Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Lauren
On the morning of the wedding, Kate's suite has become a controlled hurricane of champagne, hairpins, and opinions. Carolyn and Ginger are making significant inroads on the champagne as we all stand around my scooter.
It’s actually less of a scooter and more of a knee-mounted shopping cart. Four chunky wheels, padded knee rest, handlebars, and a small black wire basket on the front that currently contains my sparkly clutch purse and my dignity, in that order.
“What's a wedding without a little quirkiness?” Ginger says serenely, waving her champagne flute in the air.
“A bow. It needs a bow,” Natalia agrees, studying the scooter with the gravity of an art director while tapping her chin with her index finger. “Very chic. Very statement.” She pauses. “I've seen worse things at weddings. I've been worse things at weddings.”
“Flowers would look pretty woven into the basket. Does anyone have a hot glue gun handy?” Ginger says.
“Yeah, Mom, I’ve got one in my purse,” Natalia deadpans.
“Or we could zip tie a cupholder to the handlebars,” Sadie says cheerfully. “So you can keep your drink with you at all times.”
“I once went to a wedding on Halloween,” Natalia adds.
“The bride and groom dressed as a bride and groom and surprised everyone by actually getting married right there.” I blink, wondering how this story is relevant to the fact that I'm about to wheel myself down the aisle on a scooter like a five-year-old on Christmas morning.
Or perhaps I could sit on it. I try that and nearly fall over.
“No, no, no,” Natalia says, helping to steady me.
Somehow the pale blue of Natalia's hair exactly matches our chiffon bridesmaid dresses, and the effect is stunning. I would look okay too, if it weren't for the black boot cast strapped around my foot and ankle.
I sigh.
“Give it a whirl. Please?” Kate begs.
With a little push of my left foot I surge forward on the tile floor of the suite and make a few wobbly circles around a recliner.
“It's kind of fun, I guess.” This is Kate's day, not mine. I need to stop being so precious about it. “And at least I can steer. Check this out.”
I turn left with ease and don't topple over. Success.
“It's so much better than the crutches, Lauren,” Kate says. I'd been practicing on the crutches all morning and couldn't quite get the hang of them. When I'd tried to wrangle them alongside my long flutter-sleeve dress, I'd nearly toppled over.
Okay, I had gone over. Onto the sofa. Thank God only Kate witnessed that particular moment.
I maneuver the scooter into the suite's small kitchen and glide back to Kate. “I'll use the scooter. I'll leave my dignity here in the room.”
My phone, which is also sitting in the little wire basket attached to the handlebars of the scooter, pings. It’s my youngest sister Jessie.
Hey can you call mom today? She's been weird and I don't know what to do and you always know what to do.
I stare at it for a second. Jessie is eighteen, sweet, and about to leave for college, and has spent her entire life letting me handle things so that she wouldn't have to. I can't even be angry about it, not with our disorganized parents.
I'm at Kate's wedding today, I type back. Call me tomorrow and we'll figure it out together.
I put the phone away before she can respond. Today is not the day.
Natalia laughs and winds a white ribbon through the wire basket. “Oh, pfft. It's Cypress Grove. We don't do stuffiness here. We relax and have fun and we don't give a crap what people think. Half the people at the wedding will be witches.”
Kate comes over. “Truly though — you don't have to go down the aisle if you don't want to. You could sit in the front row. Or Max could carry you.”
I shake my head, although the thought of being in Max’s arms makes me smile. “I'm being a baby. The pain's practically gone today…” this is a lie, “and I want to be up there with you. You need someone beside you. Plus, I have Damien's ring.” I pat my silver satchel.
Truth is, I wouldn't miss this for the world.
A lone classical guitarist strikes up Mendelssohn's Wedding March, and at the first notes, tears well in my eyes.
I didn't expect to be this emotional at Kate's fake wedding. Or is it real, since she is in love with the guy? I’ve stopped trying to figure it out.
The pale wooden platform in the Magnolia Grand's garden, the white canopy with tulle fluttering in the breeze, the white rose petals scattered on the red carpet aisle — and behind it all, the Starlight River through the ancient oaks, golden in the late afternoon light — make my chest ache with a longing for something I can’t name.
