Vee chased after her, followed by Ivy and the newly arrived Rylee.
“Holy shit.” Rylee rushed over to stand behind her and peeked around the dress to look at Macy in the mirror. “You’re a girl.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Rylee’s peal of laughter filled the room. “Yeah, but like really a girl. You’re gonna kill Gideon. Oh my God, are those bats?”
Macy’s lips twitched as she did a little sway in her dress to see the back. “I really am, huh?” She sniffed and tipped back her head. “You people are not going to make me cry.”
“It’s probably the hormones.” Vee was full-on sniffles with the waterworks on high.
Macy hugged her and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Right. Hormones. You doing okay?” She glanced down at Vee’s mammoth belly. She had twins cooking in there. “Not going to go into labor at my wedding, are you?”
Vee laughed and dabbed at her eyes with a colorful handkerchief she pulled out of a magic pocket on her dress. “Would I do that?”
“Yes.”
We all laughed.
“Well, I’m going to try not to. We still have some cooking time, don’t we, babies?” Vee patted her belly under the blue and orange layers of tulle that didn’t do a thing to hide her very pregnant self.
“Why don’t you sit down? You’ve been running around all day.” Gently, Macy led her to the high-backed chair crammed in the corner.
“I could sit.”
I hurried to the drink station I’d set up. Mostly non-alcoholic for those in the baby way. Except for the punch. That was for Rylee and me, and maybe a little for Ivy now that she wasn’t a total slave to the breastfeeding deal.
I filled one tumbler with the punch and went for the sparkling fruity waters for Macy and Vee. “Here you go.” One cup said Bride in scrolling wedding lettering with a bat for the I in the word. I handed that to Macy who took a grateful sip.
“Not coffee, but pretty tasty, Cinnamon.”
I grinned at Macy’s nickname for me. She liked to hand out nicknames to give us a tiny clue of our specialty coffees she created for us. Not everyone got one, but we were all secretly happy when we did.
I gave the pink MOH tumbler to Rylee. “Spiked.”
“Yesss.” She accepted it and took a quick drink.
“Not spiked.” I handed the rainbow one to Vee.
I rushed back for my own and a smaller one for Ivy. After I was done passing out the drinks, I took a fortifying sip. “Now let’s get everyone else ready.”
Next time, I was buying much larger cups.
Two
“Shouldn’t this have been done earlier?”
“This is a public area. We had to wait until our scheduled time.” I grabbed half of the arbor. “Look, weakling, if you can’t handle your share of the load, let me deal with it.”
“Shut up and shove over.” Jared—known as Sheriff Brooks to most, but not to me since I’d been busting his balls for years—hefted one half of the freestanding arbor I’d created from pressure-treated wood, sweat, and a few not so metaphorical drops of blood when I’d hammered my own thumb.
“Hang on. I got it.” Murphy Masterson, otherwise known as Moose, hustled forward to grab the opposite end of the arbor. It wasn’t that heavy, but all we needed to do was to step into a hole and drop the thing an hour before showtime.
Carefully, we set the arbor into position. I adjusted the last minute addition of purple gauzy fabric with tiny silver stars, a Kinleigh suggestion. I’d figured white might be nice, but she’d said it looked as if it belonged in a church and didn’t match Macy’s Halloween aesthetic in any case.
I glanced at the orange lights and decorative bats fluttering from the trees. Couldn’t argue there.
“Damn nice piece of work, Aug.” Moose cocked his head, studying it. “Wish we’d had something like that at ours. Vee would’ve loved it.”