“Jesse.” I shook my second-oldest friend. “That is True’s wedding dress! We need to get it off the grandmother ASAP!” I started for the casket, but Rowan grabbed me around the waist. “What are you doing? True will be here soon!”
“Love, stop. We won’t be able to salvage that dress.” Rowan nodded to the casket. “They cut the back of the clothing to fit it around the body.”
“Ewww.” Jesse scrunched his face up in disgust. “Yeah. I’m not touching it now.”
“The fuck you are!” I yelled.
“Is everything okay in here?” A woman in a black robe called from the back of the sanctuary. “It’s getting a little loud.”
“Fine. Ma’am,” Rowan said, holding up a hand and smiling at the reverend. “You know how grieving can be.”
The preacher squinted her eyes at us but kept walking, leaving us alone in the sanctuary with The Hot Mess of All Hot Messes.
“True is going to be so pissed at me,” Jesse moaned and scrubbed his hands down his face. “I thought I was helping!”
I sighed and looked at the giant cross on the wall.Was it too late to start praying for divine intervention?
I had a crazy idea, and I turned back to the men. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Jesse, I need the name of the funeral home you took that dress to. I will call the funeral director and ask them to meet us here. Rowan, take my car and Jesse to the grandmother’s house, find therightgown, and bring it back here on the double,” I ordered.
Rowan saluted me, took the keys, and grabbed Jesse’s arm.
“What are you going to do?” Jesse asked as Rowan dragged him back up the aisle.
“Pray that your mom can perform a miracle.”
An hour later, I dabbed the sweat on my forehead and arms as people began filing into the sanctuary for the service. People murmured words of peace and love to True and her family, who stood in a receiving line next to the casket.
“That was close,” Rowan breathed heavily beside me. He, too, wore a nice sheen of sweat. I worried about what that would mean to his good suit but was too frazzled to think about it any deeper.
“Yes. Thank you for helping him,” I said, turning to my fake fiancé. “I truly appreciate you.”
“You could have let him twist,” Rowan suggested. “But you didn’t. Why?”
I huffed a laugh. “I asked myself that same question over the last hour about a million times, and the answer was always the same. I couldn’t do it to True.”
“But you could’ve done it to Jesse,” Rowan pointed out.
I picked at the hangnail on my thumb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do, Goldilocks,” Rowan insisted. “If you didn’t know True, hadn’t gotten to know each other, and she was a faceless bride-to-be, you could have let Jesse twist in the wind because you know she’d have been pissed at what he did to her dress.”
“Well, he didn’t do it. The funeral director did,” I corrected. The funeral director did indeed cut up the back of that gorgeous gown and dressed the grandmother in it. And because of all the embalming fluids and makeup on the body, the dress was ruined. There was nothing Charlotte would be able to do to fix it. She would have to remake True’s dress - in less than 48 hours. Her team of seamstresses was working on it right now.
“You know what I mean.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I do. No. I couldn’t let Jesse twist either. He’s my second-oldest friend. This was a mistake. How could he know True hid her wedding dress at the grandmother’s house so he wouldn’t see it?”
Rowan kissed me on the cheek. “You’re a good person. You know that? I admire that loyalty to someone who has hurt you.”
“Did he hurt me, though? Or did I hurt myself?” I asked. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since you said what you said at the bar.”
“You need to let that go, love. I was talking out of my arse,” Rowan said.
“No. You were being honest with me because we were strangers in a bar, and if you can’t tell a stranger the truth, what can you tell them?”
Rowan was about to say something when the organ music started up. I leaned closer so he could hear me without yelling. “I’ve been holding onto this -crush- for years. Looking at every scrap of interaction for hidden meaning. Holding my breath for him to come back here and rescue me and my business. Waiting for breadcrumbs. It’s ridiculous. And everyone knows. I see that now. My brothers, Joy, even you saw it, and you didn’t even know me.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Rowan said. “I don’t think that was all in your head. I believe he did give you false hope.”
