Ditch the Cake, Let’s Have Mochi

An Excerpt:

Crust the caravan carries you away, the vehicle proudly included in the day. You sing your heart out from the back seat to the same CDs always in the console. The same songs with a new hum to them, a new life poured out of the speakers. 

There isn’t a first dance, but there’s a first harmony. You all sing together, an 80s synth pop dream come to life. Colors bursting, windows down. The wind whips past uneven haircuts and brushes against prim clothes. The first dance is Marsha pounding on the dashboard, Johnny and Dave stomping their feet, Matilda’s dark lips curling into a smile. Wide mouths crying out in joy, happy to be alive. To be heard. That’s the fire love lights in you. 

Crust tears through town to where they had their first date. A little sushi place with too many lights on to be classically romantic, but it’s just right. The tables wobble and you all cram beside the window. Hot sake comes in droves and it’s Connie’s turn to be the bashful one, as Marsha rises to lead a toast. A little cup with curling steam is held above their heads. You look around you at the table and you see so much more than friends. You see years of becoming found family. Shoulders cried on. Car rides shared. You look back up at Marsha who has a glint of mischief in her eye as she starts to tell a story. 

Years ago, after much prodding and nervous glances, she tells you how the two of them wound up together alone in this booth. Connie had tried her hardest to be impressive, to pick somewhere with enough class to suit a lady like Marsha. The place did not appear how it did online, the pictures were all wrong. They were “catfished by fish,” Connie couldn’t help but to say. 

While Marsha tells the story, Connie can’t keep still. Everyone told you she was never good at staying in her chair. The two tell the story together, remembering details and sharing giggles, breathlessly struggling to get the story out. Connie was always known as the type of person who goes above and beyond, but when you go above, crashing down is all the harder, even in laughter.

You all know the story already, of how Connie so eagerly chose sushi to impress a girl who had never used chopsticks, but hearing it told this way, this ancient story comes to life with the flair of a greek drama, and it makes the moment a new memory. It’s glazed with the soft patina of a story grown fonder. Your smile peels wider at the thought of an anxious Connie dropping her chopsticks to the floor and trying to eat a California roll with her bare hands. Splashing and dunking into soy sauce while mild mannered onlookers couldn't help but stare. 

Tables turn to look now, at the howling booth in the corner. All of you are standing now, with stories and toasts that must be shared right at this instant. That's the way a moment feels when you’re swept away. If you don’t share what you’re feeling right then and there, it will slip away. 

The waitress returns with another hot bottle of sake. You all clamber back down to your chairs. The porcelain cups don’t match, and your stomach is hungry for rice and colorful slabs of sashimi. Soon, rainbow colored food comes out in droves. Pearls of rice topped with salmon, fruit topped mango rolls, cups of miso soup clamor between you all. You’ve all mastered chopsticks in the years since college, but that doesn’t stop seaweed salad from slipping between your grip and splashing in soy sauce. Between mouthfuls of shrimp tempura you all talk of daydreams and movies, concerts remembered, and costumes yet to be worn again.  

The waitress remarks with a smile that you could eat a whole ocean between you. You all apologize profusely and try to explain it is a wedding, a monumental moment occurring right there in that very booth. The waitress laughs alongside you, and brings back four orchid table pieces from empty places around the restaurant. “Florals for the occasion,” she insists. Between your plates, plastic flowers reach up towards your face. Green leaves and plum and pink colored petals make it hard to steal off each other’s plates, but you tease and make a game of it, weaving through the stems for mouthfuls of spicy tuna or avocado. Crab meat salad spills over and there isn’t an inch of the table untouched. Bursting with food and color, just like each of you. 

Connie steps away from the table and walks to the bar. You think nothing of it, though you wonder about the cake. The whimsy and giddiness of an elopement suggested that a baker was never called, that two plastic brides would never sit on top of a puffy cloud of buttercream. No knife would slice through tiers of intricate piping.

Instead, something so much better. 

One of every mochi flavor comes out, dolloped on a massive plate. Connie smiles as you frantically try to clear some plates to make room for such an arrival. Three sparklers the restaurant saves for birthdays poke out of a red bean mochi and Marsha squeals. Her eyes have been dry all day, but it’s the palette of mochi that bring her to drip moon drop tears. It was a promise that Connie had made for her little MatchaMarsha. Her little Matcha who always kept a kettle warm, who knew just when to pull the tea bag out, who poured perfect cups and never spilled. Marsha’s always wanted one of each, and Connie knows it.

“What better day to grant your greatest wish, hm?”