What kind of person would plan her wedding without a proposal? The kind who ended up single, sweaty, and salty on the intended date, that’s who.
I took another gulp of chardonnay, inhaled the scents of fresh-cut grass and Harper’s Marlboros, and watched my three best friends dance on the sidewalk. An iPod and Bluetooth speaker blared “Since U Been Gone.” Brightly colored Mexican muumuus stuck to their backs in the humid night air.
They toasted Cinco de Mayo, graduation, and the future, shiny as a new penny. I leaned back on the cool concrete steps of the Texas Christian University chapel and closed my eyes for a moment. The screw-top bottle dripped condensation between my bare feet.
On loop in my head ran the inescapable thought: This was supposed to be my wedding day.
“Lottie, get your butt over here!” Natalia, one of my soon-to-be-former housemates, yelled.
I waved the chardonnay at her in dismissive reply.
“Suit yourself,” Megan said with a shimmy of her narrow purple hips and a toss of her dark-brown curls. “But this may be the last night we’re all together. Like, forever.”
“Quit being such a party pooper. It’s graduation,” Harper said. “You have dancing to do, drinks to consume, and an ex to get over.”
“One day, four years of dating will feel like nothing,” said Natalia, ever the optimist. “This will just be a blip on your radar. A step on your way to your actual fabulous life.”
“Preferably with someone rich and famous who loves you, Jesus, and his mama.” Harper winked.
“Maybe someday you won’t even feel like such an idiot for planning your wedding years before Brody ever, I mean never, proposed,” Megan said.
“I don’t think it’s idiotic—just very, very committed.” Natalia smiled broadly, albeit unconvincingly, teeth white against golden-brown cheeks.
“Maybe more like deserving to be committed,” said Harper, arching a thin brow.
“Lovely. Very funny. Thanks, y’all.” I knew they were trying to be helpful. However drunkenly.
Three years, nine months, and three weeks prior, I had met Brody Stevens during freshman orientation. The football team let the players out of two-a-days long enough to figure out where their classes would be and to meet enough cute girls to stay motivated during muggy predawn practices.
Funny, I couldn’t remember the exact moment we met. Only that by the end of my third day of college, his six-foot-three frame had hauled all my textbooks to the freshmen girls’ dorm from the campus bookstore.
Brody was hilarious, ambitious, and smarter than most guys who had their heads bashed every day for a decade. Confident in the way all handsome men were confident, but with the endearing hint of insecurity that remained when your growth spurt hit at the tail end of puberty. He behaved like the gentleman his Baton Rouge mama intended, and he kissed with a certain . . . well, expertise.
We bonded over both being from the dodgy suburbs of our respective towns and scholarship students in the middle of a country club set. He worked hard to earn his spot in the starting lineup—and somehow found time and energy to push me to excel too. I’d spent our first couple of months together wondering why he picked me.
If I scrolled through my social media profiles or mental images of the last four years, his goofy grin appeared in nearly every frame. Every friendship, every club, every milestone was shared. We were Brody and Lottie. Campus sweethearts. All-conference quarterback and
student association vice president. We had shed our working-class histories quicker than we dropped our heavily twanged accents.
Okay, yes, we’d even won homecoming king and queen. I knew deep down that it was due to our ethos, the aura surrounding our relationship, and not because I was especially beloved. But Brody was. All of campus and the entire alumni association got to fall in love with him every fall Saturday for four years.
I certainly did.
Sophomore year, my sorority great-grand-big (yeah, I know, I know . . . ) got married in the TCU chapel, and I manned the guest book. Daydreaming through the vows, I imagined us at the altar instead. We’d been saying “I love you” for several months and using phrases like “after school” even though it seemed on some distant horizon. But two weeks later when Brody mentioned “our kids,” I called the campus wedding coordinator.
