Chapter 38: Never fuck with a Tinkerbell.
You would think, with Grace Adler being Grace Fucking Adler, that we could’ve had a better place than Dillan’s Bar & Grill for the reception. But whatever. Dillan’s is walking distance from St. Peter’s, it has a dance floor, they never skimp on alcohol, and it’s exactly the kind of rednecky, small-town northern Ohio joint that seems to fit Grace.
And if it fits Grace, it fits her second husband Kyle even better. It doesn’t take much time after the champagne toasts and the cake cutting for his boys to start to get rowdy and loud. Blazers come off, ties get draped on the backs of chairs, and the dance floor swims with white guys who don’t have any rhythm when they’re sober, let alone drunk.
I roll my own sleeves up as the temperature inside Dillan’s starts to heat up. We’ve already eaten (I’m still hungry), and Amy’s hitting the open bar to get us another round. I glance around, people-watching while I wait.
Amy reappears before me a minute later, sets two drinks on the table. “Sorry that took so long. The barkeep kept trying to flirt with me.”
I give her a lopsided grin. “Yeah? And what did you tell him?”
“That my girlfriend wouldn’t be very pleased if I let him give me his number.”
Girlfriend. It’s the first time Amy’s used the word. She glides over it as if it’s no big deal, while my brain snags on it. The janitor inside my head flips through her massive key ring, unlocks a door.
“What did he say to that?” I ask.
“That he bet I hadn’t met the right guy yet if I was seeing a girl.” She smiles wickedly. “I pointed to you in the corner and said, ‘See the professional basketball player sitting in the back there? The one with at least six inches and probably twenty pounds on you? I know when I’ve found the right girl.’ And he looked at you and I swear he went ghost-white.”
“He did?”
“Mm-hmm. And he literally said, ‘Your girlfriend’s Anika Singh? Aw, shit. Never mind.’”
“Really?” I ask, mildly surprised. I lean around Amy, try to get a glimpse of the barkeep to see if I would recognize him as fast as he recognized me. Maybe we went to high school together. Sure, people in this town knew me when I carried our girls’ basketball team to two state championships in a row, but that was twenty years ago.
Her eyes twinkle. “Seems I’m dating a local celebrity.”
Girlfriend. Dating. A warm feeling grows in my stomach, a pleasant buzz that has nothing to do with alcohol.
“Dance with me?” I say.
“Let’s finish our drinks first.”
But one more drink becomes two more drinks; two more drinks becomes three, because now a tipsy Amy decides she wants to see if she can antagonize the barkeep a little more. I swear I don’t condone the action, but somehow I find myself dragged to the bar anyway, ordered to look tall and intimidating as I glare and cross my arms tightly against my chest and tower over the barkeep, who’s probably a perfectly respectable five-nine or five-ten, while Amy orders another drink. It seems like a mean thing to do, but it amuses Amy, so I go along with it.
Even I’m starting to feel the buzz by the time Amy drags me onto the dance floor.
I might be King Kong-huge, but I still have rhythm, and I know how to use what my Momma gave me. But still, when you’re as big as I am, when you stick out the way I do, there’s something that always feels inherently awkward about being on a dance floor, especially if you’re this giant black dyke on the floor surrounded by a bunch of scrawny, mostly redneck middle aged white people. So I start out hesitant. But it turns out that Amy’s years as an Ohio State going to Pi Phi mixers paid off, because the girl can dance.
She’s definitely drunk at this point, but she guides me through slow songs and fast ones, guides my big paws to where she wants them — which ends up being her waist, her hips, her sides, her shoulders. Everywhere, more-or-less. And I should feel self-conscious about some of the looks we’re starting to draw, and fucking defensive about the way some of the men are ogling her, but I’m both too buzzed and too enamored with my Tinkerbell-sized Jane Lane to care. We bump and we grind and then we take it easy with a few slow songs, but eventually I get to the point where the need to pee overcomes my need to run my hands down that sweat-damp green bridesmaid dress before me.
At the end of another slow song, I lean down and kiss Amy on the cheek. “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”
Her eyes widen and she grins. “Oh. Okay. Let’s go.”
I chuckle. “Amy. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean I’m actually going to go, like go, go.”
Her face falls. “You weren’t just saying that to get me some place more private?”
I land another kiss on her cheek. “I’m sure I’ll get you some place more private later, but let’s make it at your B&B and not Dillan’s. Alright?”
It’s hard to tell if her cheeks flush from blushing or from drinking or from the heat of a half-hour of dancing. At any rate, her eyes cut away from me as she reddens, and she glances towards our cowed barkeep. “I’ll get us more drinks while you’re gone.”
