Histrionic (adj.) – Overly theatrical or dramatic
So much for spending the day exploring Sydney with my boyfriend. Instead, I’d been traipsing around florists, haberdashery shops and nail salons all day. By the time we eventually made it home, Ben had already moved into the hotel ahead of the stag night. I was exhausted and grateful that Cara had organised a quiet evening in with girly films, face packs and a ton of ice cream as Jimmy enjoyed his last night of freedom with his mates. Well, that’s what I thought was going to happen, but Shelley was using it as a chance to rope in some of her friends to have a craft night making last-minute wedding decorations.
I was currently surrounded by church candles and bags of eucalyptus leaves that I was in charge of artfully sticking around the base. I was not doing such a great job of it.
‘So, what do you reckon the boys are up to right now?’ Cara asked, bending down to pick up a reel of laced ribbon.
‘Oh God, I have no idea. To be honest, I reckon it’s probably better it stays that way,’ Shelley laughed.
I took a sip from my luminous, pink drink. Shelley had tried to ban booze as she was on an alcohol detox before the wedding, but Cara had thankfully ignored her and created this ‘Shell on the beach’ cocktail which was slipping down a little too easily.
‘You need to add more glue; they won’t stick as well otherwise,’ a woman with badly applied blue eyeliner piped up next to me.
I squeezed the tube harder and a whoosh of glue squirted out.
‘Careful!’ Shelley cried.
‘Sorry!’
Shelley tutted, but was pulled from assigning me to another task by one of her friends, a woman wearing an extremely tight vest top who smelt of cigarettes, who shouted across the room, ‘You starting to get nervous about it all yet, Shell?’
‘Well, I’m worried I’m going to have to restock the diarrhoea tablets if that’s what you mean.’
‘I was like that before my big day. Always stressing that I’d made the wrong choice, worrying about the last-minute things I was sure I’d missed off my list,’ one of the women chirped up as she picked chalk paint from her fingertips.
‘Yeah, but you’ve got Lars to make sure everything has been taken care of,’ Cara added, making the other women coo that she was so lucky to have a wedding planner.
‘To be fair, he has been a godsend,’ Shelley chimed. More like a gobshite, I thought, remembering that awful dress fitting. ‘Although I keep reading these articles on Pinterest about all the things I’m supposed to have done and I swear I haven’t done them all. I’m terrified I’ve left something off my to-do list.’
‘You’d be planning a wedding for the next year if you tried to do everything you see on there!’ The women laughed.
‘How are you going to cope with the post-wedding blues?’ one of her friends piped up. ‘I was so depressed after my big day; it was like there was a huge hole in my life.’ I tried not to scoff at the dramatic face she was pulling. ‘I even thought about going into wedding planning myself.’
’I hadn’t even thought of that!’ Shelley’s eyes lit up as she explained how she could do with a career change.
I picked up the nearest wedding magazine to occupy myself with.
‘Check this one out,’ I said loudly, breaking up the chat about nightmare caterers and pervy Masters of Ceremonies that one of the women in the room was going on about. The article was ‘Fifteen Things You Must Have for the Perfect Wedding’. ‘“To add a personal touch, why not monogram drinking straws, arrange a chill-out area complete with Balinese handcrafted throws, or ask your guests to start an impromptu sing-along of your favourite songs.” Jesus.’ I shook my head, laughing.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Shelley looked up from painting the base of a jam jar. ‘I think that sounds lovely. Maybe we should nip out to get some straws; I’m sure I can find something online we could print off and decorate them with.’
I let out a bark of a laugh. ‘Oh, come on, you don’t seriously believe that without these things – things that most people won’t even remember – you won’t have the perfect day?’
If I hadn’t been so glued to the next article on the ‘Ten Ultimate Tear-Jerking First Dance Songs’, most of them naff classics, or been on my third ‘Shell on the beach’, I might have noticed the atmosphere in the room cool.
‘You do? Really?’ I said to her silence, stifling a giggle at how serious she was being. One of the women already had her coat on to head off on the straw-buying mission.
‘Well, why not?’ Shelley folded her arms.
‘Oh, excuse me for being such a sceptic, but I thought you had more brains than that.’
The others looked up at me as if I was the Grinch who stole weddings.
‘I mean, enough with the ridiculous wedding rituals. Actually, if you think about it –’ I raised my finger to make my next valid point and put on this ridiculous clipped English accent – ‘the whole institution is just so antiquated and extremely anti-feminist.’ I paused, hoping for one of the women to take her bra off and wave it in the air in solidarity with me. They all continued to look at me as if I’d lost the plot. ‘I mean, you have your father literally give you away, like you’re some flipping cow or prize bull, then you have to honour and obey this man. I mean, come on – obey!’
‘If you think all this wedding stuff is just a load of shite, then why did you bother to fly over and help me?’ Shelley asked, putting her hands on her hips.
‘Shell, come on, I didn’t mean it like that!’ I said, slowly picking up on the fact she wasn’t finding this funny in the slightest.
‘Do you know what I think?’ She was baiting me to answer. ‘You’re jealous,’ she said, pursing her lips. I swear I legit heard someone gasp.
‘What?’ I scrunched up my face at such a ridiculous suggestion. Where had this come from?
‘Yep. You’re jealous because I’m getting to go up the aisle and you never made it that far.’
