How to Make a Wedding

by Cindy Kirk

  “I’m working on it.”

  “What about the second part? Have you been viewing yourself as superior to him?”

  “Funny you should mention that. I spent a lot of time thinking on that topic last night.”

  “And?”

  “I’m working on that part too.”

  Sam released a long-suffering sigh. “Your time with him is almost done, Holly. I’ll be honest with you. At this point, there may only be one hope left for you and Josh.”

  “Which is?”

  “Divine intervention.”

  Four forty-five p.m. Fifteen minutes until the wedding ceremony.

  Fifteen minutes had never before seemed like such an impossibly long stretch of time. Holly had been corralling the flower girls and the ring bearer for an hour already. At first, she’d trailed the photographer around as the intrepid woman attempted to capture pictures of the little tykes. That hadn’t been too terrible, because most of their moms had been in the mix. But then the moms had deposited the kids in this boring anteroom that was beginning to resemble a prison and deserted Holly to go find seats in the jam-packed sanctuary.

  The church was so jam-packed for Amanda and Ben’s wedding, in fact, that Holly had said a prayer asking God to keep the choir loft from buckling under the extraordinary weight. Here’s hoping the ceremony doesn’t include architectural collapse and death-by-crushing.

  “I’m hungry,” one little flower girl stated.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “I need to use the potty.”

  The ring bearer! He’d climbed on top of the bureau with the help of a chair. Holly dashed over, scooped him up, and deposited him safely on the floor.

  Each of the children were gorgeously dressed. The ring bearer in a mini-tux. The seven flower girls in dove gray gowns with satin bodices and full tulle skirts. Every hair had been combed into place by the moms. Every black ballet slipper tugged into position. Their angelic appearance had so far proved deceiving.

  One of the flower girls screeched and pushed her sister, also a flower girl.

  “Girls.” Holly placed herself in between the fighting siblings. “Let’s be sweet to each other.”

  They both released a string of tattling aimed at the other.

  Oh, no. The ring bearer and the tiniest flower girl were on their way back up the bureau. Determinedly, Holly intercepted the climbers. “Would anyone like some gummi bears?”

  “Me!” they all chorused.

  She went to her purse for the big package of gummi bears she’d purchased on her way back to the church after lunch. The itty-bitty set followed her as if she were the Pied Piper. God bless Sam.

  “Sit down nicely in a circle, everyone, and I’ll come around and give you each gummi bears.” With child number two, she learned the importance of making sure she gave them each the same number of gummi bears in the exact same variety of colors.

  After she’d dropped gummi bears into the final child’s hands, the door creaked open and Josh leaned in.

  Joy suffused Holly at the sight of him, as if it had been months since she’d seen him instead of hours.

  Josh’s face seemed to ease at the sight of her. He stepped fully into the room. He was wearing—Have mercy on me, Lord—a tuxedo that looked as if it had been made for him. Which it probably had been. It fit him the way James Bond’s tuxedos fit.

  The children peered up at Josh while chewing loudly.

  Holly skirted the circle of kids and approached him, slightly mortified at the thought of what she must look like. She’d dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved mint green cotton shirt this morning because she’d planned not only to oversee the wedding setup, but also to offer a helping hand if needed. She’d intended to return home before the wedding to change and fix herself up. The second part of her plan hadn’t materialized. Mitzi had kept her flat-out busy. A while ago, she’d gathered her hair into a low side ponytail, but even that felt bumpy and askew at this point.

  “Hi.” She stopped near him, wishing she could blurt out how sorry she was about her kiss-fail.

  “So this is where you’ve been,” he said, his voice pitched low.

  “Yep. I’ve been hanging out here with the flower girls—”

  “—and the ring bear,” the lone boy added. “Grr. I’m a bear.”

  That set off a round of giggling and loud talking. The sisters began to fight again, so Holly plopped a curly red-headed flower girl in between them.

  “Can we have more gummi bears?” one of them asked.

  “I still need to go to the bathroom!”

