Toss the Bride by Jennifer Manske Fenske Read Free Book Online Page A

realize I’m in for my second night in the swamp. A kid steps on my foot. I decide to leave.
    It’s not that Avery wouldn’t marry me. Or that I haven’t, well, you know, hinted. Looked at rings. Threatened in my own way. But Avery, he’s working on some other level. Like the battle of the swamp bottom back there. There’s stuff working down in the depths that no one knows about. And you might think it’s sad and sorry to get hung up on marrying someone, but when you’re not twenty-one anymore and you’re working for a man named Maurice who paid more for his imported dog than you made last year, sad and sorry starts to work itself over pretty good.
    I think about that swamp as I drive to Maurice’s favorite jewelry store. The bride we’re tossing later in the summer is named Isabel, and she wants to give all her bridesmaids platinum I pendants. Subtle nudges that perhaps they might want to receive pendants with their own first initials have gone unheeded. So, here I am, in Barrclere, inspecting and then ordering fifteen I ’s in Gothic script. They will be ready in ten days. Isabel will be thrilled, I tell Maurice into my wristwatch.
    â€œAre you using it?” he screams to me. He thinks the volume is low because the watch is so small.
    â€œYes,” I reply. The saleslady at Barrclere points to me. The other salesgirls stop to look. I feel like Judy Jetson.
    â€œSo Euro. See you tomorrow.”
    I nod and sign off. The time flashes at me: 5:25 P.M. It’s almost time to meet Avery. We’re playing tennis before dinner. He likes to work up an appetite. Before I go to meet his convertible, I order a pendant for myself. I’m in luck; the A ’s are in stock. I wear my purchase outside into the spring air.
    *   *   *
    Tennis is no simple affair at the Lelands’. For one thing, Avery’s father might join us. That’s always tricky because Mrs. Leland told us Mr. Leland feels he is losing his youth, and winning at tennis is one way for him to “pull back the hands of the time-clock,” as she puts it. Mrs. Leland never joins us, even though she played tennis at Vandy and a few trophies up in Nashville have her name on them. Then there’s Avery, a really decent player, and me.
    Avery and I start with a few ground strokes. I enjoy warming up. It’s something about the rhythm of the new, yellow ball bouncing toward me and then away. Occasionally, the rhythm stops and starts when I toss one into the net. Avery rarely makes mistakes. Unless his mind is on something big, he can hit winners by me all day long.
    This is a source of tension between us. “Avery,” I’ll say when he hits a particularly evil shot to my backhand when he knows full well I am recovering from diving for his previous return. “Avery, give me a break. That’s not fair.”
    â€œFair? What’s fair?” he’ll reply without breathing hard.
    This is where I pout and refuse to play anymore. In my mind, an opponent who picked up a racket for the first time two years ago is not to be tortured with a constant volley of winners. Especially when said opponent is the girlfriend.
    But Avery, of the summer tennis camps in some European country and custom-made leather tennis shoes, does not subscribe to my way of thinking. I am reminded of this when a wicked slice drops in front of me and thuds out of my reach. The warm-up is over.
    We play hard for thirty minutes and then relax for a bit at the net. Avery leans over the webbing and gives me a quick kiss. “You seem distracted today. What’s going on?”
    â€œOh, well, you know, it’s the job. I just live for those bridal gals,” I say.
    Avery laughs, showing his pink tongue and white teeth. I smile back, feeling the spring sun on my face.
    â€œI’m thinking about telling the next bride who asks for those tiny autumnal flowers they saw last month in Atlanta