Ade and Harry are getting married. Something to do with Ade’s permanent residency application. Having a legal partner speeds up the process, unhooks it from the pile. 

Weird, Jeremy says, when Fanny tells him. Very straight, he adds.

Well, Fanny counters, they are straight. She points out that Jeremy’s friend Seb recently got married.

That’s different, Jeremy says. Seb, at least, still fucks other people. 

Fanny prepares for the wedding by trimming her hair and shaving her legs. She does both with some resentment, winds up with uneven ends and cuts around her ankles. She buys a new pair of pantyhose and an old dress, baby blue with an empire waist, and tries the outfit on several times after bringing it home. Her legs look good, especially once the cuts have been covered.

In the weeks before the wedding Fanny finds herself wandering towards the bridal shops on Corso Italia, gazing at the enormous white dresses in the windows. When she was nineteen, she thought these dresses were the ugliest thing in the world, gaudy and bright in all the worst ways. She probably walked by the stores with her mother and complained about the trap of femininity, the lengths women will go just to get patriarchally laid, not that she was getting any herself. When she was fifteen she never even noticed the dresses at all, they were just like wallpaper, scenery for faces passing by. Now she thinks they’re kind of nice, hanging there all on their own. 

She tries to imagine what Ade will wear to the wedding. Red was always her colour. One year, Ade showed up to Fanny’s birthday party in a strapless top, ruby heels, and red silk pants that spread straight out from her hips. Fanny had wanted to kick her for looking so good but the impulse passed. They went dancing downtown and Ade with her charm and hips got free shots for the whole group, before getting a little too drunk and trying to arm wrestle the bartenders. After they all sang happy birthday, Ade yelled across the bar that Fanny had the best legs in town and she would murder anyone who disagreed. At the end of the night they smoked weed in Fanny’s kitchen and threw up in the tub. 

The wedding will be in High Park. The cherry blossoms are just past their prime, which means the ground will be littered with the remains of a bloom. Fanny wonders who will give the speeches. Probably Ade’s mom, who has her daughter’s flair for performance and always sings Ade’s name like a song: Adri-aah-na. She’ll have a few drinks and Ade’s dad will give her a stern look, because he’s French, and they don’t tolerate public nonsense. Fanny has never met Harry’s parents but suspects that they are, like him, smart and well-mannered. Fanny always used to tell everyone she thought Harry was boring but really she kind of liked him. He had a way of looking people directly in the eye when he spoke that made him seem even, like he would at least tell you if he was going to screw you. 

In another version of things, probably Fanny would be giving a speech, something a little funny and a little too sentimental, and Ade would get a bit uncomfortable but play along anyway, acting her way through the right response. Later she would pull Fanny aside in the bathroom and kiss her roughly on the cheek, and Fanny would say something like, “your dad’s still a bitch, eh?”

*

Twelve days before the wedding Jeremy asks what Fanny is getting Ade. Shit, Fanny says. I have to get her something? 

Well, normally, yes, but it’s kind of a fake marriage isn’t it? So maybe you don’t have to.

Don’t we think all marriages are fake, anyway? Fanny asks.

Right, whoops, Jeremy says. He is looking forward to the wedding. He has missed Ade since Fanny stopped having her around and has even missed Harry, who is better conversation than he seems. He wonders whether he should bring a date other than Fanny but understands that she probably needs him there, and if he brings someone else she’ll have to try to find someone else, which is not her strongest skill. 

Jeremy slept with Ade, once. It was in their first year of university, when they were both flirting with bisexuality. They were at a terrible club on King Street that Jeremy promised he would never return to and mostly doesn’t, except for when he feels like pretending he’s getting an MBA. Ade was wearing black lipstick and kept doing a kind of deep squat while she was dancing, which turned Jeremy on. The sex was ok, they laughed about it later, as good friends should when they find themselves fucking. Jeremy is still attracted to women sometimes, especially when out and dancing and drunk, but rarely acts on it.  

That was before there was Ade and Harry, before there was even really Ade and Fanny. Before the girls had dreams of driving across the country, moving to L.A., buying a food truck like Jon Favreau in Chef. And before Jeremy found himself unable, for whatever reason, to get through the second semester of his third year, unable to contemplate doing laundry or owning furniture or painting a wall for one fucking second without bursting into tears, before the heavy doses of Zoloft made it possible to sleep beside other people again. Now he sells imported paper in Yorkville and is saving up to someday move out of his dad’s basement. The concept of someday feels good, though so does the basement. 