Somehow the Hastings family, Carolyn, and Kate have thrown together a heartbreakingly beautiful wedding in only a few weeks. It’s truly impressive.
And there’s Max. In his black tuxedo he looks rakish, dignified, and like a whole, delicious snack. We're standing at the far end of the garden, waiting for our cue.
He turns to me, and his blue-green eyes catch the late light. “You seem so much better today.”
“High pain tolerance, apparently.” I glance toward the altar where Damien is chewing his thumbnail. “I think I'll be able to stay awake past ten tonight.”
He grins. “High bar.”
“I set achievable goals.”
My eyes go back to the audience. Every chair is filled, and a shocking number of guests are wearing Birkenstocks.
The strains of the guitar tug at that place in my chest reserved for overly emotional television commercials and certain romance novels.
It's almost sunset and the golden light is perfection. I glance down, and there’s Steve with his little adorable piggy face, in a bow tie, panting happily.
I wish I had my camera. Not my phone for a quick post, but my actual camera, the one I'd packed carefully. I make a private promise to come back to this garden in better light.
But that's not why my eyes are stinging.
It's Kate. It's the way she's going to walk down this aisle toward a man who married her out of kindness and somewhere along the way fell genuinely, obviously in love with her.
It's the fact that this whole weird, thrown-together, slightly chaotic wedding is more real than anything I've been doing online for the past three years.
“Hey,” Max whispers. “Are you crying?”
I swallow the thickness in my throat. “Um. Maybe a little. I didn't think it would hit me this hard.”
I can't tell him I didn't think a fake wedding would affect me at all. But now I know how Kate feels about Damien, and the whole ceremony seems loaded with everything she can't say out loud.
Max reaches into his tuxedo pocket and produces a folded handkerchief. He holds it out without a word.
I take it, dab my eyes, and start to hand it back. He waves it off. “Keep it. I suspect you'll need it again before this is over.”
“You're a gentleman, but no, I’ll be fine.” I hand it back to him.
He leans close, lips near my ear. “You look absolutely beautiful, by the way. The most beautiful woman here. I mean that. Truly.”
I shoot him a look and glance pointedly at the scooter.
“Whatever,” he says. He pauses, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Your hair piled up like that is extremely sexy. And yes, before you ask, your butt looks great in that dress too.”
I giggle. “Pervert. But thank you. And you clean up well.”
“We’re going to knock ‘em dead as we go down the aisle.”
Still grinning, we turn toward the minister, who nods at us from thirty feet away. Max rests his hand on the small of my back, steady and warm, and we're off.
I hadn't rehearsed with the scooter. I'm terrified of rolling into the guests, crushing the rose petals, or somehow taking out the front row with sharp turn.
But Max's hand stays at my back, and my confidence grows with every foot of red carpet.
This might be my most objectively ridiculous moment. And somehow it doesn't feel that way at all. It feels…sweet. Lovely. Romantic.
A breakthrough arrives somewhere around the midpoint of the aisle: this isn't about me. It's not my day. It's Kate's day, and I love her, and I would roll down this aisle on a scooter through a blizzard if that's what she needed.
I catch a few people holding up phones in our direction. A flicker of anxiety — will this end up online? But then I look at the expressions on people's faces, and they're not mocking. They're just happy. The whole room is pure joy.
No one here knows me. No one cares about my brand. Everyone is dressed informally — Hawaiian shirts, sundresses, people with sand still on their feet. Nobody here has the faintest interest in my engagement metrics.
It's startling how much that makes me relax.
I grin at Damien as we reach the altar. He leans in and gives me a peck on the cheek, then wraps Max in a hug. Then Tate and Remy pile in, and they're like a heap of very well-dressed man-bears. It's sweet to see how much the Hastings brothers love each other.
And when Kate walks down the aisle alone, all of it falls away — my ankle, my scooter, my anxiety about phones — because my best friend looks like a radiant, entirely perfect angel, and she is getting married.
Max quietly passes me his handkerchief. I drench it.