Chapter Three
Present Day
Portland, Oregon
The Arrival
“You probably should have stopped at two glasses of wine on the plane.” Lily scolds me as we walk across the ugly green carpet that is famously known as Portland Airport.
This could possibly be one of the most stressful weeks of my life. If I choose to go into it with a little liquid courage, so kill me. I don’t really want to face Jack for the first time in two years at all. Doing so in front of a room full of people who were also invited to our wedding is making me a little crazy.
“Don’t listen to her.” Josh winks at me before grabbing Lily’s hand with a sympathetic look on his face.
“This week might be miserable enough already. I just don’t think she should start it buzzed.” Lily defends herself to Josh and the two of them argue back and forth as we pull our carry-on bags behind us, heading towards the non-ticketed area of the airport where my brother Evan is meeting us.
“There he is.” Josh nods in the direction of my brother.
Evan and I look a lot alike. We’re twins, so looking at least a little alike was kind of in the stars. We both have dark ash-brown hair, blue-gray eyes and pasty white skin.
We are adopted. We’ve known since we were old enough to understand it. Our parents waited so long in life they couldn’t conceive naturally. Back then they didn’t have the technology of today, so while they knew they were getting a baby, boy and girl twins weren’t on their radar. I can’t imagine having one baby, let alone two, and yet my mother was a picture of grace for our entire childhood.
Evan is standing in front of the schedule boards with a homemade sign that says Esmeralda the Great like I’m some sort of gypsy palm-reader coming to read him his fortune. I’m not sure why my mother chose a name straight from a circus side show act, but she did.
I’m the 2-minute younger twin sister of my brother Evan. Actually, that’s not even his full name, and my name isn’t really Emi. Our mother was older when we came along and she insisted we have unique old school names. She succeeded in naming us after Romanian gypsies, even though she wasn’t Romanian. I know nothing about our birth parents, so maybe she knew they were Romanian; who knows? My full name is Esmeralda Erin Harrison, and my brother is Evangelo Eron Harrison. The different versions of Erin are because we are twins and our mom thought we needed twinning names. We insisted on being called Emi and Evan but our parents never would cave in and use them.
“You know I hate it when you call me that,” I say as I approach him.
He wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the floor in a giant bear hug. “Exactly why I do it. It’s what brothers do.”
“Fine then, Evangelo.” I say it in the most annoying sisterly tone available, and watch his face scrunch up and his eyebrows rise.
“Whoa now, OK, I won’t call you Esmeralda anymore if you’re gonna use Evangelo.”
“Good. Let’s go grab my bags.” I point over at the baggage claim sign and watch Evan give me a disapproving look.
“You checked bags and brought this?” He pretends he can hardly lift my super-sized pink luggage off the floor.
“It’s a wedding. I had to get the dress here and it takes a lot to maintain and dress this figure up.” I point to myself in case he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“High maintenance, huh?” Evan directs his comment towards Josh and Lily, who both nod their heads.
“I am not high maintenance. This is just—”
What is it?
It’s a wedding that my ex will be at. That’s what it is. If I didn’t come prepared for anything even I would wonder what was wrong with me.
“Got it.” Evan nods with an unspoken understanding as if he’s just read my mind. Sometimes having a twin is a good thing. Like those times where you need them to spontaneously read your mind, or call when you're having a bad day and you don’t want to call first. We do those weird things.
He jogs over to the baggage carousel that is on the point of sending my two extra-large hot-pink luggage bags and dress bag back through the hole in the wall to wherever it goes if no one claims it. I was kind of hoping the dress bag would end up on its way to Brazil, or anywhere else for that matter. But there it is, taunting me by being draped over both my other bags, impossible to not see and accidentally leave behind.
“Is he there?” I ask Evan, following him to the parking garage, Lily and Josh lagging behind us.
“Who?” He gives a joking smile over his shoulder at me. “No, he’s not there. He doesn’t live with us, Em.”
“I know that.” Thank God. If he did I’d be heading to a hotel right now, instead of to my brother’s mini-mansion.
“I doubt you’ll see much of him anyway, besides at the wedding. He’s… uh… preoccupied.”
