Chapter 3: The Bridal Veil of Panties
The gray briefs hit Robert square in the face before he could duck, which was impressive given he couldn't actually duck, what with the ropes and the chair and the general architecture of his captivity.
They were soft. Worn. They smelled faintly of lavender and something older underneath, something that reminded him of his grandmother's attic—cedar chests and mothballs and decades of quiet neglect. They draped over his nose like a flag of surrender, and the room dissolved into shrieks.
"Those are definitely not Morgan's," Ava said, doubled over. "Unless Morgan has a secret identity as an eighty-seven-year-old woman in a memory care facility."
"She's not eighty-seven," Morgan protested, but she was laughing too. "She's eighty-four."
"Much better."
Robert spat gray cotton from his mouth. "I was guessing strategically. Process of elimination. You said the game was about matching panties to owners, not about—"
"Not about what?"
"Not about being ambushed by geriatric underwear."
Mindy plucked the briefs from his head and examined them with mock reverence. "These count as a wrong guess. That means they go in the pile."
"What pile?"
Ava was already there, her phone still recording, grinning like a cat with a bird in its mouth. "The veil pile. Every wrong guess from here on out gets added to your head. By the end of the night, you're going to look like a bridal boutique exploded on your face."
"That's not—that's not how veils work."
"It is now."
Robert twisted in the chair, trying to find Mary in the crowd. She was on the couch, champagne in one hand, phone in the other, filming everything. Her auburn hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was laughing—that specific laugh, the one that crinkled her eyes and made her look twenty years younger. The laugh he'd fallen in love with twelve years ago, back when he was just a divorced dad with thinning hair and a daughter who hated him, and she was a single mother with a sense of humor that could cut glass.
"Mary," he called. "Mary, you're supposed to be on my side."
"I'm on the winning side." She raised her glass. "And the winning side is the one with the champagne."
"Traitor."
"Absolutely."
The gray briefs went on his head, joining Mindy's sheer panties. The contrast was jarring—delicate lace against sensible cotton, high-end against high-mileage—and Robert caught his reflection in the mantle mirror again. He looked like a man who'd lost a bet and was being punished by a committee of very creative women.
"Okay," Ava announced, clapping her hands. "New rule."
"There are too many new rules. The rules keep multiplying. It's like a rules hydra."
"Shhh." She waved a hand. "New rule. From this point forward, you're blindfolded. You have to identify the owner by scent alone."
The room went quiet. Not the shocked quiet from before—this was different. This was the quiet of forty women processing a new flavor of chaos.
"By scent," Robert repeated.
"By scent."
"You want me to smell their underwear."
"We want you to smell their underwear and then guess whose it is."
"That's—" He stopped. Started again. "That's not something that happens at bridal showers."
"Clearly, you've been going to the wrong bridal showers."
Mindy was already moving, pulling a strip of black silk from somewhere—a scarf, maybe, or a length of fabric that had been lying in wait for exactly this moment. "I'll do the honors."
"Do what honors? There are no honors here. There's only shame and regret."
"Hush."
She stepped behind him, and Robert felt the silk settle over his eyes, cool and smooth, blocking out the room. The world went dark. He could still hear them, though—the whispers, the giggles, the clink of glasses. Someone's phone was playing music, low and thumping, something with a beat that made the floor vibrate beneath his bare feet.
"I have a sense of smell," he said. "It's not that good. I had COVID in 2021. I still can't smell most things."
"Convenient excuse."
"It's not an excuse, it's a medical fact."
"Then you'll have to improvise."
Someone pressed something soft against his face. Robert inhaled reflexively, and got a lungful of jasmine and vanilla and something sharp underneath, something like citrus or maybe just cleaning products. It was pleasant. Feminine. Completely useless for identification.
"Karen," he guessed.
Silence.
"Karen, no. Not Karen. Someone else."
"Wrong," Ava sang. "That's one for the pile."
"But I didn't—I thought I got a hint or something—"
"No hints. Only noses."
The fabric landed on his head, adding another layer to the growing pile. Robert could feel the weight of it now, the layers of silk and cotton and lace pressing down on his thinning hair. His scalp was starting to sweat.
Another press. This time it was something musky, earthy, like sandalwood and old books. It tickled his nose.
"Mindy," he said.
"I'm flattered." Mindy's voice was dry. "But no."
"I was just—I thought—"
"Wrong again."