I shake my head. “I’ve had enough. And I don’t want you passing out on me.” I waggle my eyebrows suggestively. “Not when I have plans for you for later.”
This time, it’s definitely not the dancing or the drinking that makes her go crimson to the tips of her adorable little Tinkerbell ears. She reaches up, wraps a hand around my loosened necktie, pulls me down to her level. Kisses me hard.
“Don’t be gone too long,” she whispers in my ear once she breaks the kiss.
I lick the taste of her off my numb lips. “Believe me. I won’t.”
I head to the women’s room, completely fucking missing the fact that a blonde head turns as I pass by, and also completely fucking oblivious to the fact that a blonde, wispy, different Tinkerbell of a woman follows me through the crowd.
#
I’m finishing in the bathroom, washing my hands at the bathroom sink, when a stall door squeaks opens and Jenny walks out. She takes the sink next to mine, turns the hot water on, reaches across me to pump soap into her palm. Meets my eyes in the mirror.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hey. Having a good time?”
In the mirror, her eyes shift from mine to her own. “Not really.”
I turn my water off. “Why not? A night off from the kids. Your best friend from high school marrying a guy who seems halfway decent. Free food. An open bar. What’s not to like?”
She looks down, scrubs at hands that are quickly turning a scalded red. Back of the right hand. Back of the left hand. Palms. Fingers lacing together. It’s the same hand-washing ritual she’s had since high school.
Hot water still sending up little clouds of steam from the sink, she reaches around me for a paper towel, not seeming to notice the way the motion brushes her left arm across my right. She turns the water off with the paper towel.
“I’m not overly fond of weddings,” she says. “If it weren’t for the fact that it’s Grace, I wouldn’t have come.”
I cock my head in both suspicion and surprise. “You always loved weddings. Said they were romantic. And that a woman is always at her most beautiful on her wedding day.”
“Did I?”
“You did. And you cried at every wedding we ever went to. Remember when Graham and Alex got married? And we — ”
She grabs my forearm. “Please don’t talk to me about Graham and Alex’s wedding.”
I look down at the porcelain-white hand wrapped around my tan forearm. “Why not? We had a really nice time.”
“Because I can’t think of their wedding without thinking of our wedding. And ever since you sat down next to me in the church, I haven’t been able to get our wedding out of my mind.”
Alex and Graham got married two years after Jenny and I did — a chance for Alex and me to repurpose our grey tuxes, a chance for Jenny to plan yet another romantic church wedding, since Graham wasn’t much into the planning side of things herself. And like us, they married right before Christmas. Also like us, basketball season ensured that their honeymoon was approximately non-fucking-existent. Probably nothing more than a hot night or two in a hotel room. A lot like…
I pull Jenny’s hand off me gently. “Maybe thinking about our wedding isn’t a good idea right now. For either of us.”
Her eyes meet mine. Neither one of us says anything for what seems an extremely long fucking time.
“You, too, huh?” she asks. Her voice is small.
I nod. Swallow. “You were… We were… It was a beautiful ceremony, you know. Even if it wasn’t at St. Peter’s like you wanted. And you…”
(“Don’t you fucking dare,” says the janitor in my brain. She shakes a mop at me. “I just finished cleaning up in here.”)
“…You were so beautiful that day. More beautiful than Grace Adler will ever be.”
“Ani.” The two syllables escape her lips like a soft prayer. Like a plea. A wish. Jenny’s eyes flit from my eyes to my mouth.
I feel it coming before it happens, but I don’t do anything to stop it. It tingles up my arms, my neck, into my face, my lips, the back of my throat. Blame it on alcohol. Blame it on nostalgia. Blame it on the fact that I’ve never had any willpower around Jenny.
Then the dam breaks and her hands are reaching up, curling into the fabric of Gerry’s black dress shirt on either side of the collar, pulling me down at the same time that I step forward and wrap my hands around her waist. Our lips don’t so much meet as they collide, two mouths each intent upon devouring the other, desperate and hungry and needy.
I should catch the movement of the bathroom door out of the corner of my eye, but my eyes have fallen shut. I should hear the door squeak on its hinges, but all I hear is the tiny moan Jenny breathes into my mouth — a moan I haven’t heard in more than five years, a sound that used to be the opening bars to my favorite song in the world.
No, I don’t realize that someone else has walked in until I hear my name.
“Anika?” Amy calls as she rounds the corner into the bathroom foyer. “Did you fall — Oh, God.”
Jenny and I are already splitting apart, pushing away from each other like repelling magnets, but it’s too late. Amy stands wide-eyed in the center of the bathroom, both hands flying to her face, covering her nose and mouth, eyes immediately glassing over with tears.
Motherfucker.