I have never been comfortable in my own skin in that particular way, and Kiley knew it, because I told her.
Four years ago, on a family trip to the lake, she asked me — kindly, I thought, over a beer on a dock at eleven at night — why I never swam. And I told her the truth, more of it than I have told most people, and she said something warm and I went to bed feeling closer to her than I ever had.
She remembered every word of it.
Just not for the reason I thought.
I turned around and went down the stairs. Grant came behind me. He had heard all of it.
He did not go in. He did not knock. He put the dish on the mat and got in the car.
And he barely said anything for the twenty-five minutes home, which frightened me more than shouting would have, because Grant Castellow is a talker and always has been.
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Two days later the new itinerary came through the group chat.
Aguadora Springs. Adults only. Two nights. Matching swimsuits — she had ordered them, in everyone’s sizes, which she had gotten from the bridesmaid measurements and, in my case, from asking his mother. Group photos at four. “Bride squad” pool games at six.
I declined.
Kiley replied within about ninety seconds.
Aww, I figured you might!
That sentence has stayed with me longer than the one in the kitchen. The exclamation point especially.
I showed it to Grant. He read it once and handed my phone back and said, “Don’t answer her again.”
The four days between that text and the Saturday were bad in a specific way I did not expect.
The group chat kept going, because nobody removes the declined guest from a group chat. So for four days I watched twenty-two women coordinate matching swimsuits and a playlist and who was bringing the inflatable something, and every time my phone buzzed I looked, and every time I looked I felt worse, and I did not mute it, which tells you something about me that I have since discussed with a professional.
On the Thursday Deb called me.
She was warm about it, which is her way. She said she understood I wasn’t going, and that it was a shame, and that Kiley had been so looking forward to including me, and that these things are easier when you just throw yourself in.
I said something noncommittal.
And she said, “You know, at your age I’d stopped worrying about any of that.”
I said I had to go.
Then I sat in my car in a grocery store parking lot for eleven minutes, and I want to include that, because the story that gets told about weekends like this is that the villain is one person. It is almost never one person. It is one person and a chorus, and the chorus is usually well-meaning and that is what makes it work.
Grant did not know about the phone call until much later. If he had known on the Thursday I think the Saturday would have gone differently and worse
The morning of the bachelorette I was in the kitchen in my pajamas at nine, drinking coffee and not thinking about it very successfully, and Grant came in with a shopping bag and put it on the table in front of me.
Inside was a plain black swimsuit, nothing fancy, and a loose linen cover-up that came to the knee.
