by Hart, Staci
I frowned, glancing behind me as best I could into the small wedge of the room that was visible, which was useless—the view mostly consisted of a corner.
I took stock of my person, tallying what I had in my pockets. “Here, take my pocket square.”
She made a frustrated sound. “I am not using your wedding pocket square to clean my vagina!”
“Hey now, don’t get mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you,” she snapped. “I’m mad at your dick and my desire for it.”
I snorted a laugh.
“I think there’s a box of tissues on the table by our bags. Will you go get it? If I walk, it’s gonna be a fetish sex show. Thank God I’ve been doing Kegels.”
“I hope you have underwear,” I joked and kissed her shoulder, but she made that angry kitten sound. I should have felt bad, but I so didn’t. “I’ll be right back.”
I pulled out of her—woefully, so woefully—and hurried across the room with my pants half-undone, eyes scanning the room, suddenly aware that our time was borrowed. Someone would be walking in any second. And her naked ass was dripping while I rushed around the bridal suite with my sword drawn.
I didn’t see tissues, but I caught sight of her bag and rifled through it. “Can we use your sundress?”
She scoffed. “That is from Anthropologie.”
I frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means no. No, we cannot use that.”
A case that looked like a girlie toolbox sat off to the side, and I opened it up to find more makeup than I’d ever seen in my life. But there were some makeup wipes and a couple packs of tissues in there, so I swiped them and hurried back to her.
“Will this work?”
She sighed, finally smiling. “The tissues, please. I don’t think Clinique makes wipes that are pH-balanced for lady parts.”
I pulled a couple for myself and gave the rest to her, and as we got ourselves right, she said something that would haunt us like those vengeful Native American souls in Poltergeist.
“God, West—I swear, if this brings us bad luck, I will never let you live it down.”
The door burst open, and the sound of our mothers talking turned us into a whirlwind of hands and fabric and zippers and tucking and adjustments. With the briefest, sweetest of smiles and a brush of our lips, I stepped out from behind the screen, towing Lily.
Our mothers stopped in their tracks, beaming and clasping their hands, blissfully unaware—thank God. Rose, Maggie, and Astrid stood behind them, their eyes wide and apologetic.
“Oh my goodness,” Lily’s mom breathed. “You’re both glowing!”
Astrid snickered, and Rose elbowed her.
“I didn’t know you two had a first look planned!” Mom said.
“We didn’t,” Lily noted, “but we were nervous.”
“Aw, honey,” Lily’s mom cooed, stepping toward us to clasp Lily’s upper arms. “Do you feel better?”
I stuffed the hand that had just been under her daughter’s wedding dress in my pocket.
Lily let out an awkward laugh. “Oh, much better. Thanks, Mom.”
“I should go,” I started, not at all wanting to leave her side. Everyone busied themselves in an effort to give us a modicum of privacy as I turned to her. “I love you, Lily,” I said so only she could hear, “and in a few minutes, I’m gonna make you mine forever.”
“I can’t wait.” Her eyes glistened with tears.
And then I kissed her one last time before drawing her into my arms and bringing my lips to her ear.
“Next time I kiss you, you’ll be my wife,” I whispered.
She sighed, melting into me. “Forever.”
3
Like a Virgin
Lily
Within a second of the door closing behind West, I took a step and heard the last sound any woman wanted to hear on her wedding day.
The zipping crack of fabric splitting.
With horror I could only express in shades of red and purple, I turned to the offending sound. My unsuspecting mother held the short train of my dress down with her misplaced heel, and a tear the length of my middle finger exposed a sliver of my bare ass.
“Lily!” my mom gasped, eyes on my rump. “You’re not wearing underwear!”
I leveled her with my gaze. “Not really top on the list, Mom.”
She snapped herself to attention. “No, I suppose it’s not.”
Astrid was at her side, bending to inspect the tear as horrified tears pricked my eyes.
“What am I gonna do?” I breathed, the words trembling like a feather in the breeze.
