CHAPTER 3

The Bachelorette Party

After my hair was set and my perfect shoes purchased, Britney and I headed over to Carly’s house for the evening festivities, but I had to wait in the car for a few minutes because apparently the girls were still decorating outside. I was thrilled to be having a bachelorette party in my honor. This was one of those things we all thought about as a teen—part of the entire wedding celebration—and it was with friends I really enjoyed being around.

It was early, around five o’clock or so, and the weather was perfect, with that late spring smell in the air, when you know summer and all its excitement are fast approaching. I was wearing the casual clothes I’d had lunch in, but I had the great dress with me to change into for later that night—white, like the one I’d wear on my wedding day. But this one was fun, cute, and short. I was giddy. The four girls—Carly, Lauren, Britney, and Samantha—were going to wear a shade of purple, just like they’d wear for the wedding. Purple was one of my school colors and my favorite color, too.

All of these girls were from such different walks of my life. Lauren was my oldest friend. We’d met when we were two years old, when our brothers were in Boy Scouts together. She was the sister I never had. She lived in Charlotte now, but she was the kind of friend where no matter how much time had passed, it didn’t matter; we picked up right where we had left off. We used to make videos together of us dancing and acting silly. Her mom had a whole stack of VHS tapes of us. We took acting lessons together and used to make big plans to live on a farm with a bunch of horses.

Carly and I met in middle school when I was twelve. She ended up going to a different high school, but we stayed friends. We loved to sing together. Carly was a phenomenal musician, great at both piano and guitar. We loved showing off by putting shows on for our friends.

I met Samantha through Carly in freshman year of high school, when Carly brought me to a birthday party. Samantha and I didn’t get along right away. She thought I was a dork, and I thought she was a snob. We both judged too quickly. We slowly warmed up to each other and grew closer over the summer. I got to know her really well when we worked together at the beach. We used to have so much fun. Our one job was basically to sit there, a little ways apart from each other on the beach, and wait for people to come and rent stuff from us. We each had our own station, and although we stayed extremely busy, it was still boring work. Sometimes we would sneak away and go bodyboarding for a few minutes in the middle of our shift to break up the monotony. Of course, we’d return to shambles—people using umbrellas they hadn’t paid for and such—and we’d have to backtrack to make up for the time. To liven it all up, we made a book. We were just far enough apart that we couldn’t sit and talk to each other. So we made this book and we’d write funny things in it—well, things that we thought were funny—and then we’d run it back and forth across the sand. That’s how we communicated all day.

We would write things like how cute some of the beach boys were. We talked about going dancing. We were both dancing queens and we’d turned eighteen around the same time, so we could finally go dancing at the clubs downtown at night. Our senior year we went out all the time together on weekends.

So all of the other lifeguards knew about the book and they wanted it. I remember one asking, “What’s in the book?”

As he was asking I wrote his name in it, big so he could see. Then he kept asking if he could see it. It was fun. It kept us entertained as we sat under an umbrella in a beach chair all day.

Britney and I met in 2009. Her boyfriend and Chris had played ball at the university together. We were in the clubhouse playing pool one night right after college, both living in the same apartment complex. She and her boyfriend had recently graduated, too. It was practically the first week out of school for all of us. Chris and her boyfriend bumped into each other and introduced us. It was a quick encounter and I didn’t think much of it at the time, nor did she obviously, as we didn’t say much more than hello to each other. A week later, I saw a girl washing “Go ECU!” paint off the side of her car. Drawn to a fellow Pirate fan, I approached, hoping to make a new friend. I began talking and then a minute in, I realized it was Britney. After that we kept bumping into each other. We’d go to each other’s apartments and out in downtown Raleigh frequently. It was so nice to have a girlfriend close by.

Britney wasn’t in the bridal party, but she was joining our celebration. There were a few more girls who were supposed to come out with us, but they wound up not being able to make it that night, so it was just the five of us. At the time, Britney wasn’t a bridesmaid because another friend of mine, Sandra, was in the wedding. But that friend and I had drifted apart, and I wished I could have had Britney in my wedding party because we’d grown so close. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get another dress to match, and I couldn’t very well ask the other friend to step aside and give up her dress for no reason.

When they finally let me in that night at Carly’s, I felt so happy to be with them. They had hung pink banners everywhere and decorated outside beautifully. They were excited to surprise me with the decorations. The patio looked nice, all done up. We sat under an umbrella around a table catching up, enjoying the weather. We grilled some burgers and hot dogs and had a little bit of champagne to kick off the night. The limo would arrive much later to take us dancing. The girls had set up games on the deck, some of them too racy to mention, but ultimately we never played any of them, because we all talked too much.

Britney had us in hysterics. She was telling us all how she couldn’t go to the bathroom anywhere other than at home, no matter where she was—it was a genuine phobia. She relayed a story about how she went on vacation with her boyfriend for the first time to his family’s house, and it was small and she just couldn’t relieve herself. She was afraid of people hearing it. She’s always had to jump through hoops to avoid using public restrooms, so she often made us laugh with her extraordinary stories.

At some point in the evening, just for a few minutes, my parents stopped by to give me a hug and say hello. It was a very significant hug, though none of us had any idea how significant. It would be the last time they’d see me stand . . . or give me a hug at eye level.

