Julia’ssneezerackedherentire body the moment they walked into the florist’s shop. Eliana fished a tissue packet out of her purse and handed it to her sniffling sister.
Natural light shone in through the tall windows surrounding the shop. It highlighted the colorful bursts of flower arrangements from every color in the rainbow. Logan had planned to come with Julia to pick out wedding flowers, but cancelled last minute to help his sister, Willow, with her two kids.
Eliana tried not to think of her own elegant wedding as she spotted a bouquet of white roses. Corbin’s mom had insisted on a classic color scheme of black, white, and red.
When the roses had arrived wilted, she should have taken that as a sign.
Julia sneezed again.
“Are you allergic to flowers?” the florist, Carrie, asked with a frown.
“Just some of them,” Julia said, her nose sounding even stuffier than before. “Roses and lilies for sure. And sometimes I react around carnations.” Julia blew her nose loudly, and her eyes were rimmed in red. The entire ship brimmed with a kaleidoscope of roses and carnations.
The phone rang, and Carrie led them to a table with stacks of photo albums to browse before she hurried off.
“Do you have any ideas?” Eliana asked Julia.
Julia blew her red nose. “I’d love to carry a bouquet filled with flowers indigenous to southern Florida.”
“Let’s see what they have.” Eliana riffled through the albums until she found a bouquet with white gardenia and jasmine.
“Perfect,” Julia said, her eyes teary.
“Are those crying tears or allergy tears?” Eliana asked suspiciously.
“Both. I just can’t believe this is happening,” Julia said, sniffle-laughing and wiping her eyes.
“Are you sure you want to get married so quickly. There’s no reason you can’t wait until after Logan goes to Africa to—”
“Yes, I want to marry Logan now. That’s the fun part. Not this.”
Eliana tried not to let her skepticism show on her face. She must have done a good enough job—or Julia was too distracted by her allergies to notice.
“Why don’t you wait outside, and I’ll finish this up.”
Julia hugged Eliana gratefully. “Thank you!”
Eliana finalized the details with Carrie and headed outside. She paused to watch Julia, who was texting someone, probably Logan based on the sweet smile on her face. Eliana hoped with her whole soul that Julia really would be happy with Logan, but what if they weren’t?
They could at least start with an amazing wedding. Eliana got into the car and turned to her sister. “What do we need to do next for the wedding?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have a checklist?”
“Not yet.”
“Julia.” Eliana would not allow her sister to have a wedding disaster. Wedding disasters led to marriage disasters led to a long, hard path to being happily single. “Give me your phone. I’ll make a checklist while you drive.”
Grandma Winnie worked on Julia’s wedding dress while Eliana edited her latest video at her grandparents’ bungalow. This time, she’d opted not to do her weekly live, and instead attempted to put out three longer-form videos.
So far, this video was proving to be uneditable. First, the background noise in the recording was so loud, it was difficult to hear Eliana. The laundry was going—with five people in the apartment, the laundry was always going—and even though her family had sworn to be quiet, she could hear them knocking things around in the kitchen and TV area.
So she’d moved to the quietest room in her sister’s apartment … the master closet. Which led to the second major problem, the lighting. Her sister’s apartment was wedged in a corner of the complex, which meant it never got any direct sunlight. This was great for keeping the apartment cool, but not so great for filming with natural light. The closet had cast her in shadows reminiscent of a horror movie.
When Eliana got to the part of the recording when Julia forgot Eliana was filming and walked into the closet wrapped in a towel to grab her clothes and screamed—well, that was that.
She deleted the entire video from her hard drive. Usually she liked to save the things she filmed, but even the words coming out of her mouth were aimless and unscripted in a way that made it seem like she didn’t know what she was talking about.
