Salvatore

4. Bachelorette Party

The day before my wedding, I have plans to peacefully sleep in, but my mom has other ideas. She barges in at the ungodly hour of 8:00 AM telling me to wake up.

"Mom," I groan, pulling the covers over my head. "It's my last day of sleeping in my own bed, let me sleep."

She throws my curtains open before pulling my blanket off me. "I need to go upstate to an estate sale and I need you to come with me."

This isn't an unordinary occurrence. She's an interior designer/decorator so she often goes to estate sales to pick up vintage pieces for her clients, but usually she gives me more notice if I'm going with her.

I pull my blankets, fighting her for them. "Why are you working the day before your only daughter's wedding?"

She gives up fighting me for my blankets and goes around my room, tidying up. "You know how estate sales are, anyways, you don't have any other plans today."

She's right but I can't admit that. "Yes I do, me and the girls are getting dinner later."

I'm not having a traditional bachelorette party because a) we're all mostly underage and there isn't much we can really do anyways, and b) there wasn't enough time to plan anything exciting. So, we're just doing a quiet dinner at a restaurant.

"Perfect, we'll be back before then." Mom catches me off guard and yanks my blanket off. I curl into a ball as a wave of cool air rushes over me. "Come on, get up, I'll get you Starbucks on the way."

I'm up immediately at that. I never turn down free Starbies. "Give me fifteen minutes so I can shower and brush my teeth."

She nods. "I'll lay some clothes out for you since most of yours are all packed up."

After the fastest shower of my life, I find the clothes mom's laid out for me. There's a little white summer dress laid out, it's brand new so I'm assuming it's part of the clothes Isabella sent me.

I groan. "Why can't I wear black?"

"Because I'm already wearing black," I hear her yell from the kitchen. "And hurry up or we won't have time for Starbucks."

I give in and wear the dress. It's cute but I'd rather not wear white to an estate sale where things are kinda dusty. Mom has this thing where she likes to see furniture pieces against solid colors, usually white or black, so if I'm going with her she always has one of us dress in white and the other in black. Usually I get to wear black.

The estate sale is actually pretty fun, we find some interesting pieces for her clients who meet us there. I also find some cool things for myself and for my friends.

On the drive home, as our neighborhood whips around us I get this choked up feeling in my throat. I really am leaving this place where I basically grew up. As we pass everything, I find myself thinking of how much history me and this neighborhood have.

There's the corner store where I have looked my absolute worst as I shopped for pads and Tylenol at 10 PM. Then there's the bench where Madison's freshman year boyfriend broke up with her and we sat to console her for two hours. There's the street corner where I'd give money to this homeless lady and she'd supposedly tell me my future. My future changed from good to bad based on how much I'd give her.

There's the stop sign that Matteo hit the first time he drove us to school (we never told anyone but Christiano somehow found out anyway). We then pass the place where Jocelyn and I once ran from a crackhead because we only put five dollars in his cup. We drive past Samirah's house and I think of the times we used to play chicken with our bikes in front of it.

We pass the coffee shop that my friends and I used to frequent before stopping. They'd always misspell my name as "Martini" which is no biggie, but the barista's were super microaggressive, always asking Jocelyn where she's from even though she explained multiple times that her mom is white and her dad is part-Cuban and part-Black, but everytime without fail they'd ask. So we boycotted it.