Bridge thought for a moment. “It’s all right to be nervous…”
“This isn’t nervous, Bridge. This is my body telling me something is profoundly wrong.”
“Well.” She thought for another moment. “Take some milk of magnesia?”
Another wave of nausea swept over me. “No, I mean profoundly wrong emotionally.”
“It’ll calm your stomach down,” she insisted.
Still feeling wobbly in six different ways for six different reasons, I crawled upright and checked my bathroom cabinet. “I don’t have any.
I have”—I took another look—“ibuprofen and Bonjela.”
“I’ll bring you something.” I could already hear her getting out of bed.
“You don’t have to. Not bring something. I mean, you should stay at home in your home where you live with your husband who you’re married to.”
The thumping and rustling from the other end of the line suggested she was already getting dressed. “I’ll still be married when I get back. You’ve been my best friend for years. I’m not letting you down now.”
“You wouldn’t be letting me down,” I told her. “You just wouldn’t be letting me drag you out of bed at three in the morning when we’re both getting up in four hours.”
“Well, there you are. I’m rising early, that’s all. It’s healthy. It’s healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Checking the cabinet had taken it out of me, so I lay back down on the floor and tried to enjoy the cool of the tiles. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy anything right now. “I’ll be fine. It probably is just nerves.” My stomach churned uneasily. Oh God. Was this the universe punishing me for wishing Miles would shit himself on the way down the aisle? “Besides,” I went on, “I think I might need to get some air.”
“I’ll get some air with you,” cried Bridge, far too enthusiastically.
“We can get air together.”
“Why? Do you think I’ll need help carrying it?”
Bridge gave a kind of vindicated squeak. “See, you’re being sarcastic. That means you’re feeling better. Which means I’m helping.”
I shouldn’t have called her. There was no way she was going to let me spend the few hours before my wedding puking alone into a toilet. Not if I could spend them puking with her. But I’d panicked.
Because I was getting married in the morning. And instead of feeling excited or giddy or a little bit anxious, I was feeling like an informer from a seventies mob movie being slowly drowned in cement. And there was no point pretending now that I hadn’t known all along that she’d drop everything and come for me.
Married or not she was, after all, my best friend.
“I’m calling a cab,” said Bridge from the other end of the phone.
“Where shall I meet you?”
I groaned and ground my face against the bathroom floor.
“Anywhere but here. The walls are closing in and everything smells of vomit.”
In hindsight, anywhere but here hadn’t been a helpful thing to say. Something that became only more apparent as I half climbed, half fell out of my own taxi and made my way to our agreed rendezvous point in the middle of the Millennium Bridge.
“Why?” I asked as soon as I was in earshot. “Is this because your name is Bridge? So you thought of a bridge?”
Her ash-blond hair was whipping slightly in the wind. “Maybe? I had just woken up. Although also the nice thing about being on a bridge is that if you’re sick, you can go over the side.”
I couldn’t tell if that made me feel better or worse. “What if I fall in the Thames?”
“Then wedding nerves will be the least of your worries.”
Drawing my coat more tightly around me, I lurched over to the railing. Not because I had any intention of spewing over it, but because we were stuck on a bridge and there wasn’t much else to do. It was a weird view because you had the city gleaming on either side, but the sky above and the river below were dull, black, and voidy. Which at least matched my mood. “I don’t think this is nerves,”
I said finally. “I think this is I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
Bridge came and stood beside me. “Oh, it’s so pretty at night,”
she cooed.
“Bridge. What part of terrible mistake did you not hear?”
“The part where it makes any sense.”
“I didn’t say it made sense.” Folding my arms on the top of the railing, I sagged. “I said it was how I felt.”