CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I yawned as the stylist curled my hair around the wand. My mother apparently inherited her tendency to snore from her mother, and the snores had continued until five, when my grandmother woke to do her “calisthenics,” which as far as I could tell consisted of her standing on the balcony in a bathrobe and drinking a cup of black coffee that she brewed next to my head on the pullout sofa. Not the restful night’s sleep at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico that I had envisioned, but I was glad she had put on the robe.
And at least they had a real coffee bar at the resort. It wasn’t Starbucks, but it was an iced latte with vanilla. I took another sip and wondered if room service delivered refills to the resort’s salon as well.
I had hardly even seen the bride. She said a quick hello at the rehearsal dinner the night before, but that was it. She seemed a bit more effusive with her family and friends, but I only witnessed that from afar.
She looked really happy, though, across the salon, as a makeup artist shellacked her final product into place. Truly, genuinely happy. You watch all of these movies and TV shows where the bride is nervous or crying before her wedding and you forget that this look of pure happiness is how it’s supposed to be. I should use that, I thought, pulling out my phone.
I opened the WordPress app to start a new post, then paused. I had a hundred and seventeen notifications.
That couldn’t be right. I clicked over to the notifications tab—thirty-nine likes on the post from the previous day about my grandmother, forty-two on the one about sharing a room with her, nineteen new followers to my blog, and seventeen comments.
Excitement prickled along my spine as I scrolled through the comments.
“This is fake, right?”
“It’s like a train wreck and I can’t look away.”
“Girl! Your grandma is gonna kill you if she reads this!” （I’ll admit, that one gave me pause. Then again, my grandmother’s grasp of the internet was tenuous at best—she thought it was called “the Google.” And I couldn’t see her trolling wedding blogs in her spare time.）
“You seriously say everything I wish I could about being in a wedding.”
“LMAOOOOOOO.”
“If you come home to a sock on that door, I’m going to die.”
“What happens to grandma in Mexico stays in Mexico . . .”
“Yaaaaas girl, keep that snark coming!”
“Imma sit right here and wait to see what granny does next.” With a GIF of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.
I realized I was grinning broadly and looked around surreptitiously to make sure no one had noticed. The only one looking at me was my grandmother, and her eyes narrowed as she pursed her lips. I felt a wave of guilt. Did she know somehow? Had she gone through my phone while I was in the shower?
She sipped more of her mimosa, and I laughed off the thought. My grandmother’s iPhone was the last one in existence without a passcode because she had locked her previous phone for 556 days trying to figure it out. There was no way she had gotten into mine.
Another notification came in, and I smiled again, clicking over to the new post tab.
You forget that a wedding is actually about being happy, I started, then stopped. I had followers now. People who would get notifications when I posted something. Would they stick around if I wrote a sweet post? No way. They came for the snark, and it was my job to deliver.
I glanced back at Madison. Her makeup done, she had come to sit next to my grandmother, saying something that looked ridiculously genuine. But was there anything to say about Madison that was snarky? She was . . . sweet. Not simperingly, sickeningly so, but just a nice Midwestern girl without an ounce of my sardonic humor.
I couldn’t annihilate her on the internet.
But the blog wasn’t really about the brides. It was about me and my experiences in their weddings. They were supporting cast at best. I hadn’t realized that before, and it was empowering because it was the first thing all year that had been about me, not them.
I was still thinking about what I would write when they called me to get my makeup done. And by the time I was finished, we had to do photos and then go to the wedding itself, so I was out of time. I can sneak away for a little during the reception, I thought. After I walked down the aisle in my yellow dress, my job was done until it was time to get my grandma on the plane back home. And Ken and Louise, apparently, as they would be on our return flight and sharing our Uber back to my grandmother’s house as well.
I felt a twinge of legitimate envy watching the ceremony. Jake was grinning ear to ear while he waited for Madison to come down the aisle, and I was close enough to hear him tell her that she was “so beautiful” when she reached him. He held her hand through the ceremony, and I saw my mother crying unabashedly during their vows, when he promised to love her unconditionally for the rest of their lives.