The Worst Wedding Date

This bikini is so small it’s making me glad that I waxed last week. My stomach is a little poochy. My thighs are white enough that they’re practically translucent. I have cleavage courtesy of the two postage-stamp-sized pieces of tropical flower fabric held together with dental floss. And I think my right ass cheek is a little bigger than the other because I can’t tug the bikini bottoms far enough over to cover it fully no matter how I shimmy or tighten my glute muscles.

“Nope, can’t do it,” I tell Sabrina through the stall door. I’m changing in a small bathroom near the pool so that I have less time to chicken out. Which is clearly working so well. “Bikini, yes. But this one might be too much.”

“Okay,” Sabrina replies.

“Okay?”

“Your journey, your pace.”

“Please talk me into this.”

“You sure?”

“No.”

“Are you dressed?”

“Indecently so.”

“Open the door.”

She knows I won’t argue when she uses the you will obey me or I will scale the stall door just like that gecko on the wall who’s watching you and judging you for putting your skin on display to tempt the men.

I sigh and open the door.

When I’m being judged by the geckos, it’s probably time to either cut back on the mai tais or have more. I’m not sure which.

Sabrina looks me up and down while I try to not look at myself in the mirror. “What don’t you like about it?”

I point to my rack. “It gives me cleavage.”

She points to her own cleavage artfully displayed beneath a white tank top. “Do you consider me a whore for showing my boob crack?”

“Sabrina.”

She grabs me by the cheeks and pulls my face down to hers. “You are smart, you are strong, you are beautiful, and you get to enjoy the body that you live in. If any single piece of shit out there at the pool tries to embarrass you for being a hot-ass goddess with confidence issues because of too many years of being told you have to live up to unrealistic puritanical ideals whose entire life would be destroyed if you touched a boy’s danger stick, I will destroy them. So tell me what you want for you. Do you want to wear this bikini and go out there and jump in the pool as a step in your journey of having fun? There is no incorrect answer except for the one you tell me because it’s what you think anyone else in this world would want to hear.”

Rule number one of being Sabrina’s friend: Don’t ask her opinion if you don’t want to hear it.

“Thank you for not mincing words.”

“This is what you pay me for.”

I stare at her for a second, and then I burst into laughter.

She grins.

I square my shoulders and look past her to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I don’t know who that woman is. Her cheeks have a pink flush that’s creeping down her neck and over her chest. She does have a nice chest. Full boobs that are attention-getters without causing back problems. The bikini bottoms cover enough to almost make her hips cute. And her arms are toned and slender.

Maybe I’ll pretend I’m her with a little more confidence for an hour or so.

And if my parents see pictures… I flinch a little.

Easier to say I’ll remind them that I’m a grown woman who can have responsible fun on vacation than it is to fully believe I’m capable of such a sentence.

But I need to be capable of it if I’m going to fully embrace this idea of living my life for me.

“It’s so much harder when your parents are your bosses at a job you love,” I whisper.

Sabrina hooks her arm around my waist and lays her head against my arm, studying me in the mirror too. “I know, sweetie.”

“Okay. Let’s do this. Gotta have a story to tell my grandkids about the time I scandalized the family by wearing a bikini one time.”

“Oh, Laney,” she says on a laugh. “Only you.”

“Can I have another mai tai?”

She grabs hers from the marble sink and hands it to me.

I take a big gulp, and yep.

I can do this.

Who knew?

I walk out of the bathroom with my head held high, pretending I’m Sabrina instead of Princess Plainy-Laney. Helps that I’ve slipped my sunglasses back on so that no one can see straight through to the insecurities lining my soul.

I admire the hell out of women who are confident enough to wear bikinis at the pool, so why am I calling myself all kinds of horrible names in my head?

Out, voices, I order. You lie. Be gone.

Sorta works.

But not fully.

Not when I realize everyone around and in the pool is turning to stare at me, including the Sullivan triplets, who were not here when I left to go shopping.

And now the voices are getting louder.

Laney’s having a breakdown. Laney’s out of control. What will Laney’s parents say?

How old is old enough to no longer worry about what people say about you? Not asking for a friend.

“They are totally checking you out,” Sabrina whispers beside me.

“Are you sure they don’t think I’ve lost my mind?”

“The men are all idiots thinking you’ve done this for them and it’s their lucky day. Claire’s proud of you and cheering you on, even if she doesn’t know exactly why. And Theo is shitting himself right now realizing he’s been an ass to the sexiest woman in Snaggletooth Creek for the past twenty years.”

“Eww. I don’t want to swim in a shitted-in pool.”

Sabrina laughs so hard a little snort slips out.

I smile and the tension in my neck eases. There’s nothing like making one of your best friends honestly snort-laugh to make you feel all kinds of better when you’re afraid you’re nothing more than Ms. Frumpy McBoringPants.

“Oh, yeah, Laney, the triplets are totally checking you out,” she whispers, still giggling. “If you need help telling them apart, don’t worry. I’ve got you.”

“I think I can tell your triplet cousins apart,” I whisper.

“Really? Which one’s checking you out the most?”

“Not fair. Your most and my most are way different.”

“Laney. Jack just let an entire piece of calamari fall out of his mouth.”

“I thought that was a French fry.”

She chuckles.

I giggle too.

But what I’m really doing is not looking at the pool. At Theo at the edge of the pool near Claire, who is a total actual bombshell just like Sabrina.

“I’m not doing this for Theo,” I whisper to Sabrina.

“You’re wearing the bikini for you. How’s it feel?”

“Naked.”

“I can confirm neither of your nipples and none of your vagina are hanging out.”

Lucky Sullivan misses his mouth and smears his hamburger across his cheek while he stares at me, and Decker spills his tropical drink.

