Body-Slamming the Cherry Blossoms

"Bitch, hide me, he is looking right at us."

Leah didn't wait for a response. Her fingers clamped around Sandy's forearm like a vice. Her nails, painted a miserable shade of pastel pink mandated by the bride, dug sharply into Sandy's skin.

Sandy didn't flinch. She just stopped chewing her ice. "Who?"

"Connor."

Sandy swallowed the ice whole. It hurt going down. "Oh. Shit. Move."

They moved.

Spring was supposed to be a season of renewal, but currently, it was just a season of aggressive pollen and poor choices. The air was thick. It felt like breathing through a warm, wet towel. The outdoor wedding venue, a sprawling estate that probably belonged to someone who evaded taxes in the nineties, was covered in a layer of yellow dust. It coated the white folding chairs. It coated the overpriced champagne flutes. It coated Leah's lungs, making every panicked breath feel tight and shallow.

The omniscient reality of the situation was this: Connor was not actually looking at them. Connor was looking at his own reflection in the mirrored surface of the raw bar. He was checking his hairline. He was a man who listened to podcasts at 1.5x speed and thought he was an intellectual because he owned a French press. But to Leah, his gaze felt like a sniper's laser. Her stomach turned over. Acid hit the back of her throat. Her body didn't care about logic; it only knew threat.

"Where?" Leah hissed, her voice a compressed whisper. She was walking fast, her heels sinking into the soft, aerated turf. Every step was a gamble against gravity.

"Behind the cake," Sandy said. She took the lead, pulling Leah through a gap between two tables occupied by elderly relatives who smelled like mothballs and gin. "Keep your head down."

"I am keeping it down. I'm practically crawling."

"Lower."

Leah bent her knees. Her dress, a satin monstrosity that trapped heat like a greenhouse, bunched up uncomfortably around her thighs. Sweat pooled at the base of her spine. She could feel her makeup melting, the carefully applied setting spray failing against the sheer force of her anxiety.

They bumped past a waiter holding a tray of something that looked like miniature hot dogs but probably cost thirty dollars apiece. The waiter glared. Sandy didn't look back. She was a woman on a mission, her eyes locked on the massive, sprawling dessert table at the edge of the reception tent.

The tent was a feat of temporary engineering. It was supposed to look rustic and elegant. Instead, it looked like a circus that had been sanitized for a corporate retreat. The centerpieces on every table were aggressive. But the dessert table was the main event. It was anchored by a ten-foot-tall cherry blossom tree. It was a real tree. Or, at least, it used to be. The caterers had bolted dead, heavy branches to a metal armature and hot-glued thousands of imported silk blossoms to it. It was a monument to excessive spending. It was also, currently, the only solid cover between Leah and her ex-boyfriend.

"In here," Sandy ordered.

They dove.

It wasn't a graceful dive. It was a frantic, uncoordinated scramble. Leah hit the grass hard, scraping her knee through the thin satin of her dress. She didn't care. The physical pain was grounding. It cut through the cognitive static screaming in her head. Connor is here. Why is Connor here? The bride promised. Jessica lied. Jessica is a liar. I hate weddings. I hate spring. I need a drink.

Sandy slid in next to her, her back hitting the heavy wooden struts of the dessert table. They were completely hidden from the main floor, barricaded by tiers of fondant and the sprawling, overarching canopy of the fake cherry blossom tree.

They sat in the dirt, breathing hard.

"Did he see us?" Leah asked. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against the cool earth to stop the tremors.

"No," Sandy said. She sounded out of breath. She pulled a rogue leaf out of her hair. "He was too busy looking at himself. You're fine."

"I'm not fine. I'm sweating through my dress. I feel like I'm going to throw up."

"Don't throw up. The cake is right there. It's white. It'll show."

Leah let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh. She looked at Sandy. Sandy looked back. Sandy's eyeliner was smudged. Her hair, which had been in a tight updo an hour ago, was starting to rebel. She looked messy. She looked real. In a sea of spray-tans and forced smiles, Sandy was the only authentic thing in a ten-mile radius.

