Slumber Party

by Anna Luciano

         “I’m sorry… what?”

        “Jenni’s getting married in May.”

        “You can’t be serious, Cami. This can’t be happening.”

        “Well she’s been engaged for a while now…”

        “Yeah, but that’s not the same thing as actually setting the date!”

        “Anna, what did you think would happen?”

        “I dunno…. I guess I just thought it would take longer. We’re only 23!”

        “Well, she’ll be 24 when it happens. And it’ll be fun! Are you going to come out for it?”

        “Of course! I’ll start checking out flights tomorrow.”

        And so, 5 months later, I found myself sitting in a comfy JetBlue seat as I winged my way from Boston to California to see one of my oldest friends getting married. Married. I channel surfed around the seatback TV for a while, eventually settling on watching Dudley Moore romance Liza Minelli in “Arthur.” I couldn’t keep myself distracted for long though, and found myself thinking back over my friendship with Jenni

        On my first day of high school, I was more than a little bit nervous. Not only was I switching from a public middle school to a private, Catholic high school, I was going in not knowing anyone. On top of this, since I lived two towns over from the school, I had to take a public bus to get there. Gross.

        When I got to the bus stop, I was relieved to see other kids wearing the school uniform – at least I wasn’t going to be the only student on the bus. Unfortunately, most of them seemed to know each other already, and were busily comparing schedules and catching up after the (too short) summer. I stood off to the side, pretending that I didn’t care that I was alone, and wondered who on earth I’d sit next to on the bus. I sure wasn’t going to sit next to an adult! The bus came, and I waited until everyone else boarded, figuring at least one of the others would end up sitting by themselves. I climbed aboard, my eyes scanning seats frantically as I walked down the aisle. After what seemed like an eternity, I saw a girl in a plaid skirt sitting alone and asked if I could sit with her. She smiled and nodded, and we introduced ourselves. Her name was Jenni, and she became my first friend in high school. Four years later, she was one of my best.

        God, we’ve known each other for ten years now. Ten years! I can’t believe she’s getting married… she was always so independent and anti-marriage. Okay, not anti-marriage exactly, but she was never that excited about it either. And I definitely never expected to attend anyone’s marriage before we were 25…jeez, now everything is going to be different…

        My thoughts trailed off as I fell asleep. I woke up as my ears popped on the descent into Long Beach, and anticipated a short wait before Cami, our other best friend from high school, arrived to pick me up. She’d never been on time before, so I was shocked to see her next to the baggage carousel.

        “Well this is a first!” I joked as she helped me throw my bags in the car.

        “I know! I was so worried about the traffic getting here from Los Angeles that I actually left on time!”

        “Or you drove like a bat out of hell to get here.”

        “Well…maybe. Do you want to go to In ‘n Out to get some burgers?”

        “Don’t I always? I miss them SO much when I’m in Boston.”

        And so, we cruised down the freeway, heading for some Double-Doubles with cheese, chocolate shakes, and fun. Since our boyfriends were unable to make it to the wedding, Cami and I were going with each other. But the wedding was a whole day away…and that night, we had a slumber party.

        Jenni’s maid-of-honor had decided to throw a pre-wedding slumber party for all of the girls – the bridesmaids, a couple of college friends, some relatives, Cami, and me. Since the groom couldn’t see the bride before the wedding, he was staying at his best-man’s house. We had their condo all to ourselves. Most of the other girls were coming from the rehearsal dinner, but since Cami and I weren’t in the wedding, we planned on getting to Jenni’s place around 8. Everyone was told to bring something – some of the girls brought movies, others brought food. We were responsible for bringing champagne – after all, you can’t celebrate a wedding without the bubbly, right?

        We decided to go to Cost Plus World Market, a fabulous store with an eclectic mix of items from around the world, to get the champagne. I spent some time looking at toys to bring to the party, and tried to convince Cami that a piñata was a good idea. She managed to talk me out of it before we wandered over to the champagne section. The selection was staggering, and we weren’t exactly experts, so we wandered around for a while, judging bottles by their labels. Eventually, we decided to get a few bottles of Veuve Clicquot – we knew it had a good reputation, and wanted to get nice champagne for this momentous occasion. No Korbel tonight.

        After a little bit of shopping, we went back to Cami’s place to get our stuff together for the party and start chilling the champagne. Since we didn’t have a proper champagne pail, we ended up putting the champagne in a mopping bucket filled with ice – an entertaining mix of glamour and grunge.