‘Pfft. Whatever. I think you need to wake up and realise that spending three months deciding what to have as a wedding hashtag is complete bullshit.’ She looked as if I’d slapped her. ‘Fancy table decorations, quirky centrepieces and an unusual font on your invites doesn’t make a bit of difference. No one in this room will remember.’
‘So, why were you going to marry Alex then, if you think weddings are so pointless?’ she barked.
‘Because I didn’t know any better,’ I answered back, with a little too much sass.
‘Well, if you’re not jealous then you’re scared.’ She angrily screwed the lid of the paint pot back on and got to her feet.
‘Scared of what?’ I laughed, standing up to face her, possibly swaying slightly.
‘Hiding your true feelings means you pretend that you don’t want this. You’re a coward, Georgia Green. You’re convinced that it will all go wrong as it has done with every other relationship you’ve had, so what’s the point?’
I wasn’t scared, I was being realistic. Shelley didn’t know what she was talking about. I wasn’t jealous. It was all just a giant ego-parade.
‘Oh, so you’ve remembered what happened to me then? Because you’ve not once thought to check that this would be hard for me. Or bothered to see if I was okay giving up my holiday and reliving this wedding stress after what I went through?!’ I knocked some of the candles over as I stretched out my arm clumsily. ‘You haven’t once thought about me to see if I was fine being surrounded by your chaotic wedding planning twenty-four-seven, if it would be a little difficult to deal with for a previously jilted bride. I mean, where has my friend Shelley gone? The girl who would lighten up about fucking candles and place settings! The one who is sympathetic and kind and would realise that her wedding might be the most life-changing event to ever happen to her, but for everyone else in this room it’s not such a big deal.’
She gritted her teeth and stared back at me. The others in the room were silent, trying to breathe through this tense atmosphere. I was on a roll. It was as if the past few months of stress with work, house-buying, losing out on the investment cash, hearing about this bloody wedding, and biting my tongue on the hen-do road trip suddenly began spilling out.
‘Even Jimmy thinks it too! The poor fella is sick of having a bridezilla stomping around. If you’re not careful, there will be no fucking wedding!’
I was fuming. My head pounded as I finally let her in on some home truths. I didn’t care that I looked deranged in front of her friends, I just wanted my old friend back.
She reeled from that last comment. ‘You’re just bitter, Georgia. You don’t know anything about what Jimmy thinks.’
‘Fine,’ I spat. ‘If you’re going to be like that, lost in this superficial wedding crap, then I won’t stay here for a moment longer!’
I stomped off to my bedroom and hurriedly stuffed my things into my bag. Luckily, as Cara had way nicer stuff and beauty products than me, most of my things were still packed up in my case, so it didn’t take long. I was desperate to be away from her and her warped views on everything. I could hear hushed whispers once I’d left the room. No one attempted to come and speak to me, which only made me bang around even more loudly.
Fuck this! I’d come all this way to help Shelley out, to support her, putting my own issues and feelings to one side, even slept on a sodding street, and this was how she repaid me? I tried to control my rapid breathing that was leaving me light-headed, and stomped back into the lounge, unable to even look Shelley in the eye, banging my shin on the edge of the shiny coffee table as I did.
‘Thanks for a lovely evening,’ I said spitefully to Cara. The other girls were picking at the carrot sticks and dips that Shelley had laid out, loving every minute of the real-life drama playing out in front of them.
‘Georgia, don’t go, come on, we can sort this out,’ Cara said quietly, stretching out her long yoga-pant-clad legs.
‘No, I think everything has been said. I’ll leave you to it.’ I flicked my nose in the air, managing to only look at Shelley through the corner of my eye. She’d slumped onto the sofa and was picking at the cushion and stubbornly refusing to look at me or say a thing. I had the door handle in my hand and was about to step foot outside when I finally heard Shelley pipe up.
‘Wait!’
I turned to look at her, hoping for an apology, or at least for her to admit she had lost her mind in bridal bedlam. Instead, she got to her feet and stood tall. ‘You are no longer welcome in the bridal party; in fact, I don’t want you to come to the wedding at all!’
One of her friends gasped loudly. I know that just a few minutes earlier we’d been screaming at each other, but I never expected to be expelled from Team Wedding. I went to speak, but nothing came out of my mouth. My whole body felt tense and I was willing the tears not to show. I flung the front door open.
‘Georgia, wait—’ Cara called.
This time I didn’t wait. I slammed the door behind me as dramatically as I could and pulled my bag down the thick padded carpets of the hallway to the lifts. My breathing was all over the place, my mouth tasted metallic and my head was banging. How had tonight ended up like this? After calling the lift to the ground floor, I walked out into the cool evening air. Standing in the cobbled courtyard, in a place I hardly knew, with every shape and noise sounding ominous, I shivered. Now what?
I pulled out my phone, half expecting to see WhatsApp messages from Shelley or Cara begging me to go back, apologising for overreacting, but the phone screen remained empty. I kicked my foot against the wall, chipping off a piece of concrete with it, glanced around the courtyard and looked back up at the window of Cara’s flat. I don’t know what I imagined to see, maybe the group of them pressed against the windowpane, but it was empty.
I spun on my heel and walked out into the street, pulling my jacket closer and trying to hold back the sniffs of tears. What now, Georgia?