Leah's chest tightened, and this time, it wasn't panic. It was something else. Something heavy and warm that had been sitting in the back of her mind for six months. She looked away, focusing on the grass.

"Thanks," Leah muttered.

"Don't thank me yet. We're trapped behind a dessert table."

"It's safe here."

"It smells like artificial vanilla and desperation."

"Better than Connor's cologne."

Sandy snorted. She shifted her weight, trying to get comfortable on the uneven ground.

That was the mistake.

The omniscient truth of the dessert table was that it had not been set up by professionals. It had been set up by three hungover college students working for an event company that paid minimum wage. The metal armature holding the ten-foot cherry blossom tree was not bolted to the table. It was resting on a piece of plywood, balanced purely by gravity and hope.

When Sandy shifted her weight, her heel caught the edge of the tablecloth. She tugged. The fabric didn't give. She tugged harder, an annoyed grunt escaping her lips.

The tablecloth yanked the plywood. The plywood shifted two inches to the left.

Gravity did the rest.

It happened in slow motion. Leah watched as the massive trunk of the cherry blossom tree began to tilt. It groaned. A deep, woody sound that vibrated right through the soles of her shoes.

"Sandy," Leah said.

"What? I'm just trying to get my shoe—"

"Sandy. Look up."

Sandy looked up. Her eyes went wide.

The tree was coming down.

It didn't fall gracefully. It fell like a drunk man leaving a bar. It tipped, hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then committed.

Leah shoved Sandy hard into the grass, rolling sideways.

The crash was spectacular. It sounded like a car driving through a greenhouse. Branches snapped. Silk flowers exploded into the air like pink confetti. The heavy metal base slammed into the edge of the dessert table, sending a tray of macarons flying into the void. The top half of the tree hit the dirt right where they had been sitting, the impact sending a cloud of yellow pollen and dust billowing into the humid air.

Silence.

Complete, utter silence behind the table.

Out on the dance floor, the wedding band was playing a terrible cover of a Bruno Mars song. The bass thumped steadily. Nobody had heard the crash. The music was too loud. The guests were too drunk.

Leah lay on her back, staring at the canvas roof of the tent through a cage of shattered wooden branches. A single pink silk blossom drifted down and landed perfectly on her nose.

She blew it off.

"Are you dead?" Sandy's voice came from somewhere to her left.

"No," Leah croaked. "You?"

"I think my soul just left my body, but otherwise, intact."

Sandy sat up. She pushed a heavy branch off her shoulder. She looked at the wreckage. It was total devastation. The tree was split cleanly in half. The top section, a sprawling web of branches and fake flowers, was lying in the dirt like a felled beast. The bottom section was still precariously balanced on the table, looking like a jagged, broken tooth.

"Oh my god," Sandy whispered. The color drained from her face. "Leah. Oh my god."

Leah sat up slowly. Her knee was definitely bleeding now. She looked at the tree. She looked at the table. She looked at the fifty thousand dollars worth of wedding planning that they had just turned into mulch.

"Jessica is going to kill us," Leah said.

"She's not going to kill us. She's going to sue us. And then she's going to kill us."

"We have to fix it."

Sandy stared at her. "Fix it? Leah, look at it. It's a dead tree. I broke a dead tree in half."

"We can put it back."

"With what? Magic?"

"I don't know!" Leah snapped. Her heart rate was spiking again. The cognitive static was back, louder this time. Connor is out there. The bride is out there. The tree is broken. I am bleeding. Everything is wrong. "Just grab that end."

Leah scrambled to her feet, ignoring the sting in her knee. She grabbed the thickest part of the fallen branch. It was incredibly heavy. The wood was dense, strapped with thick gauge wire.

Sandy scrambled up beside her. "This is insane. This is literally insane."

"Lift," Leah ordered.

