Told my maid of honor (Melanie) that I wanted my bachelorette to be an out of town weekend, preferably next to the beach with some nightlife. That was all I asked for, pretty simple and straightforward, or so I thought.
Melanie said she’ll try to make it happen, and after three months, when I asked her how the planning was going, she told me she was having a hard time getting PTO. I asked her how that could be when she had months to get those PTOs? But instead of answering my question, she said she would rather just do a night out on town.
It was a huge disappointment but what I could do. I had spent almost a thousand dollars on Melanie’s bachelorette two years ago, a four day “weekend” in Charleston (not a cheap place) because that’s what she asked for. I almost got fired from my job because I had used up all my PTOs to travel for her bridal shower and dress appointments, and that’s not counting the bach and the wedding itself.
And I broke a finger helping her with centerpieces and decorations. I loved that girl, she was my bestie, my ride-or-die, and for her to be like “oh I can’t get PTO” for my bach? That’s so bullshit.
I know friendships aren’t tit for tat, but I couldn’t help feeling bitter. I seriously planned on telling Melanie I didn’t want the bach anymore. But then I knew Edmund my fiance (whose amazing friends were taking him to Vegas for FOUR days) would ask me why I wasn’t getting a bachelorette.
Edmund had about a million friends who would do anything for him, as he never failed to remind me. He’s a great guy otherwise but he also had this high school mentality towards life. He could make me feel like such a loser sometimes.
So I went, and it was pathetic. There were only the two of us, me and Melanie. She bought me a couple of round of drinks, I got drunk, and we went back to my house for some pizza.
Edmund too had just gotten back from game night with some coworkers. As I went to wash my face, I heard Melanie make small talk with him and I heard them laughing. She was making more of an effort with him than she had made with me on my own bachelorette party.
It was the kind of thing that happened all the time. People would be preoccupied and sullen with me, but the minute Edmund appeared on the scene, they came alive. It was nothing personal, Edmund just had that effect on people, but at that moment, on that night, it stung.
Anyway, the week after my (so called) bachelorette, Edmund was going to Vegas with his TEN groomsmen for his bachelor party. They all chipped in for him to fly first class and he didn’t have to pay a dime for his accommodations, which was at one of the nicest hotels on the strip.
Edmund couldn’t stop talking about all the stuff the guys were doing for him and how grateful he was to have them as friends. Like I’m happy he’s happy, but coming on the heels of my pathetic little bachelorette, I wished he would shut up. He could be SO annoying sometimes. I was so relieved when he finally left for Vegas.
And now here comes the kicker. Melanie’s husband James was Edmund’s best man. The first night Edmund was in Vegas, he texted me and said he was having a great time. But, he said, he didn’t know that Melanie was going to be there too. He and James were going to share a hotel room, but Melanie insisted on staying with James, so Edmund now had to room up with another groomsmen.
So at least now I knew why Melanie couldn’t save her PTOs for my bachelorette. She had planned on going to Vegas with the boys. SIGH.
Friday night, Edmund told me Melanie was tagging along to their every single activity, basically super glued to James’ side and acting extremely irrationally whenever approached by anything remotely female.
Edmund was getting super annoyed, and he said James was beyond pissed. He told Edmund Melanie could be a lot sometimes, and he tried to apologize for what Melanie was doing. He would have said more but Melanie came up to them. Edmund said he and James didn’t have ten whole seconds alone together the entire trip.
By Saturday all the groomsmen were sick and tired of Melanie glowering menacingly at anything with breasts who dared to walk within five feet of her husband. The groomsmen weren’t there to be raunchy, but Melanie made it seem like they would all rush into the nearest brothel the moment she took her eyes off of them.
Sunday morning, Edmund told me shit hit the fan, bad. He was going to James (and Melanie’s) room when he heard James talking inside. He heard him shouting but couldn’t catch the exact words. Edmund knocked and the door opened so fast it was like James had been standing at the door the entire time. Edmund said he looked like he was going to kill somebody.
Edmund tried to play it off like everything was fine, but James was in a trance or something. He was staring at Edmund and his hands were gripping the door so hard the knuckles were white.
Edmund was seriously concerned about Melanie now. He didn’t think James would hurt her, but he felt like he had to make sure. So it was a huge relief to him when Melanie came up behind James, very calm, very much in control like. She put her hand on James’ arm and pulled him back into the room and closed the door in Edmund’s face.
