I don't know why I was going to this wedding. I hate weddings. Awkward people giving speeches, bad DJs who only play the most cliché songs, and always, dry chicken. At least this one would include plenty of alcohol. The bride's dad was a well-known local brewer, so good beer was guaranteed.
The bride.
I guess if I had to be honest with myself, she was the only reason I was going. Erin Winter. We'd grown up together, best friends since my family moved into town when I was six. We were in the same grade and our teachers referred to us as a unit. It was always Erin and Elaine. Double Es. Even our younger sisters were best friends. Our families camped together, did cookouts, recreation softball leagues, pretty much everything.
She was my person...and the first girl I kissed.
The first time I kissed her, we were sitting on the bed in my violently pink bedroom. (My parents really gave me too much free-reign in The Home Depot paint aisle.)
"Lainey, have you ever been kissed?" Erin had asked while flipping through a stolen copy of "Cosmopolitan". (It was the nineties, okay?)
"Nope," I said while popping my gum. "Have you?"
"Uh, yeah, Nate kissed me after the dance last weekend."
I almost swallowed my gum. "What?! Why didn't you tell me?"
She blushed. I remember how pale her skin was, how every blush showed up deeply on her cheeks and nose. Fuck, she had the cutest nose.
"I guess I was still deciding how I felt about it," she sighed. "It wasn't a very good kiss, I think. Not like this describes kissing." She turned the magazine over to me. It was a typical trash article something like, "How to WOW Your Crush With a Stellar Kiss".
"E, that stuff's all junk. I don't think a magazine is going to make you a better kisser. You've just got to do it."
Then, like a line straight out of every young lesbian's wet dream, my best friend uttered those fateful words...
"What if we practiced together?" With her face tomato-red she added, "Just a little!"
Looking back, I know why my heart rate picked up and why my entire body felt hot. But sheltered me, raised in a quiet, conservative town, just thought it was a reaction to doing something so wrong, because girls shouldn't kiss other girls.
When she leaned forward and we gave each other a light peck, I didn't see fireworks or anything, but it was the most I'd felt in my eighteen years. Though we never talked about it, we both seemed to recognize the importance of the shared secret.
After that, things were different. Erin got an official boyfriend. Poor, confused, baby gay that I was, I took out my confusion on Erin by pulling away.
There was no major implosion or public fight, we simply drifted apart. She began hanging out with the more artistic crowd, while I dual enrolled and took community college business classes. The summer after graduation, her parents went through a bitter divorce and she decided to go to Colorado for college to get away from it. I went east and the thousands of miles that separated us just sealed our fates.
When Facebook came around, most of my graduating class found each other online. (The amount of "Hey hun, I've got a GREAT financial opportunity for you!" messages rivaled the "Oh wow, Elaine, I didn't know you were gay!" ones in my inbox on a monthly basis for the first year or so.) I think they had a ten year reunion, but I wasn't in town. Erin's younger sister, Trish, got married and my parents went. My mom updated me on the Winter family periodically as well as all the people I vaguely remembered from my town. And that's how I found out I was invited to Erin's wedding.
My phone rang as I was walking back to my apartment one rainy night, mom's weekly call.
"Hi Mom."
"Lainey! I saw you've been getting lots of rain again. How are you?"
"I'm good, I've got my nice raincoat, so it's fine-"
"Oh right, good thing. So you'll never guess who texted me yesterday," she gasped, her excitement steamrolling our riveting discussion of the weather.
"Who?"
"Becky Winter! Did you know Erin's living in the area again? She and her fiance moved to those apartments south of town, the red brick ones? Anyway, so they're having the wedding here!"
I rolled my eyes, of course I knew most of this already because of social media, but I let my mom have her moment.
"That's cool, Mom. Are you and Dad invited?"
"Well, that's another reason I called, apparently we're all invited! Becky was calling me to get your and your sister's addresses. The wedding's in June, so maybe you can line it up with your summer visit?"
"Oh, um, yeah I could probably do that."
That one sentence is what sealed my fate. It's why I found myself loading two bags of dry cleaning and a suitcase into my car the first week of June and paying a ridiculous amount for a cat sitter for the next week. The seven hour drive wasn't bad, but I ate way too much candy. (Gas station snacks, right?)
"Lainey!!" My sister's shriek rang through the house as I opened the front door.
"Hi Nora," I huffed as she barreled me with a hug. My sister was a lot like my mom, bubbly, independent, free. I hadn't seen her since September because she was working in Australia over the holidays and had only been back in the country for a couple of months. "When did you get here?"
She bobbed on her toes as she helped me with my bags, "Oh I got in last night. My flight from Phoenix was delayed, but it was fine. Trish actually picked me up from the airport and we had a few drinks. Apparently the wedding planning is taking its toll. She said Erin is a total bridezilla!"
"Erin? Really? I wouldn't have thought that," I shrugged. It's not like I really knew the woman anymore. We hadn't seen each other in person since we were eighteen. A lot changes in your twenties and thirties.
"Yeah, anyway," she continued brushing some of her dark bangs out of her eyes, "Trish updated me on all the town gossip. Did you hear, Mark Layton is buying the hardware store?" Nora rattled off a dozen or so other facts about people whose names I barely recognized and I showed the appropriate amount of interest as we got all my stuff put in my old room.
My parents weren't very sentimental. They'd converted my room into a craft room the minute I'd moved out and my sister's room was now the office. They still kept the little beds in there, though, because they loved having us visit.
As we wandered back down the hall, I noticed my mom put new artwork up. It looked like she was going through a hummingbird phase at the moment.
"So, where are you booked next and when do you leave?" I asked as Nora and I flopped onto the living room couch.
"There's an orchestra in Toronto that's invited me for the summer season, so I'm leaving right after the wedding."
"Nice! Summer in Canada. Wait, do they have summer there?"