“It’s not that bad,” Astrid said, whipping her phone out of the pocket of her bridesmaid dress. “Luc Phillipe is here, and he never goes anywhere without an emergency kit.”
My throat clamped shut from relief and uncertainty. “Do you really think he can fix it?”
“I once saw him reattach an entire bustled train in under four minutes during fashion week. I’m not even sure he’s human, but I’m damn sure he can fix this.”
She stepped away as he answered, and when I turned around, Rose was thrusting a lacy wisp of nude fabric at me.
“You might want to put these on.”
I snatched it from her. “Thanks.” I hurried behind the French screen where West had just annihilated my ladyhood, cursing his name and my absent willpower as I shoved my legs into those silky drawers.
Bad fucking luck. I told him it was bad luck, and I was right. Oh, am I gonna tell him how right I was.
The door burst open, and I heard the second to last sound no bride wanted to hear on her wedding day.
“We have a problem.”
It was Cam, and the tone of her voice sent a shiver tumbling down my spine.
I stepped out from behind the screen with a slow, numb detachment settling into my chest. “Tell me.”
She nibbled her bottom lip, the crease between her brows disconcerting. Rose had called it— Cam had a headset nestled in her ear and a clipboard in her hand.
“The hors d’oeuvres had anise in them.”
I frowned, narrowing my eyes in concentration like it would help me make sense of the sentence. “I don’t—” I started at the same time Maggie gasped.
“Oh my God. Cooper ate one, didn’t he?”
Cam nodded, and the two shared a dark look.
“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” I asked, pressing down the hysteria as it rose in my chest.
Maggie turned to me, her blue eyes big and wide and apologetic. “Cooper’s allergic to anise.”
I sucked in a breath. “Oh my God, is he okay? What’s happened?”
“He’s fine,” Cam assured us, “but …” She swallowed, and I balled my fists to stop myself from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. “Well … his … his lips and throat are a little … swollen.”
“How swollen?” I asked through my teeth.
Cam cringed and extended her phone, which displayed a picture of Cooper.
His lips looked like he’d attempted the Kylie Jenner lip challenge and subsequently seen the wrong end of a vacuum cleaner.
“Oh. My. God,” I whispered, big-eyed. “Please, tell me he can talk.”
“I mean, he can talk. I’m just not sure anyone can understand him.”
A groan climbed up my throat. “He’s officiating. He’s supposed to marry us. Who will marry us? How will we get married?” The pitch of my voice rose to a shrill tremble. “There’s no one else! No one else is ordained! We can’t get a priest or a preacher or—”
“A sea captain—” Rose offered helpfully.
“—Or a sea captain or anybody! What are we going to do?” I asked Cam like she was a fairy godmother.
Her face, which had otherwise been pinched in discomfort, popped open like a roller shade. “Hang on, I might be able to fix this. Be right back!” And she took off with a poof of imaginary smoke in her wake.
My breath was shallo
w, my lungs too tight, the air too thin. My vision dimmed around the edges, and I reached for Rose.
“Whoa there,” she said as she grabbed me around the waist and guided me to a settee. “Come here and sit down.”
“Whiskey,” I croaked.
“Step ahead of you,” Astrid said, putting a crystal glass in my hand, one I brought to my lips and kicked back, welcoming the shocking sting of molten liquid as it slid into my chest and bloomed like sunshine.
Luc Pierre burst into the room in a flurry, his homburg hat cocked stylishly on his head and waistcoat gorgeously tailored. In his hands, he held a small case that, once unzipped, displayed a substantial collection of needles, threads, fasteners, and tools.
“Come here,” he said as he approached. “Let me see the damage.”
I stood and presented my ass to him. I felt his hand on said ass and heard a cluck of his tongue, followed by a string of gentle French that I thought might be a curse.
“I can fix this,” he said with authority.
“Without a seam?” Astrid warned.
I turned as he shot her a look that could wither a cactus in four-point-two seconds. “Please. I’m not an amateur. Now take this off and let me have it.”
