How It All Goes Down
Amy Elliott—September 18, 2005
- After eight months, two weeks, and two days of no follow-up phone calls from the powdered sugar kiss incident, Amy runs into Nick at an outdoor market. And just like that, they're an item.
- The timing couldn't be better. Amy's parents, Rand and Marybeth, authors of the Amazing Amy series, have written another installment in which their beloved heroine—you guessed it—gets married. The Amazing Amy books really annoy her—all her life, her parents have used the fictional Amy as a way to vicariously get the daughter they always wanted. When Real Amy quit playing violin, Amazing Amy embraced the challenge of playing an instrument; when Real Amy ditched a tennis tournament to go to the beach with her girlfriends, Amazing Amy won the big game.
- Amy appreciates the money the series has raked in over the years, but believes the whole thing is generally just super fake. Her parents have a perfect marriage and have thoroughly exploited their love story as a husband and wife writing team. Being an only child can be hard enough, but being the only child who inspires a charmed couple's mega-selling young adult book series can't exactly be a charmed life.
- To make an uncomfortable situation even more awkward, her parents throw a big party for the Amazing Amy wedding book's release. Real Amy spends most of it drinking alone and fielding the same questions about what it's like to be single while Amazing Amy is getting married, and by the end of the night she feels so lonely that she just goes home and cries. After all, she's thirty-two, and while she isn't ready to marry and definitely doesn't want to settle like most of her friends have, she's nonetheless still alone.
- And then—just when she's about run out of hope—she runs into Nick.