Practice Makes Perfect: A Novel

My sisters are finally home from their trip, and tonight is Amelia’s bachelorette party at our house. She didn’t want to go out and party—surprise, surprise—she wanted to stay in and watch an Audrey Hepburn movie. We still made her wear a sash and a veil, and we hung spicy lingerie all over the room. Oh, and we’re all wearing penis necklaces. So that’s fun.

The wedding is only two days away. All the details are finalized, and Amelia’s dress came back from the seamstress today and it fits like a glove. Everyone seems to be remarkably calm about the impending nuptials. Not me. Because what it all means is that in three days, Will is going to be gone from my life for good.

I’m trying with all my might to pay attention to my sister’s story about how in Mexico a male teacher got wildly drunk and went streaking down the beach and wasn’t found until an hour before their flight the next day, butt naked on the beach, rear end pointed up to the sky, but my mind can’t seem to stay put. Instead, it’s willing my phone to light up with a text message from a bodyguard.

“And I didn’t get to see it, but, apparently, his white ass was fried like a lobster!” Maddie winces and looks at me expectantly. When I smile, pretending I’m actually engaged in her story, she frowns. “You’re not going to pull out the tally book?”

“Huh? For what?”

“For saying ass,” says Maddie with a duh expression.

“You get a freebie tonight.”

All three women gasp.

“Something is wrong with you. You haven’t recovered from your cold yet. Are you dying?” says Emily with a slight laugh, only 10 percent kidding but trying to convince us she’s not 90 percent worried.

“I’m fine, Em. Just distracted.” I unconsciously look down at my phone.

They all stare at me expectantly. “Distracted about…”

I look at them. “Stuff.”

Maddie laughs. Emily groans.

“I swear you’re harder to get information from than Noah,” Amelia says with an affectionate smile.

I shrug, thinking there’s only one person in this world that I’ve ever felt like telling everything to. Great, and now I’m sad. I’m never sad. I have this uncanny ability to see the positive in most situations, but I don’t see it now. I have this sinking feeling that Will is gone from me forever—just as I knew from the beginning he would be. This whole situation has turned me into an angsty pessimist! How dare it!

“You’ve been over here huffing and puffing all night and scowling down at your phone like it pinched Grandma,” she says, adjusting her body to face me on the couch.

“Speaking of Grandma, how was she when you guys went to visit her today?” I ask my sisters, knowing they went first thing when they got back in town this morning.

Madison throws a pillow at my face. “No freaking way are you distracting us that easily. Grandma was fine—now what’s wrong with you, my angelic little buttercup? Your petals are drooping.”

Knowing Maddie usually speaks in inappropriate innuendo, I look down at my chest.

“I’m not talking about your boobs, Annie. Did something happen with Will?” Madison jumps on the couch beside me so she can fix me with a closer-than-comfortable stare.

“Did he hurt you? That jerk, I’ll wax him from head to toe!” says Emily, standing from her chair.

“Sit down, Emily. He didn’t hurt me.”

Emily folds her arms. “I’ll only sit if you tell me exactly what he did to you and why it’s making you wilt like a sunflower without water.”

“So many flower analogies today.”

Madison nudges me. “Is it that he wanted to take your lessons to the next level and have sex? Don’t feel bad for waiting until marriage, though—everyone knows it comes with the territory of dating Angel Annie. Stick to your rules because you’re going to have to put in a good word with the Almighty to get us into heaven with you! Heaven does accept plus-ones, right?”

I’m immediately angry. It’s not a gentle movement on the meter from green to yellow to red. It’s calm to livid in one second flat. At first, I try to swallow my feelings so I don’t upset anyone, but then I hear Mabel’s voice in my head: Tell your sisters the truth.

“Maddie, I need you to stop saying things like that. It’s so frustrating to me.”

Madison’s head tips back a little, and her eyes widen. Everyone else seems too stunned to speak. That’s fine because I have more than enough to say right now. “And please, I’m begging you to stop calling me Angel Annie. I hate it. I’ve hated it forever. I know you don’t mean it as a bad thing—but it feels like one. It puts me in this suffocating little box that I can’t climb out of.”

