Grace frowns. "You look terrible. Aren't you sleeping?"
"Just feeling a little under the weather," I mumble. I reach for my stinky tea and stare into the steamy green liquid. Truthfully, it's hard to sleep in that big bed alone, especially when I'm forced to endure listening to my fiancé's night terrors in the other room.
"You're rushing this wedding."
I jerk my head up to see my best friend eyeing me pointedly.
"It's a little too late for the lecture." Smirking, I pat my stomach.
Grace responds with a patronizing scowl.
I'm tired of pretending I'm drinking liquid vomit, so I set my tea down for good, grimacing as it sloshes all over my hand. "What about you and Violet?" I ask with a note of accusation in my voice. After all, she's got no room to criticize Andrés and me for getting married so soon when she and Violet started talking about marriage months ago. "You two have been dating as long as Andrés and I have."
Now it's Grace's turn to avert her gaze. Uh, oh. I was hoping their little argument in the bridal shop was no big deal.
When her eyes gloss over, I clasp her hands in mine. "What's wrong?"
"I think we rushed things." She sniffles. Oh, crap. Grace is one of the strongest women I've ever known. Other than the time her parents disowned her after she came out, I don't think I've ever seen her cry.
"You two used to seem so happy together."
Grace grabs a cloth napkin off the table and dabs her eyes. "The honeymoon's over. Now she's taking in all these troubled teens."
"But that should be perfect for you. Isn't that why you're studying to be a therapist?"
Grace dabs her eyes again and then blows her nose.
I jerk back at the sound that comes from her nose, a cross between a dying whale and a fog horn. Wow. That's something I've never, ever seen her do. Grace had been raised to be a prim and proper southern belle.
"Yeah," she says as she daintily folds the napkin and sets it to the side, "but Violet doesn't want my input on how to deal with them. It's like my opinion doesn't matter."
I look at the busboy cleaning a nearby booth, and I think about warning him to use rubber gloves for our table, but Grace needs me at the moment, so calling out the Hazmat team will have to wait. "Andrés and I went through that, remember? I didn't listen at all to him."
Grace sinks into the booth and rubs her temple. "You guys worked through that, but I don't know if this is fixable. And it's not just that. She's always so busy, we hardly do anything together anymore, unless it involves the ranch."
I think back to last night, and every other night these past few weeks, when Andrés has had to work late. I have been telling myself things will get better when he learns the ropes, but Andrés has been working there for almost a year. What if these long shifts are permanent? But I push those dark thoughts aside. Andrés will make time for us. He has to.
"What are you going to do?" I ask, when in reality, I know I'm asking myself the same question.
"I'm going to give it a little more time and try to see if she can understand my side, but we're definitely not getting married anytime soon." The hopeless look in Grace's eyes is enough to break my heart.
"I don't blame you," I barely rasp, choked up all of a sudden. I decide to blame it on the tea, and not the bad feeling I get about this wedding. I burp up the rancid taste of old stevia and pungent tea. Ew. Guess that's my karma.
I want to curl up into a fetal ball and roll away from this whole conversation when Grace looks at me again with that pitiful smile. "It was only a few weeks ago that Andrés walked out on you. Are you sure you're ready to get married so soon?"
I don't want to answer her question, so I look away, and then damn, I'm burping up tea again. I should have had the latte. Despite the café's noisy chatter and clatter of forks scraping plates, I feel like I'm trapped inside a glass bubble with Grace, and she won't let me out until I tell her the truth, but I'm not even ready to face the truth myself. Everything about this wedding feels wrong, and the bubble around me is closing in, cramping my space and making it hard to breathe. I'm forced to ask myself why I'm doing this. And I don't just mean the shrimp puffs and annoying bridesmaids. Why am I marrying a man who is clearly overworked and overstressed?
Because you love him, Christina, a voice inside me echoes. And it's true, I do love him more than life, but I still can't help but wonder if we're making a mistake.
Grace slaps a white envelope in front of me, startling me.
She flashes a crooked smile. "I'm sorry. We came to this lunch to celebrate right?"
"What's this?" I say as I pick up the envelope and dump the contents on the table.