Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

4

Ama

MARCH

Ileave the coffee shop with a promise to call tomorrow to set up another meeting. I have their email addresses. I’m supposed to send my favorite vendors over tonight.

I won’t be.

I need a little space to figure out how to decline. I need to figure out what kind of lie sounds best. Is “I don’t work with that vendor” enough? Or does the whole truth need to come out? Will it come out anyway when Jackie asks her old family friend what happened? Will Whitney Harrison be doing their wedding by then?

I can’t get my thoughts straight, and I almost drive directly home before remembering I have the Ferguson wedding today. I turn around and head downtown to check on prep.

I fall into my routine, allowing my brain to worry about schedules and late caterers instead.

I think I’m doing a good job too. That is, until Mar pulls me aside at the reception and says, “Where the hell is your brain today, girl?”

All of it rushes back to me, making my head spin, and I sprint to the bathroom. I’m splashing water on my cheeks when Mar finds me after finishing the cake cutting.

“You didn’t get Hazel Renee?”

“I did get Hazel Renee. They’re set on Blooming for flowers.” My throat threatens to close up. Saying it makes me nauseous.

Mar curses. I look up and see her head thrown back, eyes on the ceiling. I check up there to see if the answers are written on the fluorescents.

Leaning next to me on the wall, Mar kicks her shoes off to make herself shorter. The hotel has carpeting in here, thankfully. “You could do it.”

“Could I? Really?” I turn to her, and her hesitation tells me she doesn’t believe it either.

She’s silent for a bit before she says, “What if you correspond by email only? You explain there’s a situation, but you’d be happy to work around it.”

I consider it. It’s far less professional. It may make me look weak. “You really think I could do a wedding without seeing him once?”

Her lips press together. “Maybe they don’t want a lot of floral design?”

“If you’re using Elliot Bloom, you want a lot of floral design.”

Even saying his name makes my stomach tighten. Behind my eyes, I see white dahlias and spider mums.

I turn to her. “Go out and get more shots of the reception. I’ll be fine.”

“We can discuss this tonight. Drinks on me.”

She disappears through the bathroom door, and I check the time on my phone.

I have four thousand new notifications.

Four thousand, two hundred and twelve, to be exact.

I open Instagram to see what’s up, and I find a picture of Hazel and Jackie outside the coffee shop from this morning at the top of my feed.

Met our wonderful wedding planner for coffee today—@WeddingsbyAma. Check her out.

I have two thousand new followers. I have thirty DMs from strangers. I have notifications that my Pinterest pins have been saved. I have two emails from bloggers asking what we can expect to see out of Hazel Renee’s wedding.

The notifications keep coming. I stagger back out to the Ferguson wedding and try to keep everyone on schedule. By the end of the night, my follower count has doubled. I have six more emails from journalists.

If I wasn’t already regretting this, I would be now. This is far more exposure than I’ve ever handled, even under Whitney. And exposure means just as many opportunities for mistakes as there are for successes. Every wedding has its pressures, but not many have the possibility of advancing or ruining your career with one small swing of the pendulum.

When Mar and I eventually settle at the hotel bar at eleven, she’s thumbing through my Instagram with weary eyes. She rubs her face.

“You can still say no,” she says, almost a question with the way her vowels tilt upward at the end.

I nod, staring down into a martini. “I can.”

“Or you could carry on. Be a professional.”

My eyes close, I suck air through my nose.

Be a professionalis a phrase that haunts me. Mar doesn’t know she’s hit a land mine, so I just breathe deeply to clear my head.

Be a professional. Is that what Whitney would say to me? I want to call her and ask, but then I’d have to tell her what happened at Senator Gilbert’s wedding. And what had been happening for six months prior to it. And with whom. And she’d say “Ama,” in that tone that told me I’d disappointed her. She’d know I’d never learned my lesson, and I crossed another line.

“Talk me through the worst-case scenario,” I say.

Mar sits up tall. “You walk into his shop. You immediately burst into tears. Hazel Renee films it. It’s live on Instagram titled, ‘Woman Regrets Choice Made in Haste—’”

“You know I’d never be called ‘woman.’”

“You’re right. ‘Sacramento Minor Could Have Had It All. News at eleven.’ I think E! would get enough of the facts straight.”

We drink some more, and when I get home, I email Hazel and Jackie the vendor list like I said I would. As if I’m actually doing this.

When I wake up on Monday morning, hungovery, Jackie’s returned my email with:

Can we get in to see Elliot sooner rather than later? I want Hazel’s input on flowers before she leaves for filming.

I laugh until I dry heave. And then I wet heave. When I’m done and refilling on electrolytes, I look at my calendar.

