Chapter 43
Forty-Three
CLARA
B ecky had a schedule for her schedule on her wedding day and was working very hard to make sure we all stuck to it down to the nanosecond.
Which meant that she was banging a saucepan over the bed again because we were all asleep and she needed us to be eating. When the first bang came, I refused to believe it was real because I had only just managed to fall asleep, and I wasn’t prepared to face the day like this.
“Darren made pancakes!” Becky said at a volume that was only just below the decibels produced by the saucepan. “We’ve gotta get down there before the boys to at least try and avoid Gavin seeing me before I walk down the aisle,” she said at a more reasonable volume.
“We’re coming, Bex,” Lucy said. I was lying on her thigh. It wasn’t even attempting to move. Good to know I wasn’t the only one in a state of shock at being awake so suddenly.
“You’re not coming quickly enough! Come on. They’re chocolate chip,” she said hopefully, like the type of pancakes would make us move quicker.
When there was still no movement, she resorted to putting the saucepan down and grabbing at whatever limbs she could find.
She dragged me off the bed by my calf.
* * *
When we got to the kitchen, it was just my dad, Xander, and Danielle down there. Sure enough, there were chocolate chip pancakes. Lots of them.
“I made blueberry ones, too,” Dad said as I approached the breakfast buffet.
“I know I don’t make pancakes often, but even I can tell on sight that these are all chocolate chip,” I said, nudging my shoulder against his.
Dad smiled as he walked to a covered plate and removed the foil, revealing blueberry pancakes. His daughters’ favourite.
As I started piling them onto a plate, Becky came over to me, her mouth full of pancake.
“Can I say ‘I do’ before you go and fix your life, or do you need to do it now?” she asked.
“Maybe it’s best if I try it after in case it ends badly. I don’t want to ruin the vibe of the ceremony with my sadness,” I replied.
Becky swallowed her mouthful, her eyebrows pinched together. “Oh, I was more concerned that if you did it before, you would have to do your hair and make-up in about two minutes because you got distracted getting your back blown out.”
I snorted. Hard enough that it hurt the back of my throat, which prompted a loud laugh from Becky.
“You have total faith that it’s going to work out for me, don’t you?” I asked as I took a bite of my pancake.
“That man looks at you like you hung the moon. If that doesn’t work out, then we’re all fucked,” she said, walking away to find some syrup.
* * *
There was a unique kind of chaos in the room as we all got ready for the day.
It was mostly organised. We all sat in a row of chairs while Juliette went down the line, applying various products one by one. But she could only work on one face at a time, so when she wasn’t working on our faces, we took a lot of liberties. Taking turns telling the most absurd stories that we could think of just to get the kind of laugh out of one another that made eyes water and stomachs hurt. We reminisced about the early days of Becky and Gavin’s relationship. We got lost in the overriding joy of getting to see Becky finally live out the wedding she had dreamed of for as long as any of us could remember.
It was only when our make-up had been applied and we were in various states of undress, trying to get into our respective dresses while keeping an eye on the bathroom door for the reveal of Becky’s wedding dress, that I noticed Addie had a yellow dress laid out for her.
“Since when were you in the wedding party?” I asked her. Becky and Gavin were due to have three people standing next to them. Me, Rachel, and Lucy for Becky, and Andrew, Danielle, and Samuel for Gavin. Addie being there threw the numbers out.
Addie wasn’t the one to answer.
“Because Drew is now walking down that aisle on his own,” Becky said, standing in the bathroom door.
The only thing Becky had told us about her wedding dress was that it wasn’t white. She hadn’t let us see any iteration of it, and all of us froze as we looked at her. It was a midnight blue; an incredible shade that made her rich brown skin look even warmer. It was tight in the bodice and slinked over the curves of her lower body like it had been poured on her. When she felt like we had taken in the front of the dress, she slowly turned around with a smile. The back was completely open, settling above the dimples in her lower back. There was a small train fanning out behind her.
It was perfect.
Lucy whistled low and long. “Well, I’ll be damned, Rebecca.”