“With work, right?” Lily suddenly appears at my side leaving her luggage with Josh to pull to the car. “He’s a lawyer,” she narrows her eyes at Evan, “so I’m sure he’s busy on a case, or whatever.”
“Right. He’s working.” Evan is obviously following her lead on something.
“What’s going on?” I stop when Evan’s car beeps at us approaching and the back door automatically opens for our bags.
“Nothing is going on, Em.” He grabs my bags and stacks them in the back, arranging them like a Jenga game so that Josh and Lily can maybe fit theirs in as well. “Let’s head home.”
We all pile into Evan’s SUV quietly. Too quietly. Like someone-is-hiding-a-secret quietly.
“Seriously guys, what is up? What do you all know that I don’t?”
Evan backs out of our spot silently, avoiding even looking in my direction, obviously ignoring my question. I glance at the backseat, where Josh and Lily are exchanging a look I know all too well.
“What are you not telling me?”
“It’s nothing, Ems.” Lily is a horrible liar. Even though her mouth says nothing, her face is saying please forgive me.
“What did ‘nothing’ do?”
“He got engaged.” Evan blurts it out, never looking at me.
“Engage—”
“Yes,” Lily interrupts me. “I was gonna tell you, but I didn’t want to chance you refusing to get on the plane. Jack is engaged, OK?” She says the last sentence slowly, exaggerating the pronunciation of each of the words as if she’s talking to someone just learning the English language.
The words hang in the air like a storm cloud. I hear them, but I can’t wrap my head around it.
How can he be engaged? Engaged implies that he’s happily moved on, and I don’t want that. I want him to be miserable and broken like I am. I want him to look terrible, to have gained fifty pounds, to be balding and to eat dinner every night alone. That would make me happy: his misery. He deserves at least that.
“I’m fine with it,” I lie, and stare out of the window. “It’s not like I haven’t moved on too.” Another lie. Why am I lying to the people who know me the best?
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I mean, come on, I refused to talk to him for three months even though he begged daily, and then I moved over two thousand miles away when you guys got transferred. So yes, obviously, I’ve moved on.”
Behind me, Lily clears her throat. “Moving on physically isn’t the same as letting go, Ems. We’ve talked about this.”
“It’s true, though. In this case, it means exactly that. I am over Jack. I’m just a little surprised to hear that he’s engaged, that’s all.”
“Good, because this week is not about Jack and Emi for once. It’s about Hannah.”
“And you.” I say to Evan.
“Yes, exactly. So, we’re going to have fun, and things will go smoothly.”
When we pull up to Evan’s house I’m reminded immediately of our parents. He has our dad’s old vintage 1952 Corvette in the driveway. He’s completely redone it and it looks like it just came off the showroom floor of the car dealership. Dad bought the car when Evan was 18 so they could rebuild it together. It turned out gorgeous, and the last time I saw Dad he was driving it to the country club for his weekly game of tennis. That was his last game. He died of a major heart attack right there on the court. For a second my heart hurts as I stare at the car from my seat.
“Kind of sad they can’t be here for the wedding, isn’t it?”
When he says it I realize we are the only two still in the car.
“Yeah. It is. Do you think they knew they’d never see either of us get married when they brought us home?”
Our parents not being here nearly breaks my own heart. How sad to spend your whole life raising these kids and then never getting to celebrate the big moments with them, like weddings and babies.
“Nah, they never felt their age as it was, so I doubt it even crossed their minds. I’m sure they’re around us somewhere. Dad’s probably super-impressed with my more responsible venture into adulthood, and Mom’s probably still wondering when her sweet dizzy Emi will finally grow up.” He laughs until I make a swing for his arm, then jumps out of the car before I can make contact.
“Not even funny,” I say loudly as I get out, heading to the back to grab my bags.
“EMI!” Hannah comes squealing out of the house and engulfs me in a huge hug. Which is a little more than awkward, considering she’s a good nine inches taller than me.
