To The Dodging O’ Bullets

“Please . . . please, Chloe . . . you can’t do this!”

As my sister wrings her eyes like dish rags, I take a quick peek at the video that I posted four hours ago. 529 likes and climbing – and, according to my notification history, the man who was supposed to become my brother-in-law this evening is instead conducting the retweet train with extreme prejudice. His caption? To the dodging of bullets {champagne glass emoji}.

“I sure as fuck can’t undo it,” I retort, calmly shoving my Android back into my purse.

“You have to! Don’t you understand? I’m supposed to marry my soulmate today!”

“You should’ve thought of that before you spent your bachelorette party with an absolute rubber chicken of a groomsman.”

Judging by the death stare that our mother chucks in my general direction, I must’ve grown a second head. Maybe even a third. “Chloe Euphemia, you delete that tweet and apologize to your sister this instant, or – ”

“What for?”

“Don’t you dare ‘what for’ me, young lady,” she hisses. (Once again, she intentionally forgets that the “young lady” in question is 32.) “You know that Penelope’s going through a tough time right now, and yet here you are, being a spiteful bitch.”

My eyes perform a standing back tuck before I can stop them. Leave it to Mabel Astor to champion a bridezilla who just uninvited her maid of honor from the wedding. The wedding, mind you, that’s being funded by a blank check coming out of said maid of honor’s bank account, because it always is in stories like this.

I finish off my wine cooler – the only alcoholic beverage of which I’ve ever been able to tolerate the taste – and look my sister straight in the eye. “Theodore deserves to know what kind of woman he was about to marry.”

Penny cuts the crocodile tears just long enough to snort like a hippopotamus with a sinus infection. “Excuse me?”

“Theodore deserves to know what kind of woman he was about to marry,” I repeat, syllable by syllable, as though I were speaking to a particularly dimwitted Muppet. “What he chooses to do with that information is his prerogative, not mine.”

That shuts her up, to the surprise of absolutely nobody who knows that Penelope Astor “dropped” (read: flunked) out of three different Ivy League schools in two years.

Except for Mom, apparently. She turns to my sister, her 29-year-old daughter, with an expression that I should long since have learned to read. “Surely, you’re not going to stand there and let her persecute you like this?”

Persecute? In the seven months since she got engaged, I’ve lived exclusively on ramen and grilled cheese sandwiches to cover the cost of whatever fairy tale nonsense Penny refused to get married without. She changed her mind seven times about the cake alone and expected me to be grateful for the privilege of explaining this to a quarrelsome baker who barely spoke English. But, sure, I’m the bully here.

Penny’s iPhone pings. She rips it out from under her bra as though it were a snake biting her breast, and she stares at the screen for exactly three-quarters of a second before wailing, even more hysterically than before: “He wants – he wants the ring back! My ring!”

I can’t help but smirk. The wedding’s off. Good.

“There, there, baby, girl,” Mom coos. “We’ll make this right. We’ll fix this – ”

“I don’t know how to fix this! I don’t – I don’t know how! I don’t know how! I don’t know how!”

“You don’t.” The sentence comes out colder than I intended, but that doesn’t make it any less true. “You don’t fix this. There’s nothing left to fix. Theodore’s moving on. You should, too.”

My mother’s glare could freeze the sun, if she were so inclined. “Don’t you think that you’ve done enough damage for today?”

She has a point. I’ve done what needed to be done. Now I only need to get some of my money back, start eating actual food again and move on with my life.

I pitch my empty bottle into the recycling bin and leave, ignoring my mother’s insistence that “we’ll make him buy you a better ring – that dinky old thing isn’t worth the dust on his shoe!” (The “dinky old thing” in question is a family heirloom on Theodore’s side, probably worth more money than Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner combined.)

I’m barely seated in a taxicab that reeks of poorly-prepared okonomiyaki when my phone buzzes with a text from Dad: Saw the video. Very ashamed of your sister right now. I raised her better than this.

Then a text from my best friend, Fiona: Seriously? A groomsman? And not even the best man, at that? Even for her, that’s . . . certainly a choice {laughing emoji}.

Then a text from my grandmother: You did the right thing, sweetheart. Your mother and sister will understand eventually.

Finally, a text from an unknown number: Thank you.

Theodore. It’s got to be. One of the other bridesmaids must’ve given him my number. Don’t mention it.

I’ll pay you back for whatever the vendors don’t refund. Every penny.

I type and retype my reply several times before I send it: No need. Focus on finding a woman who treats you right.

I konk out as soon as I get back to my hotel, then check my bank account on a whim the next morning – mainly to make sure that I can afford room service in what’s probably a front for some money-laundering scheme.

Guess what? Theodore paid me back anyway. Stubborn bastard.

Oh – and, just for the record, I wasn’t even planning to post the video. I simply hadn’t been alone with Theodore long enough to break the news privately yet, and Penny’s refusal to give me his phone number – because (and I quote directly) “the only woman who deserves access to a man’s number is his woman” – didn’t exactly help the situation.

But the outcome was the same either way, so . . .