This is a work of semi-autobiography and therefore should be considered fiction. Names and events have been altered. "Seven Years Bad Luck" is an ongoing series. This is part ten.

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When I climb back through the French doors into the Bragg-Mitchell Mansion, I’m immediately aware that I may have made a mistake. It’s quiet inside.

I stride through the empty rooms, each step fomenting panic. Where is everyone?

I come into the front living room before I hear noise again. Through the glass windows in front I see rows of standing people and the arch. I hurry out through the front door.

Tina has the best luck with the weather today. I come out as the ceremony is just finishing up (late, my signature style), and while she stands there and kisses her groom, it’s just late enough in the afternoon that shafts of amber light come in horizontally to gild the couple and the arch. Standing on the porch, I watch things wrap up.

Then comes the bouquet toss.

I have a history with those.

I never, ever want to catch them. So, of course, I tend to. Stacey told me it’s because when I don’t want to catch it I tend to move to the middle of the crowd, where there’s plenty of other girls around me to do the catching. But it’s also where brides like to aim. So I’m always catching them anyway.

You’re supposed to be the next one to get hitched if you do, but I have a habit of passively breaking tradition. Must’ve broken it half a dozen times already, after this wedding season.

Watching them prepare for the bouquet toss, I have an unfortunate reverie.

My friend Stacey has probably the most intimate understanding of my aversion to bouquets. She was my old victim of it. Stacey is a high school friend of mine, and though we didn’t stay close in college, I was still a bridesmaid at her post-college wedding. The event was small and quiet, held in the cavernous hall of our big, moderate church. I wore a purple dress that was extremely unflattering, make-up that was equally so, and brought an attitude that at the time I was unaware of.

At the reception, in front of all her parent’s friends, all her friends, his friends, and the ancient church-goers that were barely involved in the whole shebang but she was obligated to invite, she turned around and hefted the bouquet. Lifted it once…twice…

Myself, standing in the middle, trying not to even politely lift my arms.

It flew through the air.

I almost didn’t catch it, because I was waiting for someone else to snatch it out of the air. Then I did. For a split second, I held it. There was a flash of boiling temper, so quick I barely felt it.

The bouquet hit the bride straight on the face and bounced off.

The quiet after that would have gotten to me, if I hadn’t been too busy staring, dumbfounded. What? What happened?

The wedding proceeded with admirable grace after that soul-destroying faux pas, but the look her mother had given me after the reception could’ve wilted grass.

I stand on the porch this time: quite safe, out of the danger zone. I’mma threat with a bouquet.