From the moment Julia told me that Simon had proposed, I knew she would be one of those brides who spends a year planning her wedding. You know, obsessing over the seating chart to make sure that Uncle Clyde doesn't get seated next to his insane ex-wife, dragging her bridesmaids to three different dress fittings, getting the perfect reception hall with a garden and making sure the tea-lights are just right. From where I sit now, downing my fourth whiskey sour, those tea-lights do look pretty damn good. I've got to hand it to the girl, after all – as she spins by in Simon's arms with the train of that white dress whirling after her (how does she not trip over it?) – she really did it. She got all the stuff our friends wanted in college – the guy, the wedding, the dress, the fucking tea-lights.

"Annie?"

I turn to Stacy, the bridesmaid sitting next to me who is twirling the straw in her ridiculous Pepto-Bismol colored drink.

"What?" I say.

"You just looked upset. Where –," she lowers her voice and leans closer, "- where is Mark?"

What I want to tell her is that it's none of her business why my boyfriend has suddenly disappeared. Why does she care that I have a terminally bad attitude toward weddings and other sentimental events, that I couldn't keep my snide comments to myself and that I instead chose to share them with Mark? Why does Stacy (what is in that drink anyway, vodka and cotton candy?) care that Mark got frustrated with my caustic negativity and left?

"Oh my God," says Stacy.

Shit. I think I just said it out loud. I should know by now that bad things happen when I'm drunk.

I push my drink toward Stacy. "Here," I say. "Finish this instead of the liquefied pink poodle in your glass."

She looks suitably horrified. I stumble over to the bar.

"Back again?" says the bartender, who looks like he stopped growing at the age of fourteen. I stare down at him from the wobbly height of my heels.

"Not to drink," I say. "Just needed to get away from that table."

"Ah," he says, leaning on the counter. "Weddings. Always the site of surplus theatrics. Fight with the bride? The groom?"

"My date," I say.

"Let me guess," he says. "He slept with the bride? … Or the groom?"

I laugh a little. "Nope. I don't really want to talk about it. Let's talk about those flowers over there. Now, Julia knows her flowers."

"Does she?"

"Yeah. Flowers everywhere in her apartment, fresh ones every day. Simon better like flowers ‘cause they're going to be coming out of… out of everywhere in their house. Their big, big house with white shutters and all and window-boxes."

"I'm detecting a little resentment," he says.

"Nah," I say. "I just don't like weddings. I mean, Julia's been my best friend since junior high so I had to be a bridesmaid. Good thing she's got a sister or else I would've been the maid of honor. Listen, I gotta go to the bathroom. It was really nice talking to you."

"Wait a second –" he says, but I'm already walking toward the French doors leading to the bathroom. Once I'm there I look at myself in the mirror – bad, but not as bad as I'd thought. My eyes have that wild look that always freaks me out when I drink, but my hairdo is practically shellacked in place and the makeup hasn't smudged yet.

Back outside, I stumble right into Julia.

"Annie!" she says. "I was looking for you. Where's Mark?"

I shrug.

"You're drunk," she says.

Apparently my shrug was more of a full-body movement than it should have been.

"What am I going to do with you?" she says, putting her arm around me.

"I guess it is true, that shit about the world looking different through a bride's eyes," I say. "Any other day except your wedding day, you would ream my ass for drinking and fighting with Mark and making a bad impression."

Julia rolls her eyes. "So you fought with Mark and that's why you're drunk and upset. And in about half an hour, he'll come back and the two of you will wander off into an empty room and have hot make-up sex. Am I right?"

I shrug again. "Probably," I say.

That reminder – even coming from Julia's nuptial-bliss-addled mind – actually makes me feel better, so I go back to the head table and start popping Jordan almonds while I watch the door for Mark.

In a while, I've gotten through three beribboned bags of the things and he still hasn't come back. Meanwhile Stacy's twirled off with one of the groomsmen and the rest of the wedding party is stuffing their faces with cake, leaving me alone at the end of the table. I think about just catching a cab and going home, but I'm feeling kind of sick from the whiskey and the sugar and I'm not looking forward to a night alone, falling asleep with the TV on.

Then Mark walks through the door. I know it's going to be all right. Just look at him, all tall and sexy in that suit, with those silly wingtip shoes, walking over to me. Like always. Julia was right. Ten minutes from now, he'll be fucking me against the wall in an empty ballroom, then we'll lie on the red-carpet floor and I'll tell him I love him, I really do.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," I say.

"Um. Can we talk?"

We go to the other end of the garden, where there are no people, and sit on a bench. I expect him to put his arm around me, but he doesn't. He just sits there.

"Annie," he says. "I don't know how to say this, but… I think I need some time. To think. Things aren't working right now."

I stare. This isn't happening. Mark – the gorgeous Ph.D. student who reads me Byron poems – is not spouting breakup platitudes at me on a bench under a goddamned rose arbor. It can't be happening. I'm drunk; I'm hallucinating. I'm going to black out and wake up hungover, with him making me coffee and handing me the bottle of Advil.

He sits there and looks at me with those sexy brown eyes. He looks like – damn it, really – he looks like some kind of trapped animal.

I stand up. "You're not fucking doing this to me, Mark," I say. "Get out, why don't you? Just leave!"

And, goddamn it, he does. And I'm about to cry, but of all things to think about, I think about how I just can't cry and let my mascara run because Julia will see it when I go back to the reception, and above all things, I won't be able to stand the look on her face when she realizes I've fucked up again.

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