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‘Sparkles with all the wit, charm and drama of the best 90’s rom-coms’

TORREY PETTERS

BEST WOMAN

BEST WOMAN

ROSE DOMMU BEST WOMAN

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For Maddy and Alex

“This is my one chance at happiness. I have to be ruthless.”

—Julia Roberts, My Best Friend’s Wedding

I want to be the girl with the most cake.

—Hole, “Doll Parts”

BEST WOMAN

PROLOGUE

IT’S SO HOT inside the club, the walls are dripping.

I’m not a very good dancer, but tonight isn’t about dancing. I’m on the prowl, but I’m no sexy feline. I’m a bumbling, bipedal animal and evolution has not been kind to me. I watch everyone around me pair off in twos and threes—the first orgy on Noah’s ark, after the flood.

Suddenly, like light breaking over the horizon, I see her. She stands alone, nursing a drink long turned to ice, leaning against the sticky wall in jeans and a black tank top. Her messy mullet is meant to look effortless, like she took a pair of shears to it herself, but I’m guessing it’s the work of the lesbian­run salon in Williamsburg that specializes in sapphic shags.

I bob and weave through the heaving mass of bodies, mumble something loud enough, charming enough, to catch her attention. We join the other dancers. Her arms are strong where they wrap around my waist, and her hair is slick with sweat that drips into our eyes as we kiss.

In no time at all, we’re shoved inside a bathroom stall, furiously making out, hands in each other’s hair. I don’t know her

name, but I don’t need to. She doesn’t know mine either. She doesn’t know anything about me.

After, when I’m back out in the sea of bodies, I don’t feel any different than before. My feet are beginning to hurt from these shoes. Just another night, another party, another nameless stranger. Another train ride home alone.

Better luck next time.

CHAPTER One

THERE ARE NO malls in New York City. As a recovering mall goth, I find this sad. Malls are my favorite kind of liminal space, a portal to a bygone era that smells like Auntie Anne’s cinnamon pretzels and credit card debt.

On occasion, a woman finds herself in need of a garment so special in its mundanity, so particular in its ubiquitousness, that it can only be obtained in a large, air­conditioned building where one can also buy ill­fitting cargo pants made of microplastics, expensive body lotion that smells like rotten bananas, thigh­high boots that were trendy four years ago, a sleek new laptop, lipstick in one hundred nearly identical shades of mauve, vinyl records that will end up in a landfill when their owner has moved on to a new hobby, and designer perfume. I am a woman who has found herself with this particular need, meaning that after three subway transfers and one sojourn on the Long Island Rail Road, I am at a mall.

The skylights, soft pop music, and power walking senior citi­

zens remind me of home. I spent enough of my adolescence in malls to know that they are all fundamentally one shared space stretching across the fabric of reality. This mall is my childhood mall, the mall of my ancestors, my children’s mall, etc.

I pass a department store full of middle­aged women returning jeans they’ve already worn twice, a fast fashion chain selling fetish wear to teenagers, and, of course, a Starbucks.

“New phone case?” The pimply teenage salesman stares at my chest, not that he’ll find much there.

“Try our new falafel recipe!” I spit out the overcooked ball of fried chickpeas as soon as the kind­eyed woman who forced them on me is in the distance.

“You’d look gorgeous with some extensions.” The pretty girl running the kiosk probably means that I’d look better with extensions, as the rain and humidity have both flattened my hair and electrified it with frizz, but alas. I check my boring brown bangs in my phone camera, but they’re beyond repair.

After walking what feels like miles, I finally reach my destination. Born to Bride is tucked away in an older corner of the mall that clearly hasn’t been renovated to keep up with the newer additions. While there are, according to the Born to Bride website, thirty­five locations across the country, this was the only one in New York State. Headless brides clutch plastic flowers in the windows, which seems like a bad marketing strategy—how are they supposed to sell veils that way? Do brides still wear veils, or is that outdated?

I text Aiden. Is Rachel wearing a veil?

nah he replies right away. fuck that purity culture bullshit. she might be doing a flower crown though. very early lana.

I can’t deal with my twenty­seven­year­old heterosexual

brother knowing who Lana Del Rey is, so I drop my phone back in my bag and head inside the store, passing through the archway molded to look like a chuppah—Born to Bride being a chain primarily marketed toward Jewish women—and into a scene straight out of Say Yes to the Dress, but with uglier dresses. In one corner of the store, a girl with frizzy hair—I raise a mental fist in solidarity—is hissing at a woman who can only be her mother, who is in tears. At the other end, a sales associate bearing a shocking amount of cleavage for a Thursday morning seems to be talking down a woman who can’t zip up the back of her dress.