  “Keeping care of this group seems like a fun job,” Josh remarked.

  “Oh, it is. My heart is full of thankfulness.”

  Just then, one of the girls made an awful choking sound. The best behaved of all the flower girls, a dark-haired five-year-old girl with her hair in two side buns, was half-coughing, half gagging.

  Holly knelt beside her. “Are you okay, Olivia?”

  Olivia couldn’t answer. She was hunched over, wheezing too much to speak. Fear spiked deeply into Holly. What should she do?

  Josh lowered onto his knee on Olivia’s other side, his hand on her back.

  Should they give Olivia the Heimlich? she wondered, panicking. Get water? Thump her back? Holly wasn’t a mom and didn’t know—

  Olivia hacked and threw up a wad of chewed-up gummi bears right into the lap of her tulle skirt. After a few deep breaths, she straightened and looked up at Holly, eyes round.

  “Are you all right?” Holly asked.

  She nodded.

  Thank God! Holly smiled tremulously and patted her shoulder. Thank God she was fine.

  What wasn’t fine?

  Olivia’s dress.

  “New rule, everyone.” Holly went to the cupboard and found napkins inside. “You may only eat one gummi bear at a time. Chew it very, very carefully before swallowing. All right?”

  They chorused assent.

  Josh calmed Olivia and the other kids by asking them questions like Are any of you married yet? and Who did you have to pay to get the gig of flower girl in this wedding?

  With Olivia’s attention diverted, Holly did her best to keep her bile down while using the napkins to scoop the . . . mass from Olivia’s lap. Though she wiped the area as best she could, a stubborn round stain the color of red gummi bears remained.

  Holly caught Josh’s eye and gestured toward Olivia’s skirt, asking him with a somewhat wild-eyed expression, What in the world should I do about this?

  Mitzi would have her head. She’d been the one pumping the kids full of hard-to-chew gummi bears.

  “Any scissors around?” Josh asked.

  “I’ll check.” Was he thinking to cut the stain out? How? Inside a bureau drawer, she found a pair of scissors that looked like they were circa 1952. She handed them to him.

  “How many layers of fabric do your dresses have, girls?” he asked the group. “A hundred?”

  “Mine has forty thirty.”

  “I think mine has a million!”

  “I’m two,” the youngest flower girl offered.

  “I think whoever said a million is probably right,” Josh said. “Your dress has so many layers, Olivia, that I don’t think it’ll miss the top few. What do you think?”

  She just blinked.

  He escorted her to an empty patch of floor and went to work cutting off the top-most layers of tulle.

  When Olivia shot her an uncertain expression, Holly responded with a big smile and a thumbs-up. That dress had probably cost a bundle. If Holly had been the one with the scissors, she’d have hesitated and debated with herself. Josh didn’t.

  When he finished, Olivia’s dress looked slightly less puffy and slightly more sheer, but otherwise as good as new. Olivia scampered to one of her friends. Josh hooked the ring bearer (who’d ascended halfway up the face of the bureau again) under his arm and walked over to Holly.

  “I suspected that you were a superhero yesterday,” Holly said. �
�Now your secret identity is definitely busted.”

  “And here I’d worked so hard to protect it.”

  Mitzi tossed open the door. “Josh! The wedding is starting in two minutes. I need you to take your position at point D.” Mitzi’s method of assigning letters to ceremony positions would have baffled a field general.

  “I’m on it.” He met Holly’s gaze, ruffled the ring bearer’s hair, and disappeared.

  Mitzi’s huge earrings pulled at her lobes as she aimed her laser-beam focus on Holly. “It’s time for the children to assemble at point B.”

  Holly passed the flower girls their petal-filled baskets. She handed the ring bearer his pillow, which didn’t actually cushion any rings since Mitzi would never have trusted a child with something so critical.

  Out in the hallway, Holly worked to keep peace among the squabbling sisters. She pulled a gummi bear from where it had been hiding, stuck near the hem of the redhead’s dress. And she kept reminding the girls to keep the petals inside the baskets until the right moment.

