“What do you think?” she asked innocently as she stared at herself in the mirror. My jaw almost dropped, but I kept it under control and stood behind her. I trailed a finger across her bare back, and she shivered beneath my touch.
“I keep thinking about how hard it’ll be to rip this off of you,” I said. Her eyes widened as her stare met mine in the mirror. I noticed she didn’t spend more than a few seconds staring at the dress. “But you don’t love it,” I said. “So I’ll have to rip a different one.”
She agreed with me and returned to the fitting room. The next one looked like a regular ball gown in the shape of an A, and was all silk and smooth with little details to distract the eye. It made her curves more pronounced, and her breasts nearly spill out of the neckline, and she swatted at my shoulder as I stared at them in an obvious fashion.
“Not the one?” I asked as she struggled with keeping her breasts covered.
“No,” she shook her head and tried again.
Several more times she tried on a different dress, each one emphasizing a different part of her body, and by the first hour’s end, I was struggling with keeping my thoughts in order. She was beautiful in all of them, but the dirty thoughts were the only things keeping me from truly seeing her as a blushing bride. A part of me was thankful for that, at least.
After nearly an hour and a half, as I heard Yvette finish helping her into another dress, Maddie gasped.
“This is it,” she said immediately. I leaned forward in anticipation. “This is the dress.”
“Well?” I called out. “Let me see it.”
She hesitated a moment before responding. “Not this one,” she said. “You’re not going to see this one.”
Yvette emerged from the dressing room with a price tag in her hand. She handed it to me, I took a single glance, nodded, and gave it back to her. It wasn’t 150,000, at least. She paled slightly, clearly not expecting such a reaction, and cleared her throat.
“It is against tradition to see the wedding dress before the wedding,” Yvette said.
“Come on, Maddie,” I said. “Not even a peek?”
“You’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” she said with a happy tone in her voice. I leaned back against my chair as Yvette left to help Maddie out of the dress. “You’re definitely not seeing this until it’s on the aisle.”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t wipe the stupid grin off of my face.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Maddie
It was the day of my wedding, and I sat in the car and watched as planes landed and took off from our state. I often imagined that I was on one of them, waiting my turn to leave this boring state, and on my way to a better life. The irony wasn’t lost on me as I waited for Nancie’s flight to arrive. Afterward, we would grab some breakfast and then rush to Gavin’s house, where I would put on the gorgeous wedding dress that I had picked, and Nancie into one of her designer gowns that she brought with her.
She still wasn’t okay with my sudden engagement at all. I was lucky that she agreed to fly back at a moment’s notice, after nearly an hour on the phone convincing her that what Gavin and I had was true love, but I knew there was still a part of her that didn’t believe me. I couldn’t blame her, really. I had barely s
poken to Gavin in ten years almost, and all of a sudden, we were getting married.
A part of me knew that I could tell Nancie the truth. She wouldn’t judge me. She would have done the same thing. But I wasn’t willing to go against Gavin’s terms, despite how difficult it was to keep the lie to myself.
Nancie finally emerged from the airport, looking just as beautiful and stunning as ever, in a flowing white dress that draped along the ground behind her. She had a sunhat on, which I had to smile at considering the sky had been cloudy and downcast the past few weeks, and flip flops.
Her skin had a healthy glow to it, and she smiled with a face clear of imperfections.
“California’s been nice to you,” I said and hugged her. “You look amazing.”
“You have no idea,” she gushed as I opened the passenger door for her. “Now let’s get to breakfast so I can tell you just how great California has been.”
I laughed. It wasn’t surprising that she was totally ignoring the entire reason why she was even in town. I took her to a small diner that we both liked when we were poor and broke living in our apartment together, and she ordered a smoothie bowl with a side of honey toast while I stuck to a simple smoothie. I had a wedding dress to fit into, after all.
“Is it like the movies?” I asked. “Lights everywhere, stars shining at night, celebrities at coffee shops.”
“More than you could imagine,” she said. “I mean, sure, there are just as plenty drug dealers and homeless people, but the glamorous parts make up for it.”
“And your job?” I asked. “Is it what you expected?”
“A little harder,” she admitted. “It keeps me busy, at least. Which is good when you’re living in such a busy city. You’ll love it, Maddie. You were meant to live in Hollywood.”