It’s the day of my wedding. My wife and I are exchanging our vows. I’m describing the first time that I truly saw her. All of a sudden, cell phones start vibrating and beeping. One of our guests goes to turn his off, but not before he sees the news. He gasps. Discreetly, more guests check their phones.
“Could we maybe do this later?” I ask, but now my wife is checking hers.
“Is this real?” she says, without looking up.
“Confirmed!” my father-in-law shouts. “By multiple sources!”
“What is it?” I stammer. “What’s going on?”
My wife stares deep into my eyes, inhales, and says, “Pete Davidson and Cazzie David are dating.”
I nod. “Let’s finish this later,” I say to her.
I turn to our friends and family. “Let’s finish this later, everyone.”
A year or so has passed, and my wife and I are cozied up on our couch, watching an old movie. We never finished our wedding, but we don’t care. She has her hand on my leg and her head on my chest. I’ve never been this happy before.
Suddenly, my wife sounds concerned. “Have you always had this lump here?” she asks me.
I check my thigh. I’m sure of only two things: it’s definitely a lump, and it hasn’t always been there. We open WebMD and within ten minutes I’m convinced that I’m dying.
“Let’s call a doctor,” my wife says. “Before you start writing a will.”
So we do. I’m too scared to dial, so my wife punches in the number for our doctor’s office. She gasps, staring at the phone.
“What?” I ask. “What is it? Am I totally fucked?”
“No, no . . . it’s Pete Davidson.”
“My lump is Pete Davidson?” I ask, like an idiot.
“He’s dating Ariana Grande,” she says.
“Jesus Christ,” I say. And that’s when the doctor answers.
“Well,” my doctor says with a sigh, holding up my chart as he adjusts his glasses. “You’re not gonna want to hear this.”
My heart sinks. “Tell me,” I say. “Just tell me.”
He clears his throat.
“Kate Beckinsale,” he announces.
I’m confused.
“Kate . . . Beckinsale?” I ask. “Is that . . . is that a new disease?”
“No,” my doctor says impatiently. “That’s who Pete Davidson’s dating. You don’t have a disease, you’re fine. The lump was nothing.”
But it’s too late—I’ve vomited from anxiety.
“I did the same thing, buddy,” he tells me, and walks out of the room.
As I drive home from the hospital, I turn on the radio to listen to the traffic report.
“Expect long, long delays,” I hear. “Cars are at a standstill on every major road and highway.”
That’s odd, I think. Every road and highway?
“It’s Pete Davidson,” the man on the radio says. “He’s dating Margaret Qualley. Nobody knows what to do. Everyone’s forgotten how to drive.”
“Makes sense,” I mutter as I abandon my car on the side of the road and walk home.
We can’t afford it, but my wife and I decide to take a week off work and fly to Norway. We’ve always wanted to go, and, until recently, I thought I was dying.
I’ve always been afraid of flying, so I pop an Ambien during takeoff. But before the pill kicks in, I hear the P.A. system crackle on.
“This is your captain speaking. We have an emergency.”
Other passengers begin to murmur anxiously. I fight the urge to fall asleep—I need to be able to react.
“Does everyone here know who Cindy Crawford’s daughter is?” the captain asks. My wife takes out her phone and starts Googling.
“No need to Google it,” our captain continues. “Cindy Crawford’s daughter is named Kaia Gerber, and apparently she’s dating Pete Davidson. Isn’t that crazy?”
Everyone on the plane has taken their phones out and turned off airplane mode.
“Wait!” the captain shouts. “Seriously, don’t Google it! If everyone uses their phones with airplane mode off that could send us hurtling to the—” But it’s too late.
The plane begins to shake and then tilts forward, toward snow-capped mountain peaks. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. I fall asleep as the oxygen masks deploy.
“She’s in ‘Bridgerton,’ ” my wife says, scrolling on her cracked phone with one hand as she pulls me out of the wreckage with the other. I gaze past our shattered plane and scan the bleak horizon—we must be hundreds of miles from civilization.
“*Who’s *in ‘Bridgerton’?” I ask.
“Pete Davidson’s new girlfriend,” my wife tells me.
“B.D.E.,” I whisper, as I help the rest of the survivors build a makeshift shelter. “B. D. E.”
Those of us who survived the crash have split into warring factions. We fight over every scrap of every meal. Today it’s a deer, lying slain in the snow.
“Please!” I yell to my wife, who has broken from my group. “Just share this deer with us! We’re all hungry, my love!”
“We’re not even married!” my wife yells back and throws one of her makeshift spears at me.
“What does she mean?” the captain asks, as it whizzes by me.
“We never finished our wedding,” I say. “Cazzie David and Pete Davidson started dating.”
“Well, they’re not dating anymore,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “He’s dating Phoebe Dynevor now.”
“No,” the captain shouts above the fray. “He’s dating Kim K.!” Everyone immediately stops fighting over the deer meat.
“That can’t be true,” my wife says. “That’s too crazy.”
“How could you even know?” I ask. “We’re in the middle of nowhere!”
“My phone turned on and got service last night,” the captain says. “I saw the news just after I sent out an SOS.”
Another spear flies through the air and into the captain’s chest, immediately killing him. I turn to see my wife’s empty hand, her eyes full of fire.
“He kept that celebrity gossip a secret from us.” She spits at me. “He had to go.”
It’s been weeks. I can no longer tell if I’m dreaming or awake. The only thing I know is that I must be dying. Not from some lump or from the impact of a plane crash but simply from hunger and thirst. As I take what I believe will be some of my final breaths, I feel a boot make contact with my side. I struggle to open my eyes, and when I do, what I see is almost magical: a search-and-rescue team has found us. But then I see my wife being pulled up onto a stretcher.
“She’s out of the picture,” my rescuer tells me.
“Oh God,” I whisper. “Not my wife. Please, not my wife.”
“Oh, no—your wife will be fine,” he says. “But Kim K. is out of the picture. Pete’s dating Emily Ratajkowski now.”
And that’s when I pass out. ♦