“Please tell me that’s a sign of attraction and not horror. But not too much attraction.”

“Laney?”

“I know, I know, get out of my head and enjoy the feel of sunshine on every square inch of my skin.”

She grins. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Oh my god, it does. It really does. Do you think I might have a vitamin D deficiency?”

“Delaney. Go do a cannonball and have some fun.”

“I didn’t grab—”

“I will get you all the towels you want when you get out of the pool. Now go. Shoo. Have fun. For you.”

Right.

Fun.

Are my arms a little jiggly? What about my thighs? Will the triplets think I want to have sex with all of them because I’m showing skin at the pool?

“Laney,” Sabrina whispers, “sex is normal and healthy and fun.”

“Oh, god, did I say that out loud?”

“You and mai tais are a combination for the ages.”

“I need you in the pool with me to make me stop talking. And those mai tais barely have any alcohol in them.”

“No regrets today. Today is your day off of expectations. You’ve earned it.”

We’ve reached the edge of the pool. I can jump in. Dive in. Cannonball in.

Sit on the edge and slowly lower myself in while I get used to the temperature.

“You know how to swim, Laney, or do you need a floatie?” Theo calls.

The taunt is all it takes.

Did he know? Did he know that’s what I needed to hear?

Or is he just an ass?

His smile says he’s not being an ass. His smile says you can trust me, I’m goading you to remind you who I used to be, but I’m not him anymore, and I know you’ll do a great cannonball.

Or possibly that’s also the mai tai talking.

Doesn’t matter though. What matters is action.

I take seven giant steps back from the pool. Then three more. And then I take off at a dead run, leap as I reach the edge of the pool, and do my very best to tuck my knees up as I hit the water. “Cannon—”

I misjudge and am yelling ball! as I go underwater, fully aware that this was the weakest of weak cannonballs.

There wasn’t enough splash.

I can feel it.

And that’s not some sense of needing to make a bigger splash than Theo talking.

Not completely, anyway.

It’s more that I can’t even cannonball right enough to have fun with it.

Also?

I totally swallowed a mouthful of water. Which I will not complain about, by the way.

It’s part of the fun.

I kick to the surface, feeling weird in the bikini. Like, even weirder than I thought I would.

And as I surface, I realize why.

I shriek.

I cross my arms over my breasts and cover them, which makes me dip below the surface.

And I consider staying here.

I do.

Bikini?

It’s a stretch, but I’ll do it.

Losing my bikini top after a cannonball that didn’t even make a splash?

Take me now, pool. Just take me now.

I kick back to the surface and do my best to cover my breasts while I half-swim to the edge, looking desperately around for my bikini top. It has to be in the pool.

How am I going to get it without baring my breasts?

“I see it!” Decker yells from the side of the pool.

There’s a tremendous splash—almost as big as the splash Theo made, but not quite—and then Decker swims past me, in his khaki shorts and Hawaiian shirt, and snags something off the bottom of the pool.

Sabrina squats beside me at the edge of the pool, her face a study in not laughing when you want to. “I am so sorry,” she whispers. “I should’ve double-checked the tie.”

Decker surfaces next to me with a gasp. “Here you go, Laney. Your sunglasses.”

Sabrina plucks them from him. “Thank you.”

He looks down at my breasts, which I’m covering as much as I can with my arm.

Then at my face.

Then back at my breasts.

And then his face goes a deep purple.

“Out you go before I tell everyone what you were doing in the clubhouse bathroom yesterday,” Sabrina sing-songs.

Decker takes one more look at my arm covering my breasts, then scrambles out of the pool.

And then the very worst thing in the history of worst things happens.

Theo speaks.

He’s on my other side. “Lose this too, Laney?”

My face goes so hot that it could make this entire pool boil in under ten seconds. But I turn my head to look at him with my bikini top dangling from his fingers.

Sabrina doesn’t snatch it from him.

She doesn’t threaten to tell his secrets if he doesn’t hand it over right now.

She just squats there next to the pool, silent, soaking it all in.

“I d-did.” My teeth chatter even though the pool’s warm.

“Need help putting it back on?”

“S-sabrina can get it.”

His dark eyes bore into mine, right there in broad daylight for everyone to see, no sunglasses to shield me from staring straight back.

I liked you in high school.

We liked each other in high school.

And we both knew we shouldn’t. And neither of us ever acknowledged it. Me especially, even to myself.

Until now.

Here.

In a place that’s foreign but so warm and welcoming that it makes me want to do things that I’ve craved but denied for a very long time.

After an eternity, he shrugs and plops the soaking-wet top onto the pool deck. “Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

When the pool starts boiling, it won’t be from the heat of my face.

It’ll be from the heat of the tension in our gazes.

He breaks eye contact and heads across the pool, not looking back. When he surfaces, he’s right next to Claire and the other sorority women again.

He says something I can’t hear, and they all laugh.

I look back at Sabrina.

She’s gone poker-faced again. “You want me to put that back on you, or do you want a towel?”

“Can I take option C and just die right here in this pool?”

“Not after that. That, my friend, was the biggest you’ve lived in a long, long time.”

Dammit.

I was afraid that was what she’d say.

And honestly?

I don’t think I want to die of mortification in this pool. My teeth chatter one more time.

I order them to stop.

And they do.

“Sabrina?” I whisper.

“Yeah?”

“Tomorrow I’ll think this was fun.”

She cracks up. “Good,” she says. “Even better if you think it’s fun today. You didn’t do anything wrong, and you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. You get to live, Laney. You get to have fun in the moment too.”

“You keep saying those words, and I keep wanting to believe them.”

“You will. One day. It just takes practice.” She lowers her voice. “Also, you made a grown man dive into a pool fully clothed to rescue your…sunglasses.”

I stare at her.

She stares back.

And then we both crack up.