More fabric. A thong, from the feel of it—thin, delicate, nothing substantial. Robert inhaled. Peaches. Sunscreen. The beach, somehow, compressed into a scrap of fabric.
"Tiffany," he guessed.
His stepdaughter's fiancée's name hung in the air.
"That's my mother's," Tiffany said from somewhere to his left. "I didn't even know she owned something like that."
"You weren't supposed to know," a woman said—Tiffany's mother, presumably, her voice somewhere between mortified and amused. "That's the point of the game."
Robert didn't know if that counted as right or wrong. The thong landed on his head either way.
The parade continued. He guessed wrong on a hot pink thong (belonged to the pixie-cut brunette, which he should have known, but the jasmine was confusing him). Wrong on a black lace number (belonged to one of Mary's old sorority sisters, a silver-haired woman named Susan who apparently had a wild streak). Wrong on a pale yellow bikini (belonged to no one—it was a decoy, a trick, a test that he failed spectacularly).
"Whose are these?" he asked, his voice muffled by fabric.
"Nobody's," Ava said. "They're decoys. Every good game has decoys."
"That's not fair."
"There's no fair with you, stepfather. That's the whole point."
By the fifth round, Robert had lost count of the layers on his head. He'd lost count of the women, too—their names blurred together, each scent indistinguishable from the last. Something floral. Something spicy. Something that smelled like coffee and printer ink, which he guessed belonged to Mindy but actually belonged to a woman named Rachel who worked in tech and apparently smelled like her job.
Then someone pressed something to his face that made him stop.
Because it smelled like home.
Not the home he shared with Mary and Ava, not the suburban house with the beige walls and the basketball hoop in the driveway and the Stanley Cup of paint from when Ava had decided she wanted her ceiling to be gold. But home before that. Home when he was young, when he was married to Ava's mother, when Ava was just a baby and the world was simpler and he didn't know what a mistake he was making.
It smelled like lemons and printer paper and something that might have been wildflowers, and his throat closed up, and for a moment he forgot he was tied to a chair with a dozen pairs of panties on his head.
"This one's yours," he said quietly. "It's Ava's."
The room went still.
"How did you know?" Ava's voice was different. Softer. The teasing edge was gone.
"I just—I remembered. When you were little. Your mom used the same detergent, and you always smelled like—you always smelled like that. At first. Before things got... before."
Silence.
Then Ava laughed, but it wasn't her performance laugh, the one she used for cameras and audiences. It was real. Warm.
"That's cheating," she said. "You're not supposed to actually know me."
"I've known you for twelve years."
"You're not supposed to admit it."
Robert shrugged, as much as he could while tied to a chair with underwear on his head. "I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a liar."
A beat.
Then Mary's voice, from the couch, soft and proud. "He's really not."
Someone took the blindfold off. Robert squinted into the light—the fairy lights, the lamps, the overhead chandelier glinting off champagne flutes and diamond rings and the twenty-eight pairs of eyes now watching him with something different than before. Something gentler. Something that might have been affection.
"Well," Ava said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "This is awkward."
"What is?"
"I was supposed to humiliate you. And then you had to go and be—" She gestured vaguely at all of him. "That."
"I can try to be more off-putting."
"Too late." She turned to the room. "Ladies, I present to you the most decorated bridal shower guest in history. Robert. Stepfather. Paddle victim. Buried under twenty-three pairs of underwear and one decoy."
"Twenty-three?"
"Give or take."
Robert let his head fall back. The pile shifted, a cascade of silk and lace and cotton, and something—a thong, probably the peaches one—slid down his cheek and landed on his shoulder.
"I need a drink," he said.
Mary was already there, champagne in hand, leaning down to kiss his forehead just above the wall of fabric. "You did good," she murmured. "Really good."
"I'm wearing your friend's underwear on my head."
"You're wearing everyone's underwear on your head. And you did it with grace."
He looked up at her, at the laughter still dancing in her eyes, at the love underneath it. Twelve years. Two daughters—one by blood, one by marriage. One beautiful disaster of a bridal shower. And somehow, impossibly, he wouldn't have traded any of it.
"Can I take the pants off now?" he asked.
"Absolutely not." She straightened up, champagne glass raised. "We're only halfway through."
"Halfway through what?"
"The evening." She smiled, and it was the smile from before, the one that promised trouble and delight in equal measure. "You still have to do the toast."
Robert closed his eyes.