“Annie…where is this coming from all of a sudden?” asks Emily, looking startled.

I sigh and then, yep, the tears finally catch up to my anger. “It’s coming from years and years of swallowed feelings that I was too afraid to voice. And that’s my fault. I haven’t been truthful with you guys at all—and now I feel like you don’t even know me.”

“That can’t be true,” Maddie says, shaking her head and trying to catch up.

“It is—and I’ll prove it. Will was actually acting as my dating coach because I did go out with Hot Bank Teller, and he bailed in the middle of the date because I was so boring.”

Emily gets angry creases between her eyes. “That son of—”

I hold up a hand in her direction. “But it’s not about him. What I realized is that I have been boring. I’ve been hiding so much of myself all this time to fit into the mold I accidentally made as a kid. I never really thought I was affected by the deaths of Mom and Dad like you guys were, but it turns out that my perfectionism has been one big coping mechanism. I never wanted to rock the boat or add more hurt or stress to anyone’s lives, so I became this always-sunny version of myself, which…is killing me.”

Tears start rolling down my cheeks now and instead of getting angry at me, Maddie tips forward and takes my hand. She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes in a go-ahead sort of way.

“Y’all, I hate the No Swear Notebook. I loathe that thing. But I keep it up for you guys because it seemed important to you.” I raise and lower my shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t even remember how it started! But truthfully, I could care less whether you guys curse or not. Oh! And yeah, it’s true—I don’t like casual sex. I’m an emotional person and I’ll need an emotional connection before I sleep with someone. And I really need for you guys to stop turning that into a punch line.”

“We didn’t make it a punch line! Or…not intentionally,” Emily says defensively.

“It always felt like one, though. Every time you guys call me sweet or refer to me as a cherub or someone who never makes mistakes—it feels like you’re saying it in a belittling way.”

“Okay—I do hear you, but roasting each other is what we do! It’s how we show our love.”

“And I understand that too. But you can’t only refer to those aspects of me in a joke. You need to spread the teasing around. Make fun of my stinky feet, or that I snore at night, or some other random shit. Don’t always go after my personality, because it starts to make it feel like a fault in me.”

Maddie looks at Emily. “Did she just say shit?”

“I think she did.”

I’m on a roll now, though. My adrenaline is pumping so hard I could walk outside and lift this house above my head. I could crack it down the middle with my bare hands. “And that’s not all!” I say like an overexuberant infomercial host.

I dart from the room and return, pushing my box of romance novels. “I’m a romance reader,” I say firmly, like this is the biggest reveal of all. “And sexy pirate romances are my favorite. I have fantasies of men in buckskin breeches wearing an earring and making love to me on the helm of a ship! But more important, I have fantasies of Will Griffin being the pirate to do it! And I’ve accidentally fallen in love with him and he’s leaving in three days and he’s never going to look back and now I’ve probably ruined my relationship with you guys too—and I’m so sorry.”

I collapse into a heap on the floor now. Putting my hands over my face and crying into my hands. I’ve never been this dramatic in my entire life, and I’m sure that tomorrow I’ll feel embarrassed about it. But for tonight, I just need to be authentically me. Messy embarrassing emotions and all. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been honest with you guys. I just didn’t know how. And now…”

Suddenly I feel bodies near me and arms wrapping around me.

“Shh, Annie! It’s okay!” Maddie says with her face pressing into my neck so she can hug me tighter.

“We love you,” Emily adds, brushing my hair back away from my face like the affectionate mother hen she is. “Everything about you. I’m so sorry you felt like you couldn’t be honest with us or that we were making fun of how kind and sweet you are. I’m sorry we made you feel like that’s the only version you could be of yourself around us.”

Amelia is here too. “And I’m sorry that I’ve encouraged your constant sunniness. I—more than anyone—should have seen the signs that you were worn-out from always having to be perfect, but I didn’t see it.”

We are all four sobbing now. None of us really sound coherent, and yet we all understand one another perfectly.

“No, it’s okay,” I say to Amelia while reaching up and removing her penis necklace that’s poking me in the eye. “It’s no one’s fault.”

