Chapter Eleven
· Adriana ·
“I’ve always desperately wanted one of these.” I grinned and held up a snow globe that held a miniature version of Bravetown.
“Oh yes, very useful, very pretty.” Esra’s words dripped with sarcasm. “Definitely goes on the list.”
I turned the globe upside down, and she fired the scanner-gun at the barcode on its base. One beep later, it was snowing in mini-Bravetown, and the snow globe was on my wedding registry.
It was Esra’s day off, and she’d decided that we’d spend the morning scanning the most useless and overpriced park merch we could find.
I wasn’t sure how many people actually built a wedding registry here, but apparently enough for it to be an offered service.
For Esra, it seemed to be more about showing her support for my engagement.
She’d shoved all her hair up in a baseball cap and wore big aviator sunglasses to go incognito in the park, so little kids wouldn’t recognize her as Annie Lou, and had already told me twice how happy she was for me.
“Ooh, how about those?” She pointed at a couple of green plastic cups shaped like cacti with pink straws.
“Very classy. Ten out of ten.” I grabbed one off the shelf and turned the barcode toward her. “I need at least six.”
Esra laughed and rapid-fired the scanner again and again. There were probably a dozen of these cups on the registry now.
“I think we’ve got everything worth having here. Next shop?” she asked.
“How about hats? I feel like every wedding guest should have their own hat.”
“You know, that’s not how a registry works, right? It’s for gifts that you want your guests to buy for you. Not gifts for the guests.”
“And you know that I’m not going to give this registry to anyone, right?” I snorted. “I have zero intention of using a sheriff-star-shaped salad bowl for the rest of my life.”
We left Mrs. Duck’s Home & Housewares store behind, my eyes hanging on to a dainty cup and saucer set that, if I were the kind of person who drank tea, would wander onto an actual wedding registry.
Bravetown’s souvenir shops had an odd mix of nice vintage replicas like that and cheaper plastic merch and toys.
I’d browsed some of it with Skye on our day here, but I’d been trying to ignore the park for so long, I’d only scratched the surface of what was on offer for visitors.
Even now, as we walked past queues for rides and the bakery that smelled deliciously like fresh cookies, buttery and sweet, I waited for that old familiar dread to sink in.
But it didn’t. The young girl that saw the park and was constantly reminded of her family being different, of missing out on a normal childhood, didn’t resurface.
Instead, I drank it all in. I was a little curious, but mostly because I wanted to be part of this for Skye.
She loved this place, so I was determined to at least be open to it.
Every kiosk in the park had a few cowboy hats, from the pink party kind to some mid-range wearable options, but we stopped outside the hattery.
Inside, you could get bespoke hats, made perfectly fitted to your size and decorated to your liking.
Esra grabbed one of the pre-made cheap hats from the displays outside and plopped it onto my head.
It was white with a tiny tiara on the front and a cheap veil in the back, and it barely fit over my curls.
“Aw, you’re going to look so cute.”
“Oh yeah, I’ll definitely wear this,” I chuckled.
“For your bachelorette! I’ll organize something epic. Just leave it to me.”
My insides twisted with guilt. Being convincing enough for the wider public was one thing, but I didn’t want my friends to spend any significant time or money on a wedding that would never happen.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I turned to the small display mirror and pretended to be focused on tucking and twisting my hair in ways to make the hat fit.
“Have you guys actually discussed wedding planning?” Esra asked.
“Not really.” I shrugged. “I think house hunting is more of a priority right now.”
“I guess that makes sense.” She sidled up behind me and replaced her baseball cap with a glittering purple cowgirl hat with a big pink heart on the front. “It’s also going to prove to everyone that you’re not knocked up.”
“Oh my god,” I laughed. Not too long ago, I’d been the one telling her not to get knocked up by a country boy unless she wanted to get stuck in a small town. “Is that what everyone’s saying?”
“There are some bets.”
“Some? As in multiple?”
“Whether you are pregnant or not. If so, whether Brooks really is the baby daddy. When the due date is. And if you’re going to wear a dress that highlights or hides the baby bump.”
“Jeez, people are bored around here.”
Esra grinned and shrugged, and I just shook my head, pulled the hat off, and put it back on the rack.
“Wait, I didn’t scan it,” she whined.