"To the bride," he said. "And to the groom. And to the fact that I'm going to need therapy after this."
The room erupted.
Robert's toast hung in the air like smoke, and the laughter that followed had teeth. Not cruel teeth—more like the playful nips of puppies who didn't know their own strength. Ava was wiping mascara from under her eyes with the back of her hand, and Mindy had actually doubled over, one hand braced on the armchair Robert was still bound to.
"You're supposed to give a real toast," Tiffany called from somewhere near the fireplace. "That was just—that was just you complaining."
"Complaining is my love language."
"That's not a toast."
"It's the best I've got." He shifted in the chair, and the pile on his head rustled like autumn leaves. "Unless you want me to talk about how I felt when I first met you. Which involved a lot of confusion and a deep sense of inadequacy, because you were sixteen and already more put-together than I'll ever be."
Tiffany went quiet. The room went quiet with her.
"That's actually kind of sweet," she said.
"Don't tell anyone."
"Too late. Ava's been recording since you got here."
Robert turned his head toward Ava, who had her phone angled at him with the steady patience of a nature documentarian. "You've been recording since I got here?"
"I've been recording since before you got here. I started when Mom said you'd agreed to the game."
"I didn't agree to the game. I agreed to attend a bridal shower."
"Semantics."
"Legally binding semantics."
Mary reappeared at his side, a fresh glass of champagne in one hand and something darker in the other—whiskey, maybe, or bourbon. She held it to his lips, and Robert drank without asking what it was. It burned going down, but the burn was welcome. It cut through the fog of humiliation and champagne and the lingering scent of twenty-three different perfumes.
"Better?" she asked.
"Marginally."
"Good. Because we're not done."
He should have known. Should have seen it coming, the way he should have seen Mindy's trick with the sheer panties. But Mary had that look—the one that meant she'd been planning something, that the game so far had been merely the opening act. Her auburn hair was pulled back now, revealing the sharp angles of her face, the smile that had lured him into marriage and chaos and a life he never could have predicted.
"What now?" he asked.
"Now we auction you off."
"Excuse me?"
Ava stepped forward, phone still recording. "Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. We're auctioning off the privilege of cutting your bonds."
"The ropes?"
"The ropes."
Robert looked down at his wrists, still tied behind the chair, and at his ankles, still lashed to the legs. He'd almost forgotten they were there, honestly. The humiliation had a way of making you forget the small details.
"And what do I get out of this?" he asked.
"Freedom."
"That seems like it should be free."
"Nothing's free at a bridal shower." Mindy produced a mason jar from somewhere—a mason jar that was already half-full of cash. "We've been collecting since you sat down."
"You've been—" He stopped. Started again. "You've been taking bets on me?"
"Not bets. Donations. For the privilege of watching you squirm."
"That's the same thing."
"Donations are tax-deductible."
Robert looked at Mary, who was examining her nails with the studied indifference of a woman who had absolutely orchestrated this. "You knew about this."
"I suggested it."
"Of course you did."
"The money goes to the honeymoon fund. Tiffany and Marcus are going to Portugal. Do you know how expensive Portugal is?"
"Portugal is one of the cheapest countries in Western Europe."
"Look at you, knowing things." Mary patted his knee. "It's almost like you're not completely useless."
"I'm a font of information. I'm like a human Wikipedia, except no one consults me and I'm usually wrong."
"That's the spirit."
The auction started before he could protest further. Mindy took the role of auctioneer, her Southern drawl somehow making the proceedings feel more legitimate and more absurd at the same time. She held up the mason jar like a gavel, her other hand gesturing dramatically toward Robert.
"Ladies, what we have here is a genuine, one-of-a-kind, slightly damaged suburban husband. He's forty-five, housebroken, and currently wearing twenty-three pairs of underwear on his head. Do I hear twenty dollars?"
"Twenty-five!" called a woman by the window.
"Thirty!"
"Fifty!"
The numbers climbed. Robert watched from his chair, the panty-pile shifting every time he moved. He felt like a piece of art at a charity auction—oversized, uncomfortable, and entirely out of his depth. The women bidding were Mary's friends, Ava's friends, strangers he'd never met until tonight. They were laughing, but there was something genuine underneath it. Something that said this wasn't just about humiliating him. This was about the story. The memory. The night they'd all remember when they looked back on this.
"One hundred dollars!" called the pixie-cut brunette—Morgan, he remembered, whose grandmother's underwear was somewhere in the pile on his head.
