Page 35 of Best Woman

“Vivienne Westwood.”

Her eyes widen. “Wow. Did you get it at the mall?”

“No.” I don’t have the bandwidth for the Rachels right now. I have to escape. Quickly. “Oh, there’s my Aunt Harriet.” Aunt Harriet died during the Bush administration. The second one. “Good to see you!”

I hurtle myself away from her and straight into Uncle Aaron and his wife Brooke, whose house I used to stay at for a few weeks every summer before sleepaway camp.

Aaron gives me the kind of back-slapping half hug he’s been doing since I went through puberty (the first time) but Brooke wraps me up in a proper embrace, pulling back to give me a thorough scan.

“Sweetie, you look incredible!” Their kids, a pair of boys a few years older than Brody and Brian, give me awkward hellos.

I went to their house on Long Island for Rosh Hashanah two years ago, and while our catch-up chitchat is a bit stilted, it’s mostly because we don’t see each other that often and run out of pleasantries quickly.

Kim’s at the bar getting us drinks, and I attempt to weave through the crowd to her but am stopped by Randy’s mother Alice.

“Oh my lord,” she says. “Look at you.” Her red hair is teased and blown out larger than hair has any right to be, her eye shadow a shocking blue, lipstick bleeding into the wrinkles around her mouth.

I haven’t seen her in five years and could have gone for another five. Here we go.

“Hi, Alice,” I say, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “It’s lovely to see you.”

“My word,” she says, clutching a martini to her chest. She has the kind of Southern twang that could deep-fry a chicken in seconds.

“I’d heard all about you, of course, but my Lord!

” Randy is only Jewish on his father’s side, and Alice has clung stubbornly to her good Christian gentility.

“You know,” she says, assessing, “you’re actually very pretty like this. ”

“Um. Thank you.”

“And of course you were always…different.” It sounds like a dirty word in her mouth. She sips her drink. I wonder how many she’s had already. “I suppose we know why now, don’t we?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, looking back toward the bar but not spotting Kim. “I’m sure I’ll have some new shocking revelation to share with everyone before long.”

She clucks her tongue. “Bless your heart.” Another gulp. I’m pretty sure she just swallowed an olive whole. “That’s quite an outfit.” She rakes her eyes down my body. “I hope tomorrow you’ll be wearing something a bit more tasteful.”

Fuck it, I probably won’t have to see this woman again until Brody and Brian graduate, and they could be in prison or attempting world domination by then. “I’m picking my gimp suit up from the dry cleaners in the morning. Have a great night!”

Across the room I see my mom standing beside Rachel and Aiden as they welcome guests, Rachel’s parents flanking their other side.

Mom is, of course, wearing beige. When she waved me off earlier, on my way to the hotel, her eyes went straight to my feet, noticing the absence of the heels she’d paid for this morning.

Her gaze was all the reproach I needed, but I reminded myself that these shoes have walked a red carpet and the ones she bought me at Bloomingdale’s were thirty percent off. She can return them for all I care.

“There you are,” Kim says, easing effortlessly through the crowd to hand me a glass of champagne. We clink our glasses and she moves beside me, wrapping one of those strong arms around my waist. If the bodice of my dress wasn’t so tight my nipples would probably get hard.

“Hello, ladies.” Ben looks dashing in a navy blue suit, dark hair slicked back. His gaze flicks to where Kim is wrapped around me and he smiles. “You both look fantastic.”

“Uh.” How exactly does one handle casual conversation with a person they’ve fucked in the past forty-eight hours and one they’d like to fuck in the next…three, tops? It’s not the first time I’ve encountered the circumstances—Fire Island, again—but the context is wildly different. “Thanks.”

“You look pretty good yourself, Otsuka.” Kim, where she’s pressed against me, is as relaxed as ever. “I think you might have your pick of the bridesmaids.”

He shrugs, a small smile on his lips. “One or two of the groomsmen too. But I’ve set my sights a little higher. Toward the heavens, one might say.” He nods his head over toward the door, where Aiden and Rachel are greeting Rabbi Hoffman, the object of my preteen lust.

“Ben, if you fuck Rabbi Hoffman at my little brother’s wedding I’m going to be so jealous.” Adolescent fantasies centered around the private lessons for my haftarah portion come rushing back. “He was an extremely integral part of my bisexual awakening!”

“Imagine what we could use the tallit for.”

Laughing, we wish him luck and watch him stalk toward his prey.