“It didn’t fit anyway.”
“What if we straightened your hair?”
“Hell, no. It’s too much hair. Tried a couple of times and always look like I poked a fork into a socket.”
“I thought that as your maid of honor, I’d be allowed to play Barbie dress-up with you. Make you try on lots of different dresses and hairstyles.” She pushed her lip out in a fake pout.
“Oh, you’re my maid of honor now?” I laughed. Not that I had anyone else to ask, but Esra was so perfectly, lovably shameless.
“Obviously.”
“I was going to ask Lucas.”
“He’s not a maid.”
“Neither are you. Technically.”
“You got me there.” She sighed theatrically and placed the purple hat back, only to hesitate with her hand still on it.
“Wait, shit. Did I step on your toes? Were you going to ask Skye? I just figured she’d be a flower girl or like her dad’s best man—best buddy—best daughter—whatever the tween girl equivalent of that is. ”
“Genuinely, we haven’t even started to discuss it. But when we do, you are on the short list.” I winked at her.
“Okay.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “I feel like we need to get your wedding planning excitement levels way up, because I’m already mentally compiling seventeen lists exactly.”
“I’m just cautious.”
“Why?”
“Good things don’t usually happen to me, and if they do, I don’t get to keep them.
” The words were out so fast, I wished I could take them back.
Esra knew about my music, about the album that made everyone here hate me, and vaguely even about the men that had pushed me out of the industry.
And sure, I wasn’t actually going to marry Brooks, but I liked having him around.
I was looking forward to spending my lunch breaks listening to him sing, and I didn’t get quite as angry at the finicky cash register when Brooks was sitting across the bar from me.
Instead of giving me one of those pity smiles and an encouraging tilted-head-nod, Esra rolled her eyes at me, grabbed my wrist, and held up my hand.
“Huge rock. Means you get to keep this man, Adriana. Doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or says or does—or even bets on.
He’s yours. Now perk up, we have to put a dozen plush toys on your registry. ”
“Plush toys?”
“Something about being surrounded by plushies makes it impossible to get anxious. Come on.”
I laughed at that logic, but I still followed her straight march across the park to the toy emporium.
And she was right. Beeping a laser scanner at stuffed teddies and horses made it impossible to worry about anything.
Especially when she threw them in the air and I had to try to target the barcode from afar. Laser tag—Bravetown style.
I wasn’t sure if Esra was fully convinced that I was itching to become Mrs. Monroe, but she still agreed to babysit on the day of our engagement shoot.
I’d known Skye only a couple of weeks, and she wanted and needed a lot of time to herself, but even without much motherly instinct, I could see how it was better for her to have a grown-up around while Brooks and I were in Nashville all day.
Unsurprisingly CM25, Country Music 25, the biggest online platform for the industry, had won the bid on the photo shoot and interview.
I checked my outfit one last time in the dressing room mirror.
The stylist had put me in a skintight white romper, covered in rhinestones and sequins, that flared out into a little tennis skort.
It was giving Vegas wedding in the most perfectly gaudy way ever.
I loved it. Plus, the triangle halter really worked wonders for my cleavage.
It turned my teardrops into tight globes that even I wanted to motorboat.
Glancing left and right to make sure nobody was around, I bent down and tried to smush my face against my own chest—alas, my neck wasn’t long enough.
Oh well. I laughed at myself and turned my back to the mirror.
The skort really was tiny. I tried to pull the back of it a little lower. It covered everything it needed to cover—but not the back of my thighs that had a few deep dimples in them.
I liked my body. It was alive and strong and sexy and soft, but…
I was suddenly hyperaware that it wasn’t the body people had last seen me in.
Unfortunately, being perceived publicly also meant a whole lot of people thought they had a right to criticize every hair on your body, and no matter how hard you tried, some of those comments would always filter through.
Someone cleared their throat. A young man with an earpiece and a clipboard waved at me from the door. “We’re ready on set for you.”
The set in question was one corner of the parking lot, dressed up with a vintage “candy shoppe” sign with pink and white stripes, a few strategically placed plants, and a couple feet worth of white picket fence mostly covered by a shiny old mint-green car.
Brooks leaned against the latter in his signature blue jeans and white shirt.
His hat rested on top of the car, probably to avoid messing up his hair.