The shower stopped and he reached for a towel as he stepped out of the stall. The light behind him defined his sizeable form as he stood in the doorway. For the first time since I’d known him, I noticed—really noticed—just how big he was. Not ‘big boned’ as he liked to call it, but large—as in eats too much. Funny, I never noticed that before, I thought, as I turned away from him.
I had almost forgotten my question when he finally decided to answer it.
“No, a couple of the guys wanted to go golfing today. I thought I’d enjoy what I had left of single life.”
Why didn’t his answer surprise me? Of course, he was going golfing, fishing, or boating! I fluffed the pillows vigorously, as I finished making the bed.
As an afterthought, he added, “What are your plans?”
My plans for the day had been the main topic of conversation during dinner last night. Either he wasn’t listening or his memory was receding with his hairline. I knew which.
“Cory, Charlotte and I... shopping for my gown... cake... flowers? Sound familiar?” I paused, for effect more than for an answer. “Never mind.”
“Well, you and the girls enjoy yourselves. Oh, and don’t forget about dinner at the Cosgrove’s tonight!”
“What dinner?”
I caught the look of mock surprise on his face.
“Oh, didn’t I mention it?” He turned toward the closet and I recognized his aimless stare as the beginning of a con job.
“Jim and his wife are throwing a dinner party for some new client. He wants the junior partners to be there—I think he said eightish.” He offered a patronizing shrug. “Sorry baby... can’t get out of this one.” I watched silently, as he picked up his shoes and disappeared through the doorway. Arguing was pointless—he was a lawyer, arguing was what he did best.
The timing of my day with the girls couldn’t have been better. I had been feeling edgy lately and knew that if anyone could put me in a better frame of mind; it would be Cory and Charlotte. We had grown up within fifty miles of each other, but attended different high schools and didn’t meet until we enrolled at the same college. In spite of the vast differences in our personalities, we had become fast friends.
Charlotte Birch—circumspect to a fault. Guided by hardheaded practicality, she had worked her way through college, kept her nose clean and made all the right choices until it fell apart in her senior year. One month into her last year, she learned she was pregnant. In customary Charlotte fashion, she gave her options way too much thought before ending her three year relationship with her boyfriend, Kevin, with the words, ‘I’ve made one mistake, I’m not about to make two’. After considerable protest, he agreed to her decision and settled for liberal visitation with their son and occasional liberties with Charlotte.
Cory SaSalle—now there’s the fun-loving free spirit. Full of verve and vitality, she sees the world through a romantic eye and brightens every room she graces. Her natural blonde hair and enormous, silicone-free breasts demand attention, but her spirited personality ensures a lasting impression. She loves two kinds of men—foreign and domestic. And they love her. Women seem to hate her for the same reasons men love her, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s been riding on a smile and her father’s credit cards for the last decade and in all the time I’ve known her, I’ve only known one thing to bother her—aging. Aging petrifies her. She swears she’ll hold on to twenty-nine for as long as her wrinkle-free complexion allows, letting plastic pick up where natural elasticity leaves off. Charlotte and I know she means it.
Then there’s me, the last of the three musketeers. I’m Meg Embry. I fall somewhere between the two of them, not sure if who I am and who I want to be are the same person. I’m a doting granddaughter, a submissive fiancée, a struggling business owner and a dreamer—mostly a dreamer. I have a closet full of dreams but at this point in my life, all of the hangers are empty. I’m hoping that my upcoming marriage will finally fill a few of them.
Coming from a less-than-typical family, my personality holds all sorts of possibilities. I could end up like my easy-going but felonious grandfather, my eccentric, vodka-drinking grandmother, or maybe even my moonstruck aunt. Depending on the time and situation, I see each of them in myself, and that scares the hell out of me. Throughout Pennsylvania, the Embry’s garnered the reputation of being left field of ordinary many generations ago. Although they came by the label honestly, I see escaping it as a challenge, my quest to end the notion with my generation. In my family, lunacy seems to be a congenital assumption while normalcy is considered a genetic blemish. My best hope is that the parents I lost as a child were reasonably sane and that they passed a fragment of that on to me.