“I’m so fat,” she wails. “My wedding is in six weeks.” So is mine, incidentally. I thought everyone got married in the spring, but autumn weddings are seemingly de rigueur for East Coast Jews.

“We can try the next size up!” The sales associate’s face is braced for impact. The gaggle of friends circling the bride­to­be starts shaking in fear.

“I will not wear a size fourteen on the most important day of my life.” The bride is not quite blushing, more tomato red with rage. She whips out her phone, presses a button, and raises it to her ear. “Hello, I need to make an appointment with Dr. Roth for CoolSculpting next week.” A momentary pause, her face cracking with rage. “I don’t care if he’s boogie boarding in Corsica, I am getting married next month.”

As fun as it would be to watch her meltdown progress, I am on a mission. I shoot a sympathetic glance toward the sales associate and refocus my attention to the register, where a woman around my mother’s age is perched, assessing the space like a large bird. The kind of bird that reminds you birds are de­

scended from dinosaurs. There are dark, puffy circles under her eyes barely hidden with concealer that’s far too light and far too yellow for her. She has clearly been on her feet far too long today, or this week, or this life. But she plasters on a smile as I approach. According to her name tag, she is Lorraine.

“How can I help you today?”

“I’m attending a wedding next month.” I’m a bit sweaty from my trek through the mall, and it’s warm under the bright lights. Every pearl and scrap of lace glimmers in this overstuffed store. “It’s in Florida, but I called customer service and they said I could come to any location and pick up a dress with the model number.”

Lorraine nods, eyeing my sweaty upper lip. I give her the number and she checks their system. “Yes, we should have it in stock. What size do you need?”

“Well, here’s the thing,” I say. “I need that dress in a fourteen, but I actually need it in a different color.”

She sneers. “The order has no additional color options attached.” Her face smooths into something resembling customer service. “Listen, honey, I know you might not think”—her eyes flick to the screen—“burnt sienna daydream is your color, but . . . I’m sure you’ll look lovely.” She’s not really selling the compliment.

“And after all,” she says, clacking away at the keyboard, “it’s not about you, darling. You’re a bridesmaid.”

Big smile. “A groomsperson, actually.”

She nods, eyebrows raised. “I’ll see what I’ve got.”

A few minutes later, Lorraine leads me into a sumptuously appointed dressing room.

“Thank you.” I toss my bag on the ground and look around,

realizing something is missing. It takes me a minute because I’ve only had one cup of coffee today and there’s currently an Adderall shortage in New York City. “Where’s the mirror?”

She crosses her arms. “All the mirrors are out here,” she says, pointing toward the pink hallways branching out into dressing rooms. “People usually come here with friends and family and want to share the experience.”

“How fun for them,” I manage through clenched teeth. There is nothing I hate more than trying on clothes in front of a communal mirror and fielding commentary from salespeople, other shoppers, and the odd security guard trying to get my number. The last one is mostly wishful thinking; nothing is more genderaffirming than being desired by people you don’t want to have sex with.

“I’ll be back in just a moment.” Lorraine marches off to a hidden back room, stiletto heels sinking into the blush carpet with every step.

“You’re being such a BITCH.” The frizzy­haired bride stands in the doorway of the dressing room across from mine, the skirt of her dress as wide as the doorframe. Her mother cowers before her. “I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with you! Go get me a cinnamon pretzel with the cinnamon scraped off and an iced almond latte and don’t you dare come back until you’re ready to lift your fat ass off Daddy’s life insurance money and buy me the dress I deserve.”

The mother stalks past me, something shattered behind her eyes. I can’t look away from her daughter, which proves to be a mistake. She catches my eyes and mistakes loathing for sympathy, giving me a look I recognize from my face, reflected in the windows of every restaurant my mother has ever embarrassed

me in. It’s a look we Jewish girls grow up with, permanently beneath the surface, never far from emerging. It says Can you believe her?

“Sorry you had to hear that.” She is anything but contrite, walking over to the mirror between our two fitting rooms. “Weddings, you know?”

Shrug.

“My mother keeps going on and on about keeping the cost down, but I told her if we swing this thing for under 150 she’s getting a deal. And how could anyone say no to this dress?” Her eyes glaze as she runs her hands down the mass of white chiffon.