  Amanda’s mom passed by Holly’s group with an I’m-thoroughly-charmed-by-you “Mmm.” High praise.

  Mitzi arranged everyone in the order of the procession, then the enormous group slowly made their way into the church’s foyer. The first piece of music gusted through the organ’s pipes, all but causing the church to vibrate with majesty.

  The flower girls and ring bearer gradually edged closer to the front of the queue.

  A dash of white caught Holly’s eye and she turned in time to see Amanda and her father enter the foyer. Oh, Holly thought, awe settling over her at the sight of Amanda as a bride. Amanda had always been stunning. But today, in her beaded ivory gown, so full of delight and excitement, she looked prettier than Holly had ever seen her look. The kind of pretty that could put a single girl in a mint green V-neck shirt into a trance of fascination.

  Amanda had parted her blonde hair on the side and swept it into an intricate style at the base of her neck. Her veil had been positioned at the top of her updo. Its sheer fabric cascaded downward into a train. Her bouquet burst with fall colors of russet, apple green, pale orange, and trailing vines of autumn berries.

  Holly earnestly wished Amanda and Ben the very, very best. She caught Amanda’s eye. “You look beautiful,” she whispered.

  Amanda beamed. “Thank you,” she mouthed back.

  When the flower girls and the ring bearer reached point A, Mitzi sent them down the aisle. The guests responded with a collective “Aww.” Then the grand notes of the wedding march began and Amanda and her father swept into the sanctuary.

  Holly found a spot in the far corner of the foyer where she could listen and watch the ceremony unobtrusively through a window. If the choir loft came crashing down she’d be squashed like a bug.

  Ah, weddings. She loved them. She really loved them. Weddings were magnificent declarations of all that was good in this life. Loyalty. Honor. Love. Esteeming another above yourself. Weddings never failed to stir her or arouse in her a bittersweet wistfulness born of her own hope of marrying one day.

  When Amanda and Ben exchanged vows, Holly sighed and went a little teary-eyed. Or maybe she was going teary-eyed over Josh, standing so solidly next to Ben. The best man. Indeed.

  One of the candles in the unity candle set was slow to light. And the maid of honor almost bobbled Amanda’s bouquet at one point. But those were the little things that made weddings charming and real. Everything else went perfectly.

  When the ceremony concluded, Holly dashed around like a runner on a steeplechase course, making sure that the flower girls and ring bearer were all returned to their rightful owners. Then Mitzi trapped her and fired a dozen staccato questions at her regarding parking issues and when the decor could be taken down.

  After Mitzi departed, Holly looked around and saw that the entire church had emptied faster than a glass bottle of Dr Pepper. She hadn’t caught even a glimpse of Josh since he’d walked down the aisle during the recessional with the maid of honor on his arm.

  She let herself into the sanctuary and trailed her fingers along the long swags of ribbon, the glass hurricanes confining candles that had already been blown out, the sprays of flowers mounted on the inside ends of the pews. She took a seat on the very first row.

  She needed to rally herself, go home, get cleaned up, then make an appearance at the reception. She’d sent in a response card saying she’d attend. Far more critically, the reception would be her last chance to see Josh.

  She’d rally. She would. But the day had drained her physically and emotionally, and she needed a minute to sit and take in the hushed calm of her surroundings.

  One of the decorators had brought in a towering wrought iron arch that stood on the dais in front of the altar. A garland of large waxy leaves, twigs, and the same flowers that had graced Amanda’s bouquet covered the entire arch and even rippled a few feet onto the dais on either side. Lovely.

  During the ceremony, the arch had served as a picturesque frame for Ben and Amanda. But it hadn’t framed only them. On its far side, it also framed the altar. As Holly studied the altar, light gleamed and slid along one plane of the cross.

  When she’d parted from Josh eight years ago, God had remained. He’d been at her side through her hardest moments, her saddest moments, her loneliest.

