Marriage of Unconvenience

The tension in her face melted into an adorable smile. I would do anything to make her happy. That’s what best friends did.

“What are you going to wear?” she asked. I hadn’t thought about that either.

“No idea. I might need you to help me pick something. I’ll go shopping with you if you want.” Her cheeks got red.

“What?” I asked.

“Um, I might have already picked a dress out at a shop. It’s way too much money, but I figured I might as well. I mean, if and when I eventually do this again, I’ll probably want something else. Styles change so fast, so I don’t think what I want now will be what I want when I’m thirty. So I might as well use it now, right?”

“Sounds good,” I said. I had never thought about wedding dresses like that, so I couldn’t relate, but I was going to pretend and nod and smile through this whole thing. She was doing this huge thing for me and I wanted her to be happy while we were doing it.

“I can go with you to see it, if you want.” I’d never thought about going to a wedding dress shop, but now I was curious. I was curious about all of this stuff now.

“Really? I trust you to tell me if it looks awful on me.” Nothing had ever looked awful on her, and I would tell her that too, but I agreed for now. The idea of seeing Cara in a wedding dress hit me with a bolt of longing. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see her.

“It’ll be fun,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if that was the right word. We went back to the food and didn’t talk for a while. I was starting to think about what I might want. After a few minutes of pondering, I still had no idea. I’d have to try something on, I guess. Maybe I’d try a dress on at the shop. What the hell, why not? You didn’t wear a wedding dress every day. Might as well take my opportunity. Treat it like Halloween.

When we had eaten as much as we could and had nearly finished the bottle of wine, we ended up laying on the grass and staring up at the sky.

“Once you get all of your bills and shit taken care of, what are you going to do with the money?” she asked.

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I’ve only gotten to the ‘getting out of debt’ stage. I’m not sure. I’ve never really had a lot of money, so I’m just used to not buying things. I don’t even know how to indulge, isn’t that sad?” My parents had always been on the lower end of middle class, and we’d flirted with the poverty line more than a few times.

“If I had it, I’d buy lots of fancy cheese and maybe a better apartment and there’s this Kate Spade bag I’ve been looking at for like a year, but can’t justify buying.” I turned my head to look at her.

“Which one?” She got out her phone and showed me. I committed it to memory and hoped that when I went online that I could find the right one because I was getting her that damn bag.

“Other than that, maybe traveling? I want to go so many places.” Right, traveling. That would be cool.

“We can take a honeymoon. That’s another perk of getting married. We get to go on a trip. Since I don’t have a job, I can go anytime.” In fact, that was a great idea and I was going to start looking at plane tickets as soon as I got back.

“Could we?” Her voice was so hopeful. Looks like we’d found a few ways to spend my money.

“Absolutely. It’ll be a friendship honeymoon. Best friends go on trips all the time. Where do you want to go?” She let out a breath and laughed.

“I have no idea.”

“Me neither,” I said.

Seven

One proposal down, one to go. We still had to get a marriage license, Cara needed her dress, I needed something to wear, and then we needed to get our asses to the courthouse and make this sucker official.

It was hard keeping everything from my other friends. Ansel might be kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, but he knew how to keep a damn secret. He was like a vault.

I tried to keep the conversations casual, saying that I was busy looking for a job and would get back to them when I could. A lot of them were in school, or working multiple jobs, or dealing with bad mental health episodes, so we didn’t get to see each other as often as I would like. I saw Ansel and Cara the most.