“I knew it,” Lila says. She stops on the top of the stoop. She starts to rub her temples. “I knew something was going to ruin the wedding.”
“I hardly think this will ruin your wedding,” Phoebe says.
“Nobody can make me get in that car.”
“Technically, that’s correct.”
“We need a new car.”
“Absolutely,” Pauline says without hesitating.
“No,” Phoebe says.
“No?” Lila says.
“You don’t need a third car,” Phoebe says. “What you need is to be on time to your wedding. We’re already late.”
“So what? They can’t start without me,” Lila says. “I’m the bride.”
“Exactly. You’re the bride. It doesn’t matter what car you drive to your wedding. It really doesn’t. No one gives a shit. Everyone is already inside. They won’t even see it.”
“It matters to me.”
“But why?”
“It just does!”
“God, you’re being so ridiculous,” Phoebe says.
“Don’t call me ridiculous! I’m so tired of people calling me ridiculous!”
“Well, stop being ridiculous!” Phoebe says. “It’s just a stupid fucking car! It’s just a hunk of metal! It doesn’t matter what it looks like!”
“Then you get in it!”
“Fine! I will,” Phoebe says. She walks back down the stairs and sits in the car. It is, Phoebe thinks, a perfectly fine car. “Hey look, real leather interior. Smells like being inside a leather bag.”
“That actually does not sound very appealing to me,” Lila says.
“The Veuve Clicquot is in the copper ice bucket,” Pauline interjects.
But Lila looks so confused in her dress. Lila looks at Phoebe the way she did when Phoebe first told her she had food in her teeth, sinking under the weight of the wedding’s imperfections. Lila doesn’t move in either direction. Phoebe holds up the champagne.
“Well, are you coming?”
Lila doesn’t move.
“The car is just so … ordinary,” Lila says. “It’s just wrong.”
She sits down on the stoop in the fluff of her own dress. Phoebe waits for Lila to get up again, but when she doesn’t, Phoebe puts down the champagne, gets out of the car, and walks up the stairs to sit next to the bride.
“What’s wrong?” Phoebe asks.
“You lied,” Lila says.
“I swear I asked for a vintage car. I think.”
“I mean, you lied about Gary,” Lila says. “He doesn’t love me. Not the way I want to be loved.”
Phoebe doesn’t open her mouth, doesn’t risk lying again.
“And I don’t love him,” Lila says. “Not the way I want to love someone.”
Lila says she’s been thinking this for some time. Ever since her father died, she wondered if they were making a mistake. But she wasn’t sure. The pandemic—life without her father—it was all very confusing.
“And I thought that maybe if the wedding was perfect, it could feel right again,” she says. “Like it did those first few months. But it doesn’t. And I’m glad something ruined it.”
She puts her face into her hands like she did the night of her bachelorette party. But now it’s different. She can’t just turn over and go to sleep and hope it will all feel fine in the morning.
“What am I going to do?” Lila asks.
Phoebe feels the adrenaline of really being called into action.
“You’re going to go upstairs and take a very long bath,” Phoebe says.
“I can have Carlson start running it for you,” Pauline says.
Lila nods. “But how am I going to get this dress off?”
