She’s been drinking since we arrived in the suite to get our hair done. That was five hours ago. I take her glass and put it on my side table. “Maybe you should have a Coke?”
“Maybe you should have a drink?”
“I’m only eighteen.”
“Yeah, and you’re gettingmarried. You can have one glass of fucking champagne.”
I look around, praying no one heard her curse. “Margot, please chill?”
She sticks her tongue out at me but doesn’t say anything else. Margot is braver than I am—and tipsy—but she knows about family business too.
She yawns, stretching her arms over her head, and her platinum bangle tumbles down her wrist. She catches me looking. “As soon as the wedding’s over, I’m selling it.”
Anita moves in front of me, blocking Margot from view, and I’m glad I don’t have to answer. The bracelets are Mr. Parker’s gift to my bridesmaids. Around the hotel suite, identical bangles are sparkling on the wrists of my cousins Sadie and Penelope and my school friends Giuseppina, Darcy, and Quinn. All of them are getting their makeup done, sipping champagne, and having a far better time than Margot.
When Anita is done highlighting my cheeks, she moves back to my eyelids and applies black winged liner and false lashes. “You sit like a statue, January.”
I look at my hands. “Thanks. It’s probably because of ballet.”
“Half the girls I work with wriggle more than you. You should be a model.”
I smile. I’m sure Anita is just being nice but the idea of me being a model is crazier than me going to the moon. I get overwhelmed when two people speak to me at once. I can’t imagine going down a runway with hundreds of cameras flashing in my face.
Kurt, my bodyguard, barks out a laugh that makes everyone in the room jump. “…I said,‘Go fuck yourself, Hardaker!’”
Theodore, my other bodyguard, slaps his thigh. “Fucking asshole. You should have done it again.”
The two of them are tucked away in the corner of the suite, a bottle of Glenfiddich on the clear coffee table in front of them. I’m sure mom wouldn’t like them drinking on the job, but in a few hours, they won’t be my bodyguards anymore.
Margot bends her head toward me. “At least after today, you won’t have to deal with those chucklefucks.”
“Shhh!” I say, suppressing a smile. Kurt and Theodore are nice, but they’re also loud and kind of rude. It’ll be good not to worry about what they’re saying to the girls at ballet anymore. A clock on the wall chimes, announcing midday. There’s less than an hour until the ceremony. My nerves sizzle like strip steak.
“Nervous?” Margot asks.
“A little. But I bet Mr… I mean Zachery, is nervous too.”
Margot scowls. “First of all, who cares? Second of all, you still call him ‘Mr. Parker?’”
“Sometimes! He’s intimidating, I guess.”
“Bullshit. It’s because your nanny calls him ‘Mr. Parker.’”
My body temperature ticks up a notch. “Margot, for the millionth time, Zia Teresa isn’t my nanny.”
“No, she’smom’shousekeeper.”
I look over my shoulder. Mentioning mom always makes me feel like she’s going to show up and scream at someone. Probably me. But the room is as friendly and mom-free as ever. “Zia Teresa is my friend,” I tell Margot. “And she’s yours too. Do you remember how she helped out when you threw up on mom’s chintz lounge?”
Margot clicks her fingers at her makeup artist, Helen. “Hi? Yeah, can you bring me more champagne?”
Helen purses her lips, but she puts down her eyelash curler and leaves. I wince. It isn’t like Margot to be rude, but she’s scared, and I have no idea how to help her. If Zia was here, she’d know how to calm Margot down. She knows how to doeverything. I wanted her to come to the wedding, but mom refused. “What would people think, having a servant at a formal celebration?”
But Zia—Auntie—Teresa isn’t just a servant. She was my father’s housekeeper when he was young and when my real mom died giving birth to me, Zia Teresa bottle-fed me and read me stories, and sang to me in Italian. She’s tiny, less than five feet tall with a beautiful, wrinkled apple face and the sharpest, funniest tongue in the world. She smells like DNKY’s Be Delicious and Pond cream and Newport menthols, even though I always ask her to stop smoking. For her not to be here today… It’s just wrong.
Anita pats my shoulder. “Okay, baby girl, almost done. We just need setting spray.”
I close my eyes and Anita blasts me with so much wet mist, I’m surprised I’m not dripping. I imagine being sealed in a cocoon, a clear plastic barrier so that when Mr. Parker kisses me at the altar, he won’t really be kissingme. But when I open my eyes, I’m not in a cocoon. I’m just me, but shiny.