My mom moved for my robe, and I stripped there in front of Luc Pierre and everybody, grateful Rose had given me underwear. He sat casually on the settee with my dress draped across his lap, so comfortably seated that it looked like the furniture had been made to fit his form. Astrid pressed another whiskey into my hand, and I downed it gratefully, if not gracefully.
In an unbelievably brief stretch of time, he stood and held the dress up, his face aristocratic and smug. “Voilà. Here you are.”
I sighed my relief, smiling as I took it from him, and everyone bustled about to help me put it on. “Oh, thank you.”
He waved a hand. “It was nothing. Please, try to be more careful, darling. I’m sure Weston would prefer your ass, beautiful as it is, to stay covered until he decides otherwise.”
Maggie let out a shocked laugh, and West’s mom looked at the ceiling like Jesus might drop out of the plaster to save her.
Cam hurried back into the room with Cooper on one arm and a virtual giant on the other. He looked like a boxer from the twenties—shiny, bald head, luxurious mustache, face affixed in a scowl that broke open like storm clouds for the sun when he saw me.
“You must be Lily,” he said with a Southern drawl, roughed up on the bottom with a masculine gruff as he extended the biggest, meatiest hand I’d ever seen in my life. “I dunno if you hearda me. I’m West’s cousin, Billy.”
Billy Backlash.
I placed my small hand in the C-grade wrestler’s massive paw, and he gave it a gentle, enthusiastic pump.
“I seen your pictures, but damn if you’re that much prettier in person.” He flushed, his eyes darting to West’s mom. “Pardon, ma’am.”
“Oh, it’s fine, Billy,” she said sweetly.
Cam’s face was fixed with indecision. “Billy here is certified to marry you.”
“It’s true,” he added, slipping his hands into his slacks pockets. “I once performed a legal marriage in the ring. Jenny Jangler and Timmy Two-Tone was gettin’ hitched, but Frank the Fist busted it up with the help of a foldin’ chair.” He laughed, and it sounded like a saw eating wood.
Cooper pouted magnificently with the help of his fat lips. “Wisten, Wiwy, I’ve beed waitind all year for dith. It’th my onwy job! I can do it. I’m awedy bettew, wight, Cam?”
Her face pinched in an expression somewhere between a wince and a smile. “Sure, it’s better, but—”
“Thee?” he said, gesturing to her in triumph and effectively stopping her from finishing. “Bettew.” He stepped into me, took my hands in his, and looked into my eyes with his face so earnest that I felt myself agreeing before either he or I spoke. “Don’t wowwy, Wiw. I won’t meth dith up.”
I drew in a noisy breath through my nose, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth as I glanced at Billy, who seemed happy and willing to help. I imagined him marrying us, imagined Cooper standing behind West with a dejected look on his face and his mouth swollen like a bass, imagined Billy’s gruff voice asking me if I’d love and honor West.
I might have also imagined him whooping like Macho Man and encouraging us all to snap into a Slim Jim.
“Do you feel okay?” I warily asked Cooper.
“Yeah, dutht kinda itchy.”
I sighed my resignation. “All right. You can do it.”
He whooped and gave me an oddly spongy kiss on the cheek. “You won’t wegwet it!” And then he bounded out the door with Billy on his heels.
We all shared a glance, and Cam checked her watch. “Are you ready, Lily?”
A charm of hummingbirds took flight in my rib cage, and my cheeks tingled as they flushed and warmed. “I’m ready.”
Rose handed me my bouquet. I followed Cam through the empty hallways, catching the first, distant wisps of a string quartet. My breath hitched with every step, the music rising, and when I saw my father looking at me with his face so full of emotion and pride, my tears welled.
“Here,” Rose said gently and pressed a handkerchief into my free hand.
I couldn’t take a steady breath, the band around my lungs tightening and loosening as I took his arm.
He cupped his hand over my fingers. “I’ve been thinking about this day since you were a little girl, standing on my shoes with a pillowcase veil on your towhead. And now, here you are, all grown-up. Today, I’m giving you to another man, and I couldn’t have picked a more worthy one if I’d chosen myself.”
