“Ha. Is she going to be able to handle vows? I mean, she might have to say ‘I do’ in front of other people!”
A longer pause this time.
“Lily, you’re on speaker.” Jake cleared his throat. “With me and Madison.”
“Hi, Lily,” a quietly wounded voice said through the phone.
My stomach dropped.
“I’m a jerk,” I said quickly. “Jake, I thought you were teasing me because—well—never mind! Congratulations! I’m so happy for you both! Send me a picture of the ring! I want to hear all the details!” I went into autopilot engagement-babble mode, my cheeks burning from the embarrassment of somehow getting it wrong when Jake was being serious.
When we hung up, I let out a colorful stream of expletives only somewhat related to the faux pas I had just made in insulting my future sister-in-law while she was on the line.
Was I a bad person for feeling jealous? Probably. But I doubt there’s an older sister in the world who wouldn’t turn a little green, be it with envy or nausea, at the realization that she was going to be in four weddings, including that of her younger brother, all without so much as the prospect of a date. They were still in their midtwenties. They could date another couple of years and be fine. What was the rush?
Jake’s engagement festered in me all week. I love my little brother. I do. And it wasn’t like I was ready to get married. Or like anyone had ever proposed to me. Or like I had ever been in the kind of relationship where I wanted the person to propose. I had started talking about marriage when David and I were twenty-four, but we broke up not long after that, and I hadn’t been in a serious enough relationship to think about it since. The emerging details of Jake’s engagement, however, combined with my mother’s proud Facebook posts and completely un-self-aware comments about how happy she was to finally be planning a wedding made me begin to wish the entire institution had been left in the dark ages where it belonged.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, however, came with Amy’s phone call during Megan’s engagement party. I felt my bag vibrate while I stood chatting with Megan’s mother, but I ignored it. We were in the party room of a posh hotel, and it would have been rude to even open my bag to see who was calling. When the vibrations began again ten seconds after ceasing, I started trying to figure out how to extricate myself from the conversation, and by the fourth call, I assumed someone must have died, so I excused myself and walked onto the terrace to take the call.
“Amy? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I’m getting married!” she shrieked so loudly that I had to hold the phone away from my ear.
“Not funny, Ames,” I said. This time I was confident it was a joke. In one of the marathon phone sessions I’d had that week with my mother, Amy had been on the line and she swore up and down that Jake was too young to get married, that Madison, at twenty-five—just one year older than Amy herself—was definitely too young to get married, and that even if Tyler proposed tomorrow, she would make him wait at least four more years. This seemed logical—while a year out of college now, Amy was still living with my parents, working a part-time job until she found something she actually wanted to do, and generally did not have her life together. Tyler, her boyfriend, was two years older and in law school, so while he was more centered than she was, he still seemed light-years away from being ready to tie the knot.
“That’s because it’s real! Check your text messages! I sent you a picture of the ring!”
My stomach leapt into my throat as I looked down at my phone’s screen. Sure enough, there was Amy’s hand, complete with chipped remnants of blue glitter nail polish, topped with an inordinately large diamond. She should have done her nails, I thought, unkindly.
“Isn’t it gorgeous? It was his grandmother’s! It doesn’t fit—I have to get it sized.”
I let Amy go on for a while, but I wasn’t listening anymore. She was twenty-four, for God’s sake! Panic began to grow in my chest as I looked back in the lighted windows of Megan’s party.
“So it’ll be in June,” Amy was saying, “after Tyler graduates from law school. And you’ll be a bridesmaid, of course.”
“What?”
“Well, you’re my sister! Madison will have to be in it too, I guess, right? Mom will make me include her. And we’re both in hers, so I guess I have to. Jake will be one of Tyler’s groomsmen. And Tyler’s sister—she’s twenty-seven, that’s almost your age, so you’ll have someone to hang out with. Oh, and Ashlee, she’ll be my maid of honor. You don’t mind, do you? I already asked her. I mean, I guess I can have two maids of honor if you really want to be one, even though that means Tyler will have to have two best men. It’s too bad you’re not married, because then it’d be so easy, I’d just make you my matron of honor—ugh, I don’t have to make Madison that, do I? They’ll only be married like a month when we get married, that’s hardly a matron. No, she’ll just be a bridesmaid. Right? Oh my God, Lily! I can’t believe he proposed!”