After a minute, Maddie stands up. “Because we’re all being honest here, I have a few things to say too.” She takes a breath. “I haven’t been totally honest with you guys either. I applied to The Culinary Institute of America, and…I got in. I enrolled for this upcoming fall semester, and I’m going.” She levels a firm look at Emily. “I’m going no matter what anyone has to say about it.”

There’s so much silence. I don’t think anyone is even breathing. We’re just absorbing.

And then…

“Finally!” we all say in unison before tackling Madison to the ground.

“Maddie! I’m so happy for you!” I say, kissing Maddie’s cheek until it smooshes up.

“I hate you for leaving us,” says Emily, “but I’m so happy that you are finally following your dreams.”

“Does this mean you’re not mad at me?” Maddie asks through her laughter.

I pull back and frown lightly. “Why would we be mad at you?”

She shrugs. “Why would I be mad at you for asking me not to call you Angel Annie anymore?”

“Touché.”

“But actually—I have one more secret too. I think you’re going to like this one, though.” Maddie disappears into her room and comes back out holding…a box. She sets it next to mine and then tells me to look inside.

I open the flap and then laugh so loudly when I see a pile of bodice-ripping romances.

She grins. “I’m more into dukes and earls than pirates, though.”

I press my hand to my heart. “You like men with Big Duke Energy too?”

“Oh yeah. I also have a Bookstagram account. It’s how I actually learned about the term stern brunch daddy.”

Emily then groans beside me and stands. “Fine. If we’re all doing this, I don’t want to be left out.”

Want to take a guess what she goes and gets? Her own box. And as we all dissolve with laughter pulling her little mass-market paperbacks from their hiding place, we learn that Emily has a major thing for Scottish romances.

Amelia pouts because she doesn’t live here and doesn’t have a box of books. We tell her she can still be a part of our group, though, because we’ll always have Audrey. She does, however, scoop up an armload of books from each of our boxes and sets them by the door to take home.

It’s a good night and I feel a thousand times lighter. Mabel was right, honesty is a gift, and one I wish I had shared with my sisters sooner. Then again, maybe everything is happening in its own perfectly messy timing.

After sitting together on the floor, penis necklaces around our necks and unpacking a lot of the things I admitted to them—we also talk about our parents and how I feel left out from their memories. Emily admitted that it’s hard for her to talk about them, but she would try to do better.

And then just when I thought I was going to get away from this night without anyone being mad at me, Maddie pinches me under the arm.

“Ow!” I say, ripping my arm away from her.

“That was for not telling us about John and all the shitty stuff he said to you!”

“It was all too embarrassing,” I say, shooting my gaze to the ground. “Now more than ever because I’m head over heels for Will, and he’s already moved on before he’s even left Rome. I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”

That’s when I notice all of the ladies sharing a look. A meaningful someone’s-gotta-tell-her look.

“What? What is it?” I ask, feeling slightly frantic now.

My sisters look to Amelia to explain. “Let me start by saying, he’s okay—”

She no sooner gets the words out than I shoot to my feet. “What happened to him?!”

“I didn’t tell you sooner because he made me promise not to say anything until most of the bruising has healed, so it wouldn’t scare you.”

“Oh my God, bruising?!” I’m about to cry again. Is Will almost dead? Images of him hooked up to a sad beeping machine in the hospital plays in my mind.

“There was a superfan who made it onto the premises the other day. He hopped the gate and then sprinted up toward the house because he really wanted me to have a pair of his blue underwear to carry with me down the aisle as my something borrowed and something blue.”

“Thoughtful of him,” Maddie interjects.

“Will had to take him down, and the guy turned out to be really aggressive for someone wearing a T-shirt with my face all over it.” I feel like I’m going to pass out. “Anyway, Will got hold of the situation pretty quickly, but the guy managed to get a few good hits in before that. But when Will tackled him onto the gravel driveway, his shoulder landed on a sharp rock and it made a big gash—” She cuts off as I whirl around and take off toward the door, grab my keys, and slam the door behind me on my way out.