Chapter 6
Six
Piper
My mother cries twice before nine in the morning. Once when the makeup artist finishes my face and once when Madison pins the veil into my hair.
Both times she fans herself with whatever is closest—first a room service menu, then a copy of the itinerary—and says, “You look just like your grandmother,” which is objectively incorrect because my grandmother was four-foot-eleven with a permanent scowl.
However, I have learned that, on emotional occasions, my mother doesn’t speak in facts.
“Mom,” Madison says gently, “you’re going to start everyone off.”
“I’m not crying,” Mom insists, crying.
Rowan is sitting cross-legged on the bed, eating a croissant. She’s been dressed and ready since eight, because I suspect she wants a prime seat for whatever unfolds.
“You look beautiful, Piper,” she mumbles, brushing flakes off her lap. “Genuinely. Ten out of ten.”
“Thank you.”
“Like, if I saw you on the street, I’d think, Who is that woman, and why does she look like she’s being escorted to her own funeral?”
“Rowan.”
“In a bridal way,” she adds. “Beautiful and doomed.”
“That’s not better.”
Madison points a hairpin at her. “One more word.”
Rowan mimes zipping her lips and goes back to her croissant.
I stare at myself in the vanity mirror. Lucia, the makeup artist who has been working on my face since seven-thirty, is doing one final sweep along my cheekbones.
I look perfect.
I look genuinely and objectively perfect. The hair is soft and pinned and romantic. The makeup is glowing and precise, and exactly what a bride is supposed to look like.
If someone were to cut me out of this moment and glue me to a wedding magazine, there would be no evidence of tampering.
But I can’t stop bouncing my knee.
“Honey,” Lucia says without looking up, “I need you to be still.”
“Sorry.” I plant my foot. Five seconds later, it starts again.
“Piper.” Madison’s hand lands on my shoulder from behind.
“I know, I know.” I grip the edge of the vanity table. “I’m fine.”
“You’re vibrating.”
“I’m excited.”
Rowan looks up from her croissant and studies me for a long moment, as if she’s made a diagnosis and is deciding whether to share it. “She’s going to shit herself,” she announces.
Mom drops the itinerary. “Rowan Callahan!”
Rowan waves a hand. “Look at her. She can’t sit still. She’s gray under the bronzer.”
“I am not going to—” I lower my voice because Lucia is very close to my face. “I’m not going to do that.”
“You’re going to shit yourself in the church,” Rowan says with the serenity of a prophet. “I’m calling it now.”
Mom blesses herself before rummaging through the large tote bag she always carries, the one that holds everything a person might need in an emergency.
“I have something,” she mutters, quickly pulling out items one after another. Lip balm. A phone charger. A small laminated prayer card. “I have something for your stomach. I always have something. Where is it? It’s here somewhere.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Here.” She surfaces with a small box of antacid tablets and crosses the room, pressing them into my hand. “Take two. They’ll settle you.”
I look at the box, then at my mother’s face. It’s the face of a woman who has pulled this exact move since I was six years old, when I got nervous before my first recital. I take two tablets and chew them. They taste like chalk and love.
She pats my cheek. “There’s a good girl.”
Lucia steps back and surveys me with her head tilted to one side. “Done. Don’t touch your face.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t cry.”
“I won’t.”
She packs up her kit and steps out.
Madison and Mom start a lively debate about where my veil should sit, Rowan has begun reading something on her phone, and everyone is talking.
The room has that particular high-pitched, morning-of energy I've been observing from the inside for the past three hours, and I suddenly find it hard to breathe.
Holding up a hand, I tell them, “Just give me a minute.”
They pause to look at me.
I cross the room, walk into the bathroom, and close the door before locking it.
Pressing my back against the wood, I plant my feet on the cold tile and breathe.
I don’t know if I need to shit, vomit, or cry, and I genuinely can’t determine the order of priority between these three options.
This isn't normal, is it? This isn't how it's supposed to feel, right?
I’ve been told, again and again, by every magazine, relative, and well-meaning stranger who has seen my ring, that this is supposed to be the most incredible time of my life. The most magical morning. That I will look back on this day and know, deep in my bones, that it was exactly right.