I would, in fact, say no to the dress. It has lace in places lace simply should not be, and is at once baggy and too skintight. It’s a mess.

“You look beautiful.” That’s safe enough, right?

“I know,” she tells her reflection. Unfortunately, she’s not quite Narcissus, because she catches my eye in the mirror. “Mine’s in December, a Hanukkah wedding. When’s yours? And where are your bridesmaids? Or your mother?”

“Uh, I’m not getting married. I’m here to pick up a bridesmaid dress.” Kind of.

“My bridesmaids hate their dresses.” An ugly smile splits her face wide open. I feel another swell of sympathy for her mother, who is hopefully getting a drink at the last TGI Fridays in America or drowning herself in the food court toilets.

“I haven’t seen mine yet.”

“I’m sure you’ll look . . . great. You have nice”—the strain on her face is Herculean—“hair.”

“Yeah, I’m sure my hair will look great in whatever nightmare my future sister­in­law picked out.”

“Hmm.”

That’s Lorraine, standing behind me, holding the nightmare in question.

“Good luck,” says the bride, nasty grin fixed firmly in place. Perhaps her mother has walked into oncoming traffic.

I’m hustled back into the dressing room, a space draped so aggressively in pink it feels almost vaginal, which is probably the point.

Lorraine hangs up the dress and leaves me to it. Resting on a hanger, it’s benign, harmless. The dress is strappy, and slinky, and has a slit up one leg that promises to show off some of my best assets. But I understand clothes and the ways they lie, and also the truths they uncover, ones we are desperate to hide. The low, curving neckline would look fabulous on someone who could fill it out. I can’t, and my breasts are likely to look small and pointy and very, very sad sitting in it. The tiny straps might make me look delicate if it weren’t for the span of my shoulders.

At least mine will be black. Burnt­sienna­whateverthefuck is not gonna work with my complexion.

I strip off my clothes—also black, my urban armor—and prop my phone up on the small stool nudged against the wall, opening the camera app to use as a mirror. I’m not going outside until I’m sure it won’t be humiliating.

There, on my tiny screen is my body. And it’s just that: a body. Despite all the time I spend thinking about it, all the tears I’ve cried over it for the past twenty­nine years, and all the opinions people seem to have about it, it is still just a body. It is pale

and freckled and imperfect. My hips are too square, my thighs too dimpled, my stomach too curved, my ass too flat. But as I normally do, I try to find the parts of it I like, the parts I see as mine: My collarbones jut in a way that is almost delicate, the freckles on my shoulders left over from summer are sweet and girlish. Eyes wide, neck long, lips full—thank you, Juvéderm. And Bridezilla was right—I have great hair. Even when I had nothing else, I had great hair.

I slip into the dress, which looks . . . all right on the tiny screen, so I cautiously drag open the dressing room curtain, flinching at the screech of curtain rings. I step barefoot into the padded hallway and turn to face the large gilt mirror at the end of the pink­tunneled dressing area.

It’s not great, but it’s not terrible. The color washes me out, but I won’t be wearing this color, so that’s fine. The draping does nothing for the places I’m curved correctly and emphasizes the places I’m decidedly not, but in the grand scheme of bridesmaid monstrosities, I’ve gotten off with relative ease.

“And how are we doing here?”

Lorraine is behind me in the mirror, and I catch an unguarded glimpse of her face, and a look of naked curiosity on it as she takes in my broad shoulders, my knobby knees, my face under the harsh overhead lighting.

I meet her eyes in the mirror.

“I’ll take it.”

I have to split the dress on two different credit cards at checkout, and Lorraine sighs audibly. Bridezilla’s mother and I lock eyes from across the room. I almost ask for a bite of her pretzel.

Four

YEARS AGO

“WHY DID YOU let me drink so much Manischewitz?”

I’m on the floor of my grandparents’ guest bathroom, toilet full of regurgitated gefilte fish and wine mocking me. The gefilte fish does not look very different after its brief sojourn down my esophagus.

Aiden is looking at the photos on the wall and nervously folding hand towels. “You’re the one who said the ritual four glasses of wine were ‘merely a jumping­off point’ and you wanted to ‘imbibe the blood of our ancestors.’ ”

“I hate Passover.”

“You love Passover. When we were kids you used to find the afikomen in like, five seconds, hide it again, and find it again just to gloat that you found it twice.”

