Chapter 37
LILY
The morning of the wedding starts with champagne and Poppy crying over a bobby pin.
Not because the bobby pin is special. She's crying because her hands are shaking and she's getting married in a few hours and apparently bobby pins are the hill she's going to die on.
"I can't." She holds up the pin like it's committed some unforgivable offense against her and her entire family line. "I physically cannot make this work. My fingers are broken. I have broken fingers. Someone call a doctor."
"You're looking at one," I say. "Almost. In about eight years or so." I grin at her reflection in the mirror.
"You're not helpful, missy."
"Sit down." I cross the room and take the pin from her trembling fingers, pointing at the chair in front of the vanity. "Sit. Breathe. Let me do it."
She sits. For all of her soon-to-be-husband's millions, this girl decided she wanted to do her own hair and makeup because she didn't want strangers fussing over her on her wedding day, overstimulating her when she's already running on pure adrenaline and champagne bubbles.
I love her for it. I love her for wanting this day to feel like hers, even if it means crying over bobby pins at nine in the morning.
The wedding is in Poppy's backyard, which sounds intimate until you remember that Poppy's backyard is roughly the size of a small country.
What started as "something small, just the people we love" turned into something significantly larger, because it turns out a lot of people love Poppy and Ramsey.
The grounds have been transformed overnight, ceremony space flowing into reception, white chairs arranged in neat rows facing an arch dripping with flowers that Erin helped design.
Catering tents. A stage for the live band Ramsey insisted on. A dance floor, fairy lights strung through every tree.
Poppy was happy to hand all of that to someone else.
The logistics, the vendors, the endless decisions about napkin folds and table arrangements.
What she wanted was this: a spare room turned bridal salon, just the three of us, doing her hair and makeup ourselves because she didn't want strangers touching her today. She wanted us.
I slide the pin into place, securing the twist of hair exactly the way she showed me three times last week during our practice run.
"There," I say, stepping back to survey my work.
Poppy studies herself in the mirror. Her eyes are already red, and her makeup isn't even on yet, and she looks exactly like a woman who is about to marry the love of her life and can't quite believe it's real.
"I look sad," she says. "But I'm so happy."
"You look beautiful." And she does, even with the red eyes and the trembling chin and the slightly manic energy that's been radiating off her since I walked in an hour ago.
"I look like a woman who cried over a bobby pin."
"You look like a woman who's getting married to the love of her life today and is allowed to cry over whatever she wants." I squeeze her shoulders, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "Including bobby pins."
She reaches up and grabs my hands where they rest on her shoulders, holding on tight. She finds my eyes in the mirror and smiles a teary, wobbly smile.
”I’m getting married," she says.
"You're getting married."
"To Ramsey."
"To Ramsey."
"Lily." Her voice cracks on my name. "I'm going to fall apart in front of everyone. I love him so much."
"Good." I squeeze her hands back. "Fall apart. That's the whole point."
In the mirror, I see us. Two women holding on to each other, one about to walk into the rest of her life, one about to walk away from hers in a couple short weeks.
The reflection doesn't show that part, the countdown running in the back of my mind, but I feel it anyway.
I feel it because my whole body is screaming at me to stay.
It's at times like this that I feel so much younger than all of them. Poppy is getting married. Erin is building a life with my brother, secure enough in her relationship to take that kind of leap. They've figured it out. The career, the person, the path forward.
I'm only starting. And I'm doing it so far away.
I have years stretching out in front of me, years of studying and working and being somewhere that isn't here, before I'm anywhere close to where they are now.
By then, everything will be different. By then, Poppy will have the babies she's dreaming about. Erin will have published books and built a life so intertwined with Rome's that you won't be able to see where one ends and the other begins.
And Callahan. There I decide to torture myself with a future I don't want to see. Callahan with someone else. Someone impossibly beautiful who doesn't have to leave, who can be here every morning and every night, who gives him the life he deserves.
Children with his green eyes and his quiet steadiness. A family portrait on Will's mantel that I'll see every time I visit.
And I'll visit. Of course I'll visit. I'll come back to Harbor Hill for holidays and birthdays and all the moments that matter, and I'll walk into that house and meet them.
I'll smile at them and say the right things and be the girl he used to know, the one he had a thing with that one summer before she left.
A footnote. A memory he's fond of, but doesn't think about much anymore.
He'll give me that distant smile, the polite one, the one you give to people who used to matter. And I'll smile back. And I'll die inside, quietly, where no one can see.
I blink and I'm back in the room when Erin comes back with coffee and more champagne.
Dresses hang on the back of the door, pressed and perfect.
Shoes are lined up in order of when we'll need them.
And on the dresser, Erin has assembled what she calls the emergency kit: safety pins, double-sided tape, a sewing needle and thread, two different shades of concealer, breath mints, Advil, a full box of tissues, and a tiny bottle of whiskey that she places beside the tissues without comment.
"That's either for emergencies or for me," Poppy says, eyeing the whiskey from her chair.
"It's for whoever needs it first." Erin crosses to her and kisses her cheek, one hand smoothing down her hair with the gentle calmness that Erin brings to everything. "How are we feeling?"
"Unstable."
"Perfect. Right on schedule."
We fall into the rhythm of getting ready as we talk about Poppy's beautiful future to distract her nerves. About the home they're building and the nursery she's already designed in her head, the color she wants for the walls and the rocking chair Will is going to build her.
Her voice is bright when she talks about babies, but I catch the flicker underneath. The grief she carries quietly, the months of trying that haven't worked yet, the hope she refuses to let go of even when it hurts.
I don't say anything. I just listen and hand her a tissue when her eyes get too shiny and believe, in my heart, that she and Ramsey are meant to be parents. That they'll have the children they want so desperately, one way or another. Some things I just know.
I end up on the windowsill with my champagne, knees pulled up, watching them. My girls.
The morning light is pouring through the window and catching dust motes in the air, making the whole room look like something from a painting. They're talking about something, laughing about something, and I'm sitting here watching them.
They belong here. They'll be together, raising families side by side, growing old in this town that holds them so gently.
The countdown isn't just about Callahan.
It isn't just about Will or the apartment or the big window or the cold harbor mornings.
It's about this. These two women in a room full of morning light, getting ready for a wedding I won't be here for the anniversary of.
I'll be in their lives. Always. But I'll be far away.
And far away is a different thing than here.
"Lily." I glance over and find Erin watching me from the bed. "Come sit."
I uncurl myself from the windowsill and cross the room, settling beside her on the edge of the bed. She puts her arm around me without hesitation.
"Don't you dare cry before the ceremony," she says, her tone light but her grip firm. "I have a very specific crying schedule and we are not ahead of it."
"I'm not crying."
"Your chin is wobbling and your eyes are shiny."
She pulls me closer. "And if you start, Poppy starts, and if Poppy starts, we'll all be a mess and we don't have time to redo our makeup."
"I can hear you," Poppy calls from her chair, mascara wand paused mid-air, "and I'm already on the edge. Do not push me."
I've been like this for weeks, a tap that won't stop leaking, tears surfacing at the smallest provocation. Erin pulls me closer against her side and I lean into her warmth, and hold it together because today is not about me.
Today is about Poppy and Ramsey and the life they're building. I'm a bridesmaid. My job is to hold the bouquet and fix the train and give a speech and be steady. I can be steady.
My dress is sage green, the color of new leaves in May. I stand in front of the mirror and think I'm about to hold flowers and cry at a wedding and pretend the tears are about the bride.
The dress is beautiful. Simple and long, a cut that skims without clinging, elegant in the understated way that Poppy insisted on for us. Erin's is the same, and when we stand side by side in the mirror, we look matched and coordinated, like pieces that fit together.
"Ready?" Erin asks.
I nod. My throat is too tight for words.
The door to the bathroom opens and Poppy steps out.
Her dress is very much Poppy. It has a deep neckline and lace that looks like it was grown instead of sewn, organic and wild and somehow both delicate and fierce.
The train pools behind her like water, like something living, and she stands there in the middle of the room looking like she stepped out of a dream.
"Well?" she says, her voice uncertain.
Erin presses her fingers to her mouth. My eyes fill and I don't fight it.
"Poppy," I breathe. "Oh my God."
"Is that a good oh my God or a bad oh my God?"
"It's a you-look-like-an-actual-bride oh my God."
She turns to the mirror. I watch her reflection as her eyes go bright and full and her smile grows impossibly big. Shakes her head slowly, like she can't believe this is her life, like she's looking at a stranger wearing her face.
"Okay," she whispers. "Okay. I'm good. I'm fine. Nobody look at me or I'll ruin everything."
But we can't stop. Erin moves first, stepping forward to adjust the veil, her fingers gentle and precise.
I follow, kneeling to straighten the train, smoothing out the fabric so it falls perfectly.
Poppy stands between us and reaches down and takes both our hands, one in each of hers. I hold on with everything I have.
"I love you," she says, her voice breaking. "Both of you. I love you and I need you to know that before I go out there and become someone's wife."
She takes a shaky breath. "You two are the reason I'm standing here and not hiding in a bathroom. You're my people. Whatever happens, wherever we go. You are my people. Always."
"You did hide in the bathroom a little," I remind her, because someone has to break the tension or we're all going to dissolve.
"Shut up." She's crying now, smiling and crying at the same time, but the mascara is holding because we planned for this. We planned for all of it. "I'm serious. Whatever happens. Wherever we go. Always."
Erin dabs at her eyes with a tissue. I wipe mine with the back of my hand, less graceful, more aggressive, because that's how I am feeling.
The three of us stand in a room that smells like flowers and hairspray and hold each other's hands and let the moment be as big as it is. Because it is big. It deserves the space.
Wherever we go.
Right now, in this room, with these women, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.