Crissy Milazzo is a writer living in Los Angeles.

9AM- I wake up. Melanie was being loud and Dave needed the Excedrin; the morning of the wedding demanded a basketball game on the Marriott court with all the boys plus Mel. We’d been up ’til 3AM, beer spilled all over our hotel suite carpet. We hadn’t intended our two bedroom situation to be the party room, but we were stupid excited to be reunited and started drinking at 5PM. And well.

As everyone arrived in Albany by way of Jersey or via the airport or whatever, they trickled into our room and then it was 2:43AM and the maid of honor was yelling about a card game in our living room and I was telling Arthur to get the fuck out as he talked shit on my Legalize 4Loko 2020 tee shirt.

“It’s not that deep, it’s a tee shirt Arch,” I said, and Arch said “I wish I could think of literally any shirt as ‘just a tee shirt’ Crissy.” That’s when Melanie said “I can’t fuckin deal with this.” I peed a little bit laughing while we locked our bedroom door and yelled at everyone.

They stayed a while anyway.

10AM- I wake up again, I fell back asleep after the basketball twins left. Now I stare at an angry pimple on my chin, another sucker on my cheek. I blame myself. I’d fallen asleep cradling my phone next to my ear, even after hanging up. Everyone hates talking on the phone until they want the vibrations in their ear like ASMR. High school shit. Worth the acne. I watch Sharp Objects again.

11AM- Missa and I were supposed to get our nails done but we gave up when the hangover hit. Instead I received a text asking if I wanted Panera, to which my answer will always be “fuck yeah.” I hate me too. It reminds me of working at the mall.

12PM- We have to be downstairs and ready for the shuttle to the wedding by 3PM. No one is showered yet, I think, which seems fine. I’m ripping up bread and dipping it in Panera’s signature Creamy Tomato soup, a delicacy.

We’re drinking and talking about how the wedding will go. Charlie and Emily are two very hot, fit blonde people who love nerd shit (Game of Thrones, Star Wars) and emo from the emo golden age that was 2000-2009. The wedding/reception is on a sort of farm in a dreamy barn with a bar built in and all that shit. It’s for weddings, I assume. I ask everyone 20 questions about the wedding and the shuttle and what outfits everyone is wearing until someone tells me to shut the fuck up.

I’m staring at my soup thinking of how long I’ve known these people. I scan the room: Juli since swim team when I was 7, Missa since then too, I think, Dave and Devo and Mel since I was 13, Mark since 15, Rob since freshman year homeroom when I was 14, and Allie since she started dating Dave a few years ago– Allie rules. Do we rule? Unclear. TBD.

1:53 PM- I still haven’t showered. Our hotel room is two rooms with two bathrooms. I’m using the designated “bathroom bathroom” and my phone is connected to the bluetooth speaker and I left my phone outside and it’s playing Pusha T’s Trouble On My Mind. Allie asks “is this your shitting song?” and I say “I wish” but even in jest I hate the exchange. Scatalogical humor was never super my jam.

2:30 PM- After I pee ever so delicately and with total grace and zero other things happen, I go back to the “getting ready” room to shower. The girls, Dave and Devo have vetoed all my own dress options so I’m wearing a magenta one Allie brought. I use oil in the shower and when I go to put on the dress (a wrap style) and my shoes (very short stiletto bound to irrigate the ground at the venue) everything is slide-y and terrible. I put on a shit ton of highlighter, mascara, the works– everyone approves of this, at least. I slick my hair into a deep side part and Dave and I do a quick Tito’s chug for the road.

3:13 PM- No one wants to get on our bus. It takes so long to get the shuttle to ship off that, at one point, Missa and Mark go back into the hotel and come out with a bunch of ciders and PBR. I tell Missa she’s underappreciated and we all cheer and Missa looks like she might kill me. The shuttle shoves off. Devo is wasted. I squint and wonder how he looks exactly the same as high school. Him and Dave have matching tattoos for the skate shop they worked at in the mall. RIP X-Styles.

I worked at PacSun. I bitch about that a bit and try to get my friends to laugh at more of my jokes, some land. I’m still really seeking their approval, I observe. I share that someone is using my photos on Tinder in DC, pretending to be me. This really gets them, because why would anyone do that? Mark says something about imitating hot girls as an e-commerce scam. I won’t blow up his spot, but I do spit out my cider. The narrative is impressive.