“I can’t help having the nose of a bloodhound and the competitive drive of Tonya Harding!”

Even the mention of matzah turns my stomach and I hurl again, but I feel better for having expunged more sweet wine and pureed fish. I haul myself up and clean out my mouth with the essentials my grandparents keep stocked for whenever one of their kids or grandkids is visiting. If I’m lucky, there may be some old Valium rattling around in the drawer next to dental floss from the Bush era—the first one.

Aiden wrings the towel between his hands, clenching and unclenching. “Do you have a problem with Grandma’s design choices,” I ask, “or can I use that? I know she hasn’t redecorated since the late eighties, but I’m into the new romantic vibe she’s got going on in here.”

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for her to have all this African art,” my brother says, handing me the towel.

He’s followed me in here for a reason, but as always, I have to be the one to start the conversation. As I wipe chunks of fish from around my mouth, I find his eyes behind me in the mirror.

“Rachel seems nice,” I say, opening a toothbrush sealed in plastic. “I’m glad I could spend more time with her. We didn’t get to hang out for long when y’all were in New York last year.”

He smiles, grateful. He and Rachel have been dating for over a year, but this is the first big family event she’s joined. Passover is taken seriously in our family. My grandpa does the long version of the seder—long for Reform Jews at least, so still under two hours—and my grandma makes sure she gets the best brisket delivered from the deli and takes compliments on its tenderness as if she had not only cooked it herself but also butchered the cow. Possibly gave birth to it too.

“She is nice. She really likes you. It’s cool that y’all have so much in common.”

“Yeah, it’s great that we both love . . . music.” My head is ringing a bit too much to come up with anything better.

“And her family is great too. They wanted her to be home for Passover but were excited for her to meet my family.”

“That’s great.” A rumbling. There may be more gefilte fish in my system than previously estimated. Or maybe it’s the charoset I hoovered up despite my lifelong raw apple allergy. What was I supposed to do, not eat the delicious nutty treat that symbolized the backbreaking labor of my enslaved ancestors?

“You should stay with us the next time you’re here. We have an extra bedroom and I know it’s chaotic at Mom’s with the twins.”

“The new futon in my old room is very comfy.” Now that I’ve added a memory foam pad, at least. “And she always wakes me up for Pilates.” Something is rising inside me, using my esophagus as a ladder. Or a hose. “Whether I like it or not.”

“I’m gonna ask her to marry me.”

“How Oedipal of you,” I say, eyes watering. Aiden shoots me an unimpressed look in the mirror. “That’s amazing, Aiden. I’m so happy for you.” I’m clenching my hands into fists, nails biting into my palms, hoping the pain will distract me enough to keep the food of my forefathers in my stomach, where it belongs.

“You’ll be best man at the wedding, right?”

Chunks of fish, matzah, apples, and hard­boiled eggs, all tinged the dark pink of kosher wine, spray my grandmother’s art deco mirror and culturally insensitive tchotchkes. “Fuck!” Aiden runs out to get help, or at least escape my shame and pass the responsibility of handling me to someone more qualified.

I kneel at the porcelain altar, the warbling soprano notes of my grandma singing “Dayenu” wafting in through the open bathroom door. I don’t know what makes me feel sicker: the smell of my puke, the snot dripping from my nose, or the thought of the unopened vial of injectable estrogen buried deep in the backpack currently sitting atop my mother’s pretty fucking uncomfortable futon.

CHAPTER Two

“YOU’RE WEARING THAT to the wedding?”

The weight of River’s nearly biblical judgment, the horror dripping from their voice, has me gulping down a rather large bite of salmon Benedict, without chewing it. Thankfully I have half a Bloody Mary left to wash it down with. I roll my eyes and lock my phone, hiding the evidence of the blurry photos I took at Born to Bride. “All the bridesmaids are doing the mall princess fantasy. At least I get to wear black and match the rest of the groomsmen.”

River, wearing a strappy, asymmetrical tank top so complex I can’t begin to comprehend how they shimmied into it, looks appropriately distraught at the mention—or mere existence—of a mall and that someone would procure a garment for a formal occasion at one. “Are you sure you don’t want me to pull something for you? Hannah G has a few red carpet castoffs that could always ‘fall out of an Uber’ on their way back to the showroom.”