*
While all this was going down in Vegas at Edmund’s bachelor’s party, I start hearing from my three other bridesmaids that Melanie had asked EACH of them to venmo her $700 for my bachelorette trip. But then Melanie had gone radio silent after they had sent the money and now they were wondering what the plans were exactly. And also they were hearing from their SOs (some of whom were Edmund’s groomsmen) that Edmund had told them I had already had my bachelorette?
I told them I did not know about the money, and that it was true Melanie had already threw me the bachelorette, which was just the two of us going out to drink. I told them as far as I knew there was nothing else getting planned from Melanie’s end.
Trust that I struggled to give Melanie the benefit of the doubt. There was the slight possibility Melanie had a surprise bach planned for me down the line. But after everything that’s happened I doubted it.
*
Sunday afternoon, I called Edmund to let him know I was coming to Vegas. I couldn’t reach him, which wouldn’t be concerning under normal circumstances, but I had a weird feeling about literally everything now. I called James and then Melanie but they weren’t answering either. I called one of the other groomsmen, and he told me he hadn’t seen Edmund since Sunday morning.
*
I got to Vegas on the last flight out and took a taxi to the casino/hotel where they were staying.
The groomsman Edmund was sharing a room with told me where James and Melanie’s room was. It was one of the penthouse suites (originally James had planned to share with Edmund). I went there and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I counted to five and knocked again. I knew in my heart there was no one in there but I didn’t know what else to do. When James answered the door, he looked as shocked to see me as I was to see him.
I asked him if he had seen Edmund, and he said no, and that he was actually wondering if I had seen Edmund.
“Where’s Melanie?” I asked him.
“Haven’t seen her either,” he said.
After a little pause, he said: “The last time I saw her, she was with Edmund.”
My stomach dropped. “Are you saying the last time you saw them, they were together?”
James’ face underwent a subtle change, as if he had just realized what I just realized.
He pulled me inside the room saying, “We have to talk.”
I felt like I was going to start crying. Melanie was beautiful and outgoing, and it was only natural she and Edmund would be attracted to each other. Whenever I saw them together, I always thought to myself how strange it was that Edmund was with me instead of her.
But Melanie was also my best friend, and I had never imagined that she would betray me.
James put his arms around me, and I leaned into his embrace, tears running down my face. I was bawling by now with my face mashed into his chest. It wasn’t just Edmund and Melanie running off together anymore, it was everything that was wrong with my life.
But even as I was bawling my eyes out because my best friend had ran off with my fiance, a superficial part of me was marveling at how absolutely posh this hotel room was. It was a level of luxury I had only seen on google images.
Which was why I noticed the stain on the floor next to the bed, as if somebody had spilled a cup of water there. The stain was so out of place in all that over the top luxuriousness that it was screaming to be noticed. It seemed very wrong to me, but I didn’t know why.
James’ arms tightened around me as he nuzzled the top of my head. He held me so hard that I could hardly breathe. And then he started massaging my back, crossing the not so subtle line between consoling and creeping. James was the type to hit on everything that moves. He was a shit human being and Melanie deserved so much better. I didn’t blame her for leaving him, but did it have to be with my fiance?
I told him to stop and he backed off pretty quickly. But I didn’t like the way he kept looking at me, as if I was a thing instead of a person. It gave me the creeps. So I let my hair down so he couldn’t see my face or where I was looking. And as I grilled him on the events of the last couple of days in as normal a tone of voice as I could muster, another part of my mind kept getting drawn back to the stain on the carpet.
Mind you it wasn’t anything special. It was just a water stain. But in my frame of mind, that stain came to symbolize all the sinister forces in the universe that were conspiring to ruin my life.
And as the minutes passed, I noticed, or imagined that I noticed, that the stain had gotten slightly bigger.
I didn’t know what I was frightened of, but I was more scared than I had ever been in my life. And the whole time my mouth was still on autopilot going on and on about Melanie and Edmund running off together. James would grunt now and then, but he was obviously bored of the subject.
Finally I told him I needed to get drunk and asked him to go with me to the bar downstairs.
*
As we were leaving the room, I saw Edmund coming down from the other end of the hall towards us. It was a long hallway and James hadn’t seen him yet. As the door closed behind us, I put my hands in James’ pant pockets where I saw him put the room card key while whispering into his ear what I wanted him to do to me that night. James was such a freak about sex that it made him stupid sometimes.
