"A Toast"

My mother grabs me by the arm and pulls me aside--just far enough so that anyone who wants to overhear this can. "What were you thinking?" She's bright red, and I'm clearly never going to hear the end of this. "How could you say something like that? In front of your whole family and our friends and the Stevensons...What are they going to think about us now?"

One of the most important things about a wedding toast is knowing your audience.

I may have made a slight miscalculation.

My grandmother is shaking her head and probably talking about the way things used to be. I am now proof that the world has been rapidly declining since the 1950s.

It's hard to be an unappreciated genius, especially when you know there's a good chance you might have done something stupid.

"How are your father and I going to be able to look anyone in the eye next Sunday?" My mother is now invoking my father, who I'm pretty sure hasn't been listening to any of the post-ceremony speeches. He's got that look that means he's going through the great battles of World War II in his head. He probably has no idea that his eldest daughter has "...ruined your sister's wedding. Have you been drinking?" my mother asks in a low, disgusted tone.

"No, Mom. I haven't been drinking." I wish I was invincibly drunk. If I was drunk I'd tell her that everything is fine, that I am completely awesome, and that we all need to relax 'cuz it's a party. But I'm stone cold sober.

I should've taken a speech off the internet. Either "Today You Are A Princess" or "You'll Always Be My Sister". I avoided the last one because my sister would've laughed her ass off or assumed I was melancholically wasted.

We are not "A sister will cheer you up when you feel sad/She's a lifelong friend to make you glad", inspirational greeting card siblings. My last words to her before heading down the aisle were, "Don't trip on your big-ass feet, numb nuts."

My mother's indignant speech is working its way towards that sisterly well-wishing, but at the moment my speech has given her enough to work with.

I should never have gone with Taming of the Shrew. Or I should've given a disclaimer or asked if anybody actually knew it before doing the leading apes into hell thing.

Or maybe it was droit de seigneur. I definitely should've dropped that or not explained it. I sure as shit shouldn't have asked when we should expect the mayor.

I should've stuck with my first draft: "Here's to the bride and groom", raise glass, drink, done. Nothing memorable, but at least I wouldn't be shaming my family in contrast to the Best Man's moving, absolutely perfect tear-jerker.

"Nice one," my sister says when she's able to escape the well-wishers and sympathizers.

"You leaving?"

She nods. She's tired, she's bored, and she's got a honeymoon to get to.

We stand there. We suck at pleasantries, and we're not really huggers. And I know we're being watched because everyone watches the bride.

I tell her not to get knocked up, she tells me to take care of her dog, and everybody probably reads way too much into the fact that we don't hug.