It’s been a long afternoon. A really long afternoon.
“It’ll be over soon,” I promise.
“Cool, then we can deal with some other bitchy princess who thinks all other humans are her servants,” Lydia huffs.
“Oh, it’s not always like that,” I remind her. “Sometimes it’s the groom who’s the nightmare.”
She snorts, but I think it does the trick.
In reality, most of our brides are lovely, delightful people who are perfectly easy to work with.
They’re just not the ones that make an impression.
“Send me video!” the bride shouts. She’s now holding her phone away from her face, and even though we’re outdoors in the rose garden, I’m pretty sure they can hear her in West Virginia.
“Someone’s in trouble,” Lydia mutters.
“Video, Edgerton!” she screams. “I want to know where you are and who you’re with!”
“Uh oh,” I mutter to Lydia.
“Edgerton, I swear to God — who is that?”
“She got video?” Lydia whispers.
We exchange a glance, then both turn partially away from our screaming, shouting bride, like we’re giving her privacy.
We’re not. We could probably hear her clear across the garden, and besides, she’s the one who started this phone call in front of us, not the other way around — not to mention that she’s been a demanding asshole all afternoon.
I am not looking forward to this wedding.
I am looking forward to getting drunk after it’s over.
“Reginald’s yacht?” she screams. “Get off that boat right this instant! You know how I feel about Reggie, and if his whore of a — was she wearing a bikini?”
Lydia and I cringe in unison. Payton — the angry bride — already spent several minutes this afternoon detailing how she likes to punish her fiance, Edgerton, by withholding sex for a week whenever he does something she doesn’t like.
Apparently, when she discovered a Victoria’s Secret catalog at his house, she wouldn’t sleep with him for a month.
I have no idea why they’re getting married. They don’t even seem to like each other.
“ — Betrayed and humiliated right now,” she’s saying. “First we had to get married at this shithole while I wanted that private island in the Maldives, then you send me out here to the asshole of nowhere, surrounded by inbred hicks —"
“We’re standing right here,” Lydia hisses to me.
“ —While you party in the Greek Isles with Reginald and a bunch of sluts?”
“At least we’re not sluts,” I murmur to Lydia.
“Speak for yourself,” she whispers, and I have to bite my lip so I don’t laugh.
“Baby —” the man on the phone says. She’s got the volume cranked up loud enough that I can hear.
“Don’t you baby me,” Payton shouts. “I want you off that boat right this instant —”
“ — But, baby —"
“ — Or I swear you won’t be getting any of this pussy until Christmas —”
Lydia and I make what the fuck goggle eyes at each other.
“ — Come on, baby —”
“— And you can forget about my lips coming near your dick until this time next year —”
I’m holding my breath and Lydia’s doing the same, both of us turned away from Payton like we’re giving her privacy. We’re not. There’s no such thing as privacy when you’re screaming about your pussy in public.
“Should we leave?” I whisper.
“What if that only makes her angrier?”
“ — I swear, it’s like you don’t even want to get married, Edgerton.”
There’s a long, long, silence.
It gets longer. I desperately want to leave, only based on today’s events, I think that might just make her start screaming at me instead of him. You know that scene in Jurassic Park where the kids are in the Jeep, and the T-Rex is coming, and if they move they’ll get eaten?
I feel kind of like that.
“Edgerton!”
“Maybe I don’t,” he finally says, sounding like a sulky thirteen-year-old.
“Don’t you dare start that,” she says. “You’re coming out here tomorrow and we’re getting married like you wanted to —”
“This was all your idea,” he says, in the same tone of voice. “I just wanted to hang out for a while, but you wanted to get married.”
Lydia and I exchange a glance. I start sidling away from Payton and her phone conversation, because I just can’t take this anymore. There’s schadenfreude and then there’s enjoying someone else’s misery, and I’ve got no interest in the second.
“Reginald’s whore of a sister tried to seduce you again, didn’t she?” Payton says.
Lydia joins me in sidling away, toward the Lodge, where at least we can close a door and hear a little less of the shouting.
“She puts out even if I use the wrong fork at dinner,” Edgerton says.
Lydia and I look at each other, and suddenly we’re power walking towards the Lodge, for the sweet, sweet door that will separate us from this horror show.
“What?” Payton screeches. I swear she’s so loud that a flock of birds startles out of a tree.