Bride

There were other embarrassments in her past. The awful bridal shower she hosted for a bride who had grown to loathe her. Door prizes and party favors shoved under chairs - she'd picked out the wrong things and chosen the wrong games - later the bride would prove to be the wrong bride, when she cheated on the groom, a childhood friend of Theresa's. But during the living of it it had been awful, no one spoke to her, she had to steer a room to mirth and the room despised her. She'd brought along her mother, since her mother of course knew the groom, too. If her mother hadn't of been there Theresa probably would have ran screaming from the shower, tears burning her eyes and chocolate covered strawberries tucked in a Tupperware container under her arm. But she stayed, she looked pretty and she smiled. Her mother had taught her graciousness and never to glare. Live it and then get over it.

A week later the bride had given her a cold phone call, so cold and shallow and hard-edged, like grey shard of glittery metal: pretty at first, then obviously sharp and painful. They had began as casual friends; they ended as hostile enemies. Theresa was booted out of the wedding. She no longer spoke to the groom who was a highlight of her life as a female: one of those beautiful boys who ask nothing of you, just sarcasm, coffee, a history, ridiculous inside jokes that you're sure are funnier than anyone else's. The bride took him away from Theresa and then Theresa took herself away from the entire state. The evening of the phone call Ben and Theresa had that kind of sex that tore walls from joists, Theresa still red-faced and snivelling.

The bride sort of made amends with Theresa a year after the wedding. But it was Theresa's turn to be cold, a sliver of ice, a bitch. She was moving with Ben to Tennessee by that point. The bride wasn't worth the effort. The groom was worth every effort so Theresa tucked the thought of him into the most secret of folds in her skirts and waited. Eventually the bride cheated on the groom, the groom was liberated and then reunited with the one he was supposed to be with all along (no, no, not Theresa - this is not that kind of story), but by then Theresa and Ben were leaving their second state for their third, with Alex of course in tow. Farther away from all that cold metal.

It was all over Theresa's lack of enthusiasm for the wedding, you know? And a lack of funds to properly appease the bride's strange ideas of etiquette.