I hadn’t cried at a fitting yet. I’d been very disciplined about it.
Rose swept into the room with Jorge right behind her, pushing the rack into position.
“Are you ready?” Rose asked.
She helped me into the mini dress first while Jorge helped Penny into the forest green halter that made her hair look like fire. Then both of them helped me into the full skirt, and Penny stood back and watched.
“Kelsey,” she said softly. “You look beautiful.”
I turned to the mirror.
For the first time all morning, the anxiety went quiet.
I did look beautiful. I looked like a bride. Not Kelsey Best, pop star, trending topic, brand deal. Just a bride who was about to marry the person she loved and become part of his wild,ridiculous, enormous, wonderful family. A family that included the woman standing behind me in the mirror with her hand pressed over her mouth and tears she was definitely not going to let fall.
“Suck it up, Bestie,” I said, and she laughed, and I laughed, and we were fine.
Ciara’s assistant Wes came in with the flowers, followed by a quick touch-up from the makeup artist and a photographer who got about two dozen shots of the two of us pretending to get ready together. Then we were in the elevator, going straight from the penthouse to the underground parking garage.
I had been told, and had mostly accepted, that because our wedding weekend had coincidentally fallen on the same dates as some enormous bingo convention, our guests had been distributed across several different hotels around Aspen. It had seemed like a logistical headache but Ciara had handled it, so I’d let it go.
In the parking garage I looked for the Rolls Royce.
There was a bus.
“Penny,” I said. “What is this?”
“More room for all that dress. Come on.”
The bus had a wrap job on the outside in blue and white, with “B.I.N.G.O. Tours” printed across the side in neat block letters. I stared at it as Penny steered me toward the door.
“Are we really doing this? Are we taking a bingo bus to my wedding?”
“Just get in the bus, Kelsey.”
I got in the bus.
And stopped.
“Penny. This is my tour bus.”
“I know.” She was smiling. Like a person who had absolutely no remorse about any of this.
“Why is my tour bus wrapped to look like a bingo shuttle?”
“Camouflage. Jules’s idea.” Penny guided me toward a seat with the gentle, implacable energy of someone who was not going to answer follow-up questions.
“That seems like an enormous amount of effort for a ten-minute ride.”
“It might be slightly longer than ten minutes.”
I looked at her.
“Penny.”
“Yes?”
“Why would it be longer than ten minutes?”
