Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [40]
I was oddly compelled by Bridget’s dramatic coverage of this story. “So they stood out there for eighteen hours? Without breaks?”
“They got, like, a five-minute break every six hours or something. And they would hobble off to the sidelines and their future husbands would massage their aching feet and coach them through the next round. ‘They’re going down, honey! You’re the leanest, meanest bride ever!’ And then these psycho brides would start weeping about how hard this was, how it was torture, how it was the most difficult thing they have ever endured in their entire lives, and I was like, SOLDIERS ARE DYING IN IRAQ RIGHT NOW.”
The motley crowd assembled at the bar—all drinking pints of the hair of the dog that bit them the night before—turned around to look.
“Sorry,” Bridget said to the gawkers, then to me: “As you can see, the whole thing was really sick. That’s what started to turn me off weddings. Why is there so much emphasis on that day, and so little about the fifty years that come after?”
I laughed. “You sound suspiciously like me.”
“I know!” she said. “You’ve always said that if you got married, you would elope to Jamaica.” She was right. I have been saying this since my sister’s wedding. “Just you, your husband, and some Rastafarian minister…”
She stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes were magnetized to the bit of metal on the fourth finger on my left hand.
“What is that?”
I dropped my hand to my lap. But it was too late.
“Was that a ring?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“A ring on a significant finger?”
I brought my glass to my lips and choked down a mouthful of room-temperature tap water.
(I suppose I should provide a valid excuse for keeping your ring on the significant finger, knowing that doing so will only invite comment and conversation on a subject I’m not sure I wish to discuss. Ah, but therein lies the answer. Taking it off would mean that I wasn’t giving your proposal the full week of consideration I promised. Keeping it on forces me to confront the complications that made it impossible for me to respond to your proposal when it was first popped. And honestly, who would even notice an unblinged bit of silver that looks nothing like a traditional engagement ring…?)
“You’ve let me go on and on without telling me you’re, like, engaged?!”
“Well, I’m not—”
“Did Marcus ask you to marry him?”
I actually laughed when she said that because it was (a) absurd and(b) the truth.
“Is it true?”
I nodded, unable to say it out loud. Discussing this situation in the confines of Sammy was one thing, but saying it out loud, in public, was another.
“You and Marcus are getting married!” She squealed and bounced up and down in her chair, again drawing the attention of the bar crowd. But this time she was too happy to be embarrassed. Unlike Hope, who was shocked by the news, and Manda, who was merely amused by it, Bridget was sincerely thrilled by the prospect of our union.
“Did you hear that, Siobhan?” Bridget gushed to our regular waitress, a tough, thirtyish punk originally from County Cork with sleeve tats covering her milky-white, well-muscled arms. “She’s getting married!”
While I winced at my friend’s enthusiasm, Siobhan set down one empty plate in front of Bridget, and another heaped with steaming meats and starches in front of me. Our waitress then paused long enough to smile with her lips pulled tight against her crooked teeth, and said something unintelligible in a brogue as thick as a pint of Guinness.
I waited until Siobhan hustled back to the bar before asking, “Did she just say, ‘Coughs on your anus’?”
Bridget cackled and said, “I think she said, ‘Coffee’s on the house!’”
“Oh,” I replied with a slightly embarrassed chuckle. “I thought it might be a traditional Irish blessing or something.”
As Bridget loaded up her empty plate, I realized