Risk Management

"When I heard what Serena had done, I lost it. I felt it was my fault because I had selfishly chosen my career in New York when I should have been home keeping an eye on him.

"He's had illusions about women since we were kids. He always thought they were better than us. They were all kind and caring. Honest! That's what he thought. His illusions about women and love made him totally vulnerable. They were bound to get him into trouble.

"I was hoping my revenge would make me feel less guilty. Now I've hurt him even more than she did. She doesn't deserve his love, but neither do I."

When he finished speaking, Blade put his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees.

"I've heard enough," I said and stood up. "I'm leaving."

"So am I," Nate said as he rose. We both walked out without looking back.

************

A year later, six of us were closing the bar in the lounge of the same hotel. All the other guests were already gone, and the cleaning crew had made us leave the ballroom.

The lounge was deserted, too, except for a bartender looking at his watch.

I looked at Harvey and Serena, and they seemed to be glowing. The maid of honor was also feeling good, even though my makeup was running from all the earlier crying. My fiance caused the last outburst with what he said to me after the newlyweds walked back up the aisle. How can anyone who looks so handsome in a tuxedo be as wonderful as he is? As for the best man, he was putting up a brave front, but his eyes were moist, and he clung tightly to his boyfriend.

The drinks loosened tongues, and I began hearing a familiar tone of voice coming from Serena while she gradually monopolized the conversation. She was explaining how she had planned the wedding down to the tiniest detail. That's why it had turned out so great. She turned it into a lesson for me and my fiancé. We were rolling our eyes.

When she said, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail," everyone at the table groaned. But she was too drunk to notice.

The others were content to let her keep rolling because the more seriously she took herself, the funnier she sounded. But I'd had almost as many drinks as she'd had, so of course, I decided to say something stupid, too.

"You should be careful, Serena," I warned. "Acting superior can get you into trouble."

"You just resent it because you know I'm right," she retorted.

"Have you forgotten when you almost lost Harvey and your self-respect?"

The instant the words were out of my mouth, I wished there was a way I could go back in time and un-say them.

The table went deathly quiet. I'm sure all of us had thought about it at one time during the evening. But none of us had spoken about the fact that the wedding was in the same hotel as the incident that involved four of us at that table.

"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" I said to myself. "You've ruined her wedding night."

The only thing that saved me was that Serena had drunk so much that she had totally reverted to the personality trait she had been working hard to get rid of since that night.

"I haven't forgotten that at all," she said. "I know you're all thinking I nearly wrecked my life. But look what happened.

"Even though Reese isn't jealous because she has a wonderful man sitting next to her, nearly every woman at the party was dying of envy. All their eyes were on the most perfect specimen of manhood they'd ever seen -- good looking, ambitious, funny, kind, patient, reliable, loving, forgiving -- everything they want and will probably never get in one man.

"And who does he love? Me! And what brought him back to me after I made a slight miscalculation? Me and our best man working together! That's why I love Blade so much. I couldn't have done it alone."

We were listening closely, so all we heard the words "slight miscalculation" even though she had lowered her voice and then cleared her throat loudly after saying them.

"So who came out on top in the end?" she asked defiantly and looked around the table meeting the eyes of everyone there for a few seconds. I was the last one she turned to, and she looked straight at me as she spoke again.

"Tell me I'm wrong."

The others were either stunned into silence or too scared to say anything, but not Harvey and me. We burst into laughter.

I said it for both of us:

"You're never going to change, Serena."

"And I don't want you to, darling," Harvey added.

He gave her a sloppy, drunken kiss, which she returned. That broke the tension, and everybody in the room laughed. Except the impatient bartender.