They lifted. Their muscles strained. Leah's satin dress stretched tight across her back. She could feel a seam pop somewhere near her ribs. She didn't care. They hoisted the massive broken branch up, struggling to keep it level.

"Okay," Leah grunted, sweat stinging her eyes. "Line it up with the stump."

They shuffled forward, carrying the dead weight. They shoved the broken end of the top branch against the jagged stump left on the table. It didn't fit perfectly. The wood had splintered. But if they held it tight, it looked vaguely like a single tree again.

"Okay," Sandy gasped, her arms shaking. "It's up. Now what?"

"Now we secure it."

"With what!"

Leah looked around frantically. There was nothing. Just napkins, plates, and a decorative bowl of mints.

"Do you have tape?" Leah asked.

"Why would I have tape in a clutch?"

"I don't know! Hair ties?"

"I used them all on my hair!"

Leah felt a hysterical laugh bubbling in her chest. She forced it down. "Gum."

"What?"

"You were chewing gum earlier. Do you still have it?"

"Yes, but—"

"Give it to me."

Sandy stared at her, her arms trembling under the weight of the tree. "You want to fix a ten-foot structural wooden display with a piece of Orbit peppermint?"

"Yes. Spit it out."

"I swallowed it!"

Leah closed her eyes. "You swallowed it."

"You told me to move! It went down!"

"Okay. Okay. Fine." Leah opened her eyes. She scanned the ground. She saw a thick roll of white gaffer tape sitting near the caterer's prep station, just a few feet away. The catering staff had abandoned it.

"Hold it," Leah said.

"I can't hold this by myself!"

"Just lean into it. I'll be right back."

Leah let go. The weight transferred entirely to Sandy. Sandy let out a strained, high-pitched squeak and threw her entire body weight against the trunk, pinning it to the table with her chest.

Leah lunged for the tape. She grabbed the heavy roll, her fingers slipping on the glossy surface. She scrambled back to the table.

"Tape," she announced.

"Hurry," Sandy wheezed. "My ribs are bruising."

Leah ripped a long strip of the thick white tape. She wrapped it around the splintered joint. It looked terrible. Bright white tape over dark brown bark. She ripped another strip. And another. She wrapped it frantically, pulling it as tight as she could, creating a thick, ugly cast around the broken wood.

"It's white," Sandy observed, her face pressed against the bark.

"I know it's white."

"Trees aren't white."

"Birch trees are white."

"This is a cherry blossom!"

"I'll color it in later!" Leah shouted, ripping the tape with her teeth. She stepped back. "Okay. Let go. Slowly."

Sandy slowly pulled her weight back. The tree swayed. The white tape groaned, stretching under the tension. But it held. The tree stood, leaning slightly to the left, sporting a massive, glaring white bandage in the middle of its trunk.

Leah and Sandy stepped back. They stared at their creation.

It was an abomination. The branches were crooked. Half the silk flowers were missing. The tape was painfully obvious from any angle.

Sandy wiped a streak of dirt off her forehead. "It looks like it broke its neck and we gave it a neck brace."

Leah stared at it. The absurdity of the situation finally hit her. The sheer, unadulterated stupidity of everything. She was at a wedding she didn't want to be at. She was hiding from a man who used to tell her she chewed too loudly. She was sweating through a dress that cost half her rent. And she had just performed emergency orthopedic surgery on a fake piece of flora.

Leah's shoulders shook.

Sandy looked at her sharply. "Are you crying? Leah, don't cry. We can find a brown marker. We can—"

Leah wasn't crying. A loud, sharp bark of laughter ripped out of her throat. It was an ugly sound. A genuine, unpolished, exhausted sound.

Sandy blinked. Then, the corner of her mouth twitched.

Leah looked at Sandy. Sandy looked at Leah.

The dam broke.

