My shoulders against the rose wallpapered wall, I watched the clock, a big silver piece that looked like it’d been around since the Civil War. Four minutes after Scott stuck that first bite into his deceitful mouth, it happened. He was speaking to Bobbie Jo at the moment, her sitting to his left, and there was no warning, no clutch of his stomach, holding of his mouth, no running to the bathroom. He just opened his mouth and vomit spewed out, soaking her lavender cardigan, unbuttoned low over those ridiculous breasts, her scream loud enough to make every head in the room turn. I giggled, watching Bobbie Jo’s date, her cousin Frank, as he tried to move away, his hands frantic in their push against the table, but Scott wasn’t done, his second attack came while trying to stand. Scott got his chair pushed back, got his feet under him, his hands on the table, and then it came again. We’d had fried green tomatoes with dinner. A piece of poorly chewed tomato caught the ear of Scott’s Best Man, Bubba, and hung there for a moment, the big guy flailing at the piece, then he was the next victim, and Tara and Scott got coated by his wretch.
It was a horrific unfolding, the medicine hitting everyone within the same three minutes, every head in the room turned, mouths opened, and murmurs gaining volume as it kept getting worse. Stacey was the first to hit the floor, vomit already covering her lips and chin, her hand over her face, her heels loud on the floor as she ran down our table’s side, then hit a pool of stench and slipped. I heard the splat as her dress, a Calvin Klein she had bragged over, hit the puddle. She screamed, her cry joining the sea, and tried to stand, her skinny legs flailing, slipped, tried again, and failed. It was hard to stand up when you wouldn’t put your hands on the floor. It was hard to put your hands on the floor when the floor was covered in stomach contents.
One bystander had told Variety Magazine that it had been ‘almost like a circus, with so many things happening you didn’t know where to look.’ I agreed with that statement. The week after the disaster, the cinematographer had asked, her voice tight with disdain, if I wanted the video from the event. I had already paid for it, after all. I had taken the video and sat on my living room floor, popped it in the DVD player, and watched it. That was the first time I felt guilt. I felt sick. I saw in high definition the moment that the poor sweet boyfriend of Tara’s bent over. I saw my first grade teacher, old Mrs. Maddox, trying to hobble for the exit among the masses, clean guests infected by screaming, puking bridesmaids, innocent victims caught along the way in the bottleneck that was the sole exit.
“It was evil,” I said quietly. “Doing it there. In front of everyone. Especially in a town where appearances and decorum are so important.” It was hard to respect someone when you’d seen them vomit all over their grandmother, then run for the exit. That had been Corrine. Her ninety-two year old Grammie had chosen that unfortunate moment to come over and say hello, her frail hands gripping Corrine’s chair for support when disaster hit.
“Isn’t that why you did it there? To punish them?”
“Yeah but… I went too far.” I didn’t feel bad about the wedding party. It was all of the others whose night had been ruined. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. I cringe at their faces, so much of their money wasted, their perfect son’s perfect night destroyed…
Everyone had known it was me from the beginning. Maybe it was my manic laughter as I stood at the front of the room and watched the stampede. It was certainly confirmed by Rita, who pointed a flour-covered finger straight in my direction. I had shrugged, accepted the blame. It wasn’t like I’d ever thought about discretion. I’d wanted them to know. I’d wanted them to realize what they had caused, what Bobbie Jo and Scott had caused. I wanted them to know that you didn’t screw with Summer Jenkins and get away with it.
I’d been young, rebellious, and self-centered. And the town had, as a result, made me pay. My hour of glory had been the last moment in the Quincy sun. After that, the chill from Quincy’s elite had been solid and unyielding, a layer of impermeable frost.
“You don’t need them.” Cole pulled my hand up and kissed it.
I turned to him. “I know that. I just wanted you to know. The—” type of person I am. That was what I wanted to say. I wanted him to stop this thing he’d been doing all night, looking at me like I was made of fairy dust. I didn’t finish the sentence. Probably because I liked the way he had been looking at me. And I didn’t want it to all break apart. I had told him what I had done. The magazine had gotten it pretty much right, even if it had been horrible to read. But I’d wanted to fill him in on my motivations. He could make his own decisions from that point on.
“I just won’t ever cheat on you.” He turned to me and patted his leg. “Come here.”
I didn’t question him, just crawled over, ’til my butt was on his thigh, my legs stretched over his lap, one of his hands holding me in place, the other tucking a bit of my hair behind my ear. “No man in his right mind would cheat on you.”
If you had asked me, before that moment, if I’d had any self-doubt due to Scott’s affair, I’d have said no. I’d have said that he was an idiot, and Bobbie Jo was a ho, and that it had nothing to do with me. But his simple sentence, stated with such resolution… it opened a crack in me that I hadn’t known existed, a deep fissure that ran all the way to my bones.
He opened that crack, and a dark black tidal wave of insecurity and sadness rushed out.