“I love you, Dad,” I tried to say bravely, but the words trembled.
He smiled, leaning in to press a kiss to my hair. “I love you, too. Are you ready?”
I drew a deep breath, formed the word yes in my mind and on the tip of my tongue. But before I could speak, a thick peal of thunder ripped through the sky just beyond the doorway.
A hundred and forty-three people turned their faces up to the darkening sky, and my heart sank into my stomach.
Dad tried to look reassuring. “Don’t worry, Lil. But … we might want to get moving.”
A small, worried laugh puffed out of me as I turned to the door. “All right, I’m ready.”
Cam motioned to the quartet, and the violinist nodded, her instrument bobbing, then turned to make eye contact with her colleagues. Within a moment, the opening chords of “Fade Into You” began along with the processional. First, Tricky and Rose. Then, Maggie and Astrid on each other’s arms. And then, as the stanza ended and the music rose to the chorus, we stepped out of the doorway, and every face turned toward us.
But I only saw one.
West stood at the end of the aisle, tall and strong and sure. Dark and beautiful and perfect. His face shone with his love, with his adoration and hope, with the promise of forever. And everything around us seemed to dim and fade. I felt my father’s arm under my fingers and the grass beneath my feet. I smelled the charge of rain in the air. I was cognizant of my bouquet in my free hand and, in my periphery, the faces of our friends and family as they watched me pass. But it all existed on the fringes of my awareness.
There was only him.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears as we came to a stop. I heard Cooper asking who was giving me away with a comical lisp, but West and I were connected with such intensity, I could feel us leaning into each other. I broke the contact for only a moment to look into my father’s face and to kiss his cheek, and then he placed my hand in West’s and stepped away.
I only had time to breathe my surprise as he pulled my hand, tugging me into him, his hand in my hair, his lips descending to capture mine in a moment of sweet and utter joy, a gentle possession, the stamp of his claim on me before a single word was spoken.
The guests laughed, cheering and whooping their approval. When he ended the kiss, his lips smiled as he looked down at me, still holding my face in his hands.
> “I fink you’ve got da owdew off, buddy,” Cooper said, smirking.
But West just took my hands, and we stood that way, facing one another under the eaves of a garlanded pergola teeming with jasmine.
Cooper opened the leather-bound folder and drew himself up tall.
“Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togefa today,” he said in a perfect imitation of the priest who attempted to marry Buttercup and Humperdinck.
The crowd laughed, West and I included.
Cooper shrugged. “Sowwy. I had to. And I apowogize in adfance fow the impediment. I’m one of point-zewo-zewo-one pewcent of da popuwation awergic to anithe.” He looked down at his folder. “I have had the pweasuw of watching the fwiendship between Wiwy and Wetht bwoom—”
The sky darkened as a pregnant thunderhead passed over the sun, the dimming of the light accompanied by a low, long rumbling of thunder.
West squeezed my hand, his thumb skating the fine bones on top of my hand. It’s going to be okay, that gesture said, and I smiled, believing him.
And then I heard the bagpipes.
They were only a high, distant honking, and we all looked around, trying to figure out what direction it was coming from. But it was impossible to tell with skyscrapers stretching up all around us, echoing the sound. The guests murmured, and I saw Cam dart to the edge to peer over. My ears strained, recognizing the tune. I couldn’t place it.
“Is that …” West started, his eyes narrowing in concentration.
And it clicked into place. “‘Like a Virgin.’”
Cooper barked a laugh, covering it with a fake cough when I turned my eyes on him. I imagined they were a glimpse straight into hell.
When Cam turned to meet my eyes, she blanched and shook her head in apology.
“I think it’s getting louder,” Rose said from behind me.
Which was true. The dissonant sounds grew, hitting the chorus with gusto met by everyone on that rooftop. When they started singing, my shock slipped into hysterical giddiness when West belted out the chorus to me, about me being fine and his, telling me he’d be mine until the end of time, as the Sixth Annual New York Bagpipe Parade made their way down the street below during my wedding ceremony.