Free The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner Page A

probably disappear about fifteen minutes into it and you’ll find her in the bedroom with a book.”
    More nervous chuckles from the crowd. I shot my mother a beseeching look, which she either didn’t see or decided to ignore.
    “But,” said Nicki. She lifted her chin, raised herself onto her tiptoes, and held herself perfectly still, in a pose demanding silence. The audience complied. “My sister Josie . . .” She bent her head, and when she looked up again, her eyes were glistening. “My sister Josie is loyal. She would do anything in the world to help the people she loves, even if it’s at her own expense. She . . .” Nicki took a quick breath and looked at the crowd, then at me. “She’s the best person I know and she deserves to be happy.” She leveled her gaze at my not-quite-husband. “Take care of her,” she said, and eased herself off the chair and strutted back to the bar.
    •   •   •
    “So I can stay now?” Nicki asked sweetly, trailing me into the ladies’ room with a bottle of champagne that she’d liberated from the bar in her hand. “C’ mon, it’ll be fun! We’ll order room service and tell ghost stories!”
    A little girl in pink exited one of the stalls with her mother behind her. “I wear big girl underpants now!” she proclaimed. She looked up at my sister. “Do you wear big girl underpants?”
    Nicki stared down at her. “No, I generally go commando.”
    The mother’s eyes widened. “Jesus, Nicki,” I said, and dragged her into the handicapped stall. (“What’s commando?” I heard the girl asking as the door swung shut.)
    “What?” Nicki asked. “What? Underwear gives me panty lines! Do you want me to lie to little children?” She turned her back, tapping her foot and exhaling impatiently while I took care of business.
    Jon was standing at parade rest in front of the elevators, his feet planted hip-width apart and his arms behind his back.When the doors slid open, the three of us piled in, along with a tiny white-haired lady in a pale blue pleated dress—a great-aunt or second cousin from the groom’s side, I thought.
    “So anyhow,” said Nicki, as if the entire rehearsal dinner had merely been a five-minute interruption to her conversation, “the QVC thing’s great. Did I tell you they’re thinking of letting me do shoes, too?”
    I nodded.
    “But I think I need to be in Los Angeles.”
    “Oh, Los Angeles is wonderful,” offered the aged party. “And if you really want to be an actress, it is where you need to be.”
    Jon grimaced. I held my breath. Nicki’s eyebrows drew down as she turned slowly to stare down the little old lady. “Excuse me, but I was speaking to my brother and my sister,” she said. “I don’t believe you were invited into this conversation.”
    “Nicki,” I said, and put my hand on her shoulder. She twitched it off.
    The woman’s chin and pearls and pleats trembled softly. “Well, I didn’t mean . . .”
    The elevator lurched to a stop at the third floor. The bridal suite was on twenty-one, and the woman had punched twenty-three. Evidence, as if I needed any more, that there was no God.
    Meanwhile, Nicki had launched into a full-blown soliloquy. “Why is it,” she asked the mirrored ceiling, “that people think that just because they overhear something they’re invited to comment?”
    The poor woman in blue was cringing in a corner of the elevator.
    “Maybe it’s Oprah,” said Jon, trying hard to change the subject.
    “No, it’s me,” Nicki spat. “Everyone thinks they’ve gotsomething to say. Everyone thinks they can just throw their two cents in. Tell me how to live my life, tell me what I’m screwing up, tell me what I should be doing better. You, Mom, everyone!”
    “I’m very sorry if I offended you somehow,” the woman said.
    Nicki opened her mouth to snarl something in response as the doors slid open on the fifth floor and an aged couple—the man in a tuxedo, the woman in a beaded silver