It’s a smile.
* * *
It?
??s easier after that.
The white outfit. The apricot blazer. A pair of white mules which turn out to be shoes without backs and I make a mental note to Google mules and find out why that’s what they’re called because there must be some kind of logic in this fantasyland called women’s clothing.
Jeans. A couple of T-shirts. A pale blue dress. It’s the same blue as the butterfly-wing shoes we got last night, and I can already picture Bailey in the dress with the shoes.
And Bailey’s participating.
Turns out she has some definite ideas. Likes and dislikes. I begin to suspect that long-ago shopping trips with Vexatious Vi had left their mark, and now, with my sister’s gentle guidance, those memories are fading.
I make two trips out to the parking lot to deposit bags and boxes in the car. When I rejoin my ladies, they’re sitting on a bench, Starbucks containers in their hands. Casey’s holding two; she hands me one.
“Black,” my sister says. “Two sugars.”
I nod. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Bailey.” She sighs. “Liam and I have been together six years and I’d bet he hasn’t the foggiest idea of how I take my coffee. I guess working together day after day has made you guys pretty close.”
Bailey and I look at each other. She blushes. I do the male equivalent, meaning I clear my throat.
Casey’s eyebrows lift.
I try to come up with something clever to say. Then I decide the best thing is to say nothing, so I all but bury my face in my cup and drink my coffee. Bailey does the same and after looking from one of us to the other, Casey gives what I’m sure is a mental shrug and joins us.
After a while, we’re all holding empty containers.
“Well,” Casey says, “we’ve only got one thing left.” She looks at Bailey. “Something for you to wear to the wedding. Any ideas?”
Bailey’s been offering opinions for the past hour or so. This time, she shakes her head.
“None.”
“Well, what kind of wedding is it going to be? Afternoon? Evening? The party, I mean. Small? Big? At home? In a hotel?”
Bailey sighs. “Evening. At a country club. My cousin is into, you know, glitz. And the invitation says Black Tie. Matthew said that means he’ll have to wear a tu—”
An expression of sheer horror spreads over her face. She clamps her lips together, but it’s too late. Casey’s mouth is hanging open.
“My brother is going with you?”
Bailey looks at me. Say something, her eyes plead.
“Matt? You and Bailey are—”
“Bailey and I are in cahoots,” I say quickly. “See, she didn’t want to run the risk of being seated with this, ah, this guy. A friend of the, uh, the groom. Whenever she goes home to visit, he makes a move on her, so—so I offered to—to be her date and—and—”
Bailey reaches for my hand and squeezes it.
“Matthew is just trying to protect me,” she says in a low voice. “To keep me from being embarrassed. The truth is that my cousin—the bride…” She takes a deep, deep breath. “We don’t get along. We never have. And when she began planning this wedding she made a big thing out of how sorry she was that I’d be coming to it alone, that everyone else would be bringing someone and she wanted me to bring someone too, but she knew that there probably wasn’t anyone—any man—I knew well enough to ask to go with me, so I lied and told my mother to say that the reason I wouldn’t be going was that—that a rich, sexy guy was taking me away for that weekend and—and— Matthew—your brother—he heard about it and he offered to—to—”
It’s my turn to squeeze Bailey’s hand.
“I told Bailey she’d be doing me a favor if she let me escort her to the wedding because that way I’d have an excuse to spend a couple of days away from the city, breathing in clean country air.”