After dinner I was sitting on Lauren’s lap, reminiscing.

“How crazy is it that we were just Girl Scouts, like yesterday, playing softball and basketball together, and now we’re getting married within a month of each other?” she asked.

“I know. Soon, we’ll both be married old ladies,” I replied.

“But it’s cool how our lives have always been parallel for so long. We even used to have joint birthday parties together! Now basically weddings, too.”

As we toasted, clinking glasses, I thought about how lucky I was to have such awesome friends to celebrate with, and I was really looking forward to the rest of the evening. We all got along that night, and it was one of those rare times when everyone just became fast friends. It was almost an instant connection. I had no way of knowing as we talked exactly how important and significant that group friendship was about to become. We discussed the fact that it was actually kind of unusual that we all got along so well, with only me as the common thread. Someone made the point that everyone was so welcoming and how rare that was these days. In an eerie way, even before an unspoken bond was formed, the promise of continued friendship was apparent. This was a good group of people, period.

In 2002, in tenth grade at my private school, I joined the varsity cheerleading squad. The girls on the team did not like me because I wasn’t Miss Popular. They would leave me out of everything, including dinners before games. I’d remain at school the entire time in between practice and the start of a game, because I couldn’t drive yet. I remember feeling restricted and stuck. Rarely did someone step up and be mean to my face, but behind my back they were awful. The other cheerleaders were always whispering about me, which made it hard for me to defend myself. Looking back now, I really wish I had stood up to them. I did prevail in a sense, though, because that year I was awarded MVP cheerleader, and man, were they pissed. No one said congrats. When I heard my name announced, I felt that all of the tears they’d caused me were worth it. I wasn’t brave enough to stand up for myself back then.

That was the same summer I started working at the beach with some friends, renting out umbrellas. We were such beach bums and would go bodyboarding for hours. We partied with the lifeguards every week, but the most I ever drank was three or four Mike’s Hard Lemonades. That was when I first tried alcohol. I was actually kind of a goody-goody, and I think it annoyed my friends at school, but these girls didn’t care.

I really came out of my shell around then. I’m not sure what changed, but for the first time I felt beautiful, sexy, fun, and popular. I wished I could have felt like that at school, but around the girls there I never really did. It took meeting people like Carly and Samantha to remind me of how friendships were supposed to be, how people were supposed to treat each other. By senior year I had decided to change high schools and graduate elsewhere, because I didn’t want to deal with the drama anymore at the private school.

After dinner and a lot of laughter, we all dolled ourselves up, ready to hit the clubs. It was about eight o’clock, and we were excited to go out dancing. I felt like I was in my college dorm room, all of us in one bathroom, giggling and applying our makeup, cracking jokes about how nicely we had cleaned up. I wore my white satin dress, and they all slipped on their various shades of purple and matching black belts. My favorite dance music was Britney Spears, so as a treat Samantha created a really cool mix of all of her songs, which we planned to blare in the limo.

After about an hour we started taking pictures. Carly’s mom took pictures of the group of us, and we laughed the entire time. The limo was picking us up at ten. Just before we were leaving, we went down to the kitchen and mixed up this crazy red drink concoction to take with us while we headed from club to club. A black stretch limo pulled up in front of the house, and we jumped in with our red drinks, ready for a fun night. At one point while we were driving around, I managed to spill the red drink on my white dress. Of course, I was the only one spilling and the only one in white, so it couldn’t have felt more disastrous at the time. As I sat there soaked down the front and about to freak out, Lauren yelled up to the driver, “Stop at the next Rite Aid you see.”

Within a couple of minutes, he pulled over. Britney and Lauren ran inside, bought five bleach pens, and went to town on the dress. After about ten minutes of intense scrubbing and rubbing, we all looked down and agreed the cleanup had worked. Tragedy had been averted. Later, looking at the dress in the light, I could see that it was still totally stained. I had a pink sash on that said “Bachelorette,” so maybe that hid it or helped it blend a little. And ultimately it didn’t matter at all.

We went to clubs all over town, and it was so cool pulling up in a limo. We stepped out like we were total rock stars. It was an incredible feeling, being treated to such a decadent night with such great people. But I wasn’t quite graceful enough to live up to my pretend status. At the second club everyone poured out of the car. We headed up to the second floor, making our way to the upper deck. We reached the top, and everyone looked our way to acknowledge that a bachelorette party had arrived. Right in that moment, the heel of my shoe got stuck between the wooden deck boards. My shoe stayed, I didn’t, and I fell almost facedown, sprawled out in front of everyone in line. We all thought it was the most hilarious thing that ever could have happened, and we laughed about it as they helped me up. I cheered loudly with them to play it off as cool as possible.

We danced all night, and at one o’clock in the morning, we climbed into the limo to head back home. We had to carry our shoes at this point, because our feet were so sore from the high heels. We had been drinking, but we weren’t really drunk. We were sober enough to know when to go home. I’ve thought a lot about the timing of this night and wondered how it could have gone differently. If I had gotten drunk, would I have gone right to sleep when I got back to Carly’s house? If we’d gone to one more club, would we have been too tired for the next series of events? I’ve thought about how and when we decided to call the night and head home and how that timing determined the outcome of the rest of my life.