So why does it feel like the last twenty minutes of a horror film?
I press my palms flat against the door behind me and stare at the ceiling.
In an hour, I’ll be standing at the top of the aisle.
And everyone will turn. All of them, every single guest in those pews, every person Ezra’s mother invited, every second cousin, business associate, and person who attended out of social obligation—all of them will turn to look at me at the same time.
At me.
Only me.
Just me standing there while a crowd of people judges whether I’m an acceptable offering.
The room tilts a little, so I sit down on the edge of the bathtub.
Why are there so many people at a wedding? Why did nobody in the history of human civilization stand up and say, “Actually, what if we capped this at thirty and did it in a garden?” Why didn’t I speak up sooner? Why did I look at the guest list and think, Sure, three hundred seems reasonable?
I know why I didn’t speak up sooner.
Ezra looked so pleased when the numbers went up. His mother had already booked the venue, and Ezra said, “It’s important to make an impression, babe. This is about more than just us.” I opened my mouth and let the number stand because the alternative was disappointing someone.
The back of my eyes starts to sting.
I blink fast. Lucia will kill me if I cry.
There’s a mirror directly across from me, above the sink.
Satin robe. Hair perfect. Face perfect. The woman in the mirror is polished and assembled correctly.
She looks like someone else.
I lean forward and study her.
Maybe this is better. Maybe if I always looked like this—full makeup, hair done, the whole production—maybe he’d be easier. Maybe if I gave him the version he wants to come home to, things would feel less like a constant negotiation I’m always on the losing side of.
I could try that.
Maybe that’s the issue. I haven’t been trying hard enough.
Get it together, Piper.
I press the heels of my palms against my knees and make myself breathe.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Then, from the other side of the door, in a gentle, recognizable soprano: “Do you want to build a snow—”
“Don’t you fucking dare finish that, Rowan.”
There’s a long pause before two voices try and fail to whisper.
“Is she shitting herself?”
“I think she might be shitting herself.”
“What do we do if she shits in the dress? Can we fix that?”
“Madison, don’t. It’s not worth the images. Don’t put the images in my head.”
“I am not shitting myself!” I shout. “I am freaking out. There’s a difference.”
“We know, babe,” Madison says with the practiced calm of a woman who has been talking people down from ledges since childhood. “We know. Take your time.”
I open my mouth.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
This knock is more formal somehow.
“Piper? It’s Matilda.”
I stare at the door.
Matilda?
Who the absolute fuck is Matilda?
Oh.
Right.
Matilda is one of the three—or maybe four, I lost track—wedding planners that Ezra’s mother hired.
She’s the one with the headset and the color-coded binder.
She introduced herself yesterday, and I immediately forgot everything about her except that her binder had six tabbed sections and she said the word timeline fourteen times in twenty minutes.
“We’re running just a little bit behind, honey,” Matilda continues. “We really need you in your dress.”
I say nothing.
“Piper?”
Nothing.
More whispering outside.
“Piper, love.” It’s Mom. “Are you alright in there?”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“You need to come out now. It’s time.”
I look at my reflection.
The woman in the mirror looks back at me.
“No,” I say.
There’s a very long silence outside the door.
Then, a great deal of very loud whispering. I catch fragments. “What do you mean?” and “She’ll come out” and “Give her a second.”
I look around the bathroom.
It’s a very nice bathroom. The tile is marble. There’s a little dish of wrapped mints on the counter. It smells like eucalyptus.
I could live here.
I genuinely think I could live here.
“She said no,” Rowan’s voice comes through the door.
“She can’t say no,” says another unidentified voice.
“She literally just did,” says Rowan. She sounds like she’s enjoying this.
I drop my face into my hands because I don’t know whether to laugh or continue spiraling.
Probably both.
I’m staying in the bathroom.
That’s decided.
I live here now. I’m going to request that someone bring me a sandwich. I wonder if room service will deliver to a locked bathroom.
From the other side of the door, in the gentlest possible voice, Mom says, “Piper, love, come out of the bathroom.”
“In a minute,” I lie.
Outside, the whispering continues.
Inside, the woman in the mirror waits to see what I’ll do next.
I’m not sure I know either.