I looked at the calendar and found a slim window between the NFL draft, graduation, and training camp. As every undergrad hopeful knew, if I wanted to get married in the chapel, I’d need to book it well in advance. Two years was plenty of time for him to get around to proposing. I could even deduct the $200 fee from my on-campus spending account. Genius. Thus, with little fanfare or effort, May 5—the Saturday after graduation—was on the books.
I slowly and systematically tied my future to Brody’s with the subtlest of threads. By junior year the planning had gone well beyond our vows. He’d play in the NFL, and I’d be a card-carrying member of the wives-and-girlfriends club. Law school could wait. It had to since, of course, he could be drafted anywhere.
I channeled all my organizational skills and energy into this new plan. I continued with my English and poli-sci double major, minoring in women’s studies, but never took the LSAT, stopped applying for honor societies, and subscribed to Martha Stewart Weddings.
Good thing Brody never knew about the wedding date I’d set for us—which I had quietly let go a couple months prior, promising to call the campus coordinator again when the time was right. At least I was spared that particular humiliation. And since I’d caught the roommates eyeing BHLDN bridesmaids’ dresses a time or two, I took small comfort that I wasn’t the only one who felt confident that the day would come.
Instead, I had no grad school, job, fellowship, internship, or relationship on the horizon—and no clue what to do next. Incredible.
And now it was May 5.
So here my girlfriends and I danced. We’d donned muumuus from our spring break trip to Acapulco, feasted on Tex-Mex at Joe T’s, and eventually ended up wandering the campus. We found ourselves at the site, and on the night, of my imagined, intended nuptials.
As I sat on the chapel steps, itchy from mosquitoes, I replayed how a week ago—two days before we donned our caps and gowns—Brody had come over to do the deed. No, not that deed. The one that involved tears and a lot of “I just don’t think I can balance our relationship
with my rookie season.” And “You’d be so bored while I played and traveled all the time.”
I pathetically tried to explain how low maintenance I was. It wasn’t like he’d have to babysit me. I could work, get a job in whatever city he was drafted. We could make friends and build a life there together. I groveled. Basically did everything short of lying prostrate. It wasn’t enough.
Natalia ripped a handful of roses from the bush next to the chapel doors and bunched together a sloppy bouquet. “Hold these.” She thrust them into my hand. She tucked a long dark lock behind her ear, yanked me from the steps, and led me to the end of the sidewalk near the street. She cued my tipsy band of maids, who began to hum, “Here comes the bride.”
“It was supposed to be Canon in D,” I mumbled, walking with her down the sidewalk aisle. Right, together, left, together, right. Arm in arm we strolled, summer locusts whirring in accompaniment.
As we reached the steps Harper clambered to the top to lead the ceremony, a cigarette dangling from her lips, bouncing as she spoke and nearly igniting a few chin-length blond strands. “We are gathered together tonight to celebrate the union of Lottie and her freedom.
“Lottie, I mean, Charlotte, do you solemnly swear never to go back to that jerk, to, um, find somebody better, to—”
“Never to let him touch her forevermore!” Natalia said helpfully.
“Yes, yes, that for sure, and also to find someone else richer and handsomer and just all around better?” Harper finished.
“I do,” I said solemnly. I raised my right hand, pale in the glow of the streetlight.
“By the powers vested in me by the state of Texas and this fine college of arts and sciences, I now pronounce you a single lady. You may now . . . take a shot.”
With that, my three housemates cheered.
Brody is a jerk, I thought, while Harper and Megan began to dance some tequila-infused semblance of the Macarena across the chapel porch. As I stood on the stoop clutching my crumpled bouquet, my friends moved to the bottom, mock wrestling for a chance to catch the toss. Sticky, disheveled, mostly shoeless, some holding half-empty bottles. All perfect. I guess I’d known on some level they would be by my side today no matter what. I blinked, the click of a shutter, framing them in my memory.
I slowly turned my back to my friends, inhaled deeply, and let the tattered flowers fly.
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