I can’t say that Hannah and I are the best of friends in life, but I think we are just about as close as we’ll ever be. There may always be some lingering jealousy on Hannah’s side that Lily is my best friend and not her. But what can I do about that? Her marrying my brother won’t change the fact that I’ve known Lily since I was six years old. There is also the fact that I’ve always had that feeling that Hannah can change her opinion of someone in a split second over goodness knows what or why.
“Hi, Hannah!” I hug her back, and pretend my cheek isn’t smashed up against her perfect plastic boobs.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” She sets me free and hugs Lily and Josh. “Come in, come in! I’ll show you to your rooms. I’m so excited to show you everything for the wedding in person!”
Evan gives a raised-eyebrow smirk. He’s finally escaped the world of weddings that Hannah has become. She’s now got a new audience in Lily and me. The upcoming wedding is all she talks about. My wedding this and my wedding that is the topic of every phone call we’ve had for the last year. I honestly don’t know what she’ll talk about when this is over, but I imagine her post-wedding depression will be best for me when I’m two thousand miles away and can ignore the call.
“I have seriously shopped myself out this week getting your rooms ready, but since I knew you’d all be here a full week I wanted to make sure you had everything you’d have back home.” I find it hard to believe she is ever seriously done with shopping as I gawk at her fancy house while we follow her up the grandest staircase since Gone with the Wind and into a bedroom more luxurious than I’ve always imagined a room at The Plaza.
“Josh and Lily, this is your room. There are robes for each of you in the bathroom, toiletries that I know you all use and a snack basket on the dresser. If I left anything out just let me know and I’ll send Evan to grab it.”
“Wow, Hannah, you’ve really done too much. The room is beautiful.” Lily beams over at her. “And I thought this wedding wouldn’t be a vacation.”
“Exactly why I did this! I know you two work so hard and I wanted this to be like a vacation.”
Hannah and Lily always get along in a ‘we have to for Emi’s sake’ kind of way. Not that they don’t like each other; they do, mostly. But right now, it’s a little over the top. I’d guess by tomorrow night they’ll be slyly at each other’s throats like a scene from The Real Housewives.
“Now to Emi’s room.”
I follow Hannah out, grabbing my bags I left in the hallway, and into the next room on the right. “Same for you, but I also left a bridesmaid survival kit in here. Everything you might need for your bridesmaid duties or emergencies are in there. It’s so exciting, in a few days we’ll be sisters!” She’s talking much quieter in here, like she’s keeping what we’re saying away from Lily’s ears.
When Hannah first asked me to be a bridesmaid I was afraid to tell Lily. Not because she’d be mad, but because Hannah didn’t ask her to be one too. She had some other friends she’s closer to and thought it would be weird to ask my best friend, who doesn’t always love her, to be in the bridal party. But of course, she invited Lily and Josh as guests and moral support for me.
“Thank you, Hannah. You truly have thought of everything.”
“Grab your dress bag; we’ll put that in here with the rest of the wedding stuff.” She motions to the room across the hall from us. When she opens the door my jaw drops. The room is piled high full of boxes, gift bags, linens, decorations, and dress bags.
“Whoa. This is like a bridal shop. Why is it all here? I thought you hired a wedding planner?”
“I did, but I needed a place to store everything and we have plenty of room. Isn’t it amazing?” She glances around before hanging my dress on the dress rack full of gown bags.
“How many bridesmaids are there?” I count the bags quickly, worried that this wedding might end up like the last scene of 27 Dresses.
“There are six bridesmaids, two flower girls, and two ring bearers.”
“Why the twelve dress bags then?” I can’t help but wonder.
“Did I not tell you?” She pulls a bag out and hangs it on a hook at the end of the rack. “I designed two wedding dresses; a ceremony dress and a reception dress.”
“Two? Wow. That’s uh—” What do you say to the girl who probably spent twenty thousand dollars on material for these dresses? You want to say that you hope they never run into financial hard times and drop down to middle income. But you don’t dare say anything.