  Whatever comes, I trust you, God. If your plans for me don’t include Josh or don’t include marriage, then I’ll keep on trusting you. The silence of her aloneness settled over her like pixie dust. She couldn’t stop herself from adding a short p.s. to her prayer. If Josh does happen to . . . perhaps, maybe, please . . . be the one for me, then I pray that you’ll give me just one more opportunity with him.

  The side exit door whooshed open and Holly snapped her head to the side to see Josh standing in the opening, backlit by a late November sky. His dark gaze cut across the space and locked onto her.

  Her pulse leapt then began to pound. What could he be doing here? He was the best man. He was needed at the reception.

  He walked toward her. “I was looking for you. Out in the parking lot, and then on the road to the winery. I couldn’t find you.”

  “I’m not,” she motioned to her clothing as she pressed to her feet, “dressed for the reception yet.”

  His brows drew down. He appeared both determined and unsettled, standing there, sleek in his gorgeous tuxedo. “I’ve been looking for you a lot lately, Holly. All day today. Last night at the rehearsal dinner. Just now. I . . .” His hair was slightly mussed. His eyes bright with fervency. “I realized that I’ve been looking for you for years. I’ve been looking for you ever since I left Martinsburg.”

  Hope rose within her painfully. What? Had he . . . had he really just said that?

  He continued, recklessly honest. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking for you.”

  “You don’t?” Her voice emerged as fragile as a skein of silk.

  “No. I don’t want to make a fool of myself in front of you, either.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I’ve been telling myself to keep my mouth shut around you until I leave Texas. But I’m not going to make it.” His lips settled into a hard, resolute line. “I’d rather make a fool of myself than remain silent.”

  She gaped at him in patent astonishment.

  “I can’t not tell you that I love you,” he said. “I . . . I desperately love you.”

  Holly inhaled a jagged gasp. His words were almost too marvelous to process. He’d handed her dearest dream to her without warning. He loved her? Joy began to unfurl inside her.

  She walked to him, stopping so close that she was able to rest her palms on his chest. She hadn’t touched him in a girlfriend-like manner in ages. To do so now felt like pure, heady bliss. She smoothed his lapels, feeling the tremor in her hands.

  He stared down at her as if he was afraid to believe that the news might be good.

  The news was very good. For them both. She was still a little afraid, but God was fai
thful. He countered her fears by filling her with an undeniable sense of rightness. She looked directly into Josh’s eyes. “I love you too.”

  He gave her the exact same crooked smile he’d given her the day he’d first told her that he loved her. “You love me?”

  “I do. I love you.”

  “I’ve loved you since high school,” he said. His arms came up to support her back. “I tried to stop but I couldn’t. Seeing you again has only made me positively sure that you’re the one for me.”

  “I’ve loved you since high school too.” She interlaced her hands around his neck. Laughing breathlessly, she quoted his words back to him. “I tried to stop but I couldn’t. Seeing you again has only made me positively sure that you’re the one for me.”

  He kissed her. And she kissed him back. And he kissed her more for good measure. There, with the altar’s cross watching over them and the day’s last sun rays pouring through the stained glass like a benediction.

  Holly’s heart soared with amazement and gratitude and love. Josh! Josh loved her.

  He pulled back a few inches. “I lied about needing your help to find a rehearsal dinner location. My assistant booked the olive oil farm months ago. I misled you because it was the only way I could think of to spend time with you.”

  “Your assistant booked the olive oil farm?” she asked, like one of those parrots that repeats things. It was hard to think straight at this particular moment. He’d just incinerated her with his kisses and sent her whole world spinning with the declaration that he loved her.

  “Yes.”

  “Months ago? Your assistant had the very same idea that I had and booked the farm months ago?”

  He nodded and swept a section of her hair away from her cheek. “I’m sorry for deceiving you.”

  “You’re forgiven. And also, by the way, you have a very good assistant. Has she considered turning her attention to brokering peace in the Middle East?”

  His expression warmed with amusement. “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  “I’ll stay in Martinsburg,” he said. “I can work from anywhere.”