River is constantly stealing designer items from the B­list pop star they style and is convinced she has no idea. The reality is that River’s uncle is the head of Hannah G’s label, and she’d rather release her questionable tweets from 2011 than risk offending her boss by finding a stylist who won’t pawn her Gucci castoffs at Beacon’s Closet for coke money or schedule their top surgery for the same week as the Grammys.

I’m currently wearing a skirt Hannah G once wore to a Marvel movie premiere and River once wore to “cocktails” with a married senator. River is very generous about sharing the wealth, especially when they’re feeling guilty about missing a lunch date or forgetting my birthday, something that has happened almost every birthday since I’ve known them, five years and several sets of pronouns ago. I’m mostly lucky that I’m Hannah G’s size and River isn’t. The pop star and I share a similar build: flat ass, no chest to speak of, but long legs. Meanwhile, River is tiny, maybe five foot four in the Margiela boots they favor, with light­brown skin and a shock of dark hair currently parted down the center and smoothed down with gel like the world’s sluttiest English schoolboy.

I grimace. “While the thought of transporting stolen property across state lines thrills me, I’ll pass. It’s going to be a disaster anyway. I should just lean in.”

River rolls their eyes, spots Kyle, and begs, “Please talk some sense into her!”

“She still complaining about the wedding?” Kyle asks, effortlessly hauling a case of champagne behind the bar—he never skips arm day. Or leg day. Ignoring his actual paying customers, my buff bestie refills our Bloody Marys with a long­suffering sigh. “At least they invited you to the wedding. Your family is so

annoyingly PFLAG. Your mom sends you Pride care packages and, like, watched every episode of Glee because she thought it was supportive. You’re basically Lady Gaga to them.” As usual, he is dressed entirely inappropriately for food service, shirt unbuttoned nearly down to his navel to show off deep­brown skin and a furry chest that sends bears, otters, and cubs alike into a feeding frenzy. He props his head on his arms on the bar, the better to show off his biceps. “My family has spent most of my life desperately trying to figure out something to get me for

Christmas that isn’t a coupon for conversion therapy.”

“And I went to conversion therapy,” says Daytona, swanning in from the door, late as usual. “Hey, dolls,” she coos, blowing us air­kisses.

Kyle, River, and I give each other a look, the is she being serious or joking or both, yikes look we end up giving each other whenever Daytona references her family. Daytona doesn’t notice, too busy tossing her trench coat on a stool and hopping up onto the bar, which Kyle keeps telling her to please not sit on lest the health department make a surprise inspection. She shakes out her long dark hair, adjusting an eyelash and the rhinestone below it in the reflection of her phone camera, contour dark against the fading summer tan on her ivory skin.

Kyle picks our thread back up, because if every conversation halted to give Daytona a dramatic entrance, we’d never have time to talk about anything. “What did your parents get you for the holidays last year?” he asks me.

I squirm on the barstool. “Laser hair removal.”

“Amen to that,” says Daytona, leaning back over the bar, hair dipping into a carafe of orange juice that will no doubt still be served to customers, phone outstretched in hands tipped with

hot­pink claws. “Kyle, baby, plug this in and cue up my track. I just need to piss and then I’ll start the first set.” She hops off the bar, landing with ease in six­inch heels, and struts toward the employee restroom she’s been asked repeatedly not to use.

Daytona Bitch is not officially booked to do drag brunch at Tony’s, the chic little Italian restaurant Kyle rules with an iron—yet limp­wristed—fist, but since we’re here every weekend anyway and Daytona will start performing something from Blackout within two hours of entering any given space, That’s Amore has become an “if you know you know” brunch event for our extended social circle and the twenty lesbians who follow Daytona to every gig she books, rain or shine. Last Sunday she performed “Memory” from Cats, Celine Dion’s rendition of “O Holy Night” (it’s September), and a Nickelback song I secretly loved in high school.

River turns their attention back my way, though I’ve been attempting to make myself invisible on my barstool. “Seriously, Julia, we can’t have you at this wedding in something off­therack. This is your big I’m a gorgeous woman with amazing hair and a fabulous life moment with your entire extended family. You need to be in ready­to­wear at least, if not couture.”

“River has a point, babe.” Kyle’s phone is sitting on the bar and he sends some horny hopeful a photo of his penis with zero attempt to disguise what he’s doing. “You’ve been hyping yourself up about this official debut for literal years, why not pull a real stunt?” He smirks at the photo he receives in response, ignoring a straight couple at the other end of the bar passiveaggressively trying to get his attention.

The twisting feeling in my stomach that has nothing to do