“It’s amazing. Here look, this one is my ceremony dress.” Hannah slowly unzips the first bag which is probably the biggest dress bag I’ve ever seen. Inside is a dress with so much tulle and sparkles it’s hard to see anything else. “I know you can’t tell in the bag but it’s so beautiful. The bodice stops at my waist and it has a full-out ball-gown skirt but it’s in layers draped offset in a hankerchief cut. Look at this lace!” She pulls out a layer of the skirt with an intricate lace detail along the hem. “I designed this lace.” I can tell she’s proud of it too, as she should be; it’s gorgeous. “There is also a layer of tulle in the middle of the skirt that is hot pink so there is a hint of pink showing through in the full skirt. The beading on the bodice took me two months to complete. Can you imagine? I thought my fingers were going to fall off.” She laughs as she gently touches the intricate beading sparkling in the light.
Hannah truly has always reminded me of Barbie, with her perfect blonde hair, her always-perfect makeup, and her obsession with all things pink, ever since the day I met her.
“It sparkles, that’s for sure. I’m sure you’ll look beautiful in it.” I’m picturing this pink tinted ball gown resembling the Barbie birthday cake I had when I turned eight years old.
She puts the ball gown back onto the crowded dress rack and pulls out a smaller bag next to it. “This one is where I got the inspiration for you girls’ bridesmaids’ dresses.” The feathers spill out before I can notice anything else: pastel pink, gray and white feathers from just above her knees all the way to the bottom. If there was a giant feathered headpiece with it I’d think she was performing on Broadway or with the Rockettes. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”
“It’s feathery. Is this one for the reception?” Boy is it ever feathery, like a Las Vegas showgirl. I can’t even picture what a row of bridesmaids will look like, all of us being feathered from the knees down. I would think she would want something unique, not more feathers for her reception. But then again, Hannah has always been full of unexpected decisions.
“Yes. It reminds me of a vintage party dress, so it’s just so fitting, don’t you think?”
“I do.” I hate it, but I do think it’s fitting. Now I know what we’ll look like: insane. We will be one of those bridal parties that are pictured on-line, in a What Not To Do To Your Bridesmaids article that lives on the internet for years to come.
Lily walks in holding a glass of wine and stops dead in her tracks two feet inside the door.
“Holy shit, what is this? You opened a bridal store in your house?” There is the Lily I know and love.
“No!” Hannah yells at her and points towards the hallway. “No wine in here, it would just ruin everything if it spilled.”
I watch Lily slowly back out of the room, eyes big and eyebrows raised. That was quick, her completely offending Hannah only an hour into our trip. I thought it would take her at least till later tonight. “I’m sure you’re losing your buzz, Ems.” She rolls her eyes at me “You should come have a glass.” She nods towards the stairs trying to convince me to come downstairs with her for a glass of wine. Like it would take much to persuade me.
“Sure.” I look over at Hannah who is nodding her head at me.
I follow the two of them down the grand staircase and into their open-plan living room and kitchen. One full wall is gray stone with a huge fireplace in the center. All the furniture is stark white, the walls are white, the curtains are white, the decorations are variations of white. The room merges into a wall of the kitchen with an island almost the full length of the room. Again everything is white, except the stainless-steel appliances.
“My God, how do you keep this clean?” I ask them, glad it’s not mine.
“I have no idea. I have a lady who does it daily.” Hannah pours herself a glass of pink champagne before hopping up onto one of the metal barstools that sit just below her white sparkly quartz island counter.
“What is your life?” I ask my brother who is sitting on the counter holding a beer. “My whole apartment could fit in this room alone.”
“I don’t know why. It’s not like you don’t have money.”
He’s right. When our parents died, they left us enough money that neither of us would’ve had to work for a good ten years even after paying off our student loans and college debt. I do have money, but after looking at this house I don’t know if he will much longer. He and Hannah appear to have very rich tastes. They bought the house right after the last time I saw them both. I’ve seen pictures and I knew it was fancy, but I never ever expected this fancy.
It’s at moments like these, when I’m with my coupled-up happy friends, that I find my mind wandering to what Jack and I might have been like if we’d made it all the way down the aisle. What would the wedding have actually been like? Would we be happy? Would I have ever caught him doing his assistant, or would I have lived forever in blissful ignorance?