The odd thing is that Hazel and Jackie’s wedding fits perfectly into my life. A few months back, when I looked at what this wedding season would be like for me, I wanted a large-scale wedding to work on this year. It was, in fact, my immediate goal. I wanted something that would get me noticed and satisfy my bank account while I continue to work on a smaller scale. I wanted to be able to rent my own office space by the end of the year, hire a permanent assistant, and pay someone else to run social media. Those were my long-term goals. But nothing came my way, and I told myself I’d catch my break next season. Hazel and Jackie would put me right on schedule.

Be a professional, Whitney’s voice rings in my ear. Whenever I overstepped, she’d remind me that she got to where she is with professionalism, without crossing any boundaries.

Whitney never would have gotten herself in a situation where she had to work with an ex, but if she had, she would power through it. She’d be a professional.

I write back to Jackie and ask for their schedules this week. Then I text Mar that I need her to sober up and come over.

She knocks on my door at noon with sunglasses on and a box of donuts in hand. I’m halfway through my third when we speak for the first time.

“I’m gonna do it.”

She nods, sipping her Gatorade. “Good.”

“I need you to call him today to set up an appointment.”

Cool Blue Raspberry dribbles out of her mouth as she coughs. I hand her the napkin I had prepared for this moment. When she recovers, she says, “Do you intend to speak to him at all? Or am I on contract?”

“I just need to get through this one thing. Then I think it will become easier. Businesslike.”

Mar sighs. “Gimme some Advil, and then let’s do this.”

We’re sitting on my living room floor an hour later, the box of donuts empty. Mar is clutching her prewritten script in one hand as her thumb pokes the number I’m giving her into her phone. She takes a deep breath before hitting dial, and I feel my own catch.

It rings four times. Long enough for me to hope that we’ll get the machine. Midway through the fifth, I hear a click and wait for his father’s old message from ten years ago, inviting us to leave our name and number.

I breathe out. It’s over. It was easy. I can just wait for an email back.

“’Lo?”

The single syllable sets my skin on fire. I hate him for never enunciating. I hate him for not having a standard “Blooming, how can I help you?” I hate him for picking up at all.

But more than anything, I hate that I can’t move. I’m staring at Mar as she crinkles the notes in her hand.

“Hi, I’m calling on behalf of WeddingsbyAma.” She rushes the words together like we practiced. “I wanted to set up a meeting sometime this week for her newest clients. Can I talk scheduling with you?”

The line is quiet. I can feel my heartbeat in my lips as I press my fingertips to them. Mar checks the screen to make sure he didn’t hang up.

And then—

“Mar.” He says it like a greeting. Like a fact.

My mouth opens. My throat is dry. He’s said one and a half words and I feel like I’m in a trance. The static of the phone mutes the timbre his voice has in real life. The resonance in his chest.

Mar tilts her head back and closes her eyes. She pulls her full lips into a tight line and then says, “No, this is Kelsey!” in a high voice. “I’m calling to set up a client meeting—”

“Mar, put Ama on the phone.”

He says my name like “Emma,” like he used to. Back when it was our joke. Back before I realized it was just the way he slipped the vowel through his lips.

Mar’s eyes are wide and staring at me, but I can’t move. “Okay!” the Kelsey voice says. “I’ll see if she’s free!”

Dropping the phone onto the coffee table—his coffee table—she gesticulates in a panic, mouthing, What do I do?!

I don’t respond. I can’t respond. I stare at the phone. Then Mar takes off her shoes and walks them across the hardwood, like a Foley artist from the 1920s. She leans away from the phone and says, “Ama, call for you.”

She’s reaching for my slippers, ready to create the sound effects of two people walking, when I reach for the phone and say, “Hello.”

He’s quiet for a moment. I think I can hear him breathing.

“What time.”

I swallow involuntarily. I can’t even figure out what he’s asking for a moment.

“They’re free Thursday after four, or Friday all day—”

“Thursday at four.”

The line clicks dead.

I hold the phone to my ear a little longer, wishing for more of his consonants. Hoping for more than a three-word sentence, just like I used to.

I pull the phone away and stare at it. Mar’s phone screen is the two of us at thirteen, Halloween costumes on.

“Are you okay?”

I look up, and Mar has her hands on her cheeks like Munch’s The Scream. Her doe eyes are searching mine.

“Thursday at four,” I say. I stand and take the donut box to the trash. I wash the sugar off my fingers. “I’m gonna shower. Wanna get dinner later?”

I disappear into my bathroom before she can answer. The faucet covers the sound of my sobbing.