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Wiping my face, I said, “I guess just move ahead with the wedding. Start pla
As soon as we got off the phone, I started seeing things more clearly. I needed to separate emotion from reason. Refusing to go to the wedding was my mother’s trump card. It was the only leg she had to stand on. And she was bluffing. She had to be bluffing. No matter how upset or disappointed she was in me, I couldn’t believe 116 · je
that she would miss her only daughter’s wedding. I just couldn’t.
All there was to do now was to steamroll ahead and get this wedding in motion. With or without my mother by my side, this was happening.
Chapter Twenty-three
I was folding my laundry when Steven knocked on my door later that night. As usual he only gave me a couple of seconds before opening it; he never waited for me to say “come in.” He came into the room and shut the door behind him. Steven stood in my room awkwardly, leaning against the wall, his arms folded against his chest.
“What?” I said. Although I already knew.
“Sooo … are you and Jere serious about this?”
I stacked some T-shirts into a pile. “Yes.”
Steven crossed the room and sat at my desk, absorbing my answer for a minute. Then he faced me, straddling the chair, and said, “You realize that’s insane, right? We’re not living in the foothills of West Virginia. There’s no reason you have to get married so young.”
“What do you know about West Virginia?” I scoffed.
“You’ve never even been there.”
“That’s besides the point.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is, you guys are too young.”
“Did Mom send you up here to talk to me?”
“No,” he said, and I knew he was lying. “I’m just worried about you.”
I stared him down.
“Okay, yeah, she did,” he admitted. “But I would have come up anyway.”
“You’re not going to change my mind.”
“Listen, nobody knows you two better than me.” He stopped, weighing his words. “I love Jere—he’s like a brother to me. But you’re my little sister. You come first.
This whole marriage idea—I’m sorry, but I think it’s stupid. If you guys love each other that much, you can wait a couple of years to be together. And if you can’t, you for sure shouldn’t be getting married.”
I felt both touched and a
“I don’t expect you to understand,” I said. I folded then refolded another t-shirt. “Jeremiah wants you and Conrad to be his best men.”
Steven’s face broke into a smile. “He does?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Steven looked really happy, but then he caught me looking at him, and he wiped his smile away. “I don’t think Mom will let me be in the wedding.”
“Steven, you’re twenty-one years old. You can decide that for yourself.”
He frowned. I could tell I’d injured his pride. He said,
“Well, I still don’t think it’s your smartest move.”
“Noted,” I said. “I’m still doing it.”
“Oh, man, Mom’s go
I hid my smile. That is, until Steven added, “Con and I had better start pla
Quickly, I said, “Jere doesn’t want any of that.”
Steven puffed up his chest. “You don’t get a say in it, Belly. You’re a girl. This is man stuff.”
“Man stuff?”
Gri
Chapter Twenty-four
Despite what I’d said to Steven, I still found myself waiting for my mother. Waiting for her to come around, waiting for her to give in. I didn’t want to start pla
Thank God for Taylor.
She brought over a big white binder with clippings from wedding magazines and checklists and all kinds of stuff. “I was saving this for my wedding, but we can use it for yours, too,” she said.
All I had was one of my mother’s yellow legal pads. I had written wedding at the top and made a list of things I needed to do. The list looked pretty skimpy, next to Taylor’s binder.
We were sitting on my bed, papers and bride magazines all around us. Taylor was all business.
She said, “First things first. We have to find you a dress.
August is really, really soon.”
“It doesn’t feel that soon,” I said.
“Well, it is. Two months to plan a wedding is nothing.
In weddingspeak that’s, like, tomorrow.”
“Well, I guess since the wedding is going to be simple, the dress should be too,” I said.
Taylor frowned. “How simple?”
“Really simple. As simple as it gets. Nothing poofy or frou frou.”
She nodded to herself. “I can picture it. It’s very Cindy Crawford wedding-on- the-beach, very Carolyn Bessette.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” I said. I had no idea what either of their wedding dresses looked like. I didn’t even know who Carolyn Bessette was. After I had the dress, it would feel more real, I would be able to visualize it happening.
Right now it still felt too abstract.
“What about shoes?”
I gave her a look. “Like I’m go
Taylor ignored me. “What about my bridesmaid dress?”
I pushed some magazines onto the carpet so I could lie down. I stretched my legs as high as I could and put my feet up on the wall. “I was thinking mustard yellow. Maybe in a satiny kind of material.” Taylor hated mustard yellow.
“Mustard yellow satin,” Taylor repeated, nodding and trying hard to keep the disgust off her face. I could tell she was torn between her vanity and her credo, which was, the Bride is always right. “That could maybe work with Anika’s skin tone. I’m more of a spring, but if I started ta
I laughed. “I’m kidding. You can wear whatever you want.”
“Dork!” she said, looking relieved. She slapped my thigh. “You’re so immature! I can’t believe you’re getting married!”
“Me neither.”
“But I guess it makes sense, in a Twilight Zone kind of way. You’ve known each other for, like, a grillion years.
It’s meant to be.”
“How long is a grillion years?”
“It’s forever.” In the air she spelled out my initials.
“B.C. + J.F. forever.”
“Forever,” I echoed happily. Forever I could do. Me and Jere.
Chapter Twenty-five
On my way out to meet Taylor at the mall the next day, I stopped by my mother’s office. “I’m going to look for a dress,” I said, standing in her doorway.
She stopped typing and looked over at me. “Good luck,” she said.
“Thanks.” I supposed there were worse things she could have said than “good luck,” but the thought didn’t make me feel any better.
The formal-wear store at the mall was packed with girls looking for prom dresses with their mothers. I didn’t expect to feel the pang in my chest when I saw them.
Girls were supposed to go wedding dress shopping with their mothers. They were supposed to step out of the dressing room in just the right dress, and the mother would tear up and say, “That’s the one.” I was pretty sure that was the way it was supposed to be.
“Isn’t it a little late in the year for prom?” I asked Taylor. “Wasn’t ours in, like, May?”
“My sister told me they had to push back prom this year because of some scandal with the assistant principal,”
she explained. “All the prom money went missing or something. So now it’s a grom. Graduation-prom.”
I laughed. “Grom.”
“Also, the private schools always have their prom later, remember? Collegiate, St. Joe’s.”
“I only went to one prom,” I reminded her. One had been more than enough for me.