“Something blue and something new,” Becky said, smiling widely as she turned back around and smoothed the front of her dress.
“What’s old and borrowed?” Lucy asked. She was the only one of us that was in her bridesmaid dress.
“Shoes are Mum’s, so old, and I borrowed this ring from Clo.” Becky waved her hand around, and sure enough, one of my rings was on her finger.
“Why yes, you can wear that. But back to the Drew thing, what do you mean he is walking on his own?”
“I’ve changed the formation. Samuel and Danielle will walk down together, then Drew, then Lucy and Rachel, followed by the Henry sisters,” Becky answered casually like she wasn’t changing something she had thought about long and hard. The symmetry of it all was important to Becky, and yet she was throwing that all away.
There was no room for interpretation on why she had changed it at the last minute. She did it for me.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, blinking away tears.
“There was absolutely no way that you were walking down that aisle with that man. He’d be a dick about it and nobody needs that today. But do you know how you can repay me for this?” I nodded. “Get fucking dressed,” she said with a smile and a laugh.
I picked up a bra and started putting it on, but the moment the lace and cotton brushed against my nipples, I knew it wasn’t going to work.
“Hey, Rach, you got spare nipple covers?” I asked as I shed the offending item.
“Yeah, sure,” she said as she threw a pair, still in the packet, at me.
My nipples were a lot happier once they were encased in the silicone, and I pulled my bridesmaid dress up over my body, letting Addie zip me up before I returned the favour.
As I settled the zip at the top of Addie’s dress, there was a knock on the door.
“You can come in!” Becky called just before Xander walked in.
His eyes immediately filled with tears as he looked at his eldest daughter.
“You look beautiful, Bex,” he said, pulling her into a tight hug. “You all do,” he said over Becky’s shoulder.
“Xander, that was a given,” Rachel joked.
I started putting on my rings, minus the one that was on Becky’s finger for the day, then slipped my phone into the dress’s sole pocket.
“Are you ready for this?” Xander asked Becky, holding one of her hands.
Becky closed her eyes and took a deep breath before she looked Xander in the eyes. “Yes. Let’s do this,” she said.
We all filed out of the room, picking up our bouquets from where they waited for us outside the door and started the walk down to the gardens, which had been decked out for the wedding earlier that morning.
* * *
There had been a moment when I was writing my thoughts out in the middle of the night when I became convinced that Jesse had disappeared under the cover of night.
So, as we made our way to the back of the aisle and got ready to walk out, my eyes frantically searched the crowd for him.
“He’s here,” Addie said quietly, making me look away from the crowd and at her. “You’re not being very subtle. And he’s here. I saw him at breakfast after you and Rachel went back up to the room. He’s still here.”
“Can you see him out there, though?”
“No, but he’s here. Dad is probably with him.” She frowned at something behind me. “Can we help you?”
I turned to see Andrew standing behind me. His eyes widened, and he took a step away from us.
“Clara and I are supposed to walk down the aisle together,” he said, his voice unsure.
“That’s weird because I was under the impression that you wanted nothing less than that. You’re on your own now. Behind Samuel and Danielle, before Lucy and Rachel. You can check with Becky if you don’t believe me, but she’ll be less nice about it than me.”
Andrew’s mouth gaped open and shut before he accepted defeat and moved along. A broad smile broke out on Addie’s face, making her eyes glitter like emeralds.
“You liked that too much,” I said, fighting off my own smile.
“It was incredibly satisfying,” she said, looping her arm through mine.
Music started playing and we all got in line.
I tried to keep my focus on the watercolour blue of Rachel’s tattoo, peeking out from under her dress, but my peripheral vision snagged on purple. I knew it was him and I could feel that he was looking at me. I shifted my gaze and locked eyes with Jesse. He smiled gently, and tears pressed at the back of my eyes again. Addie squeezed my arm, and I looked back in front of me.
As we settled in on our side of the altar, I looked at Gavin as he joked around with his brother. The moment the music changed to an instrumental version of Becky’s favourite song, he straightened up and watched Becky and her parents walk towards him, a quiet smile on his face.