Chapter 2 This Is Not a Rehearsal #2
Dad kissed my temple. “Best day of my life after the day you were born.”
“You say that now, wait until I trip on my dress walking down the aisle.”
“Impossible,” he said, with the total baseless confidence of a father.
We ate lunch together at the little table Penny had set up by the window, the four of us, and for a little while the whole spectacle of the day fell away and it was just us.
Dad asked about the honeymoon plans. Mom wanted to know about the cabin where Declan had proposed.
Penny kept the conversation moving with the easy skill of someone who had been navigating my world on my behalf for years.
It was good. It was quiet and good and I didn’t want it to end.
It ended.
“We should let you get ready, honey,” my mom said, and started gathering her things.
“You aren’t going to stay while I put on my dress?”
She kissed my cheek. “You’re in the best hands.
We’ll see you down the aisle.” She gave my hand a pat, and then she and my dad were heading for the door, and I stared after her and my dad, loving that they were somehow so perfect for each other and that my father would always take care of my slightly strange, fragile, sweet mother.
“I wish she’d been able to—“ I started to say to Penny, and then stopped.
They’d uncovered the clothes rack.
My dress was right there.
I had seen it at every fitting, but always mid-process, always with chalk marks and pins and Rose’s assistant Jorge hovering nearby with a notepad. This was the first time I was seeing it complete.
Here was the thing about my mother’s wedding dress.
It was simple and beautiful and completely perfect, and it had been made for a woman who was five foot three and slight as a bird.
I was neither of those things, and I had accepted that some things just weren’t built for bodies like mine and her dress was one of them.
Then I’d met Rose Vond.
Rose had looked at my mother’s dress and seen something I hadn’t.
She’d taken the antique cap-sleeved dress and turned it into a new strapless mini.
But to make it entirely mine, there was a full skirt for me to step into.
It was cut generously for my hips and hemmed for my height.
Two dresses in one. The mini for the reception, the full gown for the ceremony, and every bit of it my mother’s and mine at the same time.
I hadn’t cried at a fitting yet. I’d been very disciplined about it.
Rose swept into the room with Jorge right behind her, pushing the rack into position.
“Are you ready?” Rose asked.
She helped me into the mini dress first while Jorge helped Penny into the forest green halter that made her hair look like fire. Then both of them helped me into the full skirt, and Penny stood back and watched.
“Kelsey,” she said softly. “You look beautiful.”
I turned to the mirror.
For the first time all morning, the anxiety went quiet.
I did look beautiful. I looked like a bride.
Not Kelsey Best, pop star, trending topic, brand deal.
Just a bride who was about to marry the person she loved and become part of his wild, ridiculous, enormous, wonderful family.
A family that included the woman standing behind me in the mirror with her hand pressed over her mouth and tears she was definitely not going to let fall.
“Suck it up, Bestie,” I said, and she laughed, and I laughed, and we were fine.
Ciara’s assistant Wes came in with the flowers, followed by a quick touch-up from the makeup artist and a photographer who got about two dozen shots of the two of us pretending to get ready together. Then we were in the elevator, going straight from the penthouse to the underground parking garage.
I had been told, and had mostly accepted, that because our wedding weekend had coincidentally fallen on the same dates as some enormous bingo convention, our guests had been distributed across several different hotels around Aspen.
It had seemed like a logistical headache but Ciara had handled it, so I’d let it go.
In the parking garage I looked for the Rolls Royce.
There was a bus.
“Penny,” I said. “What is this?”
“More room for all that dress. Come on.”
The bus had a wrap job on the outside in blue and white, with “B.I.N.G.O. Tours” printed across the side in neat block letters. I stared at it as Penny steered me toward the door.
“Are we really doing this? Are we taking a bingo bus to my wedding?”
“Just get in the bus, Kelsey.”
I got in the bus.
And stopped.
“Penny. This is my tour bus.”
“I know.” She was smiling. Like a person who had absolutely no remorse about any of this.
“Why is my tour bus wrapped to look like a bingo shuttle?”
“Camouflage. Jules’s idea.” Penny guided me toward a seat with the gentle, implacable energy of someone who was not going to answer follow-up questions.
“That seems like an enormous amount of effort for a ten-minute ride.”
“It might be slightly longer than ten minutes.”
I looked at her.
“Penny.”
“Yes?”
“Why would it be longer than ten minutes?”
She sat down across from me and folded her hands in her lap with the composure of a woman about to deliver news she had been sitting on for months.
“Because,” she said, “we are on our way to your wedding.” A pause. “Not this wackadoodle nonsense for the paparazzi. Your real wedding.”
I stared at her.
She smiled. Completely unrepentant. Completely at peace.
“My what?”