4PMish- The ceremony starts soon. The barn smells like a barn but in a charming way, like a summer night but with more dust and honeysuckle. The air is very thick and Jersey, although we are in Albany. It’s filled with noise. The signature cocktail is gin, I make a mental note to get two after the ceremony.

We take our seats. The boys file in to what I think is a whimsical rendition of the Jurassic Park theme song: Arthur, then Aaron, Ronick, Ryan, and Dale. I think about them being 30, how hungover they are, how we spent summers on their basement and living room floors playing Halo or the hours I spent watching them skate, dangling my legs out of the trunk of a red van. Fuck. I’m old. I get teary when Charlie enters, looking truly handsome. The bridesmaids come in, then Emily, the bride herself. She looks hot as fuck, if I am allowed to say that. I elbow Allie because I notice Arthur is laughing, sweating nervous and that sets off a bit of a ripple of laughter and I get a dirty look from a girl in front of me who is literally on Instagram as she scowls. I’m so sure.

Aaron attempts stoicism, chewing gum. Ronick and Ryan and Dale look normal. A decent ratio. The vows start. Dave grabs Allie’s knee in an emotional way and I put my hand on Allie’s other leg like “LOL.” They laugh. I am so lucky they tolerate me.

5PMish- Now, we’re on the third toast. Cocktail hour came and went and I ordered two gin-filled signature cocktails, like a beautiful genius. At cocktail hour I lied and told my friend’s dad—the cool one who let us drink in his basement and attend filipino holiday celebrations, you had one like him— that I am getting married in Vegas in October. It is a joke but later he asks around for the date. It’s nice for the people who’ve known you longest to enable you for the longest too.

Ah yes, the toasts. I’m drunk. I’m seated next to Arthur’s little brother, Lucas. I say he looks good but he tells me he’s 25, as if that’s a contradiction, as if that’s old. I am fucking ancient. Dale gets up to give his toast, the final toast, and everyone screams. Dale is Charlie’s little brother, so he’s everyone’s little brother. He gives a truly touching speech and I make a mental note to tell him later even though I’m fairly certain he will hate me doing that.

7PMish- I stop tracking the happenings of the night. I keep telling everyone the story of how Aaron came in our room the morning before, a 2am situation, and tried to pee on the TV. His girlfriend Priscillah said “babe that’s not a bathroom” and he responded “why do you care?” and I can’t stop laughing. I tweet about it and please myself, which sounds like a bad modern Walt Whitman line. That or I am very drunk. My heels sink into the mud and pull up grass with every step. I contain multitudes of dirt.

8PM- The soundtrack to this wedding is all early 2000s emo with notable exceptions for a few classics and some rap. It fucking rules. I embrace my corny sensibilities and join the mosh pit. Someone punches me kind of hard in the shoulder. Mr. B is lifted over our heads, the bride crowd surfs, the photographers fear for their equipment. I step out of the chaos to find someone with cigarettes and troll around the firepit for conversation, but we all sort of settle into silence.

9PM- Me and Andrew stumble onto the bus before anyone else and bullshit a conversation. I smile at my phone a lot. Lucas gets on and takes the seat next to me. We talk at each other about death and other drunk bullshit, but I think he’s pretty sober. The shuttle lurches to our stop and releases us. We spill out onto the curb and into the Marriott.

11PMish- It ends the way it always ends: me drunk and taking pictures of everyone in a sweaty room, everyone arguing, a room of people crying somewhere down the hall, and making out with a friend because it’s funny. I run outside and inside, barefoot on carpet, on asphalt, all kinds of gross. I’m sober somehow, I go back to the room and I half-drunk dial.

3AM- Most people are passed out. I stretch out in all my clothes in the empty bathtub as I listen to a bedtime story delivered through the receiver. I wonder what I’ll eat for breakfast. I think about route 78 and the drive to Jersey, my parents in Phillipsburg, my home in L.A. and my friends spread all over the continental U.S.

I wish I had weed. I say “I miss you” into the phone. I feel stoned anyway.