tattoos. Everything they were saying was terrible, but I felt very, very good.