I’m relieved, even though I’d known neither Kim nor Ben would make the situation uncomfortable.

Thank god that I can share my body with people who don’t feel some implicit ownership of it just because I’ve shared it with them.

Even if this thing with Kim and me becomes something more—a possibility that’s hot to the touch, too bright to look at closely—who’s to say Ben and I won’t fall back into each other the next time I visit?

Kim doesn’t seem possessive, and I have little desire to be possessed—outside of sex, at least. Although who knows, Rabbi Hoffman might be the jealous type.

And of course that’s when my grandparents arrive.

“Hiya, doll,” says Grandpa, pulling me into a hug. Grandma accepts a kiss to the cheek with the dignity of a monarch, eyes me up and down with pursed lips. “That’s some dress,” she says. I’m not sure what “some” is supposed to mean, but I doubt it’s good.

“And who might you be, my dear?”

“Kim,” she says. “Julia’s friend. And Rachel’s maid of honor.”

Wow, I rank before maid of honor. That shouldn’t feel as good as it does. It does anyway.

Eyeing her suit, Grandpa reaches forward to shake her hand and gives an overexaggerated wince.

“What a grip!” He shakes his hand out as if he’s playing to the cheap seats. “Careful, I’m a very frail old man. At least, that’s what my wife keeps telling me.”

“Well, you were much handsomer when I married you,” Grandma says, extending her own hand to Kim for a limp little shake.

“When was that again?” I ask them. “Sometime around the fall of Rome?”

“Romulus and Remus attended the ceremony,” Grandpa fires back, not missing a beat. “You be nice to me, doll, or I’ll write you out of the will.”

I give a mock shudder. “Oh no, how will I ever hope to survive without your stamp collection?”

“Stamps are actually a smart investment,” says Kim. “Better than the stock market.”

Grandpa smiles. “I like this girl,” he tells me, sotto voce, though we all can hear.

“Me too,” I say, more to her than my grandpa. Kim squeezes my waist.

My grandparents soon abandon us for the bar—Grandma sternly reminding Grandpa that he can have two martinis and that’s it —and I’m hopeful we might make it to dinner, where I’ll be seated at the center table while Kim dines with the bridal party, without further interruption.

I know I should get through all my awkward family interactions now, before the emotional shitshow I’m sure tomorrow will be, but all I want to do is stay tucked into Kim in this little corner, trading snarky comments about people’s outfits and heated glances heavy with the promise of what might happen after dinner.

Alas, I have never been that lucky.

“Parental unit incoming,” Kim warns.

“Ah, yes, the boss of this level. Hi, Dad.” He’s wearing the suit I unearthed from the depths of the garage, which looks like he took it out of the garment bag and put it straight on without even considering an iron or, god forbid, dry-cleaning.

My father has likely never had an item of clothing dry-cleaned in his life.

For the thousandth time in my life, I wonder how my mother—a woman so obsessed with order that it borders on OCD—ever married this man.

“Julie,” he crows.

“I have asked you repeatedly not to call me that.”

He rolls his eyes. “Right, another thing I’m not supposed to call you.

” He holds his hand out for Kim, and winces at her grip.

Unlike my grandpa, I don’t think he’s exaggerating.

Then she winces, and I follow her gaze to where Rachel is clearly summoning her.

“A maid of honor’s duty never ends,” she tells my father apologetically, giving me a final squeeze before leaving to deal with whatever Rachel-shaped emergency had emerged.

“Nice girl,” Dad says. “Pretty, if you like that type.”

“What type is that, exactly?” I say, bristling.

“You know—butch. I guess that was always kind of your thing with girls,” he says, chuckling. “You watched Alien every day when you were thirteen and wouldn’t shut up about Sigourney Weaver.”

“I can’t believe you remember that,” I say.

He shakes his head, a little sad. “You’re my kid, I remember a lot of things about you.”

This is true, but doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.

One of the reasons I barely talk to my dad is because it never takes long for him to start reminiscing about my childhood, how close we were, that I was his little buddy, following him everywhere.

He misses that version of me, the one who loved him in a way that was uncomplicated, who was uncomplicated. A child he understood.

“Really, though,” he says, “she seems great. And I can tell you like her. You look at her the way you used to look at a box of crayons when you were a kid.” He reaches out to lay a hand on my shoulder. “I’m happy that you’re happy.”

My throat feels tight. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Bit out of your league, though,” he says.

“Thanks, Dad.”