"Do I hear one-fifty?"
Silence.
"One-fifty for the freedom of a captured stepfather?"
More silence. The crowd was holding back, waiting for someone to break. Robert could feel the anticipation building, the way it did before a thunderstorm.
Then a voice rang out from the back of the room. Clear. Young. Familiar.
"Two hundred dollars."
Everyone turned. Tiffany stood by the fireplace, arms crossed, something fierce in her face. "I'll pay two hundred to cut him loose."
"You have two hundred dollars?" Ava asked.
"I have a credit card and poor impulse control."
"That's my girl."
Tiffany walked forward, scanning the room like she was daring anyone to outbid her. "He's my stepfather. Sort of. He's been around since I was a teenager. He's the reason I know how to change a tire and the reason I know to never eat gas station sushi."
"He ate gas station sushi?" someone asked.
"We both did. It was a bonding experience."
Robert felt something warm in his chest, and it wasn't just the whiskey. Tiffany—who'd been wary of him for years, who'd called him "Robert" instead of "Dad" and never called him anything else—was standing up for him. Was paying money. Was claiming him.
"You don't have to do that," he said.
"I know."
"You could save your money for the honeymoon."
"I could." She smiled, and it was a real smile. "But this is more fun."
Mindy accepted the credit card with the solemnity of a priest taking a communion wafer. She swiped it on a phone reader that appeared from nowhere—technology was getting too good, Robert thought, for moments like these—and handed Tiffany a small pair of scissors.
"Cut him loose," she said.
Tiffany approached the chair. She was wearing a simple dress, pale blue, and her hair was down. She looked like a bride, even though the wedding was still months away. She looked like the little girl Robert had met twelve years ago, the one who'd hated him, the one who'd slowly—so slowly—started to tolerate him, and then, even more slowly, to love him.
She crouched down and met his eyes.
"Hold still," she said.
"I'm not going anywhere."
She cut the ropes at his ankles first, then his wrists, then the loop around his chest that had kept him pinned to the chair. Each snip felt like being born again, blood rushing back into his extremities, circulation returning to places it hadn't been for hours.
Then she stood and looked at him, the panty-pile still cascading down his head.
"You can take those off now," she said.
"I know."
"Are you going to?"
"In a minute." He sat up straighter, rolled his shoulders, flexed his fingers. It felt good to move. Felt better to be seen. "I want to remember this."
"Remember what? Being humiliated?"
"Being part of something."
Tiffany didn't say anything. But she didn't walk away either. She just stood there, looking at him, and the room was quiet, and then Ava's voice cut through like a knife through cake.
"Okay, that's enough sentiment. Robert, you still have to do a real toast. And this time, no complaining."
Robert reached up and pulled the pile off his head. Panties rained down onto the carpet—lace and silk, cotton and satin, a rainbow of colors and textures that told the story of the night. He stood, legs shaky, pants still around his ankles.
"Fine," he said. "A real toast."
He bent down, yanked his pants up, and faced the room. Forty women. Champagne flutes. Fairy lights. The clothesline, now empty, swaying gently.
"When I met Tiffany," he began, "she was sixteen and she hated me."
"True," Tiffany confirmed.
"I didn't blame her. I was a strange man dating her mother, and she had every right to be suspicious. But slowly, over time, we figured out how to be around each other, and then to like each other, and then—"
He paused. Swallowed.
"Then to love each other. Not the way she loves her mom, or the way she's going to love Marcus. But a real way. A step-version of real."
The room was quiet.
"So here's to Tiffany. And to Marcus, who I've met twice and seems like a good guy. And to all of you, who came here tonight and made this the weirdest, most wonderful bridal shower I've ever attended. Even if I was the entertainment."
He raised his empty hand.
"And to my wife, who orchestrated all of this, and who I love even when she's making me wear other people's underwear on my head."
Mary raised her glass from the couch, her smile soft and sharp and full of everything they'd built together over twelve years. "To Robert," she said. "The best sport in the room."
The room echoed it back. To Robert.
And Robert, the unlikely comic hero of the night, the man with thinning hair and a dad-bod and a stepdaughter who'd just bought his freedom for two hundred dollars, bowed.
Then he took Mary's champagne, drained it in one gulp, and looked toward the kitchen.
"Now," he said. "Who's up for pizza? Because I'm starving, and I think I've earned it."
The laughter resumed, louder than before, and the night stretched on.