They collapsed into the dirt behind the table, entirely abandoning the tree. They sat shoulder to shoulder, laughing so hard no sound came out. Leah leaned her head back against the table leg, gasping for air. Sandy clutched her stomach, tears streaming down her face, ruining her makeup completely.

"A neck brace," Leah wheezed, pointing weakly at the tree.

"It needs physical therapy," Sandy gasped.

They laughed until it hurt. They laughed until the panic in Leah's chest dissolved, replaced by a warm, hollow exhaustion. The cognitive static was gone. The noise of the wedding faded into the background. There was only the dirt, the smell of crushed grass, and Sandy.

Leah turned her head. Sandy was right there. They were sitting so close their shoulders were pressed together. Sandy's chest was rising and falling rapidly. Her eyes were bright, crinkled at the corners. There was pollen in her hair, and a smudge of dirt on her chin.

Leah didn't know why, but her heart gave a strange, hard kick against her ribs. It wasn't the frantic flutter of anxiety she felt when she saw Connor. It was a solid, grounded thud.

She looked at Sandy's mouth. Then up to her eyes.

Sandy caught the look. The laughter slowly died on her lips. She didn't pull away. She didn't break eye contact. The air between them suddenly felt very thick, thicker than the humid spring afternoon. The distance between them felt entirely negligible, yet vastly important.

"You've got..." Leah murmured, her voice losing its sarcastic edge. She reached up, her fingers trembling slightly, and brushed the rogue piece of pollen out of Sandy's hair. Her fingertips grazed Sandy's cheek.

Sandy's breath hitched. She leaned into the touch, just a millimeter, but Leah felt it.

"Thanks," Sandy whispered. Her voice was entirely different now. Softer. Lower.

The omniscient reality was this: they were two messy people in a messy situation, surrounded by a fake environment built on fake promises. The wedding out there was a performance. But the space right here, in the dirt behind the dessert table, was the only real thing that had happened all day.

Leah swallowed hard. She wanted to lean in. She wanted to close the remaining distance. She wanted to see if Sandy tasted like the mints on the table.

Before she could move, a loud voice boomed over the PA system.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please direct your attention to the dance floor, the bride and groom are about to cut the cake!"

The spell broke.

They both jumped, pulling away from each other as if they had been burned. The moment shattered, scattered into the humid air like the fake pink petals on the ground.

Sandy cleared her throat, looking down at her ruined dress. "The cake. They're coming for the cake."

"Right here. They're coming right here."

"We need to leave."

"Immediately."

They scrambled to their feet. Leah didn't look back at the tree. She didn't look at the white tape. She didn't even look to see if Connor was in the crowd. None of it mattered anymore.

"Open bar?" Sandy asked, brushing the dirt off her skirt with shaking hands.

"Open bar," Leah confirmed.

They slipped out from behind the dessert table just as the photographer started backing up toward them, his camera aimed at the dance floor. They blended into the crowd of aunts and uncles, two ghosts moving through a pastel machine.

They found the bar at the far edge of the tent. It was relatively empty; everyone else was crowding around to watch the bride and groom pretend to be happy.

"Two gins. Neat," Sandy told the bartender.

The bartender poured the drinks. He didn't ask questions. He looked as tired as they felt.

Sandy handed a glass to Leah. Their fingers brushed. The spark was still there, undeniable and electric. Leah held her gaze, a small, genuine smile cutting through her exhaustion.

"To structural integrity," Sandy said, raising her glass.

"To chewing gum," Leah replied.

They clinked their glasses. The gin burned on the way down, stripping away the lingering taste of artificial vanilla and anxiety. They stood side by side, leaning against the bar, stronger together, watching the chaos of the reception from a safe distance.

They felt victorious. They had survived the ex. They had hidden the disaster. They had found something real in the middle of a fake spring.

They drank their cheap gin, laughing quietly into their glasses, entirely unaware that the catering manager had just found the empty roll of gaffer tape, or that Connor was slowly walking toward the bar, or that the white tape on the cherry blossom tree was already beginning to peel.