The moment the door closed and I had the card key so James couldn’t get back into the room, I ran towards Edmund, who was now also running towards me. I had no idea why I was running and I didn’t stop to ask myself why. I ran as if for my life. I didn’t look back but I could feel James behind me. Just as his hand grabbed onto a chunk of my hair, I took a sort of flying leap into Edmund’s arms.
As Edmund pushed me away from James’ path, I saw the knife in James’ hands as he came for Edmund. There was the sound of a shot, which in an enclosed hallway is simply deafening. What followed was the total silence one typically only experiences under water. James collapsed like a puppet whose master had let go of the strings. I looked behind him and saw Melanie standing there with a gun in her hand.
There was blood on her face and her hair. Her clothes were torn and she was covered in bruises all over her body.
She put the gun carefully on the floor and collapsed into my arms.
*
Below is what Melanie and Edmund told me happened during the bachelor party and the months leading up to it. I hope it makes sense…
James had been unemployed for the last six months, and Melanie said he blamed Edmund. James and Edmund used to work for the same company until James was laid off, and Edmund got promoted to James’ old position. Somehow or the other, James convinced himself that he had lost his job because of Edmund.
Melanie knew something was off when James emptied out their joint account to pay for Edmund’s bachelor’s party. So she decided to use her PTOs to go to Vegas and keep an eye on James. Because she had barely any money left, she decided to ask my bridesmaids to venmo her cash for an out of town bachelorette party which she pretended to still be planning.
In Vegas, Melanie took on the role of the toxic jealous partner so James wouldn’t guess her real reason for being there. By the third day, James’ frustration had reached boiling point. He would rant non-stop to her about how Edmund was a backstabbing bitch who ruined his life. Melanie tried to talk him down but James wasn’t having it. She still didn’t know what James had in mind. She thought he might just be letting off steam, and maybe she was the paranoid and delusional one.
But then she found a gun in their hotel room.
She knew she couldn’t keep him away from Edmund forever, so she told Edmund everything and warned him to stay away from James. Edmund said he didn’t know whether to believe her or not. To him, it all sounded like crazy talk. Even Melanie herself wasn’t sure, and she agreed with Edmund that James might have had the gun for legitimate reasons.
To appease Melanie, Edmund agreed to go on a trip to the desert surrounding Vegas with another groomsman. Melanie told them to keep the trip a secret from the other groomsmen so James wouldn’t find out. This was Sunday afternoon, and there was no cell phone connection in the desert where they went, so I couldn’t reach Edmund when I called him.
When James couldn’t find Edmund, he figured out that Melanie had tipped him off and that her whole reason for coming to Vegas was to stop him from hurting Edmund. In his rage, he started hitting her. She lost consciousness.
When I knocked on the door, he must have pushed her under the bed and then answered the door. He had probably hoped or expected it would be Edmund.
In the meantime, while they were in the desert, Edmund’s groomsman Kevin let it slip that he was surprised James went all out like this for his bachelor’s, so he guessed James must not be pissed at him anymore. Edmund got the whole story out of Kevin and it matched what Melanie had told him, that James blamed him for losing his job.
Edmund knew then that Melanie was right, and he guessed (correctly) that Melanie herself would now be in danger. He drove back to the hotel and arrived there just as James and I came out of the room into the hallway.
That stain I saw next to the bed? Melanie had peed while she was passed out. And then she had peed again, causing the stain to grow larger. When I got James out of the room, Melanie had regained consciousness and knew she had to find James and stop him. She got the gun he had left in the hotel room, and shot him just as he was attacking Edmund with the knife.
*
Melanie said she would pay the bridesmaids back, but Edmund and I insisted we would have that covered. It was the least we could do for her.
I made Melanie move in with Edmund and me because she could no longer afford the mortgage on her salary alone. James had also ran up various credit cards behind her back, and basically fucked over her finances for the next 2 years.
When Melanie got a promotion at work that came with a big raise and better PTO, she and the original bridesmaid squad took me to Miami. It wasn’t a bachelorette party because I was married by then, but we still did all the bachelorette things. We wore matching pink outfits, had a scavenger hunt, played board games, and annoyed strangers with our silly antics.
So I ended up getting my dream bachelorette after all, and I didn’t even have to plan another wedding to get it.