Look, it’s not my fault that Gemma is really fucking boring. She’s the kind of girl that gets excited when she eats a really good salad, someone who vlogs her Starbucks drive-through experience and posts it on Facebook for her 54 followers. She’s always been this type of person, someone who is easily upstaged without much effort. Which is why all of us were surprised when she announced that she and Josh were getting married.
Josh is the opposite of boring. He’s the adventurous type, always climbing a mountain or visiting a different foreign country. Gemma doesn’t like to travel unless it’s shorter than a three-hour drive. Josh will try anything once, but Gemma has always been stuck in her uptight little bubble. They should not work together at all, and now, for some reason, they are tying the knot.
The entire friend group was shocked when we heard the news. Emma was the first to hear, and she called us all into an “emergency group meeting” during our lunch breaks to drop the bomb. Kelly was surprised, but she’s surprised by everything and has the emotional depth of a squirrel, so I took her reaction with a grain of salt. Jessica was always the closest with Gemma and pretended to be happy for her, but I saw through that bullshit. It was not a secret that none of us really liked Gemma, and I was the president of the club; always denying her requests to hang out with us, “forgetting” to like her posts online, and ignoring her in the Whole Foods line. This is why I, of all people, nearly fell out of my chair when I got an invitation to her boho-themed wedding in the desert. Needless to say, I went.
Is it awful that I went mainly to make fun of her? Maybe, but she was practically begging for it. I took at least three shots of shitty Vodka in my hotel room before the service and made a note in my phone to count how many macrame pieces were hung around the venue. The place was flooded with failed Instagram influencers and decor that bordered on cultural appropriation (didn’t we cancel dreamcatchers a few years ago)? It was some kind of 2017 Pinterest fever dream. God, it was so much fun.
I was absolutely wasted almost the entire time. At one point, I think I knocked over Gemma’s big fruity margarita that she hadn’t touched the whole night, and I had flirted with almost all of the waiters and one guy who I think was the officiant. Even our friends thought I was a little too messy, whispering Alex, do you really need another drink? to me every time I went back up to the bar. But it didn’t matter at all. I was the happiest person on the planet to laugh at Gemma’s stupid fucking wedding.
The one thing I did notice, even in my inebriated state, was that Josh was very scarce throughout the entire night. He would disappear for hours at a time, and Gemma didn’t even seem to notice. Finally, towards the end of the night, when my ten drinks were starting to wear off, I watched Josh scurry off into the background. Without thinking, I followed him.
He was sitting on a decorative log outside of the venue alone. It was a funny sight, a man in a perfectly tailored suit and a brand new wedding ring sitting on a fake log with his head in his hands. Still tipsy, I laughed out loud, causing Josh to jump and turn around.
“Jesus, Alex. You scared me.”
“Sorry,” I smiled. “It’s just funny.”
“What?” He was not laughing with me.
“It’s your wedding. And you’re alone on a fake log looking like you’re about to cry.”
“I’m not about to cry,” he answered defensively.
“Then what are you doing out here?” I asked, sitting down next to him.
He didn’t answer and continued to stare out into the desert. I realized that I was too busy laughing at Gemma to remember that this was real life– she had just married this man for some godforsaken reason. I started to feel a little bad for him. But he had married her, he had even been the one to propose, so he had to be at fault somehow. Or maybe she had blackmailed him.
“I thought this was the right thing,” he said, barely a whisper.
“So, what? You’re just gonna live your life with Gemma in your millennial gray house and make 4 kids that grow up to hate you? You’re gonna go to work every day and come home to your wife cooking dinner that smells awful, but you’re gonna eat it anyway, then sleep in the same bed and never touch each other because you stopped having sex years ago? You’re gonna retire and realize that you wasted your life, but there’s nothing that you can do about it now because… what? You thought it was the right thing to do at the time?”
“Well, what the fuck else would I do?”
“I don’t know. Tell Gemma now that this isn’t gonna work before you both realize that you’re unhappy?” I realized that I was actually giving him advice like I cared about Gemma’s life. It would honestly be hilarious to watch her life fall into a corporate nine-to-five black hole, but something compelled me to try and get him out.
“But she wants this. I know she does,” Josh said, dropping his head back into his hands.
“But do you?”
Josh looked up at me. I remember thinking, at that moment, that I should kiss him. Not because I wanted to. The man was not my type, too frat boy who peaked in high school. But it was Gemma’s wedding, her husband had just revealed to me that he thought he had made a mistake, and I was alone with him outside the venue. Perfect situation for kissing, if you ask me.
And it was fucking good– something like a messy makeout sesh that you usually only have in a college bar or in a basement in high school. I don’t even know how long we made out for, I was too busy internally laughing and wondering what the hell would happen next. All I know is that at one point, there was a scream behind us, and I turned around to see almost the entire wedding party standing right there with Gemma at the helm.
Josh stood up immediately, stuttering apologies and excuses. I sat there, realizing I was drunker than I thought, laughing because I had no idea what else to do. The next part is a little blurry, but what I do remember is Gemma walking straight past Josh and up to me and slapping me clean across the face. I gained a bit of respect for her in that moment because I never took her as the type of girl to create such a scene in public. The crowd behind her gasped, and I think her mom had to pull her away from me. I just kept laughing like a madwoman, because it was fucking funny. Then, I heard Josh say, “I think we should get a divorce.”
It was picture perfect. My wet dream of a wedding. The crème de la crème of Gemma’s downfall. Gemma, now freshly divorced, dragged me to the street and put me in a taxi. Somehow, I ended up in my hotel room, still laughing.
No one in that group ever talked to me again. I never heard from Josh, either, but I know they actually did get divorced because Gemma deleted all their pictures on Instagram and started posting with a new man who always wore a backward baseball cap.
I still tell my new friends about it. It was my magnum opus, a moment of my life I would never forget. Sometimes, I think about how my old friends probably tried to comfort Gemma after it happened, telling her that I was a jealous bitch with small boobs and that she’s soooo much prettier than me. My favorite thing, though, was knowing that she still thought about me. I knew the image of me making out with her husband on their wedding night would never leave her head. And that is enough to make me laugh sometimes, knowing what was supposed to be her big day is now all about me.
Charlotte Caucci is a sophomore TV and Digital Media Production major who is trying to become the world’s first bridesmaid-zilla. You can reach Charlotte at [email protected].