They almost didn’t make it to the actual ceremony, because Lauren was throwing up al morning. “Please wait for me, you guys,” she kept saying before she ran back to the bathroom. “I’l be ready in just a minute.”
They had five friends in town for the wedding, camped out al over the apartment on couches and air mattresses. When their guests had arrived the night before, they’d done their best to be good hostesses and show them a fun night, but had ended up staying out way too late. It was al they could do to shower and put on clean dresses.
“Is this going to be a long mass?” their friend Mary asked. She had gotten ready and then lain down on the couch to take a nap in her dress.
“You’re going to get wrinkled,” El en told her.
“I real y don’t care,” Mary said. She kept her eyes closed.
El en was the only one who seemed to be excited about the wedding. She hadn’t stayed out too late the night before, and she was ready on time, looking fresh and ironed. She sat on the edge of one of the couches with her ankles crossed and watched as the rest of them scrambled to get ready.
The wedding was a mess. Everyone stampeded the bar and ordered tequila shots until the bride’s father demanded that the bartenders stop serving them. Their friend Isabel a was one of the bridesmaids, and she informed them that the bride’s mother had been crying al morning. “She kept saying, ‘I can’t believe this is how it’s happening,’ ” Isabel a said. “It was awful.”
Their friend Joe threw up on the dance floor and it had to be cleared and cleaned before anyone could continue dancing. One of the bridesmaids was found passed out in the bridal suite and had to be sent home. People made out in corners, girls fel down and ripped their dresses, and final y the band stopped playing and everyone was kicked out and decided to go to Life’s Too Short. Shannon kept slurring, “Their lives are ruined, you know. Their lives are ruined.”
Louis was at the wedding and they al knew this meant El en would cry. Louis and El en danced together at the reception and then sat alone at a table in the bar. They were sure that Louis would stand up at any moment and storm out, but every time they looked over, El en and Louis were laughing and he was touching her knee.
Tripp was at the bar and when he saw Lauren he said, “Oh, you’re here?”
“See?” Lauren said to Shannon. “Chivalry is not dead.”
Tripp didn’t say anything, and Lauren had a feeling that he didn’t know what “chivalry” meant. It was becoming clear that he was stupid. She would have to end it. But before she could say anything else, he walked away.
“What a loser,” Lauren said. Shannon nodded.
The night ended when Tripp and Margaret Applebee left together. Lauren started crying, and Shannon and Isabel a decided they should go to the diner and eat. Lauren ordered eggs and corned beef hash, poured ketchup al over her plate, and didn’t eat anything.
“He’s not worth it,” they said to her. She went home, left her dress in a pile on the floor, crawled into bed, and cried until she fel asleep.
By the time Lauren woke up the next morning, most of their guests were gone. Only Isabel a remained, sitting on the couch with Shannon. They both
looked like hel .
“Where’s El en?” Lauren asked.
Isabel a shrugged. “She didn’t come home. We think she stayed at Louis’s.”
“I can’t believe she went home with him,” Shannon said.
“Who? El en or Margaret Applebee?” Isabel a asked.
“Both, I guess. But I was talking about El en,” Shannon said.
“Can we please not talk about Margaret fucking Applebee?” Lauren said. She could feel Shannon and Isabel a exchange a look behind her back.
El en came home later that afternoon, carrying al of their usual supplies for a Bloody Mary–and–summer sausage picnic. She hummed as she mixed together a pitcher of drinks, and bounced around the kitchen getting glasses and knives.
“You seem happy,” Shannon said.
“I am,” El en said. She smiled. “You guys, I had a real y good night. Louis and I decided to get back together.”
“Oh,” Lauren said. She waited for someone else to be supportive.
“You can’t date him,” Shannon final y said. “He’s awful. He’s awful to you, and he’s awful to us, and he’s just awful.”
“He does seem to make you real y unhappy most of the time,” Isabel a said.
“Do you real y think that?” El en asked. She looked straight at Lauren. “Lauren,” she said. “Do you think that?”
Lauren had no idea why she said what she said next. Sometimes she thinks back to that moment and imagines that she could take it back. She blamed it on being hungover, on the wedding, on Margaret Applebee, but real y she had no excuse. Because what she said was “He’s just so ugly.”
El en was cutting the summer sausage when Lauren said this, and they al watched the knife slice right through her finger. Her hand was completely covered in blood before she even looked down.
“Holy shit,” Shannon screamed. Isabel a ran inside to get a towel, and Shannon cal ed 911. When they answered, she apologized and then spent five minutes on the phone explaining why they didn’t need an ambulance.
“Come on,” Lauren said. “We’l take a cab to the hospital.”
El en’s face was white and she refused to take the towel off to look at her finger. “I think I cut it off,” she kept saying. “I think I cut off my whole finger.”
Lauren assured her that her finger was stil attached. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’l just need a few stitches.”
They had to wait over two hours in the emergency room. A man sat across from them with his head leaning against the wal . When he was cal ed to go in, he left a bloody headprint behind.
Lauren and El en didn’t talk much while they waited. El en looked like she was going to pass out any second, and Lauren didn’t think it seemed like the right time to continue their conversation. Maybe El en hadn’t even heard her when she’d cal ed Louis ugly. It was possible, she thought. They sat in silence until the doctor cal ed them in. Lauren walked back to the examination room even though El en hadn’t asked her to.
The doctor looked at El en’s finger quickly and started numbing it for stitches. “That’s a nasty cut,” she said. “How did this happen?”
“A knife,” El en said. “It was summer sausage.”
“Summer sausage bites back,” Lauren said. El en looked at her with her eyebrows wrinkled together while the doctor stitched up her finger.
Lauren apologized later, but they both knew it was too late. “I don’t know what’s best for you,” Lauren said. “You’re the only one who knows that.”
El en said she understood. “Lauren,” she said. “I get it. You were just being a good friend. Don’t worry. I’l be fine.”
When El en and Louis got engaged, Shannon screamed. “Wel ,” she said, after she stopped screaming, “I guess some people just want to be miserable.” They al went to the wedding and tried not to be somber. After al , she was their friend and they wanted her to be happy.
They lost touch with El en. Not al at once, but little by little, so that they didn’t even notice until it had already happened. Maybe it was hard for El en to be around them, since she knew they didn’t approve of her marriage. Maybe their lives just went different ways—Lauren and Shannon both moved to New York and El en moved to a house in the suburbs. Sometimes they thought that Louis was behind it, that he had forbidden El en to see them. In the end, Lauren thought it was probably a combination of everything, but she knew they would never real y know.
Lauren talks about that summer a lot. It has a point, a moral of some kind, but she’s not quite sure what it is yet. When people tel her that their friend is marrying a guy they hate, she says, “Have I got a story for you.” When she gets a Christmas card from Sal ie and Max with a picture of their two little boys on it, she shows it to people and says, “You’ve got to hear about this wedding.” And whenever she’s at a party and someone serves summer sausage, she says, “Did I ever tel you about my friend El en?” and if the person she’s talking to shakes their head no, she says, “Wel , let me tel you. We had this friend. And our friend El en, wel , El en dated ugly boys.”