        We climbed in the car to head over to the bride’s around 8:30 – obviously we were running late – with me holding the mop bucket between my feet to keep it steady. Half an hour later, we parked the car and starting wandering cluelessly around the neighborhood as Cami tried to remember which apartment was Jenni’s. I was carrying the bucket of bubbly, and with the melting ice sloshing around the bottles, it was not only heavy, but messy. When we finally made it in – twenty minutes later – I had damp pants and the other girls had already been through a couple bottles of champagne. Cami and I grabbed some misfit wineglasses to join in. We struggled with the uncorking for a minute, and laughed as it finally popped open. We filled our glasses, toasted Jenni, and took our first sips.

        I was done for.

        Seriously.

        Nothing that good had ever passed through my lips before. It was sweet, but not sugary, dry without making me wince. And light and airy and powerful and bubbly and sparkly - everything that champagne should be.

        I fell in love.

        We joined all the girls in the living room, where they were in the middle of a wedding movie marathon. They had already watched “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” and were now in the middle of Steve Martin’s “Father of the Bride.” There were cookies, chips, and nuts strewn across the coffee table, as well as a little table-top s’mores maker. Champagne and s’mores go remarkably well together. We talked and laughed, interrupting the party every once in a while to watch a scene in the movie. Jenni, Cami, and I reminisced about our high school crushes, and laughed as Jenni showed off some of my phenomenal – and dorky – high school mix-tapes. It was just like the slumber parties I’d been to when I was eleven… but with different drinks.

        I heard new stories about Jenni’s college experience, including the story of how she first got involved with her husband-to-be. The maid of honor recounted the night that Jenni had been out with him – just as friends, she thought. But when Jenni came flying through the door afterwards, all she managed to say before she dropped to the ground laughing hysterically was, “He just dropped me off… and he tried to kiss me!” Everyone in the room started laughing, teasing Jenni about her initial doubts. I continually refilled my glass, and the bubbles in the champagne seemed to rise directly to my head, tickling the back of my throat and nose.

        “Father of the Bride” ended, and “Love Actually” slid into the DVD player. Jenni and her bridesmaids told the rest of us about the ceremony and location, and we looked through a photo album documenting the events leading up to the big day. We oohed and ahhed over pictures of the dresses and admired her ring for a while. Jenni didn’t seem nervous at all; a fact that kept throwing me off balance. How could you not be nervous? While thinking about this, I knocked over my glass of champagne – thankfully not ruining the scrapbook. Luckily for me, someone refilled my glass pretty quickly.

        At some point, one of the girls asked me if I’d ever been involved with Jenni’s younger brother. With the bubbles swirling around my head, it took me a minute to process the question. I finally replied, with a “that’s crazy” look on my face, “Nooo. Why would you ask that?” When a couple of the girls said, “We just heard that you had….” I almost had a heart attack as I emphatically denied it. “NO! He was in junior high – that’s so gross!” Everyone started laughing at me, and I started harassing them to tell me who had said that. I think that I called the stories vicious lies. Finally, someone volunteered, “Well… At dinner tonight, he said that you had ‘shown him the ways’ or something like that. So we all figured….” I don’t know if it was the situation or my continued denials (or the fact that I was slightly slurring) that made everyone laugh at me, but eventually I let it go.

        Usually, when I get drunk, things get fuzzy. But champagne drunk is different – it’s not fuzzy, it’s fizzy. Bubbly. Bibbly? When you’re champagne drunk, there can’t be any depression or sadness, because champagne is a joyful drink. Champagne drunk keeps your spirits up and your eyes open – there’s no nodding off when you have a head full of bubbles. Is it any wonder that champagne drunk is my favorite kind of drunk?

        Being in this state got me over my how can one of my friends be getting married if we’re not really grown-ups yet funk, and made me get into the excitement of the occasion. By getting married, Jenni was breaking new ground, blazing a new trail. I’m not kidding myself; I know I’m not even close to being mature enough to tie the knot. But as I left the party, I realized that just because I couldn’t imagine being married at our age, didn’t mean that other people couldn’t. Clearly Jenni had matured beyond me. And at the wedding the next day, seeing her pulse with happiness as we celebrated with more champagne, I regained my peace of mind. After all, isn’t happiness the point?

        But maybe it was the champagne.

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Anna Luciano grew up in Southern California, before traveling across country to attend Providence College.  After graduating, she moved to Boston, where she has been living for the past few years.  While she loves Boston, she will always be a California girl at heart. You can visit her online at http://luciano1380.blogspot.com.