Always A Bridesmaid

“Gil, this is Alan. Alan Barrett? You know, your college buddy who’s getting married tomorrow? The guy whose rehearsal started half an hour ago? That guy?”

Gil snapped his head around to stare at the clock, which had somehow vaulted forward an hour and a half since he’d last checked it. He uttered a heartfelt curse.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Hell, Alan, I’m sorry. One of my reporters just lost his dad and I’m filling in while he’s gone. I lost track of time. Deadlines are biting my ass today.” Gil sent off the first of the articles.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a deadline here, too. And a fiancée who’s working on an ulcer. You thinking about gracing us with your presence any time this year?”

“I’ll be there in—” he calculated quickly “—twenty minutes. Twenty five.”

Now it was Alan’s turn to curse. “Forget about the church. We’d be leaving by the time you got here.”

“I’m really sorry, Alan.”

“I know. Look, come to the dinner, at least, so you get a chance to meet everyone. It’s at the Odeon. You know, the new McMillan’s place?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Chapter Two

One thing Jillian could say for Alan, he knew how to throw a rehearsal dinner. Forget about a discreet restaurant back room. Instead, he’d taken the upper balcony of the Odeon Tango Theater, the newest in the McMillan brothers’ chain of brewpub hotels. The old Thirties movie palace had been completely renovated, from the trompe l’oeil and molded-plaster ceiling to the gold-leafed moldings to the deep burgundy curtains that covered the stage.

The tables on the balcony were arranged to accommodate the wedding party and the various out-of-town relatives and friends of Alan’s who’d been invited. At the gleaming walnut bar against the wall, the bartender pulled pints of the McMillan’s award-winning beers. On the tables, bottles of champagne chilled in ice buckets, readily at hand for the rash of toasts that were already taking place.

That was fine with Jillian. In her current mood, it was easy to substitute sipping champagne for conversation. Not that it was necessarily a smart move, especially since drinking wasn’t normally her thing. Champagne, even with its effervescent bubbles, wouldn’t banish the loneliness. Champagne wouldn’t banish the memory of the pang she’d felt when she’d walked back up the aisle all alone, toward the laughing crowd of paired-up bridesmaids and ushers. Sure, it was just the wedding rehearsal, but in a way it was a reflection of her life. She wasn’t a part of the laughing crowd, she wasn’t a part of a pair.

She never had been.

When, she wondered with a thread of desperation, would it change?

When you make it change.

She knew the textbook explanation for why she kept people at arm’s length—raised in squalor, abandoned at four with her twin brother, David, by their mother, neglected by their stroke-ridden grandmother, raised to feel unimportant, unloved, unwanted.

Unworthy.

She knew it was irrational. And as a therapist, she knew how difficult it was to root out feelings grown from the seeds of childhood trauma, however irrational the adult knew them to be.

As a therapist, she also knew that sometimes you had to go out of your comfort zone first to make yourself change. That had been Lois’s point; Lois, who had known Jillian since the Logans had adopted her. At a certain point you needed to move on with your life. Drinking champagne wouldn’t change the fact that she was alone. Doing something different would. If being alone hurt, then she needed to open the gates that she kept locked shut against the world.

I’m afraid.

It was ridiculous, of course, she thought, watching Carrie Summers laugh with her husband, Brian, watching Lisa and Alan as they leaned in for a kiss. What was there to fear? They were glowing with happiness, with the sheer wonder of being parts of a whole.

And suddenly, desperately, Jillian wanted to know what that feeling was like.

An intelligent woman would do something about it. That was what the therapist side of her would suggest if she were in a session with herself. Make a plan and execute it. Go on a blind date. Ask someone she knew to fix her up. Hell, say hello to a guy once in a while.

Of course, if she were in a session with herself, it might be time to consider medication for multiple personality disorder, she thought. And she surprised herself with a hiccup.

A couple of places down from Jillian’s spot at the end of the table, Lisa turned, eyes wide. “Was that a hiccup I just heard?”

“It’s nothing,” Jillian told her, surprised that she had to work just a bit to make the words come out clearly.

Down on the stage, the curtains parted to reveal a stunningly beautiful brunette partnered with a man dressed in a black shirt and trousers. They stood, pressed against one another and, slowly, they began to dance.

She never touched anyone, Jillian thought. Oh, she hugged her mother and her sister, Bridget, now and again, or maybe a girlfriend. That was about it. Her world was so small: don’t touch, don’t look too hard at anyone, don’t make eye contact for too long in case it’s too much. Because without the freedom of having that one person into whose eyes she could gaze, that one person she could hold on to without worrying, all contact with other people seemed perilously complex. How much was too much? How much would inadvertently cross the line because she no longer knew where that line was?

When she was at work, in sessions, she felt confident. Anywhere else, forget it.

The dancers whirled in the tango, twining around one another in the choreographed seduction of the dance. Even up in the balcony, Jillian could feel the heat, the sexuality. What must it be like to want and be wanted? She was thirty-three and she’d never been intimate with a man. Kisses, yes. She’d even felt a man’s hands touch her body, if you could call the clumsy college boy she’d fooled around with one night a man. She’d read about sex, she’d even counseled patients, but she knew nothing about it from personal experience.

She knew nothing about relationships, at all.

It wasn’t right, Jillian thought suddenly, watching the dancers. It wasn’t right that she didn’t know, it wasn’t right that she hadn’t even tried to change things. She was a social worker, a skilled therapist. She should do better.

Why not? she thought, feeling suddenly bold, and tossed off the rest of her champagne. Why not try going after what she wanted?

It’s your turn now.

“Hot, huh?”

Jillian turned to see Lisa’s maid of honor, Ariel, looking as mischievous as Peter Pan with her spiky brunette pixie cut and her sparkling eyes.

“They’re pretty amazing,” Jillian said. The flow of dancers’ bodies, their silky-looking touches gave her a little flicker of excitement just watching. “I’d love to learn.”

“Oh, me, too. I think they give lessons after the show. We ought to come sometime when we can try it out.”

“What if I don’t have a partner?”

Ariel laughed. “Like that’s a problem? Just smile at a guy and grab him by the arm.”

Jillian looked at Ariel in admiration. Was it really that simple for her? It seemed extraordinary. There was no way Jillian could ever work up that much nerve, not immediately. Smiling, maybe. She could start with smiling. Whereupon she’d probably be standing around forever. “They should set it up like one of those dime-a-dance places from World War II. That way you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“Dime a dance? Try a five spot, at least.” Ariel’s eyes brightened. “Ooh, just imagine if it was like one of those vending machines where you use the lever thing to pick out exactly who you want. Just put your money in the slot and—”

“Darn it!” Jillian slapped her forehead.

“What?”

“I totally forgot. I’ve got to go feed my meter. I didn’t have any change when I parked,” she explained, digging in her purse for a dollar. “I meant to go right back out.”

“Drinking champagne will do that to you. Anyway, why are you worried? This late, no one cares.”

“It’s only six-thirty.” Jillian rose. “And trust me, if anyone’s going to get a parking ticket at six fifty-nine, it’ll be me.”

Downstairs, she walked out the front door and through the old-fashioned half-moon movie-house entryway with its central ticket booth. On the street, the late afternoon was bleeding into June dusk as the sun dipped toward the horizon. The clouds of the morning had burned away. The air felt soft and welcoming.