He thinks about inviting Luke to the wedding. They’ve been seeing each other for a month, which is usually when Jeremy pretends to get a stomachache and stops calling back. But Luke has good eyes and gave Jeremy a good book, a Miriam Toews novel that Jeremy kept beside him in bed for a week straight, until he spilled honey on the cover. 

Jeremy is thinking about the book on a smoke break at work when he gets a text from Ade. We’re wondering if ur bringing a +1? Jeremy’s eyes linger on the we and he stifles the desire to roll his eyes or open Grindr. Instead he steps on his cigarette, tells Ade that he’s not bringing anyone and heads back to the store, to pick out some paper for Luke.

*

Six days before the wedding, Fanny goes gift shopping. She asks her mom what to get and Rachel, who has never particularly liked Ade or weddings, suggests she buy a colander and a bong. Fanny considers the bong, and also thinks about giving Ade back her copy of I Love Dick, but the joke might not track.

Fanny starts on Queen Street. Everything is too tacky or too nice. She traipses in and out of boutiques, cursing the City of Toronto’s devotion to condos and clichés. At a store dedicated entirely to cocktails and bitters she picks up a set of shot glasses shaped like chickens. Ade might like them, or she might not. Fanny keeps moving. Ade was always better at this, showing her love through purchases and pronouncements. One year she showed up to Fanny’s family Hanukkah with gifts for everyone, and a warm batch of rugelach that dominated conversation. Rachel had pursed her lips by the stove.   

As Fanny heads east the boutiques become chains. She peeks into Aritzia and Black Market and finds nothing to fit the mood. Her boss texts, asking if she can pick up a shift at the restaurant tonight even though Fanny has booked the day off. Sure, she answers, just have to finish something downtown.

In their last year of university, when they were living together and Ade was dating Ethan who made films and had very firm thighs, Fanny thought she had nailed a gift. For Ade’s birthday she bought a tub of ice cream and a bouquet of flowers and in the flowers put a little poem written on the back of a postcard, with a few lines about home as a pool. When she handed the flowers and the poem and the tub to Ade after dinner, Ade gathered them all in one arm, keeping the other behind her back. She scanned the poem silently. The ice cream was already melting, which admittedly, Fanny had not thought through. Thank you, Ade said finally, though she was already turning back to the party. 

By now, Fanny has walked all the way to the Eaton Centre. She wanders the mall for half an hour, gets herself some frozen yogurt, and buys a colander. As she puts the present in her bag, she considers for a second the possibility of someone buying a colander for her and Ade, imagines a one-bedroom in L.A., a dog or a cat on a windowsill, a bong on a kitchen table. She can’t quite get the dimensions of it, has never been much of a visual thinker. The impulse passes.  

They did talk about it once, after graduation. Ade’s student visa was running out and she had started telling people she was going to marry Fanny, for love and paperwork. Over drinks, Fanny asked when Ade was planning to propose, and if she did really love her back. Ade replied that she felt certain things when she said them but not the morning after. Also, she said, I’m pretty sure I’m straight. She met Harry that summer at an acting class and Fanny moved out in the fall.

*

On the day of the wedding, they both get up early. Jeremy steams his jacket in his father’s basement and Fanny combs her hair for the first time all year. When it’s combed, the ends are more obviously uneven, but she doesn’t mind it. Jeremy eats a slice of toast before his morning smoke and shit. 

Fanny puts on her tights, then her dress, then her favourite plum lipstick. She smacks her lips in the mirror and blows herself a kiss. And then, slowly, carefully, she wipes the lipstick off with her wrist, pulls the dress back over her head, and gets underneath her covers. When Jeremy arrives he finds her curled up in bed, scrolling on her phone. 

Sorry, Fanny says. 

What a waste, Jeremy answers, resting his hand on her shoulder. Should we get lunch?
Fanny nods and puts the phone down. She pulls on some shorts and Jeremy takes off his jacket. They step out into the sun looking for good sandwiches, while half an hour west Ade says her vows and puts a ring on her finger, in an olive green suit that brings out her eyes. 

Rosie Long Decter is a writer and musician based in Montreal. Her work has appeared in The New Quarterly, Peach Mag, Maisonneuve, THIS, Herizons, In the Mood, and elsewhere. She is pursuing an MA in Media Studies at Concordia University and also performs around town with her band Bodywash.

Image by Charisse Kenion @charissek