Page 11

He Adored Me for Twelve Goddamn Years! Me!

Benny has Matty, Monroe, Tyler, and me hunched around one of the flat screens watching and taking notes on My Best Friend’s Wedding .

I quickly learn that the movie is about Jules, a famous food critic (which Benny swears is divine coincidence given my viral content and further cements the need to watch this as a blueprint for “our” plans), who gets a phone call from her best friend (a very hot dude named Dermot, apparently?) that he’s getting married.

There’s only one problem: she’s in love with him.

So she flies out to Chicago intent on stopping the wedding and proclaiming her love for her best friend.

When her best friend’s fiancée asks her to be her maid of honor, she resorts to a whole lot of evil scheming and backstabbing, and eventually at the final brunch the day before the wedding, Jules kisses her bestie and tells him to “pick me, choose me, love me, marry me,” but then!

Spoiler alert! Dermot sees his fiancée and leaves Jules to chase after her and basically does not choose Jules in the end, which, like, weird choice, right?

Benny even has his iPad out, propped up on a table, with a whiteboard app open. At the top in red digital ink, he scrawls the following:

Operation: Ricky @ Second Glance

“Very funny.” My restless leg is acting up. Matty puts his hand on my thigh to calm it, but nothing helps.

“I thought so,” Benny says. “Okay, so as we learned from the incomparable rom-com queen herself, Ms. Roberts, we might need to resort to some trickery here.”

“But here’s the thing, I don’t want to scheme. And she doesn’t even end up with the guy in the end. So, this doesn’t bode well for me.” My head knocks against the wall of the plane, feeling the effects of the mimosa.

· Lite Sabotage , Benny suggests as bullet number one.

“Maybe let’s look at where Jules went wrong,” Monroe adds. “Instead of backstabbing, trying to manipulate Ricky into thinking the worst about Cam, you have to get him to remember what he loved about you .”

“Which shouldn’t be too hard,” Matty says with a smile.

“Sure, that sounds super easy and not at all vague,” I say.

Benny scribbles:

Win over Ricky’s family

Get Ricky alone to see if he still has feelings for me

Remind Ricky what he’s missing

Show him how much I’ve grown and changed

Compare/Contrast: Pros of Fielder vs. Cons of Cam

Figure out if Ricky actually loves Cam

Isolate (then eliminate) Cam!

“How’s that?”

“Great. Now all we need is a movie script to follow. Should be easy,” I say, completely checked out as everyone else is fully invested and I’m unconvinced that this can work in real life.

Matty looks up and sees the Coven making their way toward us. “Maybe we should table this until we land.” He looks to me. Neither of us needs the family to know about this plan, so Matty motions for everyone to be quiet. “I think Fielder is overwhelmed.”

Ding-ding-ding.

The rest of the flight is a blur of talking about Ricky, thinking about Ricky, trying not to look at Ricky (and Cam), and wistfully daydreaming about all the ways in which I can flush Cam down the airplane toilet or push him out of the emergency hatch door midflight.

Just kidding.

Though not really.

Monroe and Benny are great distractions, though.

At the airport baggage claim, after spending an hour in a hot line going through customs, Matty, Monroe, Benny, and Tyler create a protective barrier around me, making me the center of attention, laughing loudly, all to make Ricky jealous.

Except he doesn’t seem to care. In fact, he looks away!

As the Lemon wedding party makes its way to the Sprinter vans Topher booked for us—the Lemon clan plus Tyler in one, and the other seven, including Monroe and Benny, in the other—Ma makes small talk with Ricky and I want to die.

Granted, he was like her second son, but I’m her actual son!

I do my best to eavesdrop without getting too close, but I think I catch him saying, “I’ve missed you, too. ”

My head throbs, and I’m unsure how to process all this. I need to get to the villa, take a nap, and uncoil to prepare and think—

—about strategy: how to get Ricky alone to see if there’s anything still between us, free of any onlookers and airplane pining.

If there is, how to woo him back in one week surrounded by family and friends amid the backdrop of an Amalfi Coast wedding?

See above plan, as concocted by Benny, courtesy of My Best Friend’s Wedding .

—about what to do if Ricky still loves me, but also loves Cam.

How do I surgically remove the boyfriend without coming off as the villain in my own book?

This whole thing is bound to cause newbie Cam some complicated emotions.

(Insert: world’s smallest violin here.) At least he’s in Italy, right?

No need to feel totally sorry for the guy.

—about how to survive this next week because (a) I’m about to be in paradise, and want to enjoy it as best I can and be there for my cousin, and (b) because there’s a good chance Ricky will reject me, again, especially if I don’t go about this the right way, which is quite possibly the worst feeling in the world, and I know what you’re thinking—why don’t I let this go, ignore Ricky altogether, and enjoy the wedding?

And to that, I say absolutely not. I have no chill. I’m a mess, I realize this.

So, no. It’s not as easy as “just talk to him and solve all my problems” because the fact of the matter is that I haven’t seen or spoken to Ricky in over thirteen months, and as much as I’ve changed, I bet he’s changed, too.

Though I’ve known him practically my entire life, I probably don’t know him at all anymore.

The words to Ricky’s poem “Home” rattle in my brain, and I can’t help but think it was a plea for me to wait for him.

In the months after he left, as I read through his journal over and over again, I guessed by the placement of that poem before “Clarity” that he must have written it after he learned he got the mentor-ship and would be leaving New York for Seattle, but before he decided to end our relationship.

Call me delusional, but it was something I held on to, a little bit of hope. A clue that let me know he would come back to me one day.

Because despite Cam, Ricky adored me for twelve goddamn years!

Not Cam. Me!

Cam’s known Ricky for, like, five seconds.

And this might be the jetlag or Benny’s insistence that I’m Julia Roberts talking, but I don’t feel sorry for anything that’s about to happen.