Plus None

“You’ll find him when you’re not looking,” she said, squeezing my arm before floating off in her pastel chiffon to join the other bridesmaids.

It was the third time that night someone had asked me the same question: “So, when’s your turn?”

Fair, I suppose. This was my third wedding of the summer. At this point, my college friend group had officially been paired off and shipped away like carefully wrapped packages - addressed to “Forever After,” postage paid, fragile but insured. And I was the lone box left behind at the post office, battered and suspiciously leaking on one side.

Standing there with a blowout that had already collapsed into limp resignation and a pair of heels I bought on clearance (heels that were slowly sawing into my Achilles like decorative torture devices from the Middle Ages), I felt the sting of judgment. But worse than judgment was pity. Judgment is sharp, yes, but it can roll off. Pity is sticky. Pity clings to your skin. Pity is an open-handed slap across your carefully airbrushed face, invisible but stinging all the same.

“Maybe you’ll meet someone tonight!” Marie’s aunt chirped later as I stood in line for my fourth vodka soda. “My niece met her husband at a wedding, you know!”

What I said was: “Maybe.”

What I wanted to say was:

Barbra. No. I will not meet someone here tonight. I know everyone here tonight. The boys from college? The ones who couldn’t remember my name and called me Miley or Marlee, like I was an optional elective they were forced to take? Hard pass. Her cousins? Married, three kids, trading group texts about Paw Patrol and whether Costco sheet cake is dairy-free. The one single man here? Divorced, forty-seven, smells like Marlboro Lights, and definitely still owns a cape because he’s “really into magic.” And listen, magic is fine. Pull a bunny out of your hat, pull a dove out of your sleeve — but don’t pull me into a lifetime of pretending I’m impressed every time you make a coin disappear. So no, Barbra. I will not meet someone here tonight.

On my way to the bathroom, Marie’s mother cut me off with the stealth and force of an NFL linebacker. “Thank you so much for being so helpful today - you always are.”

“Of course,” I said, thighs clenched like Fort Knox.

“She always had such a special place for you in her heart,” she added, with the kind of hushed solemnity people usually reserve for organ donation conversations.

Had such a special place. For a split second, I thought: Did Marie die mid-cake cutting? Was this her funeral? Was I standing in a funeral home with a DJ? Was our friendship already in the ground beneath a pile of white roses and unity candles?

“We’re just happy she finally found someone,” her mom whispered. “We were getting worried there for a minute.” She even nudged me with her elbow, like we were sharing a little joke.

And that was it. That was the sentence that lodged in my ribcage.

Worried. Worried about what? Marie - the woman who graduated top of our class, earned her master’s in finance, studied abroad alone in Italy, and once carried three carry-ons through the Rome airport without breaking a sweat. That Marie. You were worried she wouldn’t make it without Zack? Zack, the lacrosse-loving, fantasy-football-obsessed, can’t-cook-a-chicken-breast Zack? She would have been adrift without him? Flailing in the waves of life until Zack rolled up with his khakis and Tom Brady poster to save her?

That’s when it hit me: it wasn’t Marie they were worried about. It was me.

Me, unmarried at thirty-three. Me, the unclaimed baggage circling the carousel. Me, the plus-none. Me, who has never once daydreamed about tulle veils or embossed invitations. Me, who is just fine driving the long, scenic route of life with the windows down, hair tangled, music too loud, pulling over for roadside peaches and gas-station coffee that tastes like burnt ambition.

If I had been braver, if I had really gone for it, I would have taken the mic right before the speeches. Stolen it from the nineteen-year-old DJ guarding it like it was the Hope Diamond. I would have cleared my throat and said:

“Hi. Hello. I know you’re all dying to know, so let me save you the whispering. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine. More than fine. My ambition is not a husband. Truly. I appreciate your concern, I do. But your concern is wasted on me. I have better ambitions. And yes, Barb, I am looking at you — and your husband, who is currently excavating something out of his molar with his pinky finger…”

And then I would’ve unleashed the truth:

My ambition is to be kind. To notice beauty everywhere. To stand at the edge of the ocean at sunrise and watch the water blush pink and orange. To sit on a train in a country where I don’t speak the language and feel the countryside blur into poetry. To live a life made of stamps in my passport, freckles scattered like constellations on my shoulders, and journals full of stories no one else could have written.

I want to plant messy gardens, cook meals that taste like laughter, and love people so fiercely they remember me not for who I married but for how I made them feel. I want to get lost in markets that smell like spice, drink coffee slowly in places that make me write, dance badly in bars whose names I can’t pronounce. I want wrinkles, wisdom, and wildness. I want to take up space. I want to choose kindness over compliance. I want to measure my worth not in diamonds or receptions but in wonder.

So no. I am not waiting for my turn. I am taking it. Because a woman’s worth is not determined by who chooses her. It’s determined by what she chooses for herself. And I choose this life. Loudly, messily, and unapologetically. Oh, and by the way, whoever owns the grey sedan with the PussyWagon bumper sticker: seek help.

“Thank you! To the happy couple!”

Of course, I didn’t say any of that. I just peed, washed my hands, reapplied my lipstick, and walked back to the dance floor. The DJ was playing “Mr. Brightside.” And for once, I wasn’t pretending. I was laughing. I was alive.

Because here’s what nobody tells you about being single at thirty-three in a room full of couples: everyone else thinks you’re missing out. But sometimes it feels like you’re the only one who isn’t.

They call it waiting. I call it living.

And the next time someone asks me “When’s your turn?” I’ll tell them the truth:

It’s already my turn.