Chapter 20
Wedding planning in six days was not for the faint of heart.
Having an unlimited budget definitely made things easier, but it was still exhausting.
It didn’t help that Frankie’s mom wanted to do everything herself.
She refused to hire any help. Thankfully, Frankie was fairly certain they were out of the logistical weeds and were now getting into the fun part.
Over the past two days, they’d taken care of everything from the guest list, invitations, location, catering, florist, DJ, photographer, rehearsal dinner, welcome brunch, welcome dinner, vendors, lighting, and day-of coordinator.
They’d finalized the seating arrangement yesterday, which had taken seven hours.
Seven. Hours. During which Liam texted her mom and said he was bringing a plus one.
She nearly had a heart attack until Poppy messaged minutes later saying she was coming as Liam’s date and asking what the dress code was.
Speaking of dresses, today was dress shopping, which is where they were headed.
Tomorrow night they had the rehearsal dinner at The Castaway, not at the resort where the wedding was being held, which Frankie didn’t understand.
She’d always assumed that a rehearsal dinner was a dinner after you rehearsed what you’d be doing at the wedding but apparently this dinner was just a dinner.
Half the people in the wedding weren’t even going to be there since her brothers weren’t flying in until.
This was just a dinner for the guests who were arriving on Thursday, which was mainly Yaya’s family.
Friday morning was the welcome brunch for any guests who had arrived and Friday night was the welcome dinner that all of the out-of-town guests would be attending.
Between the Costas, who still considered Frankie’s mom family, and Dr. Sterling’s professional acquaintances, there were over three hundred people descending on Hope Falls for the nuptials. Saturday evening was the wedding.
Saturday night the wedding party was staying at Mountain Ridge Resort, where the wedding was being held, and then Sunday morning she and Tristan would have breakfast with their parents before they left on their honeymoon, and after that the charade was over.
Tristan was flying back to New York, and Frankie and Liam could…
well, they could go back to whatever they were doing.
“Come! Come! Come!” Yaya shouted as she held the door of the bridal shop.
“Sorry.” Frankie hadn’t realized she’d zoned out on the short walk down Main Street to Ivory and Lace.
They were early for their appointment at the upscale boutique that had its grand opening in downtown Hope Falls just two weeks earlier. With the small-town drawing in more and more destination weddings, the need for its own bridal store became a necessity.
The first thing Frankie noticed as she entered was the shop's unique floral and citrus scent wafting through the air with hits of rose water and lemon.
Sunlight poured through sheer pale pink drapes framing the front window, which displayed rotating designer dresses, fairy lights, and elaborate floral arrangements.
Inside, creamy marble floors led to a series of three vignettes of velvet settees in either blush or gold, each one arranged like theater seats facing a platform in front of a three-sided mirror.
A curvy blonde with a beaming smile, bright green eyes, perfect skin, and a name tag that read "Brandi" greeted them with a calm, composed, capable energy that made Frankie instantly feel at ease, as if every single one of her needs could be met, not that they were there for her. She wore a black sheath dress that clung to her hourglass figure, with perfect, shell-pink nails that matched her lipstick, and a ‘big city’ chic aura. She was definitely giving a vibe that she’d just walked off the set of Say Yes to the Dress, which filmed in Kleinfeld’s in Manhattan, rather than working in a boutique shop located in a town of less than five thousand people.
“Who is our bride?” She beamed positivity.
Frankie gave Brandi credit, she looked at all three women with equal interest, not assuming that Frankie was the bride-to-be because she was the youngest.
Frankie’s mom lifted her hand sheepishly. She’d never been comfortable with attention being on her. “Me.”
“Wonderful, lovely to meet you, Miss Costas, or do you prefer Cora?”
Frankie’s mom never went back to her maiden name. It made sense considering her childhood had been so tough. She maintained that her children were Costases, and so was she.
“Cora is fine.”
The telephone rang, and Brandi politely excused herself to answer it.
“You know what I just realized?!” Her mom’s eyes widened and danced with excitement as she took both Frankie’s hands in her own and brought them up under her chin, the same way she used to do when Frankie was little.
“What?” Frankie asked.
“We are still going to have the same last name!” Cora exclaimed. “We’ll both be Sterlings.”
“Pfft." Yaya made the dismissive sound and then mumbled beneath her breath in Greek, “Kakos.”
“What?” Frankie’s mom turned to Yaya, her brow furrowing.
“I said—”
Frankie spun towards her grandma to stop her from repeating the Greek insult. Frankie wasn’t exactly fluent, but she knew that it was not a nice word, and she’d only heard her grandma say it when she was speaking of someone she didn’t like.
“Okay, sorry about that.” Brandi joined them once again and swept her mom away.
Frankie sighed with relief that the clerk returned and saved her mom from learning Yaya’s opinion of the man she still thought her daughter was engaged to. She was already suspicious that Frankie’s ring was back in New York getting ‘resized.’
“What are you doing?” Frankie whispered under her breath as she and Yaya followed from a distance.
“He is worthless.”
“Shh,” Frankie shushed her quietly.
“Why, shhhh? You need to tell your mama that you and him not marry.”
“I am. I will. Just let her get married and have her honeymoon, and then I’ll tell her. She deserves this.”
“Ahh.” Yaya waved her arm in disapproval as the two stood back and watched Brandi guide her mom through the showroom.
Every movement—the way she swept her arms while describing "the season's most stunning silhouettes," or how she tucked stray pins into her mouth as she knelt to hem a sample gown—broadcast her devotion to the entire bridal experience. Yaya seemed impressed by the displays. Frankie, on the other hand, eyed the racks of delicate dresses as a jungle gym or obstacle course, something to be feared, not fussed over. They represented the life that she’d thought she was going to have.
Being in the boutique was making her feel claustrophobic.
She and Tristan had been getting along the past few days after Zee’s theory turned out to be true.
Petra had falsified those documents she’d sent to Frankie, which actually made a lot more sense than if he had slept with all those random women.
Tristan used their cybersecurity team to look into the files, and they discovered the dates the documents had been created and what computer they’d originated on, proving Petra was behind them.
Frankie, just for her own peace of mind, sent her original copies to AJ as well. His findings were exactly the same.
But despite his infidelity only being with one person, the timeframe limited to the past six months, and Tristan being profusely sorry, her feelings hadn’t changed. She was not getting back together with him. The thought of marrying him now was actually anxiety-inducing.
“Okay, these are great to start,” Brandi declared as she ushered her mom to the dressing room and got her and Yaya settled on the couch with mimosas.
“Are you sure I’m not too old for this?” her mom asked from behind the white curtain.
“No!” Frankie yelled.
“Pftt. When Arthur removes head from behind and asks me to be wife, I will be back here. And if he take too long, I will put ring in his pocket and tell him, what he want to ask me.”
“What are you talking about?!” Frankie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I will put ring in his pocket and then tell him that he said he want to ask me something,” Yaya repeated slowly.
“No, you are not doing that.”
“Yes. I do. His memory not so good. I say he forgot.”
“You can not do that.”
“Why?” Her hands flew in the air.
“Because that’s…wrong. You can’t trick someone into marrying you. That’s like telling someone you’re pregnant to get them to marry you when you are not actually pregnant.”
“No! Not same!” Yaya gasped, as if Frankie had offended her by even suggesting such a thing. “I would never lie to my Arthur.”
“Yes, you would. You just said that you’re gonna plant a ring in his pocket and then tell him that he was going to ask you something.”
Yaya waved her hand in the air. “He want to marry me. He just not know he want to marry me.”
“Yaya, that doesn’t—”
Frankie’s phone vibrated, interrupting her trying to talk sense into Yaya, which, if she were being honest with herself, she knew was a lost cause.
It was a text from Liam. Just seeing his name on her screen sent a spread of warm tingles through her like she’d taken a shot of whiskey.
The text wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t anything special. It was simply checking in.
Literally. That was what the text said.
Liam: Just checking in.
Frankie held her camera out with one hand, then leaned in close to Yaya, and clinked her own champagne flute with her grandma’s. She snapped a selfie and sent it to Liam with the caption: wedding dress shopping.
He’d been working nonstop the past few days but was supposed to be at a tux fitting across town with his dad and Tristan.
“Who is that?” Yaya demanded. “Who make you smile?”
“Shhh.”
“Is Liam? He make you smile? You tell your mama.” Yaya waved her arm. “You tell her he make you smile.”
“Yaya—”