"You are too quiet," Ace says from beside me. "And that should scare anyone."
"I'm just thinking about tomorrow," I tell him. "When it's your turn"—I smile at him, knowing that tomorrow, he will be proposing to Sheila—"I'll be reminding you when you get quiet all of a sudden."
"Nah," he denies, grabbing his bottle of beer. "With you handling everything, I know it will be perfect."
I finally laugh for the first time today. "Touché," I tell him, grabbing my own glass. "Touché."
"Okay, it's time for the bride to hit the road," Clarabella directs. "We have a whole night of pampering and drinking to get on with."
"Are we really doing the whole not seeing each other until the wedding day?" Joseph shakes his head, getting up. "It's pretty stupid."
"So is showing up late, but it is what it is." Clarabella shrugs, and he just looks at her. "You can survive the night without her."
"He'll be fine," Ace says, standing up. "Besides, he's staying with me tonight." He puts his hand on Joseph's shoulder. "I have all sorts of things planned for us," he jokes with him. "But it's mainly just us watching sports and drinking beer."
"That I can do," Joseph affirms, getting up and putting his linen napkin on the table and tucking in his chair. He leans down and kisses my lips before walking out with Ace and Sheila, leaving me alone with my sisters and my brother.
I stand up. "I can't believe this time tomorrow you'll be married," Travis says as the four of us walk out of the venue. "Like two more to go."
"Hey, watch your mouth," Clarabella clips. "No one wants this negativity around them." She holds up her hand toward my brother. "Don't put that shit into the universe."
We all laugh at her. "I'm going to be a lone wolf," Presley claims, and I have to stop and just laugh at her. She has been trying to skate around Bennett, my brother's best friend, for the last four years, but we all see it.
"Let me get you home," Travis suggests, opening the driver's door. "So Mom can stop blowing up my phone." I take one more look at the venue before I sit down in the car; the whole ride to my mother's house, all I can do is look out the window. So many things are going through my head, and all I can do is try to talk myself off the ledge.
When I finally get into my mother's house, I'm shocked when I walk into the door. Her living room has been transformed into a massage area. Three massage tables are up with the masseuses behind them just smiling at us. "This is serenity lane," my mother says with a huge smile on her face. All I can do is stare at it with my mouth hanging open.
"There is more," she shares, looking at the other side of the house where the dining room is usually set, and there are bowls of water and massage chairs waiting to be filled with three manicure tables. "All we want is for you to relax and unwind."
She comes to me and hands me a glass of champagne. "Welcome to your last night of freedom." Clarabella leans over to me. "Now, you go upstairs and change." She points at the stairs, and I nod my head, walking up to the room that I had when I was a teenager. I open the door seeing a plush white robe on the bed with the word Bride embroidered in pink. I finish the glass of champagne and put it beside me on the bedside table.
I sit down on the bed, and the nerves in my stomach come back as I pick up the robe in my hand. My fingers trail over the stitches across the back of the robe. "This is everything you've wanted," I tell myself, trying to calm my heartbeat that is going a million miles a minute. "Tomorrow, you will walk down the aisle, and it'll be all over."
There is a knock on the door, and I look up, and I don't even notice that I am teary-eyed until the tear falls off my chin. "Oh, God, don't you start also," Clarabella says, coming into the room with my phone in her hand. "We just had to make Mom breathe into a paper bag. She was hyperventilating and then snot crying." She shakes her head, sitting down next to me.
"I'm fine," I assure her, looking at her. "I mean, it feels just weird."
"It's normal," she tells me. "It's like a big deal."
"We are around brides all the time, so this should be a piece of cake for me." I take a deep sigh in and then look at the ceiling.
"It's different when you're the bride," Clarabella says. "You have all these things going through your head, but you know that we've taken care of everything." And I know she has. "Everything is ordered, and we have people sleeping at the venue to make sure nothing goes wrong." I gasp in shock. "This is not our first rodeo." She shakes her head. "Now I want you to change out of that fabulous dress and get your skinny carb-free ass downstairs to get pampered, and we can talk about how Joseph is the last penis you'll ever see." I gasp when she